18 Jul 2024

Former Fox News host Lou Dobbs dead at 78

by | posted in: News | 0

Longtime conservative commentator Lou Dobbs has died at age 78, former President Donald Trump announced on social media Thursday.

“The Great Lou Dobbs has just passed away — A friend, and truly incredible journalist, reporter, and talent,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He understood the world, and what was ‘happening,’ better than others.”

Trump praised Dobbs as “unique in so many ways” and sent his condolences to the TV personality’s wife, Debi, and the Dobbs family.

“He will be greatly missed!” Trump wrote.

A short time later, an Instagram page tied to Dobbs confirmed the broadcaster’s death.

“It’s with a heavy heart we announce the passing of ‘The Great Lou Dobbs,’” the message read, remembering him as a “patriot and a great American” and “a fighter till the very end.”

A cause of death was not reported.

The former president’s Truth Social post appeared to be the first announcement of the death of Dobbs, who spent more than 20 years at CNN and a decade at the Fox Business Network.

Dobbs was a loyal Trump supporter known to promote conspiracy theories. His tenure with the Fox family ended in 2021 when “Lou Dobbs Tonight” was canceled in the throes of two defamation lawsuits filed by voting technologies companies against Fox News, which also named Dobbs.

CNN sources indicated at the time the lawsuits from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, the latter of which settled with Fox for $787.5 million, weren’t solely to blame for Dobbs’ severance from the right-wing media operation.

Dobbs, a Texas native who attended Harvard University, was with CNN at the cable news channel’s inception in 1980.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award in 2005.

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18 Jul 2024

Former St. Anthony bank being converted to mosque vandalized or broken into 7 times in two months

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A building being established as a youth-focused center and mosque in St. Anthony has been vandalized and broken into seven times in two months, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Damage is estimated to exceed $20,000 and the Minnesota chapter of CAIR is asking law enforcement to investigate whether the incidents at the Tibyan Center were motivated by bias.

“These attacks have shaken our community, and many members who were excited about the opportunity the new center represents are now feeling fearful and vulnerable,” Jaylani Hussein, CAIR-Minnesota executive director, said in a Wednesday statement. “We believe these attacks may be part of a broader effort to intimidate and harm Muslim communities and we call on law enforcement and the community to help in bringing these perpetrators into custody.”

The incidents began at the end of May after the Tibyan Center announced plans for the building, according to CAIR-MN.

There are no signs outside the former Bremer Bank building on Lowry Avenue near Stinson Parkway indicating the plans for the building or who owns it, according to St. Anthony Police Chief Jeff Spiess.

“The owner indicted to us that he believes the crime is bias-motivated, though I am unable to determine at this time the motivations of the suspects involved,” Spiess said Thursday. The department is investigating five reports it has received: three were classified as burglaries, one an attempted burglary and one criminal damage to property.

During the first break-in, fire extinguishers were sprayed and computers and other items were broken; a window was broken in June, according to CAIR-MN. A member of the center stopped a break-in on July 7. During the latest incident on Tuesday, windows were broken and there was other vandalism.

Security cameras have captured the incidents and, in two of the cases, police noted that surveillance video showed juvenile suspects.

CAIR-MN asked anyone with information to contact them or call St. Anthony police at 612-782-3350.

The Tibyan Center project is in the application phase and is scheduled to be presented to the Planning Commission on Aug. 20, according to the city.

Nick Ferraro contributed to this report.

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18 Jul 2024

Woman struck with metal bar outside St. Paul homeless shelter, struck again on ground, attempted murder charge says

by | posted in: Society | 0

As a woman was looking in another direction, a man hit her in the head with a metal rod. She fell to the ground and he struck her in the head again, according to an attempted murder charge filed Thursday.

The complaint against Crandell Dwayne Turner doesn’t give a motive for the attack in downtown St. Paul.

Crandell Dwayne Turner (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

The 43-year-old has a manslaughter conviction from Louisiana, from a case that happened when he was a juvenile.

The St. Paul assault happened about 7 p.m. Tuesday. Officers responded to the Opportunity Center, which connects adults with services, on Dorothy Day Place near West Seventh Street.

