Politics

By Nathan Layne and Peter Eisler

LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) – State police in Michigan have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and election-related records in at least three towns and one county in the past six weeks, police records show, widening the largest known investigation into unauthorized attempts by allies of former President Donald Trump to access voting systems.

The previously unreported records include search warrants and investigators’ memos obtained by Reuters through public records requests. The documents reveal a flurry of efforts by state authorities to secure voting machines, poll books, data-storage devices and phone records as evidence in a probe launched in mid-February.

The state’s investigation follows breaches of local election systems in Michigan by Republican officials and pro-Trump activists trying to prove his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

The police documents reveal, among other things, that the state is investigating a potential breach of voting equipment in Lake Township, a small, largely conservative community in northern Michigan’s Missaukee County. The previously unreported case is one of at least 17 incidents nationwide, including 11 in Michigan, in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment.

Many of the breaches have been inspired in part by the false assertion that state-ordered voting-system upgrades or maintenance would erase evidence of alleged voting fraud in 2020. State election officials, including those in Michigan, say those processes have no impact on the preservation of data from past elections.

The search warrants also authorized state police to seize election equipment in Barry County’s Irving Township and have it examined. Local officials acknowledged publicly last month that state police raided the township office on April 29, a day after the warrant was issued.

Additionally, the records shed new light on election-equipment breaches in Roscommon County. One official in the county’s Richfield Township told investigators that he gave two vote-counting tabulators to an unauthorized and unidentified “third party,” who kept them for several weeks in early 2021. The county’s clerk acknowledged that she, too, handed over her equipment to unauthorized people.

Taken together, these documents depict a statewide push by pro-Trump activists to access election machinery in search of evidence for debunked theories that equipment was rigged in a crucial swing state that voted for Trump in 2016 and for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told Reuters that the state is investigating whether the election-system breaches are coordinated.

“If there is coordination, whether it’s among those in our state or reaching up to a national level, we can determine that and then we can seek accountability for all involved,” Benson, a Democrat, said in an interview.

On Feb. 10, Benson announced that she had asked Michigan’s attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, to begin a criminal investigation, citing information that state authorities had received about unauthorized access to voting machines and data in Roscommon County. In separate inquiries, state or local law enforcement officials have investigated security breaches involving voting equipment in Cross Village Township in Emmet County and Adams Township in Hillsdale County last year.

Representatives of the state police and attorney general’s office declined to comment on the investigations detailed in this story.

Trump won all of the counties where breaches or attempted breaches in Michigan have been alleged. The results in those jurisdictions were affirmed by multiple audits and an investigation by the Republican-controlled state senate, which found no evidence of widespread fraud. But some activists and officials pushing election-fraud conspiracy theories claim that Trump’s margin should have been larger in these areas, and their efforts are roiling communities across the state.

In rural Barry County, Republican Sheriff Dar Leaf has teamed with proponents of the debunked claim that voting machines were rigged against Trump. Leaf is pursuing his own investigation, despite being urged last year by the Republican county prosecutor to suspend it for lack of evidence. Trump won the county by a 2-1 margin.

In recent weeks, Leaf’s office has sent expansive public records requests to the county’s township and city clerks, seeking an array of election-related records. The requests were condemned by clerks and local officials in Reuters interviews and public statements as baseless and burdensome. An editorial in the local newspaper, The Hastings Banner, called Leaf’s probe “a waste of time and an affront to our citizens.”

Leaf did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview with Reuters in February, he defended his investigation. He said he was “concerned” by theories that voting machines nationwide were rigged to favor Biden, and “we need to know if that happened in Barry County.”

‘INAPPROPRIATE ACCESS’

The records obtained by Reuters show that in Lake Township, a community of about 2,800 people in Missaukee County, state police obtained a warrant on April 22 to search the clerk’s office for evidence of potential violations of election law.

Township Clerk Korrinda Winkelmann, an elected Republican who oversees local voting, declined to comment.

Missaukee County, where Trump won in 2020 with 76% of the vote, is home to Daire Rendon, a Republican state lawmaker who has embraced the bogus claim that widespread fraud robbed Trump of victory in 2020. Rendon approached multiple clerks in her district, which includes Missaukee, Roscommon and other counties, asking them to give people seeking fraud evidence access to their voting equipment, Reuters previously reported https://www.reuters.com/world/us/michigan-pro-trump-state-lawmaker-sought-access-voting-machines-2022-05-20.

