Comey to testify:
Report: Trump tells Russian officials that Comey is a ‘nut job’
Ex-FBI Director James Comey, at the center of controversy over his firing by President Donald Trump, will testify to a Senate panel.
WASHINGTON Former FBI director James Comey will soon testify in open session before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, following revelations Friday that President Trump told Russian leaders that Comey is a “nut job” who was adding pressure to the high-stakes investigation of possible interference in the 2016 election.
Comey, abruptly fired by Trump last week, has agreed to testify in public sometime after Memorial Day, the committee said in a statement.
“I hope that former Director Comey’s testimony will help answer some of the questions that have arisen since (he) was so suddenly dismissed by the President,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s vice chairman. “I also expect that Director Comey will be able to shed light on issues critical to this committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
The New York Times reported that Trump told Russian officials during their May 10 meeting that Comey is a “nut job,” and that dismissing him meant the pressure of the FBI’s Russia probe has been “taken off.”
The Washington Post reported that an unidentified White House adviser close to the president has been identified as a “person of interest” in the investigation of possible collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians who sought to influence the 2016 election by hacking Democratic officials.
White House officials did not deny either story, but stressed that Trump and his staff had no collusion with Russia.
“As the president has stated before, a thorough investigation will confirm that there was no collusion between the campaign and any foreign entity,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in response to the Post story.
mold, rodent and cockroach infestations as well as plumbing and electrical problems that housing officials say make the squat World War II-era apartment complexes uninhabitable.
Despite the dismal conditions, some longtime residents at the public housing developments are fearful and angry about the prospect of moving from this storied town that Mark Twain celebrated in his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, city leaders once boasted as a “Little Chicago” and Union soldiers used as a strategic operating base at the beginning of the Civil War.
“I don’t want to leave and get pushed to live in some big city,” said Earlene Lyons, 52, whose Elmwood apartment was recently damaged by a fire she said was caused by an electrical malfunction in the kitchen. “This is what I know. This is where I feel comfortable.”
For years, HUD has moved away from building sprawling apartment complexes and instead sought to scatter residents relying on government-subsidized housing throughout communities by issuing housing vouchers that are intended to help families rent quality housing through prescreened landlords in the private market.
In big cities such as Chicago, where the last tower of the notorious Cabrini-Green housing project was demolished in 2011, and in Memphis, where the Foote Homes — the city’s last traditional public housing complex — recently shuttered, more lowincome housing stock is available within city limits for impacted residents.
Federal authorities acknowledge the situation in a smaller town like Cairo (pronounced CAREoh) is more complicated. There are perhaps only a few dozen vacant units in the city that could take in the displaced residents — nowhere near enough to accommodate the 183 households requiring relocation.
In a letter last month to the city’s school superintendent, Andrea Evers, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said a search for viable solutions to preserve affordable housing opportunities within Cairo came up empty. HUD estimates the two housing projects need $7.6 million in repairs; building new housing would cost about $70 million.
The situation, Carson said, is further exacerbated by the fact that the city’s privately operated utilities company charges abnormally high rates — making it impractical to rehabilitate the more than 200 vacant or abandoned properties in Cairo to fill the housing need. Many residents at Elmwood and McBride say they gritted through the deplorable living conditions because utilities were included in their subsidized rent. In privately subsidized housing, they’d likely be responsible for paying their utilities.
“If there was another way to keep … residents in decent, safe, sanitary housing, we’d exercise that option,” Carson wrote.
The federal agency swooped into control of Cairo’s public housing in February 2016, taking over for the Alexander County housing agency because of what it called gross mismanagement. At the time of the takeover, HUD said it repeatedly pushed the county agency to fix problems, but local authorities did little to address the issues.
Residents say the county agency for years ignored complaints about the deteriorating conditions and mismanaged taxpayer funding intended for repairs. HUD’s Office of the Inspector General is investigating.
Carson’s decision doesn’t sit well with some residents and city leaders, who insist the federal government could do more to help residents who want to remain. They also complain that HUD shares responsibility for the crisis by not doing a better job in its oversight of the local housing authority.
Mayor Tyrone Coleman said he was led to believe ahead of HUD’s announcement last month that the federal housing authority was focusing on rehabbing the developments.
“It’s easy to say I’m going to give you a piece of paper, you can go to Timbuktu and you can start your life again,” Coleman said. “We have kids now that are having nightmares over this.”
Cairo’s fortunes, along with its population, have been on the decline for much of the past century. It’s currently a berg without a grocery store, gas station or many places to spend money in its largely vacant downtown.
In the past five years, the city has seen more than two dozen businesses, five churches and five social service agencies shutter, according to city data. The median home value has fallen to $33,900.
The population decline, which began in the 1940s, accelerated as racial strife in the late 1960s came to a boiling point.
“We have kids now that are having nightmares over this . ... (HUD’s) negligence is part of the reason why we arrived at this particular place.”
In 1967, the city endured three days of violent protests following the death of a black U.S. Army soldier, Robert Hunt, 19, who was found hanged in his jail cell. That same year the Illinois Employment Practices Commission opened hearings on racial discrimination at Burkhart Factory, then one of the city’s largest employers, and Little League baseball was discontinued in Cairo to avoid integration of the town’s ballpark.
Cairo, which remained majority white until the 1980s, is now about 70% African American, according to U.S. Census data. About 3% of Cairo’s public schools student body is white, said Evers, the district’s superintendent.
With state funding of schools tied to student enrollment numbers, Evers said the district — the largest employer in Cairo with a staff of 78 — is in danger of deep cuts if public housing residents are forced to leave. In the year prior to HUD’s announcement of the Elmwood and McBride closures, Evers said the district lost 89 students — most of whom lived in public housing — leaving the district with fewer than 500 students.
Shaneka Booth, 26, who has lived at the Elmwood complex for all but one year of her life, said she has stayed in Cairo’s public housing, in part, because her neighbors felt almost like family members. But Booth said good neighbors only go so far.
“I feel like it’s a chance for me to grow and let my kids see there is more than just Cairo,” she said.