People wave U.S. flags during a 2017 naturalization ceremony at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
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People wave U.S. flags during a 2017 naturalization ceremony at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
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United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is changing its mission statement to eliminate a passage that describes the U.S. as “a nation of immigrants.”
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
Here is USCIS’s previous mission statement:
“USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”
The removal of the phrase “nation of immigrants” was announced to agency staff in an email letter from Director L. Francis Cissna.
In the letter, Cissna said, “I believe this simple, straightforward statement clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”
He also explained why the new mission statement deletes the reference to agency applicants as “customers.”
“What we do at USCIS is so important to our nation, so meaningful to the applicants and petitioners, and the nature of the work is often so complicated, that we should never allow our work to be regarded as a mere production line or even described in business or commercial terms. In particular, referring to applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits, and the beneficiaries of such applications and petitions, as “customers” promotes an institutional culture that emphasizes the ultimate satisfaction of applicants and petitioners, rather than the correct adjudication of such applications and petitions according to the law. Use of the term leads to the erroneous belief that applicants and petitioners, rather than the American people, are whom we ultimately serve.”
Ending the use of the word “customer,” writes Cissna, is “a reminder that we are always working for the American people.”
Cissna did not explain his rational for dropping the words “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.”
Cissna was sworn in as the agency’s Director in October 2017. He had been the Director of Immigration Policy with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Policy.
Opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration policies criticized the change. In a statement, Eleanor Acer, Senior Director for Refugee Protection at the D.C.-based Human Rights First said:
“Our nation is one built by immigrants—removing this language does nothing to change that fact, it only reveals the insidious racism harbored by those in this administration. It is clear from the language and policies put forth by President Trump and his hard-line immigration extremists that they will stop at nothing to demonize and dehumanize immigrants and refugees, who have often fled violence and persecution in search for a better life for themselves and their children.”
USCIS officials say the new mission statement reflects Cissna’s focus on “fairness, lawfulness, efficiency, as well as protecting American workers and safeguarding the homeland.”
The governor of Texas decided today to spare the life of a convicted killer who carried out a plot to kill his parents and his brother.
About 40 minutes before the scheduled execution, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he would grant clemency to 38-year-old Thomas “Bart” Whitaker. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a rare recommendation, voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of the “lesser penalty” of commuting Whitaker’s death sentence to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
“In just over three years as governor, I have allowed 30 executions. I have not granted a commutation of a death sentence until now,” Abbott said in a statement. “The murders of Mr. Whitaker’s mother and brother are reprehensible. The crime deserves severe punishment for the criminals who killed them. The recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and my action on it, ensures Mr. Whitaker will never be released from prison.”
Bart Whitaker was convicted of capital murder for the shooting deaths of his mother, Tricia Whitaker, and his younger brother, Kevin Whitaker, in an attack he devised at the family’s Sugar Land, Texas, home in December 2003. Bart’s father, Kent Whitaker, was also shot during the attack, but survived.
Kent Whitaker said he has forgiven his son and became his most outspoken advocate.
“I love him. He’s my son,” Kent Whitaker told “20/20.” “I don’t want to see him executed at the hands of Texas in the name of justice when there’s a better justice available.”
Watch the full story on “20/20” FRIDAY, Feb. 23 at 10 p.m. ET
Courtesy Kent WhitakerKent Whitaker with his son, Bart, in prison. Bart masterminded the attack that killed his family.
On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a rare recommendation, voted unanimously in favor of the “lesser penalty” of commuting Whitaker’s death sentence to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutor Fred Felcman, who was also the original prosecutor in the case, told ABC’s Houston station KTRK on Tuesday that he was disappointed by the parole board’s recommendation.
“I guess the 12 jurors’ opinion means nothing to the parole board,” Felcman said.
“20/20” sat down with Kent Whitaker awhile he awaited the board’s decision on his son’s fate. He said that Bart has learned Spanish in prison and was teaching some inmates English, while helping others earn their high school diplomas.
