August 18, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Highlight Pro Skydiving TeamBy KATIE KINDELAN, ABC News

(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — A team of all-female elite skydivers is taking to the skies to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

The 11 members of the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team will jump from the skies Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, which was the final state to ratify the 19th Amendment on Aug. 18, 1920.

“It was a moment in history that we wanted to highlight,” Melanie Curtis, co-captain of the Highlight team, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “We’re using skydiving to capture attention and then bringing that attention to social justice initiatives, to women’s rights, to gender equality, to equality at large.”

Curtis and her 10 teammates will be making their fifth jump together on Tuesday in Nashville. They descend from the sky at each jump carrying flags with messages like “votes for women,” “shall not be denied” and “equality can’t wait.”

Their last jump took place in July in Seneca Falls, New York, the home of the first women’s rights convention.

“It was so phenomenal just to be in the presence of the place of history, where the birthplace was, and to see and be a part of this history,” said Melissa Nelson Lowe, a Highlight team member. “And it’s so exciting to be able to do something so valuable in this sport that I love and carry a message that’s so important.”

The Highlight jumps, which will also take place this year in New York City and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, were supposed to be big, live events that drew hundreds or thousands of people, including young girls who could look up to the women in the sky.

When the coronavirus pandemic happened, the team decided to continue to jump but to livestream their jumps so that people around the world could watch at home.

“I just think about being a young girl myself and being inspired by athletes on TV and watching the Olympics,” said Nelson Lowe. “Even though we can’t have live events, I still feel that we can influence women and girls on what we’re doing and showcasing our sport.”

“The suffragists also faced a global pandemic when, in 1918, they faced the Spanish Flu,” added Curtis. “The irony of us facing that now is not lost on us.”

Curtis said she hopes that as people watch the Highlight team — whose uniforms are purple, white and gold, the colors of the women’s suffrage movement — they find inspiration and the courage to be “bold” and “brave,” like the leaders of the suffrage movement were a century ago.

“To really get what it took to secure the right to vote for women in the U.S., it was 72 years,” she said. “It takes so long to change hearts and minds and so it takes bold, brave moves and that’s the core mission of the team, to inspire women and girls to live a bold, brave life of their own design.”

“Women are underrepresented in skydiving and women are underrepresented in media and government, on boards of businesses,” Curtis added. “We see that under-representation everywhere so it’s not just skydiving for us, it’s more about those core values of what it looks like to be bold and brave and to use your voice and, right now, use your vote.”

The Highlight team’s women’s rights jumps can be viewed live on the team’s Facebook page.

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August 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

iStock/KuzmaBY: CHRIS FRANCESCANI

(CHICAGO) — Despite “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures,” the dismissal of charges against Jussie Smollett by Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx and her staff did not rise to the level of criminal wrongdoing, according to Special Prosecutor Dan K. Webb.

In Jan. 2019, the former “Empire” actor told police he was targeted in a racist and homophobic attack in which he claimed the attackers struck him, put a noose around his neck, and poured some sort of chemical substance on him.

After an investigation, police determined that Smollett staged the attack, hiring two brothers to help pull it off. He was charged and indicted, but Foxx’s office dropped all the charges in March, 2019. That prompted Webb’s appointment last summer by a judge to investigate what happened.

Webb said he concluded that Foxx shouldn’t legally have recused herself and appointed a deputy, Joseph Magats, to be acting state’s attorney and that when she learned of this “major legal defect” she “ignore[d]” advice on how to remedy the problem. The proper procedure was to “recuse the entire CCSAO and petition the court to appoint a special prosecutor.”

He also said that Foxx maintained contact with Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett, even after learning on Feb. 8 that he was a suspect, and “then made false statements to the media claiming she ceased all communications with Ms. Smollett as soon as she learned that Mr. Smollett was a suspect.” Webb contends that Foxx was in contact with the sister until Feb 13, 2019.

In addition, Webb wrote that prosecutors in Foxx’s office “did not learn of any new evidence between when the CCSAO filed a 16-count indictment against Mr. Smollett on March 7, 2019, when the CCSAO believed it had a strong case against Mr. Smollett, and March 26, 2019, when the entire indictment was dismissed.”

Webb further contended in the report that under subpoena, key decision-makers in Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO)’s dismissal of the case offered “significantly and meaningfully divergent explanations for how the resolution was reached.”

Foxx said in a statement that her office “categorically rejects the [special prosecutor]’s characterizations of its exercises of prosecutorial discretion and private or public statements as ‘abuses of discretion’ or false statements to the public,” and that “any implication that statements made by the CCSAO were deliberately inaccurate is untrue.” She said her office would submit a written response to the full report after receiving it.

