Mornings on the Mall

Monday July 11, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Mercedes Schlapp

5am – A/B/C   Dallas police used robot to kill

The use of a robot to kill the man who authorities say fatally shot five Dallas police officers has drawn attention in part because it’s the first time police have used robots in such a manner. In the wake of the shooting of the Dallas police officers Thursday night during a peaceful protest, police cornered the shooter — Micah Xavier Johnson — in a parking garage. After an hours-long standoff that included exchanges of gunfire, they used a robot to deliver an explosive that killed the gunman.

5am – D

‘Chewbacca Mom’ goes viral again with Michael Jackson cover

Texas native Candace Payne, lovingly known as the viral-video personality “Chewbacca Mom,” made waves on her Facebook Live again Saturday. Instead of donning a toy Wookiee mask and laughing about her Star Wars love this time, Payne showed her serious side singing a cover of Michael Jackson’s Heal the World in tribute to the dead and wounded police officers from Thursday night’s shootings in Dallas.

Chewbacca Mom impresses during national anthem performance at Astros game

Proving there’s nothing Chewbacca Mom can’t do, Candace Payne slayed the national anthem at the Houston Astros vs. Seattle Mariners game on Tuesday.

Instead of providing her usual laughs, Payne stayed in key the entire time and continued to be an American hero

5am – E

Referral for Clinton perjury probe could come next week

The House Oversight Committee is expected to send a formal request asking the FBI to open a criminal investigation into allegations that Hillary Clinton lied to Congress as soon as next week, a committee aide told The Hill.

Despite a vow Thursday from Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to deliver a referral to FBI Director James Comey “in the next few hours,” committee leaders are still working on the request, the aide said.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Friday that he was reviewing more than 100 transcripts of witness testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi to determine whether such a referral was appropriate.

“If a witness said something to a committee of Congress and/or under oath that is not consistent with the truth, our committee, like every other committee, has an obligation to refer that to those who actually do investigate,” Gowdy told reporters. “But we do not investigate crimes in Congress.”

Gowdy confirmed that the committee has not yet submitted a referral to the FBI.

The move comes on the heels of the Justice Department’s decision not to press charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of State. Republicans, outraged that Clinton appears to be getting off scot-free despite mishandling classified information, have quickly pivoted to accusing her of perjury. t issue is Clinton’s marathon 11-hour testimony before the Benghazi panel last year, during which she insisted under oath that “there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received.” ut Comey revealed on Thursday that Clinton did, in fact, exchange emails through her private server that included information marked classified, though he provided some cover for Clinton during his testimony before the House Oversight Committee

 

6am – A/B/C 

Report: ’95 percent probability’ of Pence as Trump VP

A Donald Trump campaign stop in Indiana scheduled for Tuesday is raising speculation that the presumptive Republican nominee will announce Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate.

The Washington Times reported Sunday evening that Pence has a “95 percent probability” of being Trump’s choice, according to sources close to the campaign and to the governor.

The first-term Indiana governor’s name has surfaced in recent weeks as a contender for the position. Pence tepidly endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas before the state’s May primary, but later backed Trump, praising the chance to “take a new direction” in Washington.

“The kind of leadership that I truly do believe, to borrow a phrase, will make America great again,” Pence said during a Thursday campaign stop, according to The Associated Press.

Others said to be under consideration for vice president are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Trump has said he will make an announcement before the Republican National Convention, which begins on July 18. Pence, who is seeking reelection to a second term as governor, would have to withdraw from that contest by noon on July 15 if he’s going to run as Trump’s vice president.

Former Trump adviser Michael Caputo said Sunday he’s putting all his chips on an announcement at the event next week.

6am – D

Hillary Clinton will have to testify under oath if federal judge agrees to petition          

Prosecutors decided last week not to charge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her secret email server, but a federal court could still force her to testify under oath after a conservative law firm petitioned the judge to force her to talk.

Judicial Watch, which has been pursuing Mrs. Clinton’s emails for years through more than a dozen open-records lawsuits and has already subjected her top aides to depositions, petitioned Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Friday to order Mrs. Clinton to talk. The group said there are questions only she can answer about how she handled her messages.

