Trump pardons a woman who praised him in RNC speech
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pardoned a woman on Friday who was a featured speaker on the final night of the Republican National Convention and had praised him as a compassionate leader.
Trump pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, who had spent more than two decades serving life without parole for a nonviolent drug offense. She had been convicted in 1996 on eight criminal counts related to a Memphis-based cocaine trafficking operation. Trump commuted her life sentence in 2018 at the urging of celebrity Kim Kardashian West, allowing her early release.
A commutation shortens or eliminates a sentence; the pardon signifies forgiveness and restores certain civil rights.
Johnson had spoken at the convention about the power of redemption and praised Trump. She said during Thursday’s address that what she did was wrong, but that sentences need to be fair and just.
“Truth is, there are thousands of people just like me, who deserve the opportunity to come home,” Johnson told convention viewers
Trump said at the White House Friday that Johnson had done an “incredible job” since her release, identifying additional prisoners who also could be eligible for early release.
“We’re very proud of Alice and the job you’ve done and what you represent,” Trump said.
Trump has sought to highlight criminal justice reform leading up to November’s election as he reaches out to African
American voters. He signed into law a bill in 2018 that gave judges more discretion when sentencing some drug offenders and enhanced employment and training opportunities for many federal prisoners.
Action against Pompeo:
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is moving to hold Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in contempt after he has repeatedly rejected the committee’s subpoenas for records related to Ukraine that the department has turned over to the Republican-led Senate.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said Friday that the panel will prepare a contempt resolution because of what he called Pompeo’s “unprecedented record of obstruction and defiance of the House’s constitutional oversight authority.”
The House has asked for the same documents that the State Department has turned over for a Senate investigation into Democrat Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his activities in Ukraine, but Pompeo has refused to provide them.
The committee’s contempt resolution will also cite Pompeo’s refusal to comply with a subpoena issued during the House impeachment inquiry last year.
Pompeo and his aides have said all of the House subpoenas are politically motivated, without merit, and unnecessary as the information and testimony could be otherwise obtained.
Virus at RNC: Four people who were at the Republican National Convention in
Charlotte have tested positive for the coronavirus, health officials in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County said.
WBTV reported Friday that those who tested positive at the event were immediately isolated.
Nearly 800 people were tested who attended the event or who helped support it, the county said in a news release. Two attendees and two people supporting the convention tested positive.
County leaders said in a statement that those individuals “were immediately issued isolation instructions and any known close contacts were notified and issued quarantine instructions by Mecklenburg County Public Health.”
The RNC said the attendees did not attend any events before they got their results.
Rand Paul: Sen. Rand Paul, who was surrounded by screaming protesters when he and his wife left Presi
dent Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention speech at the White House, claimed without evidence Friday that he had been “attacked by an angry mob.”
A video of the encounter with the protesters, who were yelling for Paul to say Breonna Taylor’s name, shows no attack on Paul, only a police officer who was jostled while carrying a bicycle and then stumbled into the Kentucky senator’s shoulder.
Police and other security personnel formed a cordon around Paul and his wife as they left the White House shortly after midnight to walk a few blocks to their hotel, and the couple didn’t appear to come into physical contact with the protesters and were unharmed.
Still, Paul tweeted that he “Just got attacked by an angry mob of over 100, one block away from the White House,” and he thanked police for “literally saving our lives from a crazed
mob.”
In an appearance Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Paul alleged, without evidence, that demonstrators were paid to create trouble.
The protesters were shouting for the senator to acknowledge Taylor, who was shot and killed by police officers who used a battering ram to knock down the door of her Louisville apartment.
Niger floods: Flooding from heavy rains in Niger has killed at least 45 people this week and forced more than 226,000 from their homes, officials in the West African nation said Friday.
Niger’s western region has been hardest hit by days of rain that caused the Niger River to overflow, essentially shutting down the capital, Niamey.
Dozens of mud homes have collapsed along the river in the Kirkissoye district and rice fields are submerged.
Since Monday, rains and
flooding have affected at least 25,800 homes, according to the Council of Ministers. In addition, 64 classrooms and 24 mosques have collapsed and hundreds of granaries are damaged, the government said.
Lincoln’s hair: A lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair, wrapped in a bloodstained telegram about his 1865 assassination, is for sale.
Boston-based RR Auction said bidding has opened online for the items ahead of a live auction scheduled for Sept. 12 in New Hampshire. The auction house set the minimum bid at $10,000 but expects the lock and telegram to fetch $75,000 or more, spokesman Mike Graff said.
Measuring roughly 2 inches long, the bushy lock of hair was removed during Lincoln’s postmortem examination after he was fatally shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth.