Schiff wants to ask Prince if he lied
WASHINGTON— The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that he wants the panel to re-interview Trump supporter and Blackwater security firm founder Erik Prince and serve former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with a subpoena for his complete testimony.
Rep. Adam Schiff, Calif., said he wants to determine whether Mr. Prince lied to the panel about a meeting last year in the Seychelles that evidence suggests was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin.
Mr. Schiff also told reporters that the panel should issue a subpoena for Mr. Lewandowski, who refused to answer questions about what he knew of President Donald Trump’s discussions, including those leading to the firing of former FBI Director James B. Comey and the misleading statement issued to explain Donald Trump, Jr.’s participation in a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower.
“Witnesses don’t get to pick and choose when it comes to very relevant testimony to our investigation,” Mr. Schiff said.
But Republicans on the committee do not appear to share Mr. Schiff’s urgency, either to subpoena Mr. Lewandowski or to hold additional interviews with Mr. Prince.
Fla. suspect changes plea
The lawyer for Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz has filed court papers saying he is withdrawing a preliminary not guilty plea and will enter no plea at all.
Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill said in the filing Thursday that Mr. Cruz “stands mute” before the court. She said the not guilty plea was entered prematurely, before a grand jury indicted Mr. Cruz on 17 murder and 17 attempted murder charges in the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The public defender’s office has said Mr. Cruz would plead guilty if prosecutors do not pursue the death penalty, but no decision has been announced on that.
The next step will be an arraignment for Mr. Cruz, where a judge likely would enter a not guilty plea for him to keep the process moving.
Fake news has wider reach
WASHINGTON— Twitter loves lies. A new study finds that false information on the social media network travels six times faster than the truth and reaches far more people.
And you can’t blame bots; it’s us, say the authors of the largest study of online misinformation.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at more than 126,000 stories tweeted millions of times between 2006 and the end of 2016 — before Donald Trump took office but during the combative presidential campaign. They found that “fake news” sped through Twitter “farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information,” according to the study in Thursday’s journal Science.
Also in the nation ...
President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty to tax and fraud charges in federal court in Virginia on Thursday, as he appeared before a judge in the second criminal case brought against him by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. ... Florida is considering adopting daylight saving time, which begins this Sunday, all year round.