Paula Bronstein/Washington PostBy WILLIAM MANSELL, ABC News
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — The civil unrest and tensions in Portland, Oregon, boiled over again Thursday night as federal agents sprayed tear gas into a crowd that included Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.
Protesters, according to ABC affiliate KATU-TV in Portland, say it’s likely Wheeler was hit with the chemical agent.
“Oh, for sure, he got gassed. I was standing with him, within three feet of him,” one protester told KATU. “I think it’s giving him a little sampling of those of who have been out here. This is the first time I’d ever seen a mayor, or any public official, be in the depths of what was going on.”
Wheeler, who has come under scrutiny from protesters and President Donald Trump alike, was drowned out while trying to speak with demonstrators before tear gas was fired.
At around 12:30 a.m. local time, the Portland Police Department declared the protest a riot and asked people to leave.
“A riot has been declared outside the Justice Center. Disperse to the north and/or west. Disperse immediately,” the department tweeted. “Failure to adhere to this order may subject you to arrest or citation, or riot control agents, including, but not limited to, tear gas and/or impact weapons.”
Some of the federal agents in Portland are part of a Department of Homeland Security task force established to respond to the growing protests across the country. The DHS said these forces were there to protect the federal properties from “criminal acts of violence and vandalism.”
Thousands are still in the area after the riot was declared and ABC News heard at least seven use-of-force warnings.
Before the riot was declared, Portland police said “multiple flares and other incendiaries” were thrown over the fence surrounding the courthouse, which resulted in fires.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf defended federal agents’ presence in Portland earlier this week, saying they are highly trained and are being deployed with proper oversight.
“These officers are not stormtroopers,” Wolf said. “They’re not the Gestapo, as some have described them. That description is offensive and hyperbolic, and it’s dishonest.”
(NEW YORK) — As Ghislaine Maxwell sits in a federal detention center in Brooklyn, New York, facing allegations that she conspired with the late Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse three minor girls, a federal judge in Manhattan is set to announce her decision Thursday morning whether to make public a batch of sealed court documents from a civil lawsuit against Maxwell that settled three years ago.
The court filings in the case — a civil defamation lawsuit filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Maxwell in 2015 — are said to contain the names of hundreds of people, some famous and some not, who socialized, traveled or worked with Epstein over the span of more than a decade. The late financier has previously been linked to a coterie of high-profile business leaders, scientists, royalty and politicians, including former President Bill Clinton and current President Donald Trump.
Attorneys for Maxwell had asked the judge — prior to Maxwell’s arrest — to keep the records under seal, arguing that public interest in the documents is outweighed by privacy considerations and the potential impact a release of the documents could have on the criminal investigation targeting alleged accomplices of Epstein.
“The sealed testimony or summaries may inappropriately influence potential witnesses or alleged victims,” Maxwell’s attorney Jeffrey Pagliuca wrote last month.
Among the records now being considered for release is a 418-page transcript of one of Maxwell’s multi-hour depositions in the case, which Maxwell’s attorneys argue were given under an expectation of confidentiality that had been agreed to by both sides in the dispute, according to Maxwell’s court filing.
“This series of pleadings concerns [Giuffre’s] attempt to compel Ms. Maxwell to answer intrusive questions about her sex life,” Pagliuca wrote. “The subject matter of these [documents] is extremely personal, confidential, and subject to considerable abuse by the media.”
Giuffre’s attorneys have argued for near-total disclosure of the sealed records and have characterized Maxwell’s objections as a “blatant attempt to stall the unsealing process by creating unjustified obstacles … that will ensure the documents in this case, which are clearly subject to a presumption of public access, never see the light of day,” according to a filing last month by Giuffre’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley.
McCawley contended that Maxwell’s arguments in favor of continued sealing are “especially jarring in light of the public’s interest in this litigation, which involved voluminous documents and testimony about Jeffrey Epstein’s transcontinental sex-trafficking operation and documents concerning various public agencies’ utter failure to protect and bring justice to his victims.”
The sealed records currently under review by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska also contain the identities of people who provided information in the case under an expectation of confidentiality, plus the names of alleged victims and individuals accused of enabling Epstein or participating in the abuse.
Earlier this year, notification letters were sent to two “John Does,” anonymous individuals whose names are among several dozen that appear in just the first batch of hundreds of sealed and redacted documents, according to court records. Neither of the “John Does” filed any objections to the potential unsealing of the records.
