Giuliani is target of election probe, his lawyers are told
ATLANTA (AP) — Prosecutors in Atlanta on Monday told lawyers for Rudy Giuliani that he’s a target of their criminal investigation into possible illegal attempts by then-President Donald Trump and others to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia.
Special prosecutor Nathan Wade alerted Giuliani’s local attorney in Atlanta that the former New York City mayor could face criminal charges, another Giuliani attorney, Robert Costello, said. News of the disclosure was first reported by The New York Times.
The revelation that Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump, is a target of the investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis edges the probe closer to the former president. Willis has said she is considering calling Trump himself to testify before the special grand jury, and the former president has hired a criminal defense attorney in Atlanta.
Law enforcement scrutiny of Trump’s actions is escalating. Last week, the FBI searched his Florida home as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. He is also facing a civil investigation in New York over allegations that his company, the Trump Organization, misled banks and tax authorities about the value of his assets. And the Justice Department is investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters and efforts to overturn the election he falsely claimed was stolen.
Giuliani, who spread false claims of election fraud in Atlanta’s Fulton County as he led efforts to overturn the state’s election results, is to testify Wednesday before a special grand jury that was impaneled at Willis’s request.
Feds oppose unsealing affidavit for Mar-a-Lago warrant
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Monday rebuffed efforts to make public the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida, saying the investigation “implicates highly classified material” and the document contains sensitive information about witnesses.
The government’s opposition came in response to court filings by several news organizations, including The Associated Press, seeking to unseal the underlying affidavit the Justice Department submitted when it asked for the warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month.
The court filing — from Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the U.S. attorney in Miami, and Jay Bratt, a top Justice Department national security official — argues that making the affidavit public would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”
The document, the prosecutors say, details “highly sensitive information about witnesses,” including people who have been interviewed by the government, and contains confidential grand jury information.
The government told a federal magistrate judge that prosecutors believe some additional records, including the cover sheet for the warrant and the government’s request to seal the documents, should now be made public.
Iran denies involvement but justifies Salman Rushdie attack
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian official Monday denied Tehran was involved in the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie, though he sought to justify the attack in the Islamic Republic’s first public comments on the bloodshed.
The remarks by Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, came three days after Rushdie was wounded in New York state. The writer has been taken off a ventilator and is “on the road to recovery,” according to his agent.
Rushdie, 75, has faced death threats for more than 30 years over his novel “The Satanic Verses,” whose depiction of the Prophet Muhammad was seen by some Muslims as blasphemous.
In 1989, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, demanding the author’s death, and while Iran has not focused on Rushdie in recent years, the decree still stands.
Also, a semiofficial Iranian foundation had posted a bounty of over $3 million for the killing of the author. It has not commented on the attack.
Clergy, social workers fear fallout from Okla. abortion laws
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Strict anti-abortion laws that took effect in Oklahoma this year led to the quick shuttering of every abortion facility in the state, but left questions for those who work directly with women who may seek their advice or help getting an abortion out of state.
Beyond the profound repercussions the abortion laws are having on medical care, especially reproductive medicine, clergy members, social workers and even librarians have raised concerns about being exposed to criminal or civil liability for just discussing the topic.
Those fears are well-founded, says Joseph Thai, a professor at the University of Oklahoma who teaches about constitutional law and the Supreme Court. He described Oklahoma’s new anti-abortion laws, which include both criminal and civil penalties, as the strictest in the nation so far and sweeping in both substance and scope.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade and remove women’s constitutional right to abortion immediately triggered a 1910 Oklahoma law that makes it a felony, punishable by two to five years in prison, for every person who “advises” or provides any other means for a woman to procure an abortion. That law allows abortion only to save the mother’s life.
“That all-encompassing language can make anyone and everyone who helps a woman get an abortion or provides information about access to abortion — including a spouse, another family member, a friend, a classmate or co-worker, a librarian, or even an Uber driver — a felon,” Thai said. “Likewise, employers who have pledged to pay for their employees’ abortions as part of their reproductive health coverage and their insurance companies face criminal liability.”
EXPLAINER: Why US lawmakers’ Taiwan trips keep riling China
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan is high on the summer travel list for U.S. members of Congress on their August recess this year, as U.S. lawmakers make a point of asserting American support for the self-governed island despite objections from China. The payoff photos from this week’s five-member congressional visit, like that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi less than two weeks earlier, are meant as a pointed message to China: newly arrived lawmakers disembarking on the tarmac of Taipei’s international airport, greeted by beaming Taiwanese officials glad for the American support.
Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Monday was wrapping up the second U.S. congressional delegation there this month. Pelosi had been the most senior U.S. official in a quarter-century to visit Taiwan, underscoring the longstanding U.S. policy of solidarity with the island’s democratically elected leaders.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory. It views any visit by U.S. officials as a recognition of the island’s sovereignty.
So far, China’s response to Markey’s delegation has been more restrained than that of two weeks ago, when Beijing launched days of intensive military maneuvers around Taiwan and froze some ties with the U.S. government over Pelosi’s visit.
A look at some key questions about U.S. lawmakers’ Taiwan trips, and why they matter.
Deadline looms for western states to cut Colorado River use
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Banks along parts of the Colorado River where water once streamed are now just caked mud and rock as climate change makes the Western U.S. hotter and drier.
More than two decades of drought have done little to deter the region from diverting more water than flows through it, depleting key reservoirs to levels that now jeopardize water delivery and hydropower production.
