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Trump to Add Clinton Impeachment Lawyer Emmet Flood to Replace Ty Cobb
Mr. Cobb arrived at the White House last summer as some of Mr. Trump’s friends and advisers encouraged the president to fire Mr. Mueller. Mr. Cobb feared that the special counsel was on the verge of issuing subpoenas demanding documents and testimony from White House aides, a move that could have locked the administration in a contentious court fight it was certain to lose. Instead, he repeatedly declared the White House to be in “full cooperation mode.”
He said publicly that the White House had no interest in firing Mr. Mueller, and told friends privately that he would not remain in the administration if Mr. Trump moved to fire the special counsel.
“There is not and will not be any consideration of terminating the special counsel, Bob Mueller,” Mr. Cobb said in an interview in October. “I think the path that he chose of trying to minimize conflict and maximize cooperation is one that benefits the country.”
Mr. Cobb’s hiring appeared to have a soothing effect on the president last year. He repeatedly assured Mr. Trump and the public that the Mueller investigation would end quickly — first by Thanksgiving, then by the start of the new year. Whether that was wishful thinking or an effort to calm an irascible president, Mr. Cobb’s prediction proved incorrect.
Behind the scenes, as Mr. Cobb rushed to turn over records to Mr. Mueller, his relationship soured with the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who thought Mr. Cobb should have more thoroughly reviewed documents and been willing to assert executive privilege. Mr. Cobb in turn thought that Mr. McGahn’s early response to the investigation had been too slow, bringing the White House to the verge of a subpoena.
Mr. Cobb, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer, was not a supporter of the Trump campaign and never viewed himself as part of that team. He has donated money to both Republicans and Democrats and supported Jeb Bush for president in the 2016 election.
He joked that he had “rocks in his head” as he took the job, and told friends that he expected to stay at the White House only as long as it took to turn over all the information to Mr. Mueller and arrange staff interviews with prosecutors. That job is nearly complete, with only Mr. Trump’s interview with prosecutors still being negotiated.
As for Mr. Flood, he has already had a whiff of the drama that follows Mr. Trump. Following a New York Times report in March that Mr. Trump was in discussions to hire Mr. Flood, the president attacked the article and one of the reporters who wrote it.
‘The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted’: Rosenstein responds to impeachment threat
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein took aim Tuesday at Republican lawmakers who have drafted articles of impeachment against him, saying that he would not comment on documents “that nobody has the courage to put their name on” and asserting that he will not change his behavior in the face of threats.
“I think they should understand by now that the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said. “We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law, and any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job.”
Rosenstein’s comments came at the end of a wide-ranging conversation at the Newseum in Washington to commemorate Law Day, which happened to fall a day after The Washington Post reported that conservative allies of President Trump had drafted impeachment articles against the Justice Department’s No. 2 official.
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) — have been in a long-running feud with Rosenstein and the Justice Department over what they see as a failure to turn over documents on a number of controversial topics, including the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
In recent days, they finalized a draft of the impeachment articles, which criticize Rosenstein for approving the warrant to monitor Page, and then failing to turn over requested documents.
[Trump-allied House conservatives draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein as ‘last resort’]
In a statement, Meadows said Rosenstein’s “response to the draft articles of impeachment is reminiscent of our interactions with him over the past few months: a lot of rhetoric with little facts.”
“If he believes being asked to do his job is ‘extortion,’ then Rod Rosenstein should step aside and allow us to find a new Deputy Attorney General — preferably one who is interested in transparency,” Meadows said.
The Freedom Caucus is one of the more influential blocs in Congress, though to impeach Rosenstein, its members would need the buy-in of House or Judiciary Committee leadership, and then they would have to win over a majority of members. Removing Rosenstein would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate — which would be nigh impossible.
Critics see the move as an effort to pressure the Justice Department to turn over documents it shouldn’t, or detract from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. Rosenstein supervises that probe, because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from it. The deputy attorney general has in recent weeks become a particular focus of the president’s rage.
Rosenstein for the most part avoided addressing that and other controversial topics Tuesday.