“It was her system. She was the primary driving force behind it and was its principal user,” Judicial Watch said in its court filing. “Without Secretary Clinton’s testimony, there can be no fair, rightful and conclusive answer to the court’s questions.”

Mrs. Clinton escaped legal jeopardy when FBI Director James B. Comey concluded that while she risked national security by mailing top-secret information on a server she kept at her home in New York, and while she may well have broken several federal laws, she was so unsophisticated in her understanding of technology and classification that she didn’t know what she was doing.

Speaking for the first time publicly about the findings, Mrs. Clinton said that if she was reckless with security, it was because she was trusting her top aides, who were sending her the material.

She said those with whom she was mailing originated the information and they didn’t see anything wrong with what they were sending, so she didn’t see any reason to be worried herself.

“Over 300 people were on these email exchanges,” she told CNN. “And these were experienced professionals who have had great years of dealing with classified material. And whatever they sent me, they did not believe and had, in my view, no reason to be at the time, that it was classified.”

Mr. Comey said both Mrs. Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” with classified information, though he cleared them of danger of criminal prosecution as well.

The FBI did not, however, focus on Mrs. Clinton’s cooperation with open-records laws, which is the subject of Judicial Watch’s civil lawsuit trying to get a look at the messages.

Judicial Watch has argued that the State Department should try to recover the 30,000 messages Mrs. Clinton refused to turn over to the government and, according to the FBI, which she then deleted. Judicial Watch says a government employee, rather than Mrs. Clinton’s own attorneys, must review those emails to make sure they don’t contain government records.

Indeed, the FBI concluded that thousands of emails Mrs. Clinton didn’t turn over likely did contain government records.

Judicial Watch said it needs to talk with Mrs. Clinton to get to the bottom of that finding, too.

6am – E

Dallas police chief: Shooter had larger plans

The gunman who killed five police officers in Dallas was plotting larger attacks, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Sunday.

“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that he was going to target law enforcement — make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement’s efforts to punish people of color,” Brown said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Brown said police found bomb-making materials and a journal at the shooter’s home that suggested he’d been practicing detonations and appeared ready to take aim at larger targets.

It was enough, Brown said, to have “devastating effects on our city.”

He said the shooter, Micah Johnson, “obviously had some delusion. There was quite a bit of rambling in the journal that’s hard to decipher.”

Among Dallas investigators’ current goals: Figure out what Johnson had meant by “RB,” lettering that Brown said he’d written on the wall in blood before his death.

Police are “trying to figure out what those initials mean, but we haven’t determined that yet,” Brown said.

“At the scene where he was killed, he wrote some lettering in blood on the walls, which leads us to believe he was wounded on the way up the stairwell, on the second floor of the El Centro building and where we detonated the device to end the standoff there was more lettering written in his own blood,” he said.

The details made for significant new disclosures about the killings that have rocked the Dallas community and the nation. Brown also sought to deliver a message to protesters in states like Minnesota and Louisiana after people there were killed by police last week in what critics have called cases of excess force.

“We’re sworn to protect you and your right to protest, and we’ll give our lives for it,” Brown said.

“And it’s sort of like being in a relationship where you love that person, but that person can’t express or show you love back,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve been in a relationship like that before, Jake, but that’s a tough relationship to be in, where we show our love — because there’s no greater love than to give your life for someone, and that’s what we’re continuing to be willing to do.”

“And we just need to hear from the protesters back to us, ‘We appreciate the work you do for us in our right to protest,'” Brown said. “That should be fairly easy.”

Negotiating with the gunman

Brown said the gunman was only willing to negotiate with a black police officer during the standoff.

He was also singing while speaking with police officers, Brown said.

“We had negotiated with him for about two hours, and he just basically lied to us — playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many (police officers) did he get and that he wanted to kill some more and that there were bombs there,” Brown said, “so there was no progress on the negotiation.”

“I began to feel that it was only at a split second he would charge us and take out many more before we could kill him,” he said.

