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Some Witnesses Told Obvious Lies To Michael Brown Grand Jury, Prosecutor Says

Some Witnesses Told Obvious Lies To Michael Brown Grand Jury, Prosecutor Says

By Koran Addo, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)

ST. LOUIS — Certain witnesses who spoke before the grand jury investigating the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown told obvious lies under oath, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch said.

“Clearly some were not telling the truth,” he said Friday morning during an interview on KTRS-AM.

In his first extensive interview since the grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, McCulloch said he had no regrets about letting grand jury members hear from non-credible witnesses.

“Early on I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything would be presented to the grand jury,” McCulloch said before adding that he would’ve been criticized no matter his decision.

During the interview, McCulloch referenced a woman who claimed to have seen the shooting.

This “lady clearly wasn’t present,” McCulloch said during the nearly 30-minute interview on KTRS. “She recounted a story right out of the newspaper,” backing up Wilson’s version of events.

The criticism of that witness fits the questions surrounding Sandra McElroy, also known as Witness 40.

McElroy, who has admitted to using racial slurs and trying to raise money for Wilson, testified that she saw the entire shooting unfold, and that Brown charged the officer shortly before he was killed — a detail that has been at the center of the shooting because of conflicting reports.

Investigators picked apart McElroy’s story, saying she could not have left the apartment complex in the way she described.

She also gave conflicting accounts of why she was at the scene of the shooting that day and admitted that she has short-term memory problems from a head-on collision that left her with a traumatic brain injury.

McCulloch on Friday also said he had no regrets about announcing the grand jury decision after dark on the night of Nov. 24.

“There was no good time to make the announcement,” he said. “Whatever was going to happen was going to happen.”

The nighttime decision, he added, was good for area schools and also allowed business owners time to decide if they would open the next day.

Of the riots that followed the announcement, McCulloch said they were out of his control.

“Those who were bent on destruction, they weren’t demonstrators, they’re common criminals,” he said.

Photo: Joe Newman via Flickr

Tsarnaevs Might’ve Had Help In Boston Marathon Attack, Prosecutors Say

Tsarnaevs Might’ve Had Help In Boston Marathon Attack, Prosecutors Say

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that the Tsarnaev brothers may have received help in building the two bombs that exploded at last year’s Boston Marathon, although they did not identify any potential suspects except to suggest the pair were inspired by al-Qaida operatives overseas.

In court papers, prosecutors said Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had emptied hundreds of packages of fireworks to create fuel for the bombs. Yet no powder residue was found in their apartments or three vehicles, “strongly suggesting that others had built, or at least helped the Tsarnaevs build, the bombs, and thus might have built more” explosive devices, the documents say.

Prosecutors did not say whether they still believed that theory or were convinced now that the two immigrant brothers from the Russian republic of Dagestan had acted alone when they allegedly detonated two homemade bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 near the finish line of the race on April 15, 2013.

Prosecutors also revealed several new details about the bombs. They said the fuses were fashioned from Christmas lights and the improvised remote-control detonators were built from model car parts.

“These relatively sophisticated devices would have been difficult for the Tsarnaevs to fabricate successfully without training or assistance from others,” prosecutors wrote.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout with police four days after the bombing. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, now 20, was wounded and captured in a boat stored in a nearby yard in Watertown, a Boston suburb.

In notes found in the boat, scrawled in pencil, he defended the bombings as retaliation for Americans killing “innocent civilians” abroad, authorities say. He also wrote that he was “jealous” of his slain brother.

“I do not mourn because his soul is very much alive,” he wrote. “God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in this boat and shed some light on our actions.”

Prosecutors said the writing “bears hallmarks of al-Qaida-inspired rhetoric, suggested that Tsarnaev might have received instruction from a terrorist group.” They said his repeated use of the word “we” suggested that “others might be poised to commit similar attacks and that Tsarnaev was urging them on.”

Tsarnaev faces 30 charges and could face the death penalty if convicted in connection with the bombings. Prosecutors filed the papers to oppose a motion by Tsarnaev’s lawyers to keep his statements to the FBI, made while he was hospitalized after his capture, from being used in court.

The defense contends that he gave the statements under duress, when he was sedated.

But prosecutors said the FBI questioned Tsarnaev under a public safety provision in the law that allows authorities to hastily gather information if they believe lives are in jeopardy.

“The government did nothing wrong,” prosecutors said.

At the hospital, they said, Tsarnaev “readily admitted” that he and his brother had carried out the bombings. They said he was “responsive, coherent and clear-headed.”