Asked in tangential ways about Trump’s recent threats to get more involved at the Justice Department, in part over his anger at Mueller’s probe, Rosenstein insisted that Justice Department officials were complying with the rule of law and that “there are no such conflicts” between that and demands by the president.
He refused to put a timeline on Mueller’s probe, but said of all investigations, “we recognize the need to move them as expeditiously as possible.”
Rosenstein declined to address whether he believed a sitting president could be indicted, noting only that Justice Department lawyers had opined in past administrations that the president could not.
Rosenstein’s most substantive comments, though, came on the Justice Department’s feuding with several congressional committees over document requests. Rosenstein noted that, throughout American history, the Justice Department had sparred with legislators wanting documents, and while there was “actually not a constitutional basis for oversight,” he found legislators’ role to ferret out misconduct important.
He said some of his predecessors had refused to turn over any FBI documents, though the courts had in past disputes instructed the two sides to “try to compromise.”
He said he would work out disputes with Congress on a “case by case” basis. In recent weeks, the department had seemed to reach agreements with several committee leaders, including those in charge of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. The committees are seeking materials on a range of topics, including the warrant to surveil Page and the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
“If we were to just open our doors to allow Congress to come and rummage through the files, that would be a serious infringement on the separation of powers, and it might resolve a dispute today, but it would have negative repercussions in the long run, and we have a responsibility to defend the institution,” Rosenstein said.
Asked about the articles of impeachment, Rosenstein quipped, “they can’t even resist leaking their own drafts,” and then compared the document to one the Justice Department seeks in charging someone with a crime.
“We have to affix our signature to the charging document,” he said, adding later, “I just don’t have anything to say about documents like that, that nobody has the courage to put their name on, and that they leak in that way.”
Rosenstein also on Tuesday addressed a question that has long vexed members of the D.C. press corps: Should his last name be pronounced Rosen-steen or Rosen-stine?
“So, there’s no right answer to that question,” Rosenstein said, to laughter. “My family, my father, pronounces it ‘stine.’ That’s how I pronounce it. But I actually have relatives who pronounce it ‘steen,’ so I’ll answer to either one.”
Harold Bornstein: Exiled from Trumpland, former doctor now ‘frightened and sad’
They came knocking because of loose talk about the president’s hair.
On Feb. 3, 2017, Donald Trump’s longtime bodyguard, a Trump Organization lawyer and a third man allegedly pushed into the Park Avenue offices of Harold Bornstein, according to an account Trump’s former physician gave NBC News on Tuesday.
Just days before the visit, Bornstein, an Italian-speaking gastroenterologist with his own shoulder-length locks and funky eyewear, had spilled to the New York Times about his most famous patient. Bornstein slipped to the Times that Trump took Propecia, a medication that stimulates hair growth. Bornstein confided to the paper he, too, took the drug. “He has all his hair,” the doctor told the Times. “I have all my hair.”
Two days later, the men from Trump — including security head Keith Schiller and attorney Alan Garten — arrived to reclaim all the files Bornstein had on the president. According to the doctor, they spent 25 to 30 minutes hoovering up the original copies of Trump’s medical records — retaliation, he intimated this week, for speaking to the press. “It created a lot of chaos,” Bornstein told the network.
“I feel raped — that’s how I feel,” the doctor dramatically said. “Raped, frightened, and sad. I couldn’t believe anybody was making a big deal out of a drug to grow his hair that seemed to be so important. And it certainly is not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What’s the matter with that?”
Trump’s New York inner circle often seems stocked with blaring characters tuned to the president’s own unique frequencies. There was Sam Nunberg, a fast-gabbing political operative. Omarosa Manigault Newman, a merciless reality television contestant. Michael Cohen, the tough-guy lawyer. Unbending loyalty knit them all to the man whose name was plastered on the building.
But as Trump’s tenure in the White House grinds on, squeezed by a special prosecutor, low approval ratings and the legal fallout from his alleged relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels, each of those old guard loyalists has slipped away. Nunberg repudiated the president in a bizarre blitz of cable news appearances. Manigault used a stint on “Celebrity Big Brother” to knock the administration. And Cohen, Trump’s attack-dog defender, is now the subject of a criminal investigation and featured in an unflattering light in the National Enquirer.