Cities and farms in seven U.S. states are bracing for cuts this week as officials stare down a deadline to propose unprecedented reductions to their use of the water, setting up what’s expected to be the most consequential week for Colorado River policy in years.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June told the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to determine how to use at least 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. The bureau is also expected to publish hydrology projections that will trigger additional cuts already agreed to.
Tensions over the extent of the cuts and how to spread them equitably have flared, with states pointing fingers and stubbornly clinging to their water rights despite the looming crisis.
New Zealand river’s personhood status offers hope to M?ori
WHANGANUI, New Zealand (AP) — The Whanganui River is surging into the ocean, fattened from days of winter rain and yellowed from the earth and clay that has collapsed into its sides. Logs and debris hurtle past as dusk looms.
Sixty-one-year-old Tahi Nepia is calmly paddling his outrigger canoe, called a waka ama in his Indigenous M?ori language, as it is buffeted from side to side.
Before venturing out, he makes sure to first ask permission from his ancestors in a prayer, or karakia. It’s the top item on his safety list. He says his ancestors inhabit the river and each time he dips his paddle into the water he touches them.
“You are giving them a mihimihi, you are giving them a massage,” Nepia says. “That’s how we see that river. It’s a part of us.”
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Urban combat and beyond: Ukrainian recruits get UK training
A BRITISH ARMY BASE, England (AP) — A few weeks ago, Serhiy was a business analyst at an IT company. Zakhar was a civil engineer. Now they are soldiers, training to liberate Ukraine from Russia’s invasion — but doing it more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Britain.
They are among several hundred Ukrainian recruits pounding through an intense form of infantry training at an army base in southeast England. One batch of the 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers that the British military has pledged to train within 120 days, they are spending several weeks learning skills including marksmanship, battlefield first aid and –- crucially for their country’s future — urban warfare.
As the Ukrainians practice house-clearing amid the rattle of gunfire and pall from smoke grenades on a mock-townscape where British soldiers once trained for operations in Northern Ireland, they think about driving Russian troops from the streets of their own cities..
“The most important part is urban training, because it’s the most dangerous combat, in cities,” said Serhiy, who like the other Ukrainians did not want his full named used because of security concerns. “The British instructors have a lot of experience, from Iraq, Afghanistan. We can adapt all this knowledge to the Ukrainian situation and use it to liberate our country from Russian invasion.”
British trainers are putting the Ukrainian troops through a condensed version of the British Army’s infantry training, covering weapons handling, first aid, patrol tactics and the law of conflict. The aim is to turn raw recruits into battle-ready soldiers in a matter of weeks. The first batch arrived last month and have already been sent back to replenish depleted Ukrainian units.
No. 1 Alabama tops preseason AP Top 25; Ohio St, ‘Dawgs next
With two of the best players in the country leading the way — and a championship game loss as motivation — Alabama is No. 1 in The Associated Press preseason college football poll for the second straight season and ninth time overall.
Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young, national defensive player of year Will Anderson Jr. and the Crimson Tide received 54 of 63 first-place votes and 1,566 points in the Top 25 presented by Regions Bank released on Monday.
Ohio State is No. 2 with six first-place votes (1,506 points) from the media panel and defending national champion Georgia is third with three first-place votes (1,455 points). Clemson is No. 4. Notre Dame rounds out the top five, setting up a tantalizing opener at Ohio State on Sept. 3.
The Tide’s preseason No. 1 ranking is the seventh in 15 years under coach Nick Saban. Since the preseason rankings started in 1950, only Oklahoma with 10 has been No. 1 in the initial poll more often than Alabama.
The Crimson Tide started last season No. 1 and finished ranked No. 2 after losing the national championship game to the Southeastern Conference rival Bulldogs.
New this week: ‘House of the Dragon,’ Lakers doc and Lovato
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— In the almost 25 years since Princess Diana died, there has never been any shortage of content examining the enormous impact and intrigue of her short life. But a new documentary from director Ed Perkins, “The Princess,” which debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and is available on HBO (and HBO Max), turns the lens back on us. The film doesn’t have any talking heads or voiceover, but instead uses only archival footage to tell a different kind of story. It is a meditative, transportive experience that is surprisingly effective.
— Two of this summer’s most delightful theatrical releases “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” and “Mr. Malcolm’s List” are quietly now available to rent on demand and watch from home. The former is a grounded fantasy adorned with mid-century designer lore, featuring Lesley Manville as a post-WWII British housekeeper and widow. She dreams of owning a Christian Dior gown and must travel to Paris to get one (and her middle-age Sabrina moment). “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” meanwhile, is an ode to Jane Austen — a Regency-era romance full of gossip, intrigue and high society hijinks starring Freida Pinto, Zawe Ashton and ??p?? Dìrísù as the titular Mr. Malcolm.
— On the other streamers, Lili Reinhart, of “Riverdale” fame, leads a Netflix pic “Look Both Ways” about a college senior whose life splits into parallel realities on graduation night. In one, she gets pregnant and has to move home to Texas. In another, she heads to Los Angeles to start her career. Co-starring “Top Gun: Maverick’s” Danny Ramierz, “Look Both Ways” hits Netflix on Wednesday. And for those looking for a scare, Paramount+ is debuting “Orphan: First Kill” on Friday. The film is a prequel to Jaume Collet-Serra’s 2009 horror “Orphan” and follows Esther as she escapes from an Estonian psychiatric facility and makes her way to America.