Timothy A. Clary AFP

Federal Prosecutor-Turned-Lawmaker To Head GOP’s Benghazi Probe

Federal Prosecutor-Turned-Lawmaker To Head GOP’s Benghazi Probe

By James Rosen and Nancy Youssef, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner on Monday chose Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor, to head a special committee that will investigate the deadly September 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the Obama administration’s response.

Gowdy has been an outspoken critic of how President Barack Obama and his top aides handled the fallout from the assault, which resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

During one of several congressional hearings since the attack, Gowdy ticked off a series of alleged misrepresentations by the Obama administration before yelling, “I want to know why we were lied to!”

On Monday, Gowdy praised Boehner for setting up the panel and said he was honored to lead it.

“Twenty months after the Benghazi attacks, there remain unresolved questions about why the security was inadequate, our response during the siege itself and our government’s interaction with the public after the attack,” Gowdy said in a statement. “All of those lines of inquiry are legitimate and should be apolitical. Facts are neither red nor blue.”

Democrats criticized the inquiry as a partisan stunt.

“We think this is a political, not a substantive, effort,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters Monday.

Many Democratic leaders have said the Republicans’ relentless focus on the Benghazi tragedy is aimed at weakening Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state when the attack occurred and is leading in early presidential polls for the 2016 election. The former senator and first lady has not said whether she will be a candidate.

Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was compelled to set up the special committee because of last week’s “revelation that the Obama administration had withheld (certain) documents from a congressional subpoena” in an earlier Republican probe.

At issue is a Sept. 14, 2012, email — three days after the attack — obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by a conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes to then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Rhodes advised Rice, who was slated to appear on several nationally televised news show, to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader policy statement.” Rice, now the White House national security adviser, said the attacks resulted from a spontaneous protest ignited by a demonstration at the American Embassy in Cairo against an anti-Islam video on YouTube.

“With four of our countrymen killed at the hands of terrorists, the American people want answers,” Boehner said in a statement. “Trey Gowdy is as dogged, focused and serious-minded as they come. His background as a federal prosecutor and his zeal for the truth make him the ideal person to lead this panel.”

As recently as four weeks ago, however, Boehner said a special committee was not needed because four House of Representatives panels already were investigating the Benghazi affair.

“At this point in time, I see no reason to break up all the work that’s been done and to take months and months and months to create some select committee,” Boehner told Fox News on April 7.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney declined to say whether the administration would cooperate with the new probe. Carney said the administration has “always cooperated with legitimate oversight,” but he wouldn’t say whether the White House considers the new inquiry appropriate.

Carney said Congress has launched seven Benghazi investigations that have produced 13 hearings, 15 briefings of lawmakers or their aides and over 25,000 pages of documents.

“The facts of yesterday are the facts today, and they will be the facts no matter how often or for how long Republicans engage in highly partisan efforts to politicize what was a tragedy,” Carney told reporters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a fellow South Carolina Republican who has accused Obama of covering up the truth in Benghazi, praised Gowdy’s selection to head the special panel.

“Trey Gowdy is the most capable person in the entire Congress to lead the select committee,” Graham said in a statement. “He’s a former prosecutor who is well-respected by his colleagues, tenacious in his approach to his duties, and fair-minded about his responsibilities.”

Gowdy, 49, first attracted national attention in July 2011 when, six months into office, he was among a small number of House Republicans who voted against every compromise Boehner negotiated with Obama to raise the federal debt ceiling.

Gowdy cast several contradictory votes on Libya during his first year in the House.

In a June 24, 2011, House vote, he broke with most other Republicans and joined a majority of Democrats in defeating a bill that would have blocked funding of U.S. military action in Libya.

In a separate 2011 vote, Gowdy supported a congressional resolution that authorized U.S. and NATO forces to launch airstrikes in Libya during the uprising against dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Subsequent U.S.-led NATO bombing helped rebels depose Gadhafi, who was captured and killed Oct. 20, 2011, by his opponents.

Yet four months earlier, in June 2011, Gowdy voted to block sending to Libya any U.S. ground troops, which could have helped secure the country after Gadhafi fell. Before the assault in Benghazi, House Republicans had passed a series of budgets that slashed funding for security at U.S. embassies around the globe.

In the nearly three years since Gadhafi’s death, Libya has been wracked by increased instability as radical Islamists, secularists and violent insurgents battle for control of the country.