Bornstein, who served as Trump’s physician for more than three decades, is the latest longtime Trump figure to publicly split from the president. And the repudiation did not stop with the doctor’s revelation about the February 2017 visit. On Tuesday, Bornstein told CNN he did not write the 2015 glowing review of the president’s health, a typo-pocked assessment that brought the doctor scrutiny.
“He dictated that whole letter,” Bornstein told CNN. “I didn’t write that letter.”
Bornstein did not respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described the visit to retrieve the records as “standard operating procedure for a new president.”
For Bornstein, ministering to Trump’s health has been a family business.
Bornstein’s father, Jacob Bornstein, served as Trump’s personal physician until 1980. The elder Bornstein’s life was “a tribute to the uniquely American concept of ‘anything is possible’ if you are born here,” according to his 2010 obituary. The son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Jacob graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University and later earned a degree at the Harvard Medical School. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II before setting up a private practice in New York City.
Harold Bornstein followed his father into medicine, attending Tufts University School of Medicine after Tufts University in Boston. According to a 2016 article in STAT, he cut a flamboyant figure across campus, wearing his hair long and composing poetry under the pseudonym “Count Harold.”
“He was irreverent. He sat mostly near the back of the room — where most of us did — and paid varying degrees of attention to what was being said at the time,” a former classmate told STAT.
Throughout his career, Bornstein has been hit with three malpractice lawsuits, according to the Daily Beast. Two of the cases involved allegations of overmedicating that led to a patients death, the website reported. “He prescribed for her medication disproportionate for her physical weight and she ended up falling and dying,” one family members of a Bornstein patient told the Daily Beast. “I’m not saying it is because of him, but he contributed to her death.”
Each complaint was settled before a trial, and Bornstein admitted no liability.
Last February, Bornstein told the New York Times he treated Trump each year with annual checkups and colonoscopies. Trump’s first and third wives were also the doctor’s patients, and he treated Trump’s second wife occasionally. “I am probably the only person in the world who has every phone number for him and all the wives,” Bornstein told the Times.
Bornstein first came to national attention after Trump’s campaign released the December 2015 letter signed by the doctor attesting to the candidate’s health. The breathless praise immediately raised eyebrows and questions.
The letter said that Trump’s laboratory results were “astonishingly excellent.” The candidate’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary.” It concluded: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
The note drew scrutiny, and Bornstein eventually admitted he dashed off the letter in five minutes while a limo from Trump waited outside the doctor’s Manhattan office. “I was just rushed for time,” the doctor told CNN in 2016. “I had people to see.”
This week, Bornstein offered a drastically different account of how the health report was compiled. According to a report from CNN, Bornstein said the letter was put together while he was on the phone with Trump. The patient offered up the language he wanted Bornstein to write, he now claims.
“[Trump] dictated the letter and I would tell him what he couldn’t put in there,” Bornstein told the network. “That’s black humor, that letter . . . It’s like the movie ‘Fargo.’ It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction.”
Bornstein, who once had told Trump’s personal secretary Rhona Graff he hoped to be the White House physician, said this week that his comments to the Times in February squashed that possibility. “So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, you’re out,” Graff told Bornstein after the records were taken from his office, the doctor told NBC News.
An 8-by-10 picture of Bornstein grinning with his famous client once hung prominently on the doctor’s wall. According to NBC News, the photo is now lying unseen on a bookshelf. Bornstein claims Trump’s men told him to remove the photo of happier times.
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Building in Sao Paulo collapses in fire; at least 1 dead
SAO PAULO (AP) — An abandoned building occupied by squatters in Sao Paulo caught fire and collapsed Tuesday, sending chunks of fiery debris crashing into neighboring buildings and surrounding streets.
Firefighters said at least one person had been killed in the collapse and that there could be more.