That, Brown said, is when his officers devised a plan to use a robot to detonate a bomb near the gunman.

 

7am – A/B

INTERVIEW–JOE DIGENOVA– WMAL’S LEGAL ANALYST AND FORMER U.S ATTORNEY TO DC

Clinton Emails: DOJ Will Not File Charges Against Former Secretary of State (ABC NEWS)

The Justice Department will not file any charges against Hillary Clinton or anyone “within the scope of the investigation” into her use of personal email while Secretary of State.

On Tuesday, FBI director James Comey called Clinton “extremely careless” in her use of private email to conduct State Department business, but recommended to not file charges against Clinton.

Prosecutors at the DOJ appeared to agree with Comey’s assessment about charges.

“Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement.

“I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”

While the email issue has dogged Clinton during the election and for more than a year, the move by the DOJ was largely expected following Comey’s statement on the investigation. Lynch had already said last week that she would accept the recommendations made by the FBI and those career prosecutors that work on her team.

The FBI completed its investigation right around the time Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, met last week with Lynch on her plane. Both parties said the meeting was not about the email issue, although it has received criticism as inappropriate because Lynch oversees the FBI.

Still, the decision against charges will likely follow Clinton during the general-election as the Democratic parties presumptive nominee. Republicans point out that Clinton was reckless with sensitive material, and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump pointed out the “the system is rigged.”

“The normal punishment, in this case, would include losing authority to handle classified information, and that too disqualifies Hillary Clinton from being president,” Trump added in a statement.

The FBI spent months looking into whether Clinton intentionally mishandled any classified information and whether her private email server had been compromised.

Comey said his team uncovered more than 100 emails that contained information that was classified. FBI investigators also found thousands of work-related emails that were not included in the 30,000 emails Clinton handed over to the State Department.

But Comey said the FBI didn’t believe those emails were intentionally concealed from investigators. espite the FBI’s finding of carelessness by Clinton and her staff, Comey said “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

7am – C  

Ambulance Driver Gets Lost While Transporting Dying Man

Authorities say they’ve started an investigation into what happened.

Authorities in Virginia are investigating how an ambulance driver managed to get lost on the way to the hospital with a dying man in the back.

Sequan Hall was shot Saturday morning out on a street in Alexandria. But during his ambulance ride to the hospital, authorities say they got a pulse and decided to head to a different hospital instead. Apparently that was confusing for the rookie EMT driving, and he didn’t know how to get there.

Hall’s mother, Patrice, was in the ambulance during the ordeal. She told WUSA: “They leave First Street going on Braddock Road. They get to Commonwealth Avenue and stop in the middle of the street.”

She went on to say: “I can’t imagine someone driving a EMS truck, an ambulance, and not knowing how to get to the hospital.”

So instead of continuing to drive, he switched spots with another EMT, who took the ambulance the rest of the way, where Hall later died. Authorities said the confusion caused a 30-second delay and the entire transport time was 11 minutes.

At this point, the investigation is so early it’s impossible to tell how much the confusion might have changed the outcome, but the Alexandria fire chief told WUSA it could lead to policy changes for newer drivers.

Patrice Hall says her son’s death was the result of “a vigilante shooting due to misinformation regarding a previous incident that he was never charged nor had anything to do with.”

This video includes clips from WUSA and WTTG.

7am – D        

 INTERVIEW–JOHN LOTT– PRESIDENT, CRIME RESEARCH CENTER

Police group director: Obama caused a ‘war on cops’

The head of a law enforcement advocacy group lashed out at President Barack Obama in the wake of the Dallas shootings that left five police officers dead, accused the president of carrying out a “war on cops.”

“I think [the Obama administration] continued appeasements at the federal level with the Department of Justice, their appeasement of violent criminals, their refusal to condemn movements like Black Lives Matter, actively calling for the death of police officers, that type of thing, all the while blaming police for the problems in this country has led directly to the climate that has made Dallas possible,” William Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said in an interview with Fox on Friday morning.

Johnson said although the Thursday night shooting of law enforcement officers reminded him of “the violence in the streets in the 60’s and 70’s,” he pointed out how Obama’s response appeared different than his predecessors.