In the weeks leading up to the attack on the U.S. special mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, a Libyan-based Islamist terror group, Ansar al Shariah, expanded its hold on eastern Libya. Many Libyans blamed Ansar al Shariah for the attack that led to the death of Stevens, who spoke Arabic, had deep experience in the Middle East and engaged with Benghazi residents while walking the city’s streets before his death.

On the day after the deadly assault, Ansar al Shariah suggested that some of its members had participated but denied having ordered the attack.

Within days of Stevens’ murder, enraged Libyans forced Ansar al Shariah militants to flee the region. But members and supporters, emboldened that they have escaped U.S. arrest over the Benghazi attack, have trickled back in. The group now controls huge swaths of eastern Libya, including Benghazi, making it unwelcome terrain for the U.S.-backed government in the capital of Tripoli.

Many of the 70 people suspected of having participated in the consulate attack operate freely in Libya, with the central government police and military forces too weak to take on insurgent groups that protect them.

AFP Photo

Ukraine Separatists Take Over Prosecutor’s Office In Donetsk

Ukraine Separatists Take Over Prosecutor’s Office In Donetsk

By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

DONETSK, Ukraine — A crowd of more than 2,000 pro-Russia separatists on Sunday night seized one of the last key official sites in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk still in the hands of the country’s interim government.

The demonstrators, some armed with sticks and shields and at least one carrying a hunting rifle, marched about two miles across Donetsk and broke down the doors to the military prosecutor’s office, raising the banner of their movement from the roof.

The building was unguarded.

The military prosecutor’s office joined the Donetsk regional administration building, Ukraine’s Security Service station and other official sites now in the hands of a pro-Russia rebellion that has engulfed at least two regions in eastern Ukraine.

“Where shall we go now?” shouted a masked man in the crowd brandishing a baseball bat and a riot police shield. “What else can we capture today? There is a Leninsky (district) executive council near by. Let’s go get it.”

As the crowd started to move, two helmeted figures intervened, one saying: “Stop! We need to obey a coordinator! Where is he?”

The coordinator, a man in his early 30s, reappeared and said his brief absence was necessary so he could warn protesters inside the prosecutor’s office not to break anything and just guard the newly acquired premise.

“Let’s walk by the Leninsky council but don’t get inside, as we have done enough for the day,” the coordinator, who gave his name as Miroslav Rudenko, told the crowd.

The separatists have been seizing government facilities in the east since pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich was driven from power more than two months ago by protests centered in Kiev. They are widely viewed by Ukraine’s interim government and many in the West as being supported or even directed by Moscow in an effort to imposed Russian control over eastern Ukraine and disrupt a presidential election on May 25 that would give the central government greater legitimacy.

“We capture at least one office building a day, thus depriving Kiev junta of its power base in the city and in the region,” saud Rudenko, who represented himself as one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic. “The military prosecutor’s office was one of the repressive tools taking orders from the criminal Kiev regime.”

The protesters are hoping to hold a referendum May 11 that would create an independent republic together with other regions of Ukraine’s east.

“We don’t need to necessarily join Russia in the end but we may join (Russia’s sponsored) customs union and other alliances with Russia,” Rudenko said. “We don’t intend to participate in the presidential election to be held by illegitimate Kiev junta.”

Ukrainian officials say the ongoing rebellion in the Donetsk region has succeeded so far in part because many regional police officers have cooperated with the separatists.

“We need to fire the entire regional police force as Russia-inspired mutiny collaborators,” a high-ranking regional Security Service officer said on the condition of anonymity. “We urgently need to build a new police force of local patriots, but we are critically losing time.”

The Donetsk Security Service station fell into the hands of separatists on Saturday.

Acting Ukraine President Olexandr Turchynov conceded last week that the government had lost control over the Donetsk region and the neighboring Luhansk region, where pro-Russia protesters in a similar fashion occupied most of the government offices and the Security Service station.

In Odessa, where a violent clash triggered a fire that left 43 people dead on Friday, a district police station was surrounded Sunday by several hundred separatists demanding the release of protesters detained during the earlier fighting. In the end, police released 67 people.

“It is necessary to unite Ukraine only through dialogue, unity and consideration for every person’s opinion,” acting Premier Arseny Yatsenyuk said at a meeting with social and cultural activists in Odessa on Sunday. “The process of national dialogue has begun but has been silenced by shots from AK-100 [Kalashnikov] automatic rifles produced in Russia.”

Yatsenyuk once again accused Russia of sponsoring and inciting separatism and terrorism in eastern Ukraine.

©afp.com / Alexander Khudoteply