‘An abundance of caution’

Foxx recused herself abruptly from the case on Feb. 19, 2019, out of “an abundance of caution … based on familiarity with potential witnesses in the case,” a spokesperson said at the time. Smollett was soon charged with felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report, and turned himself in to police. On March, 8, 2019 a grand jury returned a 16 count indictment against him. Less than three weeks later, Foxx’s office dismissed all charges against Smollett.

The conclusions of Webb’s investigation into Foxx’s office completes the second half of the special prosecutor’s mandate.

He was appointed last year by Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Toomin to determine whether Smollett should be prosecuted again after Foxx’s office dismissed the charges and investigate the CCSAO’s handling of the case. Webb concluded that Smollet should.

In February, an Illinois grand jury presented with Webb’s findings indicted Smollett on six counts of disorderly conduct related to making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers. Smollett’s trial has been delayed by the pandemic.

Foxx acknowledged in her statement that lessons were learned following the fallout from her decision to drop the charges against Smollett.

“As a result of the issues addressed in the press release, and of discussions of them beforehand, the CCSAO has already made a number of changes to its operations, including the hiring of a new CCSAO ethics officer and more separation of their function from the administration of the office, and strengthening the recusal plan with clear guidelines and explicit definitions of conflicts of interest.”

In March, Foxx won a Democratic primary and is expected to prevail against her Republican opponent in November, two years after winning a previous Democratic primary for which she went on to win 72% of the general election vote, according to the Chicago Tribune. She manages the second largest prosecutor’s office in the U.S., behind only the Los Angeles County District Attorney, according to the CCSAO website.

ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Stephanie Wash, Alex Perez, Karma Allen and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.

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August 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

ABC NewsBY: AARON KATERSKY

(HONOLULU) — Actress Lori Loughlin should spend two months in prison for cheating her daughter’s way into the University of Southern California, federal prosecutors said Monday in a memo to the judge ahead of her sentencing Friday.

Loughlin’s husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, should spend five months in prison and the couple should pay a fine of $400,000, the memo stated.

Both stars pleaded guilty to their involvement in the college admissions scandal, though prosecutors portrayed Giannulli as the more active parent in the scheme, by engaging more frequently with mastermind Rick Singer, by directing the payments and “by steamrolling an honest high school counselor who tried to do the right thing.”

According to the sentencing memo, Loughlin, Giannulli and their younger daughter discussed in January 2018 how to avoid the chance that the counselor would disrupt the scheme.

“When their daughter asked whether she should list USC as her top choice school, Loughlin replied: ‘Yes… But it might be a flag for the weasel to meddle,'” the memo said. “Giannulli added: ‘F— him,’ and remarked that the counselor was a ‘nosy bastard.'”

Prosecutors said the couple committed a serious crime.

“Over the course of two years, they engaged twice in Singer’s fraudulent scheme,” the sentencing memo said. “They involved both their daughters in the fraud, directing them to pose in staged photographs for use in fake athletic profiles and instructing one daughter how to conceal the scheme from her high school counselor.”

Even though “Loughlin took a less active role,” prosecutors said the “Fuller House” actress “was nonetheless fully complicit.”

In May, Loughlin, 56, and Giannulli, 57, pleaded guilty, via a Zoom call, to a federal judge for their roles in the massive college admissions scam. They had both been accused of paying Singer $500,000 to get their daughters, Isabella Rose Giannulli and Olivia Jade Giannulli, into USC as crew recruits — even though neither girl had ever rowed competitively.

“Giannulli emailed Singer a doctored photo of daughter Olivia Jade on a rowing machine to cast her as an experienced coxswain and made purported charitable payments, to facilitate his daughter’s fraudulent admission to USC,” according to U.S. attorney Eric Rosen. “They conspired with Rick Singer and others to commit wire fraud.”

Had the case gone to trial in the fall, as planned, Rosen said prosecutors would have used recorded telephone calls, documents, emails and witness testimony to prove the couple’s guilt. In pleading guilty, Loughlin and Giannulli dropped previous assertions that their payments were charitable and prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence.

Prosecutors have charged over 50 suspects, including parents and coaches, in the investigation that the FBI been dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues.”

ABC News’ Kate Hodgson and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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August 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

iStock/MattZ90BY: ALEXANDER MALLIN

(HONOLULU) — The United States Department of Justice arrested and charged a former intelligence officer with the CIA and FBI for selling highly classified U.S. secrets to China, according to court records unsealed in Hawaii on Monday.