“I think one of the big differences then was you had governors and mayors and the president — whether it was President Johnson or President Nixon, Republican or Democrat — condemning violence against the police and urging support for the police,” Johnson said. “Today that’s markedly absent. I think that’s a huge difference, and that’s directly led to the climate that allows these attacks to happen.”

“It’s a war on cops,” Johnson also said. “And the Obama administration is the Neville Chamberlain of this war.”Obama on Friday morning strongly condemned the Dallas shootings, which happened at the end of a protest about the killings of two black men by police officers earlier this week, as a “vicious, calculated and despicable attack.”

“Let’s be clear there are no possible justifications for these attacks or any violence towards law enforcement,” he said from Warsaw, Poland, where he is attending a NATO meeting

On Thursday, before the Dallas shootings, Obama tried to strike a balance as he talked about anger and grief in the African-American community after the latest killings by police and the feeling among some law enforcement officials that Obama has not always supported them.

“To be concerned about these issues is not to be against law enforcement,” he said. ”When people say black lives matter, it doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter.”

Other law enforcement groups on Friday called for better relationships between cops and their communities.

DC Police Union Secretary Jimmy White admitted there was a clear racial disparity in the criminal justice system, and police officers needed better relationships with their communities.

“To put all the blame on one aspect of the problem is incorrect. You can’t just say it’s only Obama that has created this culture,” White told POLITICO on Friday. “We have to look into communities, into employment, we have to look into everything.”

“It just seems that there could be more effort by our government as far as making sure that the playing field is leveled,” the secretary said.

White also criticized trends on social media like #BlueLivesMatter or #BlackLivesMatter, saying “we focus too much” on labels instead of addressing the community’s needs.

“There is a balance between giving the public what they want and keeping our police officers safe,” he said. “We are hurting as an agency and as a union and we just wish that the events of yesterday did not happen and never happen again. We will grow, we will heal from this, and we will watch each other’s backs.”

Chuck Canterbury, national President of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he would encourage the Department of Justice to investigate the Dallas shooting as a hate crime.

“Nobody should die because of the color of their skin and nobody should die because of the color of the uniform that they’re wearing either,” he said in an interview with NPR on Friday.

Canterbury added that individual officers “are not in control of their training,” pointing out that police in Chicago “have been asking for Taser training for almost eight years.”

“Less-than-lethal methods need to be improved every day. Police officers would like that. Nobody goes to work, pins on a badge or a star and wants to end somebody else’s life,” the FOP president said.

7am – E        

Pokémon Go: armed robbers use mobile game to lure players into trap

Missouri suspects used app’s geolocation feature to target ‘unwitting victims’, says police after another incident saw game lead player to dead body

Armed robbers used the game Pokémon Go to lure victims to an isolated trap in Missouri, police reported on Sunday.

At about 2am in O’Fallon, Missouri, officers responded to a robbery report that led them to four people, all local residents aged 16 to 18, in a black BMW in a CVS parking lot. The occupants tried to discard a handgun out of the car when an officer approached, said Sgt Bill Stringer. The officer then identified the four people as suspects of similar armed robberies described in St Louis and St Charles counties.

The adult suspects were charged with first degree robbery, a felony, and had bond set at $100,000 cash, Stringer said.

Stringer added that police believe the suspects used the phone app, which directs users to capture imaginary creatures superimposed onto the real world, to tempt players into secluded areas where they could be easily robbed. At a certain level in the game, he noted, players can congregate at local landmarks to join teams and battle.

“Using the geolocation feature,” Stringer said, “the robbers were able to anticipate the location and level of seclusion of unwitting victims.”

In a separate statement, a department spokesperson added: “you can add a beacon to a pokestop to lure more players. Apparently they were using the app to locate [people] standing around in the middle of a parking lot or whatever other location they were in.”

A statement from police quoted from a news article to explain the allure of the game: “Seeing a Pikachu on the sidewalk in front of you is a fan’s digital dream come true.”

