Nation & World Glance
NEW YORK — Court records released Thursday show that President Donald Trump took part in a flurry of phone calls in the weeks before the 2016 election as his close aides and allies scrambled to pay porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
The documents detailing calls and text messages were made public as federal prosecutors closed their investigation into the payoff — and a similar payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal — with no plans to charge anyone in the scandal beyond Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.
Federal prosecutors in New York said in a court filing that they investigated whether other people gave false statements or otherwise obstructed justice. In the end, the decision was made not to bring additional charges, according to two people briefed on the matter. They were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment and did not explain its decision not to prosecute anyone else. U.S. Justice Department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.
The White House had no immediate comment on the latest documents.
Trump to nominate Eugene Scalia for labor secretary
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will nominate lawyer Eugene Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to be his new labor secretary.
Trump tweeted the news Thursday evening, less than a week after his previous secretary, Alexander Acosta, resigned amid renewed criticism of his handling of a 2008 secret plea deal with wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was indicted earlier this month for sexually abusing underage girls.
“Gene has led a life of great success in the legal and labor field and is highly respected not only as a lawyer, but as a lawyer with great experience” working “with labor and everyone else,” Trump wrote of Scalia, who is currently a partner in the Washington office of the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher firm.
If confirmed, it will be a return to the department, where Scalia previously served as solicitor in President George W. Bush’s administration, overseeing litigation and legal advice on rulemakings and administrative law. He has also worked for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Trump had previously announced that Acosta would be succeeded in an acting capacity by his deputy, Patrick Pizzella.
Deemed dangerous, Epstein denied bail in sex abuse case
NEW YORK — A judge who denied bail for jailed financier Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges Thursday said he poses a danger to the public and seems to still have an uncontrollable urge for sexual conduct with or in the presence of underage girls.
Epstein, 66, also might use his “great wealth and vast resources” to flee the country, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said.
Epstein, his hands folded before him, showed no reaction when Berman announced his fate in the morning. Epstein’s lawyers did not comment.
“I doubt that any bail package can overcome danger to the community,” Berman said in court, citing a danger for both the “minor victims in this case and prospective victims as well.”
Epstein has pleaded not guilty to sex charges. trafficking
Man shouting ‘You die!’ kills 33 in Japan anime studio fire
TOKYO — A man screaming “You die!” burst into an animation studio in Kyoto, doused it with a flammable liquid and set it on fire Thursday, killing 33 people in an attack that shocked the country and brought an outpouring of grief from anime fans.
Thirty-six others were injured, some of them critically, in a blaze that sent people scrambling up the stairs toward the roof in a desperate — and futile — attempt to escape what proved to be Japan’s deadliest fire in nearly two decades. Others emerged bleeding, blackened and barefoot.
The suspect, identified only a 41-year-old man who did not work for the studio, was injured and taken to a hospital. Police gave no details on the motive, but a witness told Japanese TV that the attacker angrily complained that something of his had been stolen, possibly by the company.
Most of the victims were employees of Kyoto Animation, which does work on movies and TV productions but is best known for its mega-hit stories featuring high school girls. The tales are so popular that fans make pilgrimages to some of the places depicted.
The blaze started in the three-story building in Japan’s ancient capital after the attacker sprayed an unidentified liquid accelerant, police and fire officials said.
Ex-Illinois student’s life spared in killing of scholar
PEORIA, Ill. — A former University of Illinois doctoral student was spared the death penalty Thursday and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and killing a 26-year-old scholar from China. Her parents, disappointed he was not sentenced to death, publicly begged for the killer to reveal where her remains are so they can be returned home.
Jurors deliberated about eight hours over two days before announcing they were deadlocked on whether 30-year-old Brendt Christensen should be put to death for killing Yingying Zhang in 2017 as part of a homicidal fantasy, automatically resulting in a sentence of life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
The federal trial judge, James Shadid, castigated Christensen in court later Thursday as he formally sentenced him, telling him his “inexplicable act of violence has taken its toll on so many, first and foremost the Zhang family.”
“The Zhang family ... must live with the thought that Yingying was ripped away from them by a total stranger, thousands of miles away, fulfilling his self-absorbed and selfish fantasies,” he told Christensen.
The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month for abducting Zhang from a bus stop, then raping, choking and stabbing her before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. Prosecutors called for the death penalty, which the Zhang family also supported, but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous.