Florida House Passes Gun Control Bill, Defying NRA
March 8, 2018 by admin
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“This isn’t hard,” Mr. Moskowitz said. “Putting your kid in the ground is hard. This is easy.”
“This may be the most consequential vote we ever take on this floor,” said Representative Shawn Harrison, Republican of Tampa. “Grown-ups protect our kids. It’s what we do. It’s our turn. Don’t let them down.”
The legislation passed, with a vote of 67 to 50. Lawmakers rose, looked up into the public gallery and applauded Andrew Pollack, whose daughter, Meadow, was killed in the shooting. He sat through the debate and remained until the vote, even though it likely meant he missed his flight back home.
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Hours earlier, the grand jury in Broward County charged Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the Feb. 14 massacre — one of the deadliest school shootings in American history — with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
The indictment of Mr. Cruz, who has confessed to the killings, was essentially a formality, and the primary legal debate now centers on whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty. Mr. Cruz’s lawyers have offered a plea bargain — consecutive life sentences without parole — in a bid to avoid a trial and the threat of execution.
“The only question is does he live or does he die?” said Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender, whose office is representing Mr. Cruz. “The question for the community, and specifically the victims’ families — is it worth what will be a three-year trial odyssey followed by a 15-year appellate odyssey?”
In the State Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, the provision to voluntarily arm trained school “guardians,” including librarians and school counselors, threatened to derail the legislation. But the families of all 17 people killed in Parkland sent House members a letter on Tuesday urging them to vote yes.
“You must act to prevent mass murder from ever occurring again at any school,” they wrote. “This issue cannot wait. The moment to pass this bill is now.”
On Thursday, several House Democrats cited the letter as the reason they would favor the proposal, even after the Democratic caucus took a formal position against it. The legislation prompted raw comments on the House floor and exposed a racial divide among Democrats: Black legislators warned their white counterparts that arming educators might result in discrimination against students of color.
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Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has not said if he will sign the bill into law. His own proposal after the Parkland shooting did not envision arming school personnel or requiring a waiting period for all gun purchases.
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Trump Lawyer Obtained Restraining Order to Silence Stormy Daniels
March 8, 2018 by admin
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Ms. Clifford filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday asserting that the nondisclosure agreement that accompanied the $130,000 payment was void because Mr. Trump never signed it.
Ms. Sanders said that the president had denied having an affair with Ms. Clifford or making the payment himself. She added that she was not aware of whether Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Ms. Clifford at the time.
“I’ve had conversations with the president about this,” Ms. Sanders said. “This case has already been won in arbitration, and there was no knowledge of any payments from the president, and he has denied all these allegations.”
Lawrence S. Rosen, a lawyer representing Mr. Cohen, said in a statement on Wednesday that an arbitrator, who “found that Ms. Clifford had violated the agreement,” barred her from filing her lawsuit and making other disclosures of confidential information.
Ms. Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said that he did not consider the restraining order, dated Feb. 27, valid, and that his client would proceed with her lawsuit in open court. “This should be decided publicly,” he said.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times
Ms. Clifford’s nondisclosure contract, made public through her lawsuit, calls for disagreements to be settled through confidential, binding arbitration. The lawsuit was filed a week after Mr. Cohen initiated arbitration proceedings, but the court papers did not say what was at issue or refer to the restraining order.
The contract gives Mr. Trump the right to seek financial penalties of more than $1 million in arbitration should Ms. Clifford break or threaten to break her agreement to stay silent. It also gives him the right to obtain an injunction barring her from speaking while disputes are considered in arbitration or open court. Those terms prompted Ms. Clifford to change her plans about going public, according to two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak about it.
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Ms. Clifford had suggested she was free to speak out after Mr. Cohen disclosed last month that he had arranged the payment, prompting her to claim that the contract had been breached.
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The restraining order took her by surprise. A close friend of Ms. Clifford’s, J. D. Barrale, said in an interview that she learned Mr. Cohen initiated arbitration proceedings when she landed on a flight from Los Angeles to Texas. “She was shocked,” Mr. Barrale said.
Mr. Avenatti said Ms. Clifford had “never even been provided an opportunity to respond” to Mr. Cohen’s action in arbitration.
A copy of the restraining order, obtained by The Times and first reported by NBC News, left open the possibility that it could be modified in the future. But Mr. Avenatti said he questioned its validity because it was brought on behalf of Mr. Cohen, not Mr. Trump.
Asked if Ms. Clifford would drop her court case if Mr. Cohen provided her with more money, he said she would not. “At this point, we are well beyond that — this is a search for the truth,” he said.
The lawsuit by Ms. Clifford adds weight to allegations in a separate legal complaint brought by Common Cause, a public interest group that has asked the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department to investigate the $130,000 payment by Mr. Cohen. Common Cause argues that the payment amounted to an undeclared in-kind contribution to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Federal election law requires contributions and expenditures for a campaign to be promptly disclosed, and prohibits a candidate from dipping into campaign funds to cover personal expenses. There is no evidence that campaign money was used to make the payment.
Common Cause filed a similar complaint about a $150,000 payment made shortly before the election by American Media Inc., owner of The National Enquirer, to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate who has said she had an affair with a married Mr. Trump about a decade ago. The company dismissed the complaint as meritless.
The Enquirer never published a story about the alleged affair, and Common Cause asserts that if the payment was intended to keep Ms. McDougal quiet, it would be an illegal coordinated expenditure by a company on behalf of the Trump campaign.
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