The department added a warning, however. “If you use this app (or other similar type apps) or have children that do we ask you to please use caution when alerting strangers of your future location.”

Pokémon Go warns players to keep aware of their surroundings during their virtual treasure hunt, but after only a few days since its release it has already led people into a string of bizarre incidents. People have ended up in hospitals after chasing nonexistent animals into hazardous spots, and schools, a state agency and Australian police have warned people not to break the law or endanger themselves while “Pokemoning”. The game has also led wanderers to at least one home misidentified as a church, a venue the app considers a public space.

In Wyoming on Friday, the game led a teenager to a dead body in a river. “I just got up and went for my little walk, a walk to catch Pokémon,” 19-year-old Shayla Wiggens told local KCWY news. The pursuit led her to a highway bridge over the river, where she jumped a fence to approach the water. She spotted two deer near the water’s edge, and then a black shirt and pants – a corpse lying prone in the water, 6ft to her left.

The Fremont County sheriff’s office said in a statement that it was investigating the death, but that they do not suspect homicide. “The death appears to be accidental in nature,” said undersheriff Ryan Lee. Though the water is only 3ft deep where the body was found, investigators said the man possibly drowned.

Wiggins said the discovery of a corpse would not deter her from returning to the game. “I might go get a water Pokémon,” she told CNN. “I’m going to try.”

8am – A/B

INTERVIEW — Lanny J. Davis is co-founder and partner of the law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper PLLC, and co-founder and partner of the public relations firm Trident DMG.

Topic: Hillary Clinton’s emails.

8am –C

Texas governor burned in accident; could miss GOP convention

DALLAS –  Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas sustained “extensive second- and third-degree burns” on both legs below the knees and both feet — and may miss next week’s Republican National Convention as a result, his office said Sunday.

Spokesman Matt Hirsch said Abbott was with his family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Thursday when he was scalded in an accident involving hot water. He declined to provide further details.

The governor was treated for several hours at nearby St. John’s Medical Center. As he was being released, a top aide called from Texas to say a gunman had opened fire in downtown Dallas — an attack that killed five police officers and wounded seven others.

“His first words to us were, ‘I’ve got to come back,'” Hirsch said.

Abbott held a press conference in Dallas on Friday, but didn’t disclose being burned. Hirsch said that his legs were wrapped at the time, but that wasn’t evident since they were covered by his pants.

The only hint anything was wrong, Hirsch said, was that the governor was wearing orthopedic shoes that his staff purchased that morning — rather than the dress shoes or boots he usually dons in public.

Hirsch said surgery won’t be required immediately, but that Abbott was heading to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio on Monday afternoon to see specialists. He continues to get his legs wrapped daily and should be required to do so for two or three weeks, Hirsch said.

The governor’s communications team had been working on a statement detailing the burning Thursday, but abandoned it in the aftermath of the mass shooting, Hirsh said. Instead, Abbott released statements about the attack late Thursday night and early Friday morning, as well as an open letter to Texans, urging unity in the face of tragedy.

“For him it was important not to distract from what was happening in Dallas,” Hirsh said.

The accident wasn’t reported until late Sunday. Word first appeared in The Austin American Statesman.

Abbott has used a wheelchair since a tree fell on him while jogging in 1984, paralyzing him from the waist down. Hirsch said the governor still has functioning nerve receptors in his legs and feet, however, and that he has felt pain as they react to the shock of being burned.

The governor is chairman of Texas’ delegation to the Republican convention in Cleveland, which begins July 18. But Hirsch said he may now not make the trip, calling a decision about Abbott’s attendance “day-to-day.” Abbott endorsed the presidential bid of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but says he supports presumptive nominee Donald Trump.

8am-D/E

Dallas police used robot to kill

The use of a robot to kill the man who authorities say fatally shot five Dallas police officers has drawn attention in part because it’s the first time police have used robots in such a manner. In the wake of the shooting of the Dallas police officers Thursday night during a peaceful protest, police cornered the shooter — Micah Xavier Johnson — in a parking garage. After an hours-long standoff that included exchanges of gunfire, they used a robot to deliver an explosive that killed the gunman.