Federal prosecutors said Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a 67-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen living in Honolulu, worked as a CIA officer from 1982 to 1989 — and starting as early as 2001, an FBI investigation found he had “become a compromised asset” of China’s Ministry of State Security.

Ma was allegedly captured on both video and audio recordings holding a series of meetings with at least five MSS officials in 2001 in Hong Kong where he “disclosed a substantial amount of highly classified national defense information,” court records say.

The information included details about the CIA’s international operations, cover used by CIA officers, identities of CIA officers and human assets and other internal CIA intelligence.

Ma and a relative not named in the criminal complaint allegedly received $50,0000 in the meeting, which was captured on tape.

Following his meetings in Hong Kong, Ma in 2002 allegedly applied for a position with the FBI and after a series of background checks and interviews started his employment as a contract linguist for the FBI’s Honolulu field office in 2004, all while maintaining communication with his Chinese handlers about his efforts.

The indictment doesn’t make clear when Ma’s work on China’s behalf first became known to federal investigators.

Between 2004 and 2010 Ma “regularly gathered documents marked with U.S. classification markings” with the “intent to provide them to his MSS handlers during regular trips he made to China,” prosecutors said.

In January 2019, an undercover agent with the FBI then met with Ma while posing as an MSS officer, showing Ma the video of his 2001 meeting with MSS officers and asking him to identify the individuals from the video.

Ma believed the undercover agent and agreed to identify the individuals, not knowing he was being recorded the entire time. Then, in a separate meeting, the undercover agent paid Ma $2,000 for providing the information.

Ma is expected to make his initial appearance before a federal judge on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Hawaii.

He has been charged with conspiracy to communicate national defense information to aid a foreign government. He faces life in prison if convicted, the DOJ said.

A public defender for Ma did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

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August 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

iStock/Andrei StanescuBY: QUINN OWEN

(WASHINGTON) — The federal government agency that handles United States asylum requests, processes visa applications and grants citizenship is preparing to furlough most of its employees while would-be citizens remain stuck waiting to get naturalized ahead of the November election.

Originally planned for the beginning of August, the furloughs were bumped back to the end of the month after Democrats and independent immigration experts questioned whether such action was necessary amid to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I think it would be an extraordinary travesty to basically kick to the curb all of these civil servants and basically withhold their salaries in the middle of an economic crisis,” said Doug Rand, a former White House policy advisor during the Obama administration, who now specializes in immigration legal services. “Not to mention bringing the immigration system to a grinding halt when there’s absolutely no need to do so.”

Joseph Edlow, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ deputy director, told lawmakers at the end of July that the agency was able to catch up on its backlog of 100,000 pending naturalization ceremonies delayed by the pandemic. However, the average number of monthly naturalizations still trails far below prior years by tens of thousands, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.

“All USCIS operations, including naturalization ceremonies, will be impacted by a furlough,” spokesperson Joe Sowers said in a statement. “At this time, we do not have the number of naturalization ceremonies that will be impacted. In the event of a furlough, we will continue to conduct naturalization ceremonies, but we anticipate it will be on a more limited basis.”

An analysis from the Migration Policy Institute found budget problems at USCIS — which is almost entirely funded by the immigration application fees it collects — were apparent well before the pandemic and likely the result of President Donald Trump’s push for “extreme vetting” of applicants.

As USCIS reduced its year-over-year surplus goals, the agency’s carry-over balance dropped into negative territory in 2019, according to data compiled by MPI.

The citizenship agency is now asking for $1.2 billion from Congress, which was expected to be addressed in an additional coronavirus relief package before negotiations between Democrats and the White House stalled out. The request accounts for about a quarter of the agency’s $4.8 billion operating budget for 2020.

“Based on the latest estimates of surplus funding that will carry over into fiscal year 2021, I believe that the agency can and should delay their furlough of 13,000 dedicated public servants until September 30, 2020,” said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who serves as the vice chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations.

A group of Democrats wrote to Senate leadership last month asking for the funding to be provided on the condition of increased transparency and assurance that the money would not be used for immigration enforcement or anti-fraud measures that replicate the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a move that would have immigrants footing the bill, USCIS also plans to increase the cost of the naturalization application by more than 80%, according to the finalized version of the fee structure first proposed last year. The plan includes eliminating an $85 service fee for some applicants.

Starting in October, the U.S. will also become part of just a handful of countries — including Iran, Australia and Fiji — to charge for asylum with the addition of a $50 application fee. The fee that immigrants, including asylum seekers, pay for work permits will also increase by 34%.

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