The building, a former headquarters of the federal police, caught fire around 1:30 a.m. local time. Firefighters set up a perimeter and worked to evacuate people.
A few hours later, as flames engulfed the building of at least 20 stories, it collapsed. Globo TV, which was covering the fire, captured the destruction. Images showed the floors falling on themselves like dominoes and debris flying in all directions.
Romulo de Souza, 49, said he was part of a squatter occupation in the neighboring building. He said that when the fire began on the fourth floor of the former police headquarters, families began evacuating.
“Happily the majority got out,” he said.
De Souza said that residents believed the fire could have been started by a gas leak.
Firefighter Lt. Andre Elias told Globo TV that at least one person had been killed in the collapse. Authorities were working to locate several others who were missing.
Clearing debris and accounting for people who had been in the building could likely take days. Three hours after the collapse, smoldering debris continued to emit smoke.
The fire and collapse are sure to put a spotlight on occupations in Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city. Several dozen buildings have been occupied in downtown by highly organized fair-housing groups that take over and then fight for ownership. Many such dwellings are run like regular apartment buildings, with doormen and residents paying monthly fees and utility bills. Others are less established and more precarious.
Former Sao Paulo mayor Joao Doria, who recently stepped down to run for governor, cracked down on squatter communities as a plan to revitalize the downtown.
Doria argued the downtown should showcase Sao Paulo, the engine of Brazil’s economy and one of the hemisphere’s most important financial centers. Fair-housing activists, on the other hand, argue that the area could offer affordable housing to tens of thousands of people.
___
Associated Press reporter Peter Prengaman reported from Rio de Janeiro and photographer Andre Penner from Sao Paulo.
Israel’s Iran documents show nuclear deal ‘was built on lies’
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says a landmark nuclear deal with Iran was “built on lies”, after Israel claimed to have proof of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Pompeo said documents revealed by Israel’s prime minister were authentic.
Analysts say they show nothing new, highlighting that concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions led to the 2015 deal.
US President Donald Trump, who opposes the accord, has until 12 May to decide whether to abandon it or not.
Other Western powers, including signatories Britain and France, say Iran has been abiding by the deal and it should be kept.
- Could the nuclear deal collapse?
- Why the bomb is back
What is Iran accused of?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of conducting a secret nuclear weapons programme, dubbed Project Amad, and said it had continued to pursue nuclear weapons knowledge after the project was shuttered in 2003.
That followed the revelation in 2002 by an exiled Iranian opposition group that Iran was constructing secret nuclear sites in breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran was a signatory.
Mr Netanyahu presented what he said was evidence of thousands of “secret nuclear files” that showed Iran had lied about its nuclear ambitions before the deal was signed in 2015.
Tension between the long-standing enemies has grown steadily since Iran built up its military presence in Syria, which lies to the north-east of Israel.
Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons, and agreed three years ago to curb its nuclear energy programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.
The Israeli prime minister did not provide evidence that Iran had violated the accord since it went into effect in early 2016. But he insisted that Project Amad had continued at the Iranian defence ministry – citing the head of the programme as saying: “Special activities will be carried out under the title of scientific know-how developments.”
Mr Netanyahu said he had shared the files with the US, and they would be submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been tasked with investigating Iran’s nuclear past.
What does the US say?
The new secretary of state said the documents were proof “beyond any doubt” that “the Iranian regime was not telling the truth”.
“Iran hid a vast atomic archive from the world and from the IAEA – until today,” Mr Pompeo added.
Mr Trump, who has been vocal about his opposition to the Obama-era deal, said he had viewed part of Mr Netanyahu’s presentation and said the situation was “not acceptable”.
He said he would make a decision on whether to retain the deal in the next 12 days.
What other reaction has there been?
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the move by Mr Netanyahu was a “childish” stunt to influence Mr Trump’s decision on whether the US should stick with the nuclear deal.
He said the documents were a rehash of old allegations already dealt with by the IAEA. A former chief inspector at the agency told the Guardian newspaper his department had seen some of the documentation presented by the Israeli prime minister as early as 2005.