“I have seen such change in him,” Kent Whitaker said of his son. “He’s been incarcerated for 11 years. That’s 4,000 days. He’s done a lot of work himself and he’s struggled hard to try to find out what it was that went wrong in his mind.”
“There’s a mental illness issue here that we still don’t quite understand,” the father added. “But he has learned how to recognize the danger points and to work around them. I want the opportunity to spend years watching him grow. And there’s so much that he can do.”
Family Handout via AFP/Getty ImagesKent Whitaker and his son Bart are during a visit to Bart’s prison in Polunsky, Texas in October 2016.
Kent Whitaker said he recognizes the horrible crime his son committed, saying, “I live with it every day… and nobody’s denying it.”
“Forgiveness is absolutely critical if you want to heal from your loss,” he continued. “It is the only way that you can get the bitterness out, and the bitterness is going to stay there and it’s going to affect your relationships in ways that you can’t even see or recognize. But it’s going to negatively affect them. I was able to forgive on the night of the shootings.”
On Dec. 10, 2003, Bart Whitaker announced to his family that he had finished his final exams at Sam Houston State University and would be graduating. To honor his achievement, his parents presented him with a Rolex watch. That night, the family went to a popular Cajun restaurant to celebrate.
Photos taken from that night show Bart smiling for the camera, but he told “20/20” in a 2009 interview that he knew at that moment that an intruder had entered their home and was waiting for their return. If everything went according to his plan, his brother, mother and father would all be dead within minutes.
Fort Bend County, TexasBart Whitaker, right, is pictured with his mother, Trisha, and brother, Kevin, at his graduation celebration dinner in December 2003. Trisha and Kevin died later that night in an attack planned by Bart.
“I don’t really know a better term for how I was feeling [that night], other than I was on auto-pilot. I wasn’t even aware of myself,” Bart Whitaker told “20/20” in 2009.
“I wanted them dead,” he added. “It was my idea.”
Fort Bend County, TexasBart Whitaker, right, is pictured with his mother, Trisha, and brother, Kevin, at his graduation celebration dinner in December 2003. Trisha and Kevin died later that night in an attack planned by Bart.
When the family arrived home, Bart, knowing what awaited his family inside, ran down the driveway, saying he needed to grab his cell phone out of his car. Kevin Whitaker, 19, was the first one to open the door and was shot in the chest, then his mother followed and was also shot.
Next, his father was wounded, too — he was shot through the right chest and arm, breaking his humerus bone.
Bart said he then ran into the house and pretended to try and catch the shooter. They wrestled a bit and then Bart was shot in the arm to make him appear to be a victim.
“It was to distance me from the guilt,” he told “20/20” in 2009. “But also I think on an internal level it was me realizing that there was no way that I could come out of this physically unscathed.”
Kevin and Tricia both died from their gunshot wounds. Kent and Bart both survived. Investigators would later discover that Bart had never graduated Sam Houston State University and was still listed as a freshman on academic probation.
When they were released from the hospital, Bart moved back home to be with his father, where they spent time together reading the Bible.
The investigation made little progress, until a man named Adam Hipp walked into the Sugar Land police station and introduced himself as a former friend of Bart Whitaker’s. Hipp told police Bart had hatched a second, previously unknown murder plot that was aborted at the last minute, but Hipp claimed Whitaker had asked him to be the shooter.
Another break in the case came in August 2005, when a man named Steven Champagne, who was Bart’s former co-worker and neighbor, went to police and confessed to assisting in the crime and provided the entire story of what happened on that December 2003 night.
Champagne told investigators that Bart had set up the crime and lured his family to dinner to celebrate his fake graduation from college. As the Whitakers celebrated, Champagne said he watched from a car in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, Bart’s roommate, Chris Brashear, hid in Bart’s SUV outside the Whitaker home. Champagne told police Brashear entered the house with the key and disabled the alarm with the code Bart had given him. Champagne said he followed the family home and parked on a nearby street and waited.
