Prosecutor to decide on election-meddling charges for Ga. official
ATLANTA — A special prosecutor has been assigned to look into whether Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones should face criminal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.
The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia announced Thursday that its executive director, Pete Skandalakis, will handle the matter after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was barred from prosecuting Jones as part of her election-interference case against former President Donald Trump and others.
Jones was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the winner in the state. As a state senator in the wake of the election, he also sought a special session of the Legislature aimed at overturning Biden’s narrow win in the state.
Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney’s ruling left it up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council, a nonpartisan state agency that supports district attorneys, to appoint a prosecutor to decide whether Jones should be charged.
The statement announcing Skandalakis’ appointment cites state bar rules and says “no further comments will be made at this time.”
Trump gag order: Days after a New York judge expanded a gag order on Donald Trump to curtail “inflammatory” speech, the former president tested its limits by disparaging two key witnesses in his upcoming criminal hush-money trial.
In a post Wednesday on his Truth Social platform, Trump called his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and adult-film actor Stormy Daniels “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!”
In an order made in March, then revised April 1, Judge Juan Merchan barred Trump from making public statements about probable trial witnesses “concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding,” jurors, court staff, lawyers in the case, or relatives of prosecutors or the judge.
Merchan’s order didn’t give specific examples of the types of statements about witnesses that are banned. He noted that the order was not intended to prevent Trump from responding to political attacks.
It was unclear whether the judge might consider Trump’s criticism of Cohen and Daniels a violation of the gag order. Both are expected to testify in the trial, scheduled to begin Monday.
Climate-change grants:
The Biden administration awarded $830 million in grants Thursday to fund 80 projects aimed at toughening the nation’s aging infrastructure against the harmful impacts of humancaused climate change.
The money is expected to improve bridges, roads, ports, rail, transit and other infrastructure across 37 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, particularly those battered by increasingly frequent extreme-weather events brought on by the planet’s warming.
The money comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021 and adds to other funding already flowing to states for similar projects, according to the U.S. Department of
Transportation.
South Korea’s prime minister and senior presidential officials offered to resign Thursday after their ruling party suffered a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections in a blow to conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The results of Wednesday’s elections mean that liberal opposition forces will prolong their control of parliament until after Yoon completes his single fiveyear term in 2027. That will likely set back Yoon’s domestic agenda and weaken his grip on the ruling party, experts say.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and all senior presidential advisers to Yoon, except those in charge of security issues, expressed their intentions to resign, according to Yoon’s office. It didn’t say whether Yoon accepted their resignations.
Executive power in South Korea is heavily concentrated in the president, but the prime minister is the
Election fallout:
No. 2 official and leads the country if the president becomes incapacitated.
A Wisconsin woman who at age 12 said she stabbed a sixth-grade classmate nearly to death to please the online horror character Slender Man remains a risk to the public and won’t be released yet from a psychiatric hospital, a judge said Thursday.
Judge Michael Bohren ruled against Morgan Geyser, 21, despite the testimony of two psychiatrists, including the medical director of Winnebago Mental Health Institute, who said she was ready to depart that hospital and return to the community under certain conditions.
“The scales tip in favor of the public, and it tips that way by clear and convincing evidence,” Bohren said, citing the standard under Wisconsin law.
Geyser and Anissa Weier were 12 in 2014 when they lured Payton Leutner to a Waukesha park after a
No release for killer:
sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner repeatedly while Weier egged her on. Leutner suffered 19 stab wounds and barely survived.
Weier was granted a conditional release in 2021 from the same psychiatric center.
2 Menendez trials: U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife will be tried separately on allegations that they participated in a bribery scheme, a federal judge ruled Thursday after Nadine Menendez’s lawyers said she requires treatment for an unspecified serious medical condition.
The New Jersey Democrat’s trial is scheduled for May 6 in Manhattan federal court; Nadine Menendez’s trial was tentatively pushed back to July 8.
“This trial is going forward without Mrs. Menendez” in order to “give some stability and certainty to all parties,” Judge Sidney Stein said. “The government is going to have to try this case two times.”
Stein also denied motions to dismiss the case outright and to transfer the trial, expected to last four to six weeks, to New Jersey.
Harvard University announced Thursday that it is reinstituting standardized tests as a requirement for admission beginning with the Class of 2029 — joining Yale, Dartmouth, Brown and MIT in again mandating tests for those hoping to enter the schools.
Harvard began a temporary test-optional policy in June 2020, under which students could apply to the college without submitting scores. The change was adopted as access to standardized testing during the pandemic became limited.
Under the change, students applying to Harvard for fall 2025 admission will be required to submit standardized test scores from the SAT, ACT and other eligible tests to satisfy the testing component of the application.