Olli Heinonen told the newspaper his department had come to the conclusion that evidence of Project Amad was credible, but that substantial work on it had ceased in 2003.
A spokesman for the UK government, a signatory of the deal, said it would continue to back the deal, adding: “We have never been naive about Iran and its nuclear intentions.”
Rob Malley, who was on the Iran negotiating team under the Obama administration, played down the allegations, saying they were “nothing new”.
Skip Twitter post by @Rob_Malley
For those who have followed the Iranian nuclear file, there is nothing new in Bibi’s presentation. All it does is vindicate need for the nuclear deal
But the Israeli prime minister has an audience of one: Trump
And he’s unfortunately unlikely to reach the same conclusion.
— Rob Malley (@Rob_Malley) April 30, 2018
End of Twitter post by @Rob_Malley
Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the documents have not put into question Iran’s compliance with the 2015 deal and said they should be analysed by the IAEA.
How did Israel acquire the documents?
Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad had obtained 55,000 pages of evidence and a further 55,000 files on 183 CDs relating to Project Amad.
A senior Israeli official told the New York Times that the agency first discovered the warehouse in southern Tehran in February 2016, and put the building under surveillance.
In January, intelligence agents managed to break into the property in the middle of the night, remove the original documents and smuggle them back into Israel the same night, the official told the paper.
How is the 2015 deal meant to work?
The agreement signed between Iran, the US, China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain lifted crippling economic sanctions in return for curbs on Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Under the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran is committed to slashing the number of its centrifuges, which are machines used to enrich uranium.
It is also meant to cut its stockpile of enriched uranium drastically and not enrich remaining uranium to the level needed to produce nuclear weapons.
The number of centrifuges installed at Iran’s Natanz and Fordo sites was cut drastically soon after the deal while tonnes of low-enriched uranium were shipped to Russia.
Furthermore, monitors from the IAEA have been able to carry out snap inspections at Iranian nuclear sites.
- Iran nuclear deal: Key details
Why is Trump unhappy about it?
The US president has not held back in voicing his opposition to the deal, which he has described as the “worst ever”.
He has twice already refused to certify to Congress that Iran is complying with the agreement, and warned that the US would withdraw completely on 12 May – the next deadline for waiving sanctions – unless European signatories to the deal and Congress addressed his concerns.
He is unhappy that it only limited Iran’s nuclear activities for a fixed period and had failed to stop the development of ballistic missiles.
He also said it had handed Iran a $100bn (£72bn) windfall that it used “as a slush fund for weapons, terror, and oppression” across the Middle East.
Stormy Daniels Sues Trump for Defamation
Stephanie Clifford, the former adult-film actress professionally known as Stormy Daniels, filed a lawsuit on Monday against President Donald Trump in Manhattan federal court, accusing him of defaming her in a recent tweet.
Mr. Trump posted the tweet on April 18, in response to a sketch Ms. Clifford released of a man who allegedly threatened her in 2011. According to Ms. Clifford’s lawsuit, a few weeks after she had agreed to discuss with a magazine an alleged sexual encounter she had with Mr. Trump, the man approached her…
What Mueller Wants to Ask Trump About Obstruction, and What It Means
• What did you think and do in reaction to the news that the special counsel was speaking to Mr. Rogers, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Coats?
It is not clear whether Mr. Mueller knows something specific about Mr. Trump’s reaction to these interviews, but the question shows that Mr. Mueller is keenly interested in how Mr. Trump responded to each step of his investigation.
• What was the purpose of your calls to Mr. Comey on March 30 and April 11, 2017?
Mr. Comey said that Mr. Trump called twice to ask him to say publicly that he was not under F.B.I. investigation. In the second call, Mr. Comey said, the president added: “I have been very loyal to you, very loyal. We had that thing, you know.”
• What was the purpose of your April 11, 2017, statement to Maria Bartiromo?
While the White House ultimately said Mr. Comey was fired for breaking with Justice Department policy and discussing the Clinton investigation, Mr. Trump expressed no such qualms in an interview with Ms. Bartiromo of Fox Business Network. “Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton, that I can tell you,” he said. “If he weren’t, she would be, right now, going to trial.”