“[Brashear] said Bart’s brother had walked in first,” Champagne recalled in his confession. “And, when Chris shot him, he said before he shot him he thought he smiled. And then Chris shot his mom and then shot Bart’s dad …. And then, he acted like he wrestled around with Bart and shot Bart.”
A minute later, as he told cops, Brashear joined him in the car and they fled the scene.
“Bart said his family was worth a lot of money,” Champagne said, explaining his motivation. “He said he would give us some money — I mean millions of dollars.”
He also told police that he and Brashear had thrown a bag full of evidence off of a bridge into a nearby lake. A police dive team later found a soggy duffel bag full of decomposing evidence. Though the bag had spent two years at the bottom of the lake, detectives were able to obtain a DNA profile of Brashear on the mouth of a water bottle. The bag also contained Bart Whitaker’s cell phone.
In March 2007, a jury convicted Bart Whitaker of the capital murder of his mother and his younger brother, and he was sentenced to death. The shooter, Brashear, received life in prison without parole. The getaway driver, Champagne, was sentenced to 15 years for his role in the plot.
Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman via APKent Whitaker embraces his wife Tanya after reacting to the an email from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles which voted unanimously to recommend clemency for death row inmate Thomas Whitaker, Feb. 20, 2018, in Austin, Texas.
Since then, Kent Whitaker has gotten remarried and has devoted his time to spreading his message of forgiveness as well as fighting to prevent his son’s execution. Kent wrote a book, “Murder by Family,” in which he tracks the pain, tears and faith that carried him through it all.
“I think that justice would be the opportunity to spend his life helping others and allowing me the opportunity to walk that road with him,” Kent Whitaker said.
A top Ford Motor Co. executive has been fired following misconduct allegations, the latest business leader to be shown the door amid broader scrutiny of workplace behavior in the U.S.
Raj Nair, a 53-year-old Ford veteran who most recently ran the auto company’s profitable North American business, is leaving after an investigation found his behavior was inconsistent with the company’s code of conduct.
WHITTIER, Calif. — Police said Wednesday that they discovered two AR-15 rifles, two handguns, and 90 high capacity military-grade magazines at the home of a student who allegedly planned to shoot up his Southern California high school.
According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a security guard at El Camino High School in Whittier overhead a “disgruntled student” threaten to open fire on the school on Friday, just two days after 17 people were gunned down at a Florida high school.
LASD Sheriff Jim McDonnell said his department takes seriously threats of violence on school campuses. School-related threats are on the increase in LA county, and are regularly investigated by his department, he said.
In the El Camino case, McDonnell said a security guard overheard the student say he was going to shoot up the school sometime in the next three weeks. The student had an “extensive” disciplinary record and officials found that a semi-automatic weapon was registered to the student’s home address, McDonnell said.
The student was arrested Tuesday on charges of making criminal threats. The teen’s brother, 28, has also been arrested on weapons charges. One of the rifles was registered to the brother, but the other was unregistered, McDonnell said.
The brother claimed responsibility for having the weapons, McDonnell said. The brother said he was in the military and had shipped the weapons over from Texas, where he had been stationed, a deputy said. The weapons were found in the home unsecured near the loaded magazines, according to the deputy.
Marino Chavez, the security officer with the Norwalk La Mirada School District who reported the threat, said he felt it was important to immediately contact the sheriff’s department to “possibly prevent another tragic event.”
“The sheriff’s department can only respond if they are told,” Chavez said.
Chavez said it was after lunch break and students were returning to class when he heard the threat about a school shooting within the next three weeks. He approached the student, questioned him and brought him to the office.The student confirmed what he said, but apologized and said he was only kidding, Chavez said.
“I said, well you can’t say those things on a school campus,” Chavez said.
The student said he was angry with a teacher’s issue about headphones in class and because wasn’t allowed to go to the teacher’s class the next day, Chavez said.
McDonnell thanked Chavez for coming forward, calling him an “unsung hero.”