In December 2020, Rendon was one of two Republican members of Michigan’s House of Representatives who joined an unsuccessful federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory in five battleground states.

Rendon did not respond to requests for comment. In a May 25 interview with the Cadillac News, a local newspaper, she acknowledged contacting clerks but said she “never touched a voting machine” and did nothing wrong.

State police are also stepping up an examination of alleged breaches in Roscommon County. In February, Secretary of State Benson said unauthorized people “gained inappropriate access to tabulation machines and data drives” used in the county and in one of its townships, Richfield. Benson, however, didn’t name any suspects or provide other details.

The state police records show that investigators are probing allegations that the Richfield Township supervisor allowed a “third party” to take possession of the town’s two ballot tabulators for several weeks in early 2021. The records identify the supervisor only by title, not by name, but the county only has one person in that position, Republican John Bawol.

The records detail an interview with a “suspect.” The name and title is redacted but the suspect is described as an elected township official. The official told investigators he believed the tabulators were taken to “the northern suburbs of Detroit” in early February by an unidentified group of people driving a small SUV. The tabulators were not returned until March, the official added. The official said at one point he checked in with a woman, whose name is redacted, about when the machines would be returned, and “she advised they were almost done.”

State police found that both security seals on one machine indicated that it had been tampered with, the records show. The seals were intact on the other machine.

Greg Watt, the township clerk, whose job includes safeguarding election equipment, told investigators that he did not know the identity of the third party who accessed the voting machines, according to the records. Police documents identify Watt by name and call him a witness in the case.

Watt and Bawol did not respond to requests for comment.

The breaches are costing taxpayers money. The Richfield Township Board voted on May 25 to purchase two new vote tabulators and three memory devices at a cost of $8,763. The move was necessary to “ensure election integrity,” Watt said at the board meeting, according to an audio recording reviewed by Reuters.

State police have also sought to question the Roscommon county clerk in connection with a separate alleged voting system breach, the police records reveal. The county clerk, whose name is redacted in the documents, is Michelle Stevenson, a Republican.

In February, the county clerk acknowledged to a state election official that she had provided a data storage drive containing election information “for one or both” of Richfield Township’s vote tabulators to an unidentified third party, according to an email from the official to police, in which the name of the clerk was also redacted. She also gave the person access to one of Roscommon County’s vote-tabulating machines, according to the email.

When state investigators attempted to interview the county clerk on Feb. 17, she indicated a willingness to speak with police but declined to discuss the matter at that time, the police records show.

Two weeks later, on March 2, investigators executed a search warrant on Stevenson’s office, accompanied by representatives of Election Systems & Software LLC, the Nebraska-based manufacturer of voting machines used in Roscommon County, the records show.

Stevenson declined to comment. Election Systems & Software did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Peter Eisler; editing by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot)

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(Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disclosed new stock market trades on Monday, showing purchases of options to buy shares of Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp.

In a periodic transaction report signed last Friday and appearing on the House of Representatives’ website on Monday, the senior Democrat disclosed that her husband, financier Paul Pelosi, on May 13 bought Apple call options for between $500,001 and $1 million.

On May 24, he bought more Apple call options, in an amount between $250,001 and $500,000, the disclosure https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/2022/20021142.pdf shows. On the same day, Paul Pelosi bought Microsoft call options for as much as $600,000.

Users on social media platforms including Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and TikTok have scrutinized Pelosi’s trade disclosures in recent months, believing her position as House Speaker gives her and her husband an edge.

A 2012 law makes it illegal for lawmakers to use information from their work in Congress for their personal gain. The law requires them to disclose stock transactions by themselves or family members within 45 days.

Pelosi in January signaled that she might be willing to advance legislation to completely ban stock trading by lawmakers. That was a reversal from her previous position defending lawmakers’ right to trade stocks.

Proposals by Democrats in Congress this year to prohibit stock trading by lawmakers have yet to pass.

Pelosi’s stock trading performance ranked sixth-best in Congress in 2021, with Republican Congressman Austin Scott leading the way, according to an analysis https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/full by Unusual Whales, a service selling financial data.

Paul Pelosi’s purchases of Apple and Microsoft options in May followed a steep Wall Street selloff this year related to worries about inflation and rising interest rates.

So far in 2022, Pelosi has filed six transaction reports, disclosing several trades in Apple, the world’s most valuable company. She has also disclosed trades in Walt Disney Co, Tesla Inc, PayPal Holdings and other widely held stocks.

