White House again criticizes FBI chief for voting remarks
WASHINGTON — FBI Director Christopher Wray was the target of White House criticism for the second time in a week Friday as chief of staff Mark Meadows chided him over remarks made a day earlier to Congress about voter fraud.
Meadows suggested in an interview with CBS that Wray was ill-informed when he told the Senate that there has not been any significant coordinated national voter fraud.
Wray, who last week drew criticism from President Donald Trump for his description of Russian election interference and the threat posed by the anti-fascist movement known as antifa, said in Senate testimony that the U.S. has only experienced occasional voter fraud and on a local level.
It was the latest sign of tension between the president and senior officials over election security, as Trump and his associates seek to minimize intelligence community reports that Russia is again seeking to influence voters on his behalf as it did in 2016. Trump and other administration officials have been eager to keep the focus on the threat from China, with the president tweeting angrily last week after Wray’s testimony on election interference was centered instead on Russia.
Meadows was critical in his CBS interview of the director, tying his remarks on voter fraud to a probe of the FBI’s handling of Russian links to the Trump campaign. The president and his allies have denounced the investigation, which a watchdog has said was flawed but legitimate overall.
“Well, with all due respect to Director Wray, he has a hard time finding emails in his own FBI, let alone figuring out whether there is any kind of voter fraud,” Meadows said.
France knife attack: The main suspect in the double stabbing Friday outside the former Paris offices of a satirical newspaper where dozens were killed in 2015 was arrested a month ago for carrying a screwdriver but not on police radar for Islamic radicalization, France’s interior minister said.
Two suspects were arrested separately shortly after the stabbing in which two people were wounded, although the links between the two suspects weren’t immediately clear. The main suspect, a young man wearing orange gym shoes with a few speckles of blood on his forehead, was arrested on the steps of the Bastille Opera not far from the attack site, near the building where the weekly Charlie Hebdo was located before the 2015 attack.
The interior minister said the young man arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor, apparently from Pakistan, but his identity was still being verified.
“But manifestly it’s an act of Islamist terrorism,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in an interview with a French TV station.
Mexico’s president called on politicians and angry farmers in northern Mexico on Friday to allow the country to pay its water debt to the United States, noting he does not want Mexico to become an issue in the U.S. elections.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that unlike
Mexico water debt:
2016, candidates in the November presidential race have been “respectful” of Mexico and he wants to keep it that way.
“We are not ruling out that we can comply,” said Lopez Obrador. “Wedonot want this to become a campaign issue.”
“The (U.S.) candidates have been respectful of Mexico,” he said. “Mexico is not an issue in the political or electoral debate.”
As a candidate in 2016, Donald Trump accused Mexico of sending rapists across the border. But the rhetoric this year has been softer.
Time is running out; farmers have seized a northern Mexico dam needed to pay the debt, with less than a month left to meet the Oct. 24 deadline for releasing water to communities along the Rio Grande.
Alphabet settlement:
Google’s parent company has reached a $310 million settlement in a shareholder lawsuit over its treatment of allegations of executives’ sexual misconduct.
Alphabet Inc. said Friday that it will prohibit severance packages for anyone fired for misconduct or is the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation. A special team will investigate any allegations against executives and report to the board’s audit committee.
Thousands of Google employees walked out of work in protest in 2018 after The New York Times revealed Android creator Andy Rubin received $90 million in severance even though several employees had filed misconduct allegations against him. Shareholder lawsuits followed, and in 2019 Google launched a board investigation over how it handles sexual misconduct allegations. 2020 census: A federal judge has stopped the 2020 census from finishing at month’s end and suspended a year-end deadline for delivering the numbers needed to decide how many seats each state gets in Congress.
The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California late Thursday allows the once-adecade head count of every U.S. resident to continue through the end of October.
The judge sided with civil rights groups and local governments that sued the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the statistical agency, arguing that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ends this month.
Attorneys for the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce said Friday they would file an appeal and asked the judge to suspend the injunction while that happens.
Kim apologizes: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un apologized Friday over the killing of a South Korea official who was apparently trying to defect near the rivals’ disputed sea boundary, saying he’s “very sorry” about the incident, South Korean officials said.
It’s extremely unusual for a North Korean leader to apologize to South Korea on any issue. Kim’s move will likely de-escalate tensions between the Koreas as it’s expected to ease anti-North sentiments in South Korea as well as mounting criticism of its liberal President Moon Jae-in.
Ban on WeChat sought: The Justice Department is seeking an immediate ban on downloads of WeChat in Apple and Google app stores, saying the Chineseowned messaging service is a threat to the security of the United States.
WeChat is a messaging-focused app popular with many Chinese-speaking Americans that serves as a lifeline to friends, family, customers and business contacts in China. It’s owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.