“Any time we can get a chance to prevent something like that from happening, I think we all come away very relieved,” McDonnell said.
The parents of first lady Melania Trump have become legal permanent residents of the United States and are close to obtaining their citizenship, according to people familiar with their status, but their attorney declined to say how or when the couple gained their green cards.
Immigration experts said Viktor and Amalija Knavs very likely relied on a family reunification process that President Donald Trump has derided as “chain migration” and proposed ending in such cases.
The Knavses, formerly of Slovenia, are living in the country on green cards, according to Michael Wildes, a New York-based immigration attorney who represents the first lady and her family.
“I can confirm that Mrs. Trump’s parents are both lawfully admitted to the United States as permanent residents,” he said. “The family, as they are not part of the administration, has asked that their privacy be respected so I will not comment further on this matter.”
The Knavses are now awaiting scheduling for their swearing-in ceremony, according to a person with knowledge of the parents’ immigration filings.
Questions over the Knavses’ immigration status have escalated since Trump campaigned for the White House on a hard-line anti-immigration agenda. Those questions grew sharper last month, when the president proposed ending the decades-long ability of U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents and siblings for legal residency in the United States.
Trump has repeatedly blasted the long-standing policy as “chain migration.” In last month’s State of the Union, the president called that process a threat to Americans’ security and quality of life. Under his plan, he said, only spouses and minor children could be sponsored for legal residency.
But immigration experts said such a path would have been the most likely method his in-laws would have used to obtain residency that permits them to live in the United States.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and backed by the White House that included Trump’s proposal.
As Americans mourned the death of the Rev. Billy Graham on Wednesday, most remembered him as a pastor with the ability to lead thousands to Jesus, take presidents under his wing and console a nation after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But it was in the suburbs of Chicago where he learned how to amplify his voice as a preacher.
It didn’t take long for Graham and the congregation of Western Springs Baptist Church, his first pulpit after graduation from Wheaton College, to conclude he was better suited to preach in stadiums than sanctuaries.
“This is where he got a taste of glory, a taste of fame and the gratification that comes from speaking to huge crowds,” said Grant Wacker, author of “America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation,” a biography of the national icon. “And he got the response he was looking for.”
Wheaton’s president, the Rev. Philip Ryken, said commemorating Graham’s significant contributions to Christian ministry for the many generations born after his heyday would remain a long-term commitment of the flagship evangelical institution.
“I think Billy Graham will be regarded as one of the greatest Christian leaders of the 20th century,” Ryken said, “and that legacy will last a very long time.”
Graham, a native of North Carolina, was already an ordained Southern Baptist pastor and graduate of Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College of Florida) when he sought a liberal arts education and bachelor’s degree at west suburban Wheaton College in 1940.
After hearing the 21-year-old Graham preach in Florida, two members of the Wheaton College board, including the brother of its incoming president, hired Graham as their caddy on a golf course and offered to pay his first year of tuition if he attended the college.
He studied anthropology, which some say expanded his horizons beyond the biblical theology training he already had received.
“It did make him aware in new ways of how societies work, how cultural values are shaped, things he could draw upon, especially as he traveled the world,” said Edith Blumhofer, a professor of history at Wheaton College.
But even more important than the college curriculum were the people he met and walked alongside for decades to come, she said, including his future wife, Ruth Bell, a fellow student and daughter of Presbyterian missionaries.
It wasn’t until 1941, that Graham, then a 23-year-old college sophomore, took his place before a congregation. The Wheaton College president at the time, V. Raymond Edman, recommended that Graham replace him in the pulpit of Wheaton’s United Gospel Tabernacle.
The west suburban campus ended up becoming the laboratory where Graham learned to galvanize students, regardless of Christian tradition or denomination, to work for a common cause. He applied the same ecumenical ethos to his later ministry.
“It was where he acquired managerial skills for inspiring and leading organizations and expressing his ministry, not only by preaching but through other people,” said Robert Shuster, who oversees the Billy Graham Center Archives housed at Wheaton.