Maxwell, 58, is the daughter of the late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 in what was ruled an accidental drowning incident off the coast of the Canary Islands. She met Epstein in New York following her father’s death, and the two were closely linked for more than a decade.
In unsealed excerpts from her depositions in the case, Maxwell derided Giuffre as an “absolute liar.” She has also denied allegations from Giuffre and other women who contend in court filings that Maxwell recruited and trained girls and young women for Epstein and facilitated their abuse.
Federal prosecutors have alleged in Maxwell’s criminal case that she made false statements during her depositions in the Giuffre case, leading to two perjury charges in the indictment against her.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against her and is scheduled for trial next year.
Among the records now under consideration by Preska are documents from June 2016 associated with an effort by Giuffre’s lawyers to get court approval for additional witness depositions beyond the 10 that had been allotted to each side. In a series of court filings surrounding the request, redactions conceal the name of one of the proposed witnesses and the descriptions of the information sought from that person.
But a review by ABC News of the unredacted portions of the records, coupled with a transcript of a hearing that took place nine months later, reveal that Giuffre’s lawyers were then seeking court approval to depose former President Clinton about his prior relationship with Epstein.
“All of the people Ms. Giuffre seeks to depose have discoverable and important information regarding the elements of Ms. Giuffre’s claims,” attorney McCawley wrote in a filing seeking the additional depositions.
While there have been no allegations of wrong-doing on the part of Clinton, Giuffre’s claim that she met the former president at a dinner with Epstein and Maxwell on Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little St. James, emerged as a critical and contentious issue in the litigation.
Maxwell had argued in court filings that Giuffre’s claim was a fabrication that shattered her credibility. Flight logs kept by Epstein’s pilots showed that Clinton had traveled extensively on Epstein’s private jet to destinations in Africa, Asia and Europe in 2002 and 2003, but none of the available records showed the former president on a trip to Epstein’s island.
“This is utter nonsense and nothing more than a transparent ploy by [Giuffre] to increase media exposure for her sensational stories through deposition side-show. This witness has nothing relevant to add,” Maxwell’s attorney Laura Menninger wrote in opposition to the proposed deposition.
According to that filing by Maxwell’s lawyer, Giuffre’s legal team initiated informal discussions with attorneys for the then-unnamed witness on June 9, 2016.
Giuffre’s lawyers did contact Clinton’s attorneys about a potential deposition, a person familiar with the situation told ABC News. Clinton’s lawyer responded that it would not be helpful to Giuffre, the person said, because the president was never on the island. For whatever reason, her lawyers dropped the matter, the person said.
But according to a publicly-available transcript of a hearing in the case — Giuffre’s lawyers continued to pursue the court’s permission to take Clinton’s deposition until their request was ultimately denied by the judge, in a still sealed ruling in late June 2016
Giuffre’s lawyers pressed the Clinton issue with the judge at a hearing in March 2017, six weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin. According to the transcript, Giuffre’s legal team was then seeking to prevent Maxwell’s side from presenting testimony at trial suggesting that Clinton hadn’t been on Epstein’s island, arguing it would be “inherently unfair” to Giuffre because they had not been permitted to question Clinton.
“You did not allow us to depose him because you said it was irrelevant,” McCawley argued before U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet. “So now we’re in a position where at trial they want to put forth that information against my client, and I don’t have an under-oath statement from that individual saying whether or not he actually was.”
“What we know is [Clinton] flew with Jeffrey Epstein at the same time 19 different times internationally and nationally, but we don’t have him with respect to this particular allegation under oath,” she added. “So we would say it would be highly prejudicial for them to be able to introduce evidence saying he wasn’t there or that they have some proof or some expert saying he wasn’t there when, in fact, we weren’t able to ask him directly, the person who is at issue, under oath, whether or not he did, in fact, go there.”
Maxwell’s attorneys, according to the transcript, told the court Maxwell was prepared to take the stand and testify that Clinton was never on the island.
But because the trial never occurred, Giuffre’s motion to exclude testimony about Clinton was left unresolved. More information about the debate over the issue may eventually become public as additional documents from the case are unsealed.
Following Epstein’s arrest last July, a spokesperson for Clinton, Angel Ureña, said in a statement that the former president “knows nothing” about Epstein’s crimes.