The Justice Department ended investigations of stock trades by at least three senators ahead of the 2020 market slump, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, without filing charges.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — When leaders gather at the Summit of the Americas this week, the focus is likely to veer from policy issues — migration, climate change and galloping inflation — and instead shift to something Hollywood thrives on: the drama of the red carpet.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed Monday that he will not show up, dealing a blow to the event hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.

López Obrador said it was concerns over the guest list that led him to skip. He wanted Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to be invited, but Washington did not want to include autocratic governments. Other leaders also have indicated they’ll stay away if not all are invited.

Experts say the event could turn into a embarrassment for U.S. President Joe Biden.

Even some progressive Democrats have criticized the administration for bowing to pressure from exiles in the swing state of Florida and barring communist Cuba, which attended the last two summits.

“The real question is why the Biden administration didn’t do its homework,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who now teaches at New York University.

While the Biden administration insists the president in Los Angeles will outline his vision for a “sustainable, resilient, and equitable future” for the hemisphere, Castañeda said it’s clear from the last-minute wrangling over the guest list that Latin America is not a priority for the U.S. president.

“This ambitious agenda, no one knows exactly what it is, other than a series of bromides,” he said.

The U.S. is hosting the summit for the first time since its launch in 1994, in Miami, as part of an effort to galvanize support for a free trade agreement stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.

But that goal was abandoned more than 15 years ago amid a rise in leftist politics in the region. With China’s influence expanding, most nations have come to expect — and need — less from Washington.

As a result, the premier forum for regional cooperation has languished, at times turning into a stage for airing historical grievances, like when the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez at the 2009 summit in Trinidad & Tobago gave President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s classic tract, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

The U.S. opening to former Cold War adversary Cuba, which was sealed with Obama’s handshake with Raul Castro at the 2015 summit in Panama, lowered some of the ideological tensions.

“It’s a huge missed opportunity,” Ben Rhodes, who led the Cuba thaw as deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration, said recently in his “Pod Save the World” podcast. “We are isolating ourselves by taking that step, because you’ve got Mexico, you’ve got Caribbean countries saying they’re not going to come — which is only going to make Cuba look stronger than us.”

To bolster turnout and avert a flop, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris worked the phones in recent days, speaking with the leaders of Argentina and Honduras, both of whom initially expressed support for Mexico’s proposed boycott. Former Sen. Christopher Dodd crisscrossed the region as a special adviser for the summit, in the process persuading far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was a staunch ally of President Donald Trump and hasn’t once spoken to Biden, to belatedly confirm his attendance.

Ironically, the decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela wasn’t the whim of the U.S. alone. The region’s governments in 2001, in Quebec City, declared that any break with democratic order is an “insurmountable obstacle” to future participation in the summit process.

The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela aren’t even active members of the Washington-based Organization of the American States, which organizes the summit.

“This should’ve been a talking point from the beginning,” said Tom Shannon, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs who in a long diplomatic career attended several summits. “It’s not a U.S. imposition. It was consensual. If leaders want to change that, then we should have a conversation first.”

Instead of going to the summit, López Obrador said he would visit communities hit by Hurricane Agatha last week. His foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, will lead the Mexican delegation in his absence. He said he sent word to Biden that he would like to visit him at the White House when his schedule allows to discuss the integration of the Americas.

“There cannot be a summit if all countries are not invited,” López Obrador said Monday. “Or there can be one, but that is to continue with all politics of interventionism.”

After the last summit in Peru, in 2018, which Trump didn’t even bother to attend, many predicted there was no future for the regional gathering.

In response to Trump’s pullout, only 17 of the region’s 35 heads of state attended. Few saw value in bringing together for a photo op leaders from such dissimilar places as aid-dependent Haiti, industrial powerhouses Mexico and Brazil and violence-plagued Central America — each with their own unique challenges and bilateral agenda with Washington.

“As long as we don’t speak with a single voice, no one is going to listen to us,” said former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who also faults Mexico and Brazil — the region’s two economic powers — for the current drift in hemispheric relations. “With a cacophony of voices, it is much more difficult to find our place in the world.”

To the surprise of many, the U.S. in early 2019 picked up the ball, offering to host the summit. At the time, the Trump administration was enjoying something of a leadership renaissance in Latin America, albeit among mostly similar-minded conservative governments around the narrow issue of restoring democracy in Venezuela.