In 1943, after Graham and Bell graduated from Wheaton and married, he took a job as pastor of Western Springs Baptist Church. But both Graham and the congregation quickly figured out that the pastor didn’t belong in a stationary pulpit.
“He was not preaching what a pastor would normally preach to a church audience,” said one of Graham’s former classmates, the late Glyn Evans, in an interview with Shuster for the archive several years ago.
“Most pastors preach sermons that are uplifting and designed to enable the Christians to grow deeper in their Christian faith,” Evans said. “But when Billy preached, it was as if he was preaching to a group of sinners that didn’t know the way, that were looking for the way. And he was there to tell them the way.”
It was during his time at Western Springs that Graham walked into Moody Radio’s flagship station in Chicago to meet the gospel singer George Beverly Shea, who was involved with the show “Hymns From the Chapel.” He invited Shea to help him launch his own Sunday late-night radio show titled “Songs in the Night.”
The show “lasted for 20 years and ended up being heard by people all over the country,” said the Rev. Dean Monkemeier, senior pastor of Western Springs Baptist, now called The Village Church.
“How God used Billy Graham was remarkable. We’ve lost someone of that generation, and I don’t think we have anyone like that anymore,” Monkemeier added.
Shea went on to serve as the soloist of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for more than 60 years.
In addition to radio, Graham became a master of media on multiple platforms. In 1951, he started making movies through World Wide Pictures, a motion picture division of his ministry.
In 1956, he founded Christianity Today magazine, now based in Carol Stream, to provide an evangelical voice that didn’t lambaste fundamentalism. And in 1957, he launched a nationwide television broadcast on ABC. He later used satellite broadcasts to deliver his messages around the world.
Graham served his alma mater as a trustee from 1963 to 1990. In 1980, the Billy Graham Center opened on Wheaton’s campus. Ryken, a high school student then, recalls how Graham preached to a crowd on campus the day of the dedication.
“I was there that day, sitting on a picnic blanket and listening to Dr. Graham preach the gospel he loved to proclaim — the good news of forgiveness for sin and the free gift of eternal life through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Ryken said. “Like countless others who heard Billy Graham preach, I recommitted my life to Christ.”
On Wednesday morning, Maila Kue, a graduate student from Detroit, watched a crew set up photos of Graham in the Wheaton College museum that bears his name. (A special exhibit on his life is set to open Friday.) Earlier that day, she had met someone who had accepted Jesus as his savior at one of Graham’s crusades.
“That was surreal for me,” said Kue, 26. “This is not just something in a book. This is someone whose life was changed by Billy Graham.”
Republican strategist Eric Beach explains why Pennsylvania’s redistricting is under fire.
The Republican presiding officers of Pennsylvania’s House and Senate asked the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday to block a new congressional district map that is widely expected to boost Democratic prospects in the November midterm elections.
The emergency request filed by Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnetti says the state Supreme Court usurped legislative authority when it issued the new map on Monday, calling it an unprecedented decision.
The congressional map drawn by the GOP-led legislature in 2011.
(Supreme Court of Pennsylvania)
“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court conspicuously seized the redistricting process and prevented any meaningful ability for the Legislature to enact a remedial map to ensure a court drawn map,” they wrote.
The revised congressional map for 2018.
(Supreme Court of Pennsylvania)
Last month, the Democratic-majority Supreme Court of Pennsylvania threw out a 2011 congressional district map that had been drafted by Republicans, saying it violated the state constitution’s guarantee of free and equal elections. On Monday, the court released new maps of Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts.
Republicans had won 13 of 18 seats in three straight elections under the now-invalidated map, even though Pennsylvania’s statewide elections are often closely divided and registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.
The challenge adds uncertainty as candidates are preparing to circulate nominating petitions to get their names on the May primary ballot.
A spokesman for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, responding to the lawmakers’ filing, said Wolf was “focused on making sure the Department of State is fully complying with the court’s order by updating their systems and assisting candidates, county election officials and voters prepare for the primary election.”
