Obama issues scathing critique of Trump and the ‘politics of fear’
URBANA, Ill. — Former President Barack Obama issued a scorching critique of his successor Friday, blasting President Donald Trump’s policies and his pattern of pressuring the Justice Department.
Obama also reminded voters that the economic recovery — one of Trump’s favorite talking points — began on his watch.
Obama’s speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was delivered less than two months before midterm elections that could determine the course of Trump’s presidency. The remarks amounted to a stinging indictment of political life in the Trump era.
“It did not start with Donald Trump,” Obama said. “He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years.”
Noting the history of former presidents avoiding the rough and tumble of politics, Obama acknowledged his sharp critique of Trump was something of a departure from tradition. But he said the political moment required a pushback and called for better discourse.
Ex-Trump campaign adviser sentenced to 14 days in prison
WASHINGTON — George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, was sentenced to 14 days in prison Friday after he told a judge he was “deeply embarrassed and ashamed” for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries.
Papadopoulos, the first campaign aide sentenced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation, acknowledged that his actions hindered an investigation of national importance, a move that the judge in his case said resulted in the 31-year-old putting his own self-interest above that of his country.
“I made a dreadful mistake, but I am a good man who is eager for redemption,” Papadopoulos said.
The punishment was far less than the maximum six-month sentence sought by the government but more than the probation that Papadopoulos and his lawyers had asked for.
Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign, has been a central figure in the Russia investigation dating back before Mueller’s May 2017 appointment. He was the first to plead guilty in Mueller’s probe and is now the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing.
Pipeline company found guilty in 2015 California oil spill
LOS ANGELES — A California jury found a pipeline company guilty Friday of nine criminal charges for causing a 2015 oil spill that was the state’s worst coastal spill in 25 years, prosecutors said.
The Santa Barbara County jury reached its verdict against Plains All American Pipeline of Houston following a four-month trial, finding the company guilty of a felony count of failing to properly maintain its pipeline and eight misdemeanor charges, including killing marine mammals and protected sea birds.
California Attorney General Becerra said in a statement that Plains’ actions were not only reckless and irresponsible but also criminal.
“Today’s verdict should send a message: if you endanger our environment and wildlife, we will hold you accountable,” he said.
Plains said in a statement that it “accepts full responsibility for the impact of the accident.”
Letter confirms Vatican received McCarrick complaint in 2000
VATICAN CITY — A 2006 letter from a top Vatican official confirms that the Holy See received information in 2000 about the sexual misconduct of now-resigned U.S. cardinal, lending credibility to bombshell accusations of a cover-up at the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic Church.
Catholic News Service, the news agency of the U.S. bishops’ conference, published the letter Friday from then-Archbishop Leonardo Sandri to the Rev. Boniface Ramsay, a New York priest who made the initial allegation.
Ramsay informed the Vatican in a November 2000 letter about then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians from Seton Hall University’s Immaculate Conception Seminary. Ramsay, who in 2000 was on the faculty at the seminary, has said he sent the letter at the request of the then-Vatican ambassador because he had heard so many complaints from seminarians that McCarrick would invite them to his beach house and into his bed.
Sandri, now a top-ranked Vatican cardinal who was the No. 3 in the Vatican’s secretariat of state at the time, wrote Ramsay on Oct. 11, 2006, seeking his recommendation for a former seminarian for a Vatican job.
In it, he referred to Ramsay’s 2000 letter, saying: “I ask with particular reference to the serious matters involving some of the students of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, which in November 2000 you were good enough to bring confidentially to the attention of the then-Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, the late Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo.”
From wire sources