“He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade,” the statement adds, “and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
Giuffre, now a 36-year old mother living in Australia, alleges she was sexually abused as a teenager by Epstein and Maxwell between 2000 and 2002. She also claims to have been directed to have sex with some of their prominent friends, including Britain’s Prince Andrew. Both the Prince and Maxwell have denied Giuffre’s allegations.
Giuffre filed the action against Maxwell in September 2015, alleging that the former British socialite defamed her when her publicist issued a statement referring to Giuffre’s allegations as “obvious lies.”
Previously unsealed records from the case have already generated headlines around the world after a federal appeals court ordered the release of more than 2,000 pages of documents last August, a month after Epstein’s arrest by federal authorities in New York. The Miami Herald spear-headed the legal challenge to make the filings public.
Included in that collection were excerpts from Giuffre’s depositions naming several prominent men she alleges Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with, including Prince Andrew, attorney Alan Dershowitz, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. All of those men, and others accused by Giuffre, have denied the allegations.
“The documents and exhibits should be carefully examined for the vivid, detailed and tragic story they tell in the face of cursory, bumper-sticker-like statements by those accused,” Giuffre’s attorney McCawley wrote in a statement on the day of the document’s release. “Virginia Roberts Giuffre is a survivor and a woman to be believed. She believes a reckoning of inevitable accountability has begun.”
The morning after that first set of documents was made public, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell in Manhattan, where he was being held pending trial on charges of child sex-trafficking and conspiracy. The cause of death was determined by the New York City medical examiner as suicide by hanging, though that ruling has been challenged by a forensic pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother, the sole-surviving heir to an estate valued at more than $600 million.
Following those initial disclosures, a federal appeals court ordered the review of thousands more sealed court filings to determine which records should be made public. Preska was selected to oversee the process because Sweet, the original trial court judge, died last year at the age of 96.
(NEW YORK) — The start of the 2020-2021 school year is unlike any other.
Amid the growing coronavirus pandemic, many students, parents and teachers across the United States have little idea what the upcoming school year will look like, even as some school districts prepare to start school in just weeks.
Teachers in particular have found themselves in the center of the debate as they address concerns about their own health, their students’ health and the demands being placed upon them to lead both in-person and virtual classes.
“It’s coming down on us as teachers, as educators, but I think it needs to be framed as we’re humans first. We have lives,” said Dwayne Reed, an elementary school teacher in Chicago, who said his school district’s current plan would have him teaching in the classroom four days a week while also providing virtual lessons for his students five days a week.
“You can’t just look at it as dollar signs, bottom lines, standardized test scores,” he said. “You have to look at it as moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas who have moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and children that they need to tend to.”
Reed, whose wife is also a public school teacher, has been vocal on social media about his questions regarding plans for school reopenings. He said he sees his decision to speak out as a life or death choice.
“I get there are all of these issues that surround virtual learning, however, those issues will not lead to an immediate death or dying in five days,” he said. “I can help fix these tech equity issues. I can help recover education loss, but nobody comes back from the dead.”
Jillian Starr, an elementary public school teacher in Massachusetts, is also using her social media platform to highlight the fears teachers are facing as they are being asked to return to school while the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise in 40 states.
“I have the privilege of interacting with teachers on a national level through my social media platforms,” said Starr. “Many teachers are beginning school in a few short weeks, and I was hearing so much fear and anxiety about going back into the classroom while cases in their states continue to rise.”
“The discrepancies between the list of guidelines vs. what their experiences as teachers informs them is actually feasible in the classroom only increased those anxieties,” she said.
Starr compiled a list of teachers’ questions and shared it on Twitter, where it quickly went viral.
“I listened to teachers share that while they were the experts on the ground, nobody was seeking their expertise. I listened as they recalled being held in such high praise only a few short months ago, and the excitement about the possibility of our nation reinvesting in public education,” she said. “I listened as they described how it felt to be pushed off those pedestals so quickly and now have their lives viewed as expendable.”
“I couldn’t get their words out of my head, so I decided to write them down and share them on my platform in order to give them a voice,” said Starr.
Here are 18 questions teachers from across the country have about schools’ reopening plans, as written by Starr:
1. “Desks 6 ft apart (in some states 3 ft…what?!?) Many classrooms do not have desks, but have 5-6 tables where students sit shoulder to shoulder. How are we supposed to spread students out? Is someone buying desks? With what money? Schools are facing budget cuts & layoffs.”