• What did you think and do about Mr. Comey’s May 3, 2017, testimony?
In this Senate appearance, Mr. Comey described his handling of the Clinton investigation in detail. Mr. Comey was fired soon after. Mr. Mueller’s question suggests he wants to know why Mr. Trump soured.
• Regarding the decision to fire Mr. Comey: When was it made? Why? Who played a role?
Over the past several months, Mr. Mueller has asked White House officials for the back story, and whether the public justification was accurate. He will be able to compare Mr. Trump’s answers to what he has learned elsewhere.
• What did you mean when you told Russian diplomats on May 10, 2017, that firing Mr. Comey had taken the pressure off?
The day after Mr. Comey’s firing, Mr. Trump met with Russian officials in the Oval Office. There, The Times revealed, Mr. Trump suggested he had fired Mr. Comey because of the pressure from the Russia investigation.
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Cardinal George Pell will face trial on sex-offense charges
SYDNEY — Cardinal George Pell was ordered by an Australian magistrate to face trial over sexual abuse allegations, a decision that may make him the most senior Roman Catholic prelate to be forced to defend himself in court over a scandal that has swept through Catholic communities around the world.
After being told in a courtroom that he would face trial, Pell was asked how he pleaded. “Not guilty,” the 76-year-old answered in a firm, loud voice, according to reporters present.
Pell rose through the ranks of the church in Australia to become archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney. Five years ago, he was appointed one of eight cardinals by Pope Francis to work out how to overhaul the administrative structures of the church, which are known as the Roman curia. The following year he was placed in charge of the Vatican’s economic affairs. He has taken a leave of absence for the court case.
After a month-long pretrial hearing in which Pell was defended by one of Australia’s top criminal lawyers, the magistrate, Belinda Wallington, dismissed some of the more serious assault charges made against Pell by the Victoria state police force.
She ruled that other charges would go ahead: that Pell groped two boys’ genitals at a swimming pool in the regional city of Ballarat in the 1970s, where he was born, and ordained in 1966; and assaulted two choristers at Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral when he was the city’s archbishop in the 1990s.
Because the allegations concern offenses against children, most of the details have been legally suppressed and the court was closed to the public during part of the pretrial hearing.
“Cardinal George Pell has at all times fully cooperated with Victoria Police and always and steadfastly maintained his innocence,” a statement from his lawyers said. “He has voluntarily returned to Australia to meet these accusations. He will defend the remaining charges.”
A conviction is far from certain. Pell’s lawyers are likely to seek to undermine prosecution witnesses. The long time it took for the cases to reach court could work in Pell’s favor by dimming the memory of those called to give evidence.
“These are very difficult matters for everyone involved and no one is going to be popping champagne corks over this,” Louise Milligan, an investigative journalist and witness in the case whose reporting uncovered some of Pell’s accusers, said in a telephone interview.
Pell has apologized for the pain inflicted upon the church’s victims, and church officials say he became the first Catholic bishop, in 1996, to institute a formal restitution program.
But his patrician manner and perceived lack of empathy toward victims under his watch made Pell the focus of much anger in the disgruntled Catholic community.
A five-year national judicial inquiry into institutional sexual abuse that concluded last year received more complaints about the Catholic Church than any other organization. Ballarat was a hot spot of abuse: 140 people told the inquiry they were abused there between 1980 and 2015.
Those who complained usually received a dismissive response. Church leaders settled allegations in favor of the priests, or moved them to another district where several were able to continue abusing children, the inquiry found.
“This case study exposed a catastrophic failure in the leadership of the Diocese and ultimately in the structure and culture of the Church over decades to effectively respond to the sexual abuse of children by its priests,” the inquiry said last December.
During the pretrial hearing, Pell’s lawyer challenged the reliability of witnesses’ memories and their psychological states. At one point, the lawyer, Robert Richter, accused the magistrate of bias and asked her to step down from the case. She declined.
