Trump lawyers’ letter to Mueller challenges subpoena
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s lawyers composed a secret 20-page letter to special counsel Robert Mueller to assert that he cannot be forced to testify while arguing that he could not have committed obstruction because he has absolute authority over all federal investigations.
The existence of the letter, which was first reported and posted by The New York Times on Saturday, was a bold assertion of presidential power and another front on which Trump’s lawyers have argued that the president can’t be subpoenaed in the special counsel’s ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The letter is dated Jan. 29 and addressed to Mueller from John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers at the time who has since resigned from the legal team. In the letter, Trump’s lawyers argue that a charge of illegal obstruction is moot because the Constitution empowers the president to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”
Trump weighed in on Saturday on Twitter, asking “Is the Special Counsel/Justice Department leaking my lawyers letters to the Fake News Media?” He added: “When will this very expensive Witch Hunt Hoax ever end? So bad for our Country.”
Mueller has requested an interview with the president to determine whether he had criminal intent to obstruct the investigation into his associates’ possible links to Russia’s election interference. Trump had previously signaled that he would be willing to sit for an interview, but his legal team, including head lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have privately and publicly expressed concern that the president could risk charges of perjury.
Thousands march across NYC’s Brooklyn Bridge in gun protest
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of demonstrators have marched across New York’s Brooklyn Bridge in a protest against gun violence.
A student-led group called Youth Over Guns organized Saturday’s protest. The group formed after the deadly mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February.
The protesters marched across the bridge and then rallied in lower Manhattan. Most wore orange to show their support for gun violence awareness.
Aalayah Eastmond, a survivor of the shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, addressed the crowd. Actresses Julianne Moore and Susan Sarandon also were in attendance.
Remains of 8 veterans buried in San Antonio
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The remains of eight U.S. military veterans stored for years in the basement of a county courthouse in the Texas Panhandle have been interred as part of a formal ceremony in San Antonio.
The servicemen were buried Friday at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery after their cremated remains had been escorted more than 500 miles from the Potter County courthouse in Amarillo.
No family or friend had claimed any of the eight men when they died so their bodies were stored.
The San Antonio Express-News reports that Navy petty officer Coy Washington Black, who died at 67, had been in the basement the longest — 15 years.
Officials: Ex-Baptist leader mishandled separate rape claims
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — The president of a leading Baptist seminary in Texas was dismissed because of his response to two rape allegations made years apart by students, according to officials at the Fort Worth-based school.
Kevin Ueckert, board chairman for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in a statement Friday criticized the actions of former President Paige Patterson.
Ueckert said Patterson sent an email to the head of campus security in 2015 to say he wanted to meet alone with a student who told him she had been raped, to “break her down.” The attitude expressed by Patterson in the email was “antithetical to the core values of our faith,” Ueckert said.
Patterson also was criticized by the board for his response to a student’s allegation of rape in 2003 when Patterson was president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Paramount scraps airing ‘Heathers,’ citing violence
LOS ANGELES (AP) — After delaying its airing in the aftermath of February’s Florida high school shooting, Paramount Network is permanently scrapping “Heathers.”
Representatives from parent company Viacom confirmed Saturday that the TV reboot of the 1988 movie black comedy about high-school murder and suicide will not air on Paramount or any other Viacom properties.
Viacom says the subject matter is not suitable in the current environment for channels it is attempting to make youth-oriented, but that it is open to the possibility of selling the anthology series to a more fitting outlet.
The show based on the film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater had been set to premiere in March.