2. “Students cannot share materials. Most of the materials in classrooms have been purchased BY teachers. If students cannot share, and students need their own personal sets of materials, who is purchasing these supplies? (again… with slashed budgets) “
3. “Teachers have to beg for donations of Clorox wipes and tissues from their families and friends to support cold/flu season. Who is providing ALL of the new disinfectant materials for classrooms? Are teachers expected to do the cleaning? Will they receive hazard pay?”
4. “Who is paying for masks and required PPE for teachers? Who is ensuring that these remain stocked? Will students be provided masks? What if they come to school without one, or refuse to wear one? What about our youngest students who can’t put them on themselves?”
5. “We are laying off staff, but are in need of more teachers to comply with smaller class sizes. Our classrooms are currently filled to the brim & teachers are working out of modified closets. How are we paying for space & funds for these additional classrooms and teachers?”
6. “School buildings have been deteriorating for years. Many classrooms do not have AC or windows that open (if they have windows at all). How are we ensuring proper air ventilation in these spaces.”
7. “Why are teachers being left out of conversations? Why were questionnaires sent to families & not teachers? Why are people making the decisions not asking teachers if those decisions are actually feasible in a classroom setting? Why are we not at the table?”
8. “Also, why are school boards meeting virtually to discuss opening schools in person?”
9. “If families are given a choice between remote vs. in-person learning, will teachers? Will immunocompromised teachers get priority? What about those caring for immunocompromised or elderly family at home? Will teachers be forced to choose between their jobs and their lives?”
10. “If teachers are forced to quarantine, will that come out of their sick pay? What if they have to quarantine multiple times? Many have 10 days or less of sick time (especially new teachers). What if we just have a cold (schools are germ factories). Can we not come to work?”
11. “If we run out of sick days, will we stop getting paid? What if we have to care for a sick family member? What if our own child’s school closes or they have to be quarantined, and we have to stay home? Will we lose our health insurance while being sick?”
12. “If we are burning through sick days, where are we getting subs? There have been sub shortages for years, most include retired teachers who are at risk. What happens when we are inevitably “out of teachers”. How are expected to keep up with 2 weeks of sub plans at a time?”
13. “Students are hopefully not being penalized for attendance. Will teachers? Will teachers continue to be evaluated this year? Will teacher “efficiency” be linked to state tests that are holding students to arbitrary grade level expectations they cannot meet right now?”
14. “If we are in the classroom full time, how are we expected to console a crying child from 6 feet away? What if our students can’t tie their shoes or button their pants? What about when students fall and get hurt? How do we help them from 6 feet away?”
15. “If cohorts have to be kept together to limit interactions, how are students receiving required services? Are those teachers coming into classrooms (contaminating each room) or are students leaving the classroom, going against ‘least restrictive environment’ requirements.”
16. “If we move to a hybrid model, how will teachers be expected to teach full time in the classroom AND plan for remote learning. We cannot be in two places at the same time. If we are one week on/1 week off, what happens if our own children have different schedules?”
17. “If we move to any form of remote learning, how will we ensure equitable access for our students? What plans will be put in place to focus on the emotional well-being of our students? How will we support our most vulnerable populations in the process?”
18. “Why are people using the ‘children are less likely to spread the virus’ as a backbone of arguments, dismissing the fact that hundreds of adults ALSO work in schools? Why are teachers and school staff being discussed as if they are expendable? Why is nobody listening?”
(NEW YORK) — A New York man who allegedly faked his own death last year in an attempt to avoid sentencing on felony charges was ultimately thwarted by a typo on his forged death certificate, prosecutors said this week.
Robert Berger, 25, of Huntington, Long Island, was charged Tuesday with offering a false instrument for filing, a felony.
Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said the typo, along with formatting errors, alerted officials that Berger allegedly forged the death certificate “to avoid accountability for other crimes.”
“Submitting fake documents to prosecutors is always a bad idea, and while he’d have been caught regardless, failure to use spell check made this alleged fraud especially glaring,” she said.
According to Singas, Berger was supposed to be sentenced in Nassau County on Oct. 22, 2019, after pleading guilty to two felony charges, but then his attorney’s office notified the court that Berger had died. The following week, his then-attorney provided the Nassau County District Attorney with a New Jersey death certificate in order to dismiss the pending sentences, officials said. The death certificate stated that Berger had died of suicide by suffocation one month prior, on Sept. 21.