On Tuesday, the hearing’s final day, the courtroom was packed with victim advocates, Pell’s supporters and journalists. After the magistrate read the judgment and left the room, there was clapping from the public section of the court.
As Pell walked from the building on bail, through a phalanx of police officers there to protect him, he was jeered.
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Administration delays steel, aluminum tariffs for Canada, EU and Mexico
The confrontation stems from the president’s decision in March to slap tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum. Trump justified the action by saying it was needed to protect American metal producers from unfair competition and bolster national security. But the announcement, which followed an intense internal White House debate, triggered harsh criticism from Democrats and some Republicans and roiled financial markets.
At the time, Trump excluded several vital trading partners — the European Union, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil — from the tariffs.
That meant the steel tariff covered just 30 percent of all imports, according to Oxford Economics. If all the exemptions were ended, it would have deepened the impact of the tariffs on American companies that use steel and potentially affect financial markets. Stock prices fell nearly 2 percent when the tariffs were announced.
Two people familiar with the process said the Trump administration had been considering whether to provide a short-term extension of the exemptions to allow for more time to review the countries’ efforts to secure permanent exemptions.
One of the officials said the U.S. trade representative has been overseeing the process for all of the countries except for the European Union, whose tariffs are being evaluated by the Commerce Department.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
The EU and others had been asked to spell out what limits they could accept on the amount of steel they export to the United States, how they would address the issue of excess production of steel and aluminum and how they would support the U.S. before international bodies like the World Trade Organization. Security relationships with the U.S. have also been part of the criteria.
South Korea agreed to limit its exports to the United States as part of broader discussions involved in updating its bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. and was granted a permanent exemption.
China, Japan and Russia haven’t received exemptions from the duties. That will likely reduce steel shipments from those countries over time. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said late Friday that quotas on imports from Europe and other countries are necessary so imports from those countries don’t simply replace Chinese imports. The goal of the tariffs is to reduce total steel imports and boost U.S. production, Ross said.
“If you let everybody back out of the tariff, and you let them out of any kind of quota, how would you ever reduce the imports here?” Ross asked at a conference of business journalists. Ross is set to discuss the issue Monday with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom.
Germany, the EU’s largest steel exporter to the U.S., accounted for about 5 percent of U.S. steel imports last year. South Korea made up the largest share, shipping about 13 percent of U.S. imports, according to an American Iron and Steel Institute analysis of government data.
The EU has compiled a list of retaliatory tariffs worth about $3.5 billion it will impose if its steel and aluminum isn’t exempted.
European leaders have resisted the idea of a quota. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement Sunday that she discussed the issue with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May after returning from a White House visit Friday.
The three European leaders “agreed that the U.S. ought not to take any trade measures against the European Union,” which is “resolved to defend its interests within the multilateral trade framework,” Merkel’s statement said.
In her meeting with Trump, Merkel said, she saw little progress in obtaining permanent exemptions. “The decision lies with the president,” she said Friday.
A United Kingdom spokesperson called Monday’s postponement “positive” and said, “We will continue to work closely with our EU partners and the U.S. government to achieve a permanent exemption, ensuring our important steel and aluminum industries are safeguarded.”
In a separate trade battle with China, the United States has threatened to impose tariffs on $150 billion of Chinese goods in retaliation for what it argues are Beijing’s unfair trade practices and its requirement that U.S. companies turn over technology in exchange for access to its market. The White House also wants China to agree to reduce its $375 billion goods trade surplus with the U.S.
China has said it would subject $50 billion of U.S. goods to tariffs if the U.S. taxes its products. Trump has announced that an administration delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and trade adviser Peter Navarro will visit Beijing for negotiations on Thursday and Friday this week.
In addition to Mnuchin, Lighthizer, Ross and Navarro, the group will include economic adviser Larry Kudlow, U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad and Everett Eissenstat, deputy assistant to the president for International Economic Affairs.
“We’re going to have very frank discussions,” Mnuchin in an interview broadcast Monday on Fox Business.
Most analysts, however, think it’s unlikely the talks will reach permanent agreements and will more likely mark the start of longer-term negotiations.
AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.