But that goodwill unraveled as Trump floated the idea of invading Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro — a threat recalling the worst excesses of the Cold War. Then the pandemic hit, taking a devastating human and economic toll on a region that accounted for more than a quarter of the world’s COVID-19 deaths despite making up only 8% of the population. The region’s politics were upended.

The election of Biden, who was Obama’s point man for Latin America and had decades of hands-on experience in the region from his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, set expectations for a relaunch.

But as popular angst spread during the pandemic, the Biden administration was slow to match the vaccine diplomacy of Russia and China, although it did eventually provide 70 million doses to the hemisphere. Biden also maintained the Trump-era restrictions on migration, reinforcing the view that it was neglecting its own neighbors.

Since then, Biden’s hallmark policy in the region — a $4 billion aid package to attack the root causes of migration in Central America — has stalled in Congress with no apparent effort to revive it. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also diverted attention from the region, something experts say could come back to bite Biden if rising interest rates in the U.S. trigger a stampede of capital outflows and debt defaults in emerging markets.

There have been smaller snubs too: When leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected president in Chile, setting high expectations for a generational shift in the region’s politics, the U.S. delegation to his inauguration was led by the second-lowest ranking Cabinet member — Isabel Guzman, head of the Small Business Administration.

Shannon said for the summit to be successful Biden shouldn’t try to lay out a grand American vision for the hemisphere but rather show sensitivity to the region’s embrace of other global powers, concerns about gaping inequality and traditional mistrust of the U.S.

“More than speeches, he will need to listen,” Shannon said.

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By Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Representative Liz Cheney warned that the nation’s democratic system is threatened by ongoing efforts to deny the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

“People must pay attention. People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it,” Cheney said during an interview broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning, days before Congress’ official probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol begins public hearings.

Cheney, a vocal critic of Trump who voted to impeach him, is one of two Republicans serving on the committee. She warned that Trump continues to damage trust in American democracy by repeating his false claims that his loss was the result of widespread fraud.

Those claims have been repeatedly debunked by courts, state and local election officials and members of Trump’s own administration.

“It’s an ongoing threat,” Cheney said of the efforts to undercut confidence in elections. “It is extremely broad. It’s extremely well organized. It’s really chilling.”

The House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the attacks will hold a prime time hearing at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT June 10) on Thursday, the committee announced. It will be the first of six public hearings, set for June 13, 15, 16, 21 and June 23, according to media reports.

With seven Democrats and two Republicans, the panel has spent much of the past year investigating the events preceding and driving the attack by thousands of Trump supporters, who stormed the building in a failed bid to prevent Congress from formally certifying his 2020 election loss to now-President Joe Biden.

Cheney was once the third most powerful Republican in Washington. She was ousted from leadership after repudiating Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen. Trump has endorsed a challenger to Cheney in Wyoming’s August primary.

(Reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Richard Chang)

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By Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Bipartisan U.S. Senate negotiations on how or if to respond to the latest wave of mass shootings are focused on a range of options, including improving school safety and “red flag” laws to allow police to seize guns from people deemed dangerous.

The talks will continue into early this week, when Congress returns from a Memorial Day break, and follow a prime-time speech last week in which Democratic President Joe Biden implored lawmakers to act.

Previous mass shootings like the ones that claimed 19 young children and two educators at a Texas school, 10 Black shoppers at a New York state grocery store and a pair of weekend shootings in Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tennessee, have led to similar talks but no action in the deeply divided Congress.

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, who is leading the talks with Republican counterpart John Cornyn, said options on the table included investments in mental health and school safety.

“Do some significant mental health investment, some school safety money and some modest but impactful changes in gun laws. That’s the kind of package we’re putting together right now. That’s the kind of package I think can pass the Senate,” Murphy said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Democrats control razor-thin majorities in Congress but Senate rules mean they need at least 10 Republicans to pass major legislation. That is a tall order with less than six months before November midterm elections when Republicans aim to retake the majority.

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican member of the negotiating group, said some expansion of background checks is on the table, along with possible “red flag” laws that allow states to maintain adequate due process.

“I think there is a place to land that is consistent with the Second Amendment,” Toomey said, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “It hasn’t been finally resolved but something in the space of expanding background checks I think is very – well, certainly is on the table and I hope will be part of a final package.”

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms, and Republicans defend a broad reading of that right, opposing most new limits on gun ownership.

While the White House and Congress struggle to agree on any response to the wave of shootings, the U.S. Supreme Court this month is expected to rule on a New York case that could bring a sweeping expansion of gun rights.