Upon inspection, prosecutors noticed discrepancies in the font type and size throughout the document, and, glaringly, that the word “Registry” was misspelled as “Regsitry” for the issuer, the New Jersey Department of Health, Office of Vital Statistics and Registry. A call to the department confirmed that the certificate was fraudulent, officials said.
According to prosecutors, Berger’s fiancée allegedly gave the lawyer the death certificate. Upon the discovery of the alleged forgery, the lawyer, who told the court he believed he was used to perpetrate fraud, ended his representation, officials said. The district attorney did not indicate in a press release if the fiancée has also been charged in the alleged forgery scheme.
While supposedly dead, Berger was arrested on Nov. 14, 2019, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, for charges including providing a false identity to law enforcement, Nassau County prosecutors said. He was being held at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility and was extradited to Nassau County earlier this year and remanded, officials said.
Berger faces up to four years in prison for the forgery charge. His bail was set at $1 at his arraignment on Tuesday, but he remains remanded on the two prior charges — possession of a stolen Lexus and attempted grand larceny of a truck — prosecutors said. He has not entered a plea for the latest charge and is due back in court on July 29.
ABC News was unable to reach the public defender who is now representing his cases.
(WASHINGTON) — The logistics of getting even one can of pinto beans into the hands of a hungry family is no small feat, but an army of volunteers in the nation’s capital is banding together to make it happen.
Those beans, and thousands of pounds of other food, often arrive via freight truck to the Capital Area Food Bank, which has seen skyrocketing demand over the last few months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Nobody likes to ask for help to be able to put food on the table,” Capital Area Food Bank CEO Radha Muthiah told ABC News, standing in the nonprofit’s 100,000-square-foot warehouse in northeast Washington, D.C.
“But to put this in perspective, in the month of April, we purchased about 100 truckloads of food. And that is about three times what we purchased in the entire last year,” she continued, as employees zoomed around her moving food pallets on fork lifts.
The food bank has also seen a rise in callers to its “Hunger Lifeline,” where people can find out where to get food locally.
“People start by almost apologizing, you know, before they find out where they need to go to get food,” said Muthiah. “Often people are saying, ‘I’m sorry I have to call; I’m sorry that I need to avail myself of the food that you’re providing. In fact, in the past, I may have been a donor to you, you know, or I volunteered with you, but I am in need now.'”
After the food bank receives pallets of donations, the group divides them up among partners like Martha’s Table, a nonprofit in Washington that is helping to distribute the food directly to the individual. Before COVID-19, the organization was focused on education, creating healthy food options and job opportunities, but has since been forced to focus almost solely on community food needs.
Some volunteers, like 25-year-old Ian Yanusko, are taking advantage of their work-from-home schedules to help their neighbors.
“When COVID started, The Washington Post had a great article detailing different ways to get involved around the district,” said Yanusko, “and that made me think about the privilege that I have and how I can best use this time when a lot of people are struggling economically.”
Jason Tankersley retired just prior to the pandemic and was looking for a way to fill his free time while also giving back.
“I’m old enough to remember 9/11, and after 9/11, everything seemed to change,” said Tankersley. “There was a real shift in public opinion, and, you know, the spirit of ‘we’re all in this together.'”
Martha’s Table volunteers bring in the beans and other food, dividing it up into individual plastic bags. The bags are then transported back into a van and driven back to northeast D.C. to be handed out to the needy the next day.
Sequoya Pollard was a teacher at Martha’s Table before the pandemic hit, but now oversees the distribution of food at the group’s Maycroft location in Columbia Heights.
“The one thing that I do like about Martha’s Table is that we help people where they are. A lot of times, people can have a job, go to school, have a career. Unfortunately, rent is so expensive in D.C. The one thing that someone might have to sacrifice is putting food on the table,” said Pollard, as a bag containing the pinto beans is handed to a D.C. resident behind her.
“I hope that this whole COVID-19 really opens people’s eyes to see that there are truly people out here who are hungry, who need food, who need help,” she added. “These people are our neighbors, they live right here in the city with us, and they’re struggling.”
Paula Bronstein/Washington PostBy WILLIAM MANSELL, ABC News