Police found the woman on the sidewalk, bleeding heavily from her head. She was initially transported to United Hospital, but was found to have a fractured skull and an internal brain bleed, so she was transferred to Regions Hospital.

The woman was rushed into surgery in critical condition. When the criminal complaint was filed Thursday morning, it said she was in serious but stable condition.

Witness reports

A witness reported seeing a man, later identified as Turner, enter an open construction site on nearby Smith Avenue and take a metal bar, according to the complaint.

After the assault, a group of good Samaritans followed Turner as he walked away and pointed him out to police as the attacker.

One of the men reported he saw Turner jump in the air and swing down on the woman’s head as she was on the ground, the complaint said.

Another saw Turner approach her from behind and said he looked mad. He and some of his friends confronted Turner, asking why he hit her. Turner replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the complaint continued.

A third good Samaritan reported that the woman was trying to hold her head up after the assault, crying and asking, “Why?”

Investigators reviewed surveillance cameras from the area and saw Turner hit the woman once and then use “a two‐handed overhead swing” to hit her head again when she was on the ground, the complaint said. He walked away.

Louisiana conviction

Turner declined to talk to police. An attorney for him couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

After a 1998 homicide in Louisiana, when Turner was a juvenile, he was held in Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals until 2016 “when a medical determination was made that he was no longer considered a danger to himself or others,” according to the Ramsey County complaint. He was found competent, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and given credit for time served, the complaint continued.

The 1998 killing was of a 29-year-old man working at a food mart in Garyville, La., about 40 miles from New Orleans. A person shot the employee in the back and then took cash from the register, according to an article in the L’Observateur newspaper.

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18 Jul 2024

Hunter Biden seeks dismissal of tax, gun cases, citing decision to toss Trump’s classified docs case

by | posted in: Politics | 0

By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss tax and gun cases against him, citing a ruling in Florida this week that threw out a separate prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

The requests in federal court in Delaware and California underscore the potential ramifications of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal Monday of the classified documents case against Trump and the possibility that it could unsettle the legal landscape surrounding Justice Department special counsels.

Both Hunter Biden and Trump were prosecuted by special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. In dismissing the Trump case, Cannon ruled that the appointment of the special counsel who prosecuted Trump, Jack Smith, violated the Constitution because he was appointed directly to the position by Garland instead of being nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Smith’s team has said the Justice Department followed long-establishment precedent — for instance, the Trump-era appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian election interference was upheld by courts — and has appealed Cannon’s dismissal to a federal appeals court in Atlanta.

In a pair of filings Thursday, lawyers for Biden said the same logic should apply in his cases and should result in the dismissal of a pending tax prosecution in Los Angeles — currently set for trial in September — and a separate firearm case in Delaware, in which Biden was convicted in June of three felony charges.

The Biden team had raised similar arguments before, unsuccessfully, but they say there’s now good reason to reconsider them.

“Based on these new legal developments, Mr. Biden moves to dismiss the indictment brought against him because the Special Counsel who initiated this prosecution was appointed in violation of the Appointments Clause as well,” Biden’s lawyers wrote, also citing an opinion this month by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that questioned the propriety of a special counsel appointment.

“The Attorney General relied upon the exact same authority to appoint the Special Counsel in both the Trump and Biden matters, and both appointments are invalid for the same reason,” the lawyers added.

Smith and the special counsel who prosecuted Biden, David Weiss, are different in that Smith was hired from outside the Justice Department while Weiss was working as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware at the time of his appointment.

In her ruling, Cannon noted that a special counsel’s powers are “arguably broader than a traditional United States Attorney , as he is permitted to exercise his investigatory powers across multiple districts within the same investigation.”

Biden’s lawyers pointed out Thursday that that’s exactly what happened in his case, as Weiss in his role as special counsel filed cases against Biden in California and Delaware and separately brought charges against a former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens.

“Mere U.S. Attorneys do not have that power. Given that Congress requires a U.S. Attorney to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, it makes no sense to assume that Congress would allow the Attorney General to unilaterally appoint someone as Special Counsel with equal or greater power than a U.S. Attorney,” Biden’s lawyers wrote. “That is what has been attempted here.”