“Red flag” laws allowing police to seize weapons from people with some mental illnesses have been implemented in 19 U.S. states. Gun rights advocates criticize such measures, saying they violate the Second Amendment and deny individuals the right to argue their cases with due process in court.

Murphy, of Connecticut, where a gunman killed 26 children and educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, said parents in his state are worried.

“There’s just a deep, deep fear for our children right now. And also a fear that government is so fundamentally broken that it can’t put politics aside to guarantee the one thing that matters most to adults in this country – the physical safety of their children,” he told CNN.

(Reporting by Katharine Jackson in WashingtonEditing by Scott Malone and Matthew Lewis)

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democrats are challenging the paperwork Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for governor filed to get on the ballot in the GOP primary on technical grounds.

The state Democratic Party said Sunday that construction company co-owner Tim Michels’ failed to include his correct mailing address on the nominating forms, making thousands of signatures invalid. But Michels’ campaign dismissed the complaint as frivolous.

“This challenge shows that Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary, Tim Michels, only has 345 valid signatures to get on the ballot,” state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said. The state requires 2,000 signatures to run for governor.

Michels’ campaign acknowledged that some of the nominating forms list his physical address in the village of Chenequa instead of his official mailing address that is in the nearby town of Hartland, but it said all of the forms include the campaign’s post office box mailing address.

“Tony Evers and his insider allies are feverishly working to keep me from beating him in November,” Michels said in a statement. “It comes as no surprise that they launched a frivolous complaint in an attempt to keep me off the ballot, just days after I was endorsed by President Trump. They will not succeed.”

Michels, who joined the race late in April, faces former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, state Rep. Tim Ramthun and business consultant Kevin Nicholson in the contested Aug. 9 GOP primary. The winner of that race will take on Democratic incumbent Evers.

The state’s bipartisan elections commission will consider the challenge to Michels’ candidacy at its meeting on Friday.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump was impeached in late 2019 after pressuring Ukraine’s leader for “a favor,” all while withholding $400 million in military aid to help confront Russian-backed separatists, even the staunchest defense hawks in the Republican Party stood virtually united by Trump’s side.

But as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military marched toward Kyiv this February, threatening not only Ukraine but the rest of Europe, Republicans and Democrats in Congress cast aside impeachment politics, rallied to Ukraine’s side and swiftly shipped billions to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s defense.

The question ahead, as Ukrainians battle Russia’s grinding invasion now past its 100th day, is whether the rare bipartisanship on Capitol Hill is resilient enough to withstand Trump’s isolationist influences on his party or whether Republicans who yielded to Trump’s “America First” approach will do so again, putting military and humanitarian support for Ukraine at risk.

“Maybe there is a recognition on both Republican side and Democratic side that this security assistance is very important,” said Bill Taylor, a former ambassador to Ukraine, in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

“And maybe neither side is eager to crack that coalition.”

The fraught party politics comes at a pivotal moment as the Russian invasion drags on and the United States gets deeper into the conflict before the November elections, when lawmakers face voters with control of Congress at stake.

New polling from The Associated Press shows public support in the U.S. for punishing Russia over the war is wavering if it comes at the expense of the economy.

While Congress mustered rare and robust bipartisan support to approve a $40 billion Ukraine package, bringing total U.S. support to a staggering $53 billion since the start of the war, opposition on the latest round of aid came solely from the Republican side, including from Trump.

That is a warning sign over the sturdiness of the bipartisan coalition that the top Republican in Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, tried to shore up when he led a delegation of GOP senators to stand by Zelenskyy’s side in a surprise trip to Kyiv last month.

“There is some isolationist sentiment in my party that I think is wrongheaded, and I wanted to push back against it,” McConnell told a Kentucky audience this past week, explaining his Ukraine visit.

The divisions within the GOP over Ukraine are routinely stoked by Trump, who initially praised Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a “genius” negotiating strategy. Trump has repeatedly lashed out against the U.S. aid to Ukraine, including last weekend at a rally in Wyoming. Before the Senate vote on the $40 billion in assistance, Trump decried the idea of spending abroad while America’s “parents are struggling.”

As Trump considers whether to run for the White House in 2024, the persistence of his “America First” foreign policy approach leaves open questions about the durability of his party’s commitment to U.S. support for a democratic Ukraine. Senators are poised this summer to vote to expand NATO to include Sweden and Finland, but Trump has repeatedly criticized U.S. spending on Western military alliance.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, among 11 Republican senators who voted against the Ukraine package, called the tally an “astronomical number” at a time when foreign policy should be focused elsewhere, including on China.