Turzai told reporters earlier Wednesday that a separate action in federal court in Harrisburg is also possible.
Wednesday marked the third time in four months that Turzai and Scarnati have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put a halt to litigation over the 2011 map they took leading roles in producing.
In November, Justice Samuel Alito turned down a request for a stay of a federal lawsuit, a case that Turzai and Scarnati won in January.
On Feb. 5, Alito rejected a request from Turzai and Scarnati to halt a Jan. 22 order from the state Supreme Court that gave the Republican leaders two weeks to propose a map that would be supported by the Democratic governor and until last week to suggest a new map to the court.
The application filed Wednesday also was addressed to Alito.
Turzai and Scarnati argued that the state’s high court gave them scant time to propose their own map after throwing out the 2011 version, ensuring “that its desired plan to draft the new map would be successful.” As evidence of a “preordained plan,” they cited comments critical of gerrymandering made by Justice David Wecht during his 2015 campaign for the court.
“The court’s process was entirely closed,” they told Alito. “It did not allow the parties the opportunity to provide any comment to the proposed map, inquire on why certain subdivisions were split and whether it was to meet population equality, or further evaluate whether partisan intent played any role in the drafting.”
As a sign of the litigation’s potential impact on national politics, President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Republicans to press their challenge of the map to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Your Original was correct! Don’t let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes waste money!” Trump tweeted.
The five Democrats on the state Supreme Court sided with Democratic voters who challenged the map, although one of the Democratic justices, Max Baer, has pointedly opposed the compressed timetable.
Congressional candidates have from Feb. 27 to March 20 to collect and submit enough signatures to get on the ballot, and the new district maps have candidates and would-be candidates scrambling to decide whether to jump in. Five incumbents are not seeking another term and a sixth has resigned, an unusually large number of openings.
“Sen. Rubio, my daughter, running down the hallway at Marjory Douglas, was shot with an assault weapon, the weapon of choice,” Guttenberg said after Rubio voiced his opposition to such legislation. “It is too easy to get. It is a weapon of war. The fact that you can stand here and can’t say that, I’m sorry.”
Rachel Crooks speaks at a news conference in December to discuss her accusations of unwanted kissing by Donald Trump. The president denied the allegations on Twitter after her story resurfaced on the front page of the Washington Post.
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Rachel Crooks speaks at a news conference in December to discuss her accusations of unwanted kissing by Donald Trump. The president denied the allegations on Twitter after her story resurfaced on the front page of the Washington Post.
Mark Lennihan/AP
The lengthy feature article on the front page of Monday’s Washington Post was a profile of Rachel Crooks, one of more than a dozen women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct. After going public with her story in the fall of 2016 on the eve of the election, she is now running for the state Legislature in Ohio as a Democrat.
Up until this point, Trump hadn’t directly addressed her claim that he kissed her against her will in 2006, with Trump and his spokespeople instead offering blanket denials.
That changed with two late morning tweets.
“A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago,” Trump wrote inaccurately describing Crook’s account of what happened. “Never happened!”
A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security……
Trump added a rhetorical question bridging the two tweets: “Who would do this in a public space with live security……….cameras running.”
Crooks then responded to Trump on Twitter, calling on him to release surveillance footage, if there is any, from where she says the unwanted kissing occurred, the 24th floor of Trump Tower, not the lobby as Trump had asserted in his tweet.
Trump’s tweets come at a time when his interactions with women over the years are in sharp focus. Last Friday the New Yorker published a piece detailing how the National Enquirer bought exclusive rights to and then never published the story of a former Playboy Playmate, Karen McDougal, who says she had a consensual sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.
This followed a New York Times story a week ago where Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said that shortly before the election, he paid $130,000 to a porn actress named Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the professional name of Stormy Daniels. Cohen has released a statement for Clifford denying she had an affair with Trump in 2006. But in 2011 she detailed the alleged affair in an interview with In Touch magazine that wasn’t published at the time but was released earlier this year.