“That is nation-building kind of number,” Hawley said in an interview. “And I think it’s a mistake.”

It was nearly three years ago that Ukraine was at the center of U.S politics with the 2019 Trump impeachment proceedings that rocked Washington.

Zelenskky, a comedian turned politician, had just been elected when he asked Trump during a July 25, 2019, phone call for a meeting to strengthen U.S.-Ukraine relations and ensure military aid, according to a transcript released by Trump’s White House.

“We are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes,” Zelenskyy told Trump, referring to anti-tank weaponry Ukraine relies on from the West.

Trump replied: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”

Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, a chief Democratic rival to Trump at the time and now the American president, and Biden’s son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

The impeachment investigation, sparked by a government whistleblower’s complaint over Trump’s call, swiftly became a milestone, the first in a generation since Democrat Bill Clinton faced charges over an affair with a White House intern.

During weeks of impeachment proceedings over Ukraine, witnesses from across the national security and foreign service sphere testified under oath about the alarms that were going off in Washington and Kyiv about Trump’s conversation with Zelenskyy.

Complicated stories emerged about the scramble by Trump allies to secure the investigations of the Bidens — and of the civil servants pushing back against what they saw as a breach of protocol.

Yet American opinions over the gravity of the charges against Trump were mixed, polling at the time by the AP showed.

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House and acquitted by the Senate, with just one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, joining Democrats to convict.

“The allegations were all horse hockey,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., recalling his decision not to impeach.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., brushed back questions about whether Trump’s actions then played any role in Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine this February.

“It wasn’t like Putin invaded right after. It’s been almost two years,” Rubio said.

Republicans are quick to remind that Trump was, in fact, the first president to allow lethal arms shipments to Ukraine — something Barack Obama’s administration, with Biden as vice president, declined to do over worries of provoking Putin.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, the co-chair of the Senate’s Ukrainian Caucus who persuaded Trump in a phone call to ultimately release the $400 million in aid, stood by his decision not to convict Trump over the delay of that assistance.

“As long as it was done,” Portman said about the outcome.

But Romney said people need to remain “clear-eyed” about the threat Putin poses to the world order. “I did the right thing at the time, and I haven’t looked back,” he said.

Democrats are blistering in their criticism of Republicans over the impeachment verdict.

“It’s a shame,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Every single Republican who voted in support of Donald Trump’s geopolitical shakedown and blackmail of Volodymyr Zelenskky and the Ukrainian people should be ashamed of themselves,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., “because the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions were understood to us then, and now the world understands.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of the tensions between Ukraine and Russia at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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By Jarrett Renshaw and Costas Pitas

(Reuters) -Former hedge fund executive David McCormick conceded to wellness celebrity Mehmet Oz on Friday in the Republican primary race for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, following a recount and securing another Donald Trump-endorsed candidate in a critical midterm election.

Oz, who will square off against Democrat John Fetterman in the Nov. 8 midterm election to replace retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey, won by a margin of 916 votes, according to Edison Research.

The race is crucial to Republican hopes of regaining control of a Senate now narrowly held by President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats.

“I will do my part to try to unite Republicans and Pennsylvanians behind his candidacy, behind his nomination for the Senate,” McCormick said in conceding to Oz.

Oz secured 419,643 votes versus 418,727 for McCormick, according to Edison Research.

Trump has endorsed over 190 candidates in the midterm contests, trying to solidify his status as the Republican Party kingmaker. His picks have not always prevailed.

Trump endorsed Oz in April, after his previous pick in the race dropped out when his estranged wife alleged physical abuse and he lost a battle over custody of his children.

Oz and McCormick both positioned themselves as champions of Trump’s populist “America First” agenda.

“I look forward to campaigning in every corner of the Commonwealth for the next five months to earn the support of every Pennsylvanian,” Oz said on Friday.

Republicans are seeking to regain control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in November. They are well positioned to regain control of the House, which could enable them to stonewall Biden’s legislative agenda.

Democrats have a better chance of keeping their razor-thin Senate majority, but to do so will need to perform well in races including in Pennsylvania.

Fetterman, the state’s current lieutenant governor, said on Friday that he “almost died” from a stroke suffered days before the May 17 primary and which has kept him off the campaign trail, indicating that his condition was graver than initially suggested.

“I’m not quite back to 100% yet, but I’m getting closer every day,” he said.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Washington and Costas Pitas in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric Beech, David Gregorio and Leslie Adler)

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Today in History

Today is Sunday, June 5, the 156th day of 2022. There are 209 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 5, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded after claiming victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was arrested at the scene.

On this date:

In 1794, Congress passed the Neutrality Act, which prohibited Americans from taking part in any military action against a country that was at peace with the United States.

In 1950, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Henderson v. United States, struck down racially segregated railroad dining cars.

In 1967, war erupted in the Middle East as Israel, anticipating a possible attack by its Arab neighbors, launched a series of pre-emptive airfield strikes that destroyed nearly the entire Egyptian air force; Syria, Jordan and Iraq immediately entered the conflict.

In 1975, Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to international shipping, eight years after it was closed because of the 1967 war with Israel.

In 1976, 14 people were killed when the Teton Dam in Idaho burst.

In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control reported that five homosexuals in Los Angeles had come down with a rare kind of pneumonia; they were the first recognized cases of what later became known as AIDS.

In 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City home. (Smart was found alive by police in a Salt Lake suburb in March 2003. One kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, is serving a prison sentence; the other, Wanda Barzee, was released in September 2018.)

In 2004, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, died in Los Angeles at age 93 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

In 2006, more than 50 National Guardsmen from Utah became the first unit to work along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President George W. Bush’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

In 2013, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, many of them sleeping women and children, pleaded guilty to murder at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, to avoid the death penalty; he was sentenced to life in prison.

In 2016, Novak Djokovic (NOH’-vak JOH’-kuh-vich) became the first man in nearly a half-century to win four consecutive major championships and finally earned an elusive French Open title to complete a career Grand Slam, beating Andy Murray 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.

In 2020, Minneapolis banned chokeholds by police, the first of many changes in police practices to be announced in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death; officers would also now be required to intervene any time they saw unauthorized force by another officer. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league had been wrong for not listening to players fighting for racial equality.

Ten years ago: Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker beat back a recall challenge, winning both the right to finish his term and a voter endorsement of his strategy to curb state spending. Jury selection began in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in the trial of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach charged with child sexual abuse. (Sandusky was later convicted of 45 counts and sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.) Science-fiction author Ray Bradbury, 91, died in Los Angeles.

Five years ago: The White House said President Donald Trump would not assert executive privilege to block fired FBI Director James Comey from testifying on Capitol Hill. Bill Cosby went on trial in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on charges he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University’s basketball program, at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (The jury deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial, but Cosby was convicted in a second trial; Pennsylvania’s highest court later tossed out that conviction.)

One year ago: The Justice Department said it would no longer secretly obtain reporters’ records during leak investigations. Favored Essential Quality won the Belmont Stakes in New York over Hot Rod Charlie.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor-singer Bill Hayes is 97. Broadcast journalist Bill Moyers is 88. Former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark is 83. Author Dame Margaret Drabble is 83. Country singer Don Reid (The Statler Brothers) is 77. Rock musician Freddie Stone (AKA Freddie Stewart) (Sly and the Family Stone) is 75. Rock singer Laurie Anderson is 75. Country singer Gail Davies is 74. Author Ken Follett is 73. Financial guru Suze Orman is 71. Rock musician Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden) is 70. Jazz musician Peter Erskine is 68. Jazz musician Kenny G is 66. Rock singer Richard Butler (Psychedelic Furs) is 66. Actor Beth Hall is 64. Actor Jeff Garlin is 60. Actor Karen Sillas is 59. Actor Ron Livingston is 55. Singer Brian McKnight is 53. Rock musician Claus Norreen (Aqua) is 52. Actor Mark Wahlberg is 51. Actor Chad Allen is 48. Rock musician P-Nut (311) is 48. Actor Navi Rawat (ROH’-waht) is 45. Actor Liza Weil is 45. Rock musician Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy) is 43. Rock musician Seb Lefebvre (Simple Plan) is 41. Actor Chelsey Crisp is 39. Actor Amanda Crew is 36. Electronic musician Harrison Mills (Odesza) is 33. Musician/songwriter/producer DJ Mustard is 32. Actor Sophie Lowe is 32. Actor Hank Greenspan is 12.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been indicted on charges that he refused to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the Justice Department spared two other advisers, including the ex-president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, from criminal prosecution.

The department’s decision to not prosecute Meadows and Dan Scavino, another adviser to former President Donald Trump, was revealed in a letter sent Friday by a federal prosecutor to a lawyer for the House of Representatives. The move was reported hours after the indictment of Navarro and a subsequent, fiery court appearance in which he vowed to contest the contempt of Congress charges.