On Sunday, as Trump’s motorcade drove him to the Trump International Golf Club for dinner with his family, it passed the Ultra Gentleman’s Club near Palm Beach International Airport, which was advertising an event: “Stormy Daniels Making America Horny Again.”
A sign for a Gentlemen’s Club across the street from Trump International Golf Club that reads “Stormy Daniels Making America Horny Again” was seen from President Trump’s motorcade.
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A sign for a Gentlemen’s Club across the street from Trump International Golf Club that reads “Stormy Daniels Making America Horny Again” was seen from President Trump’s motorcade.
Andrew Harnik/AP
By Crooks’ telling in the Washington Post, Trump kissed her outside the office where she worked as a receptionist for the Bayrock Group:
“He was waiting for the elevator outside our office when I got up the nerve to introduce myself,” she is quoted in the Post as saying.
The article starts with Crooks telling her story to a group of a dozen women her aunt had gathered for a dinner party:
“She reached for her water glass and lifted it up into the air to use as a prop. ‘He took hold of my hand and held me in place like this,’ she said, squeezing the sides of the water glass, shaking it gently from side to side. ‘He started kissing me on one cheek, then the other cheek. He was talking to me in between kisses, asking where I was from, or if I wanted to be a model. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and then he went right in and started kissing me on the lips.’
“She shook the water glass one final time and set it down. ‘It felt like a long kiss,’ she said. ‘The whole thing probably lasted two minutes, maybe less.’ ”
The timing of the alleged incident is notable, coming just months after the Access Hollywood tape was recorded. In that video, which didn’t come out until October 2016, Trump is heard grabbing a mint before disembarking from a bus to greet an actress.
“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her,” Trump said in comments he later described as nothing more than “locker room talk.” He added, “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
After the Access Hollywood tape came out, the New York Times published a story that included charges from multiple women. Crooks was among them. At the time, Trump spokesman Jason Miller dismissed the entire article as “fiction.”
“It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story, and for this to only become public decades later in the final month of a campaign for president should say it all,” Miller added.
Trump himself tweeted that “nothing ever happened with any of these women.”
Nothing ever happened with any of these women. Totally made up nonsense to steal the election. Nobody has more respect for women than me!
Late last year, Crooks was in the headlines when she was among a group of Trump accusers who again came forward in the midst of the #MeToo movement, which has seen many powerful men accused of wrongdoing face public shame and professional consequences. This drew attention back to accusations against Trump and why he never saw similar consequences.
Crooks and two other women were featured on NBC’s Today and held a news conference in New York in December. At the time, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about it in the daily White House press briefing.
“Look, the president has addressed these accusations directly and denied all of these allegations,” said Sanders. “And this took place long before he was elected to be president. And the people of this country, at a decisive election, supported President Trump, and we feel like these allegations have been answered through that process.”
And up until this point, that has been the White House response to such allegations — denial combined with the argument that Trump won despite widespread knowledge of allegations against him. Case closed.
As to the question Trump posed in his tweetstorm about Crooks, “Why doesn’t @washingtonpost report the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me? One had her home mortgage paid off. Only @FoxNews so reported,” Trump was apparently referencing a December 2017 story from The Hill discussed on air on Fox News.
The story detailed efforts by well-known lawyer Lisa Bloom to secure payments or other support for women who had come forward to talk about their experiences with Trump. Crooks wasn’t mentioned in that article.
The article did describe a Trump accuser, Jill Harth, who had the approximately $30,000 remaining on her mortgage paid off by an unnamed donor. However, the article points out that Harth had filed a sexual harassment suit against Trump in 1997 and her account of Trump groping her had resurfaced and been published in the summer of 2016, months before she ever connected with Bloom.
“Nothing that you’ve said to me about my mortgage or the Go Fund Me that was created to help me out financially affects the facts or the veracity of my 1997 federal complaint against Donald J. Trump for sexual harassment and assault,” she said in the article.