The flurry of activity comes just days before the House committee leading the investigation into the riot at the Capitol holds a primetime hearing aimed at presenting the American public with evidence it has collected about how the assault unfolded. The split decisions show how the Justice Department has opted to evaluate on a case-by-case basis contempt referrals it has received from Congress rather than automatically pursue charges against each and every Trump aide who has resisted congressional subpoenas.

The committee’s leaders called the decision to not prosecute Meadows and Scavino “puzzling.” In a statement late Friday, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said: “We hope the Department provides greater clarity on this matter. … No one is above the law.”

Though the Justice Department has referred multiple Trump aides for potential prosecution for refusal to cooperate, Navarro is only the second to face criminal charges, following the indictment last fall of former White House adviser Steve Bannon.

Navarro, 72, was charged with one contempt count for failing to appear for a deposition before the House committee and a second charge for failing to produce documents the committee requested.

During an initial court appearance, he alleged that the Justice Department had committed “prosecutorial misconduct” and said he was told he could not contact anyone after being approached by an FBI agent at the airport Friday and put in handcuffs. He said he was arrested while trying to board a flight to Nashville, Tennessee for a television appearance.

“Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said. “I was a distinguished public servant for four years!”

Each charge carries a minimum sentence of a month in jail and a maximum of a year behind bars.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland had been facing pressure to move more quickly to decide whether to prosecute other Trump aides who have similarly defied subpoenas from the House panel.

The New York Times first reported on the decision to not charge Meadows and Scavino. A person familiar with the decision who was not authorized to discuss it publicly confirmed it to The Associated Press on Friday. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, which made the decisions regarding each of the Trump aides, declined to comment Friday.

Meadows, a close Trump adviser seen by House investigators as a vital witness to key events, initially cooperated with the committee, turning over more than 2,000 text messages sent and received in the days leading up to and of the attack. But in December, Meadows informed the committee that he would not sit for a deposition. Scavino was held in contempt in April after declining to cooperate with Congress.

A lawyer for Meadows did not immediately return messages Friday night. Stan Brand, an attorney representing Scavino, said he had not yet received the letter from the U.S. attorney’s office, but he’d heard the news through a third party. “I’m grateful that the Justice Department exercised their discretion to decline prosecution,” Brand said.

The indictment against Navarro alleges that when summoned to appear before the committee for a deposition earlier this year, he refused to do so and instead told the panel that because Trump had invoked executive privilege, “my hands are tied.”

After committee staff told him they believed there were topics he could discuss without raising any executive privilege concerns, Navarro again refused, directing the committee to negotiate directly with lawyers for Trump, according to the indictment. The committee went ahead with its scheduled deposition on March 2, but Navarro did not attend.

The indictment, dated Thursday, came days after Navarro revealed in a court filing that he also had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury this week as part of the Justice Department’s sprawling probe into the insurrection. The subpoena to Navarro, a trade adviser to Trump, was the first known instance of prosecutors seeking testimony from someone who worked in the Trump White House as they investigate the attack.

“This was a preemptive strike by the prosecution against that lawsuit,” Navarro told Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui during his court appearance. “It simply flies in the face of good faith and due process.”

Navarro made the case in his lawsuit Tuesday that the House select committee investigating the attack is unlawful and therefore a subpoena it issued to him in February is unenforceable under law. He sued members of the committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the U.S. attorney in Washington, Matthew M. Graves, whose office is now handling the criminal case against him.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Navarro said the goal of his lawsuit is much broader than the subpoenas themselves, part of an effort to have “the Supreme Court address a number of issues that have come with the weaponization of Congress’ investigatory powers” since Trump entered office.

Members of the select committee sought testimony from Navarro about his efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, including a call trying to persuade state legislators to join their efforts.

The former economics professor was one of the White House staffers who promoted Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud. Trump, in turn, promoted a lengthy report Navarro released in December 2020, which Navarro falsely claimed contained evidence of the alleged misconduct and election fraud “more than sufficient” to swing victory to his former boss.

Despite the opposition from several Trump allies, the Jan. 6 panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has managed to interview more than 1,000 witnesses about the insurrection in the past 11 months and is now preparing for a series of public hearings to begin next week. Lawmakers on the panel hope the half-dozen hearings will be a high-profile airing of the causes and consequences of the domestic attack on the U.S. government.

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