Cheat Sheet: All - The Daily Beast

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed a 170-year-old exception to the Constitution’s double-jeopardy clause, and left the door open for state prosecutors to prosecute Trump campaign officials regardless of whether federal officials have already done so. The case, Gamble v. United States, has drawn attention for its potential effect on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s federal prosecutions on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Had the “dual sovereignty doctrine” been repealed, states would not be able to pursue investigations parallel to the federal government, the National Law Journal reports. State prosecutors in New York have brought charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort Jr., who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, in the event that President Trump pardons him.

In the 7-2 majority decision, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote that the separate sovereigns exception “honors the substantive differences between the interests that two sovereigns can have in punishing the same act.”

Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Fox went to work to cover a trial Monday morning and left having taken the most dramatic photo of the day. Fox was at the Earle Cabell Federal Building when a 22-year-old man, later identified as Brian Isaack Clyde, opened fire and was subsequently killed by police officers.

Fox says he saw the man approach the federal building and fire off several rounds with what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle, prompting him to crouch down and capture the moment on camera, NBC5 reported.

“I’m just thankful to be alive,” Fox told the local TV outlet. “Literally I was just around the marble podium, or marble wall, from where he shot out the windows and I was just praying that he wasn't going to pass me, pass that wall because if he saw me crouch there he probably would have shot me.”

Intense video shot by an onlooker from above shows just how close Fox came to the shooter, with the photojournalist hiding mere feet away from where the gunman was firing his weapon before retreating into a parking lot.

View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet.

California raised the LGBT pride flag over its capitol building in Sacramento on Monday for the first time ever in the state’s history. “In California, we celebrate and support our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community’s right to live out loud—during Pride month and every month,” Governor Gavin Newsom (D) said in a press release. “By flying the pride flag over the State Capitol, we send a clear message that California is welcoming and inclusive to all, regardless of how you identify or who you love.”

California joins Colorado and Wisconsin this year in raising the pride flag for the first time. The decision came after several U.S. embassies flew the flag in defiance of a new State Department policy requiring diplomats to get top-level permission to put them up. The flag will remain raised at the California capitol for the remainder of LGBTQ Pride Month, until July 1. 

View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet.

President Trump’s highly-promoted Sunday night interview with chief ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos was apparently a ratings bust. The hour-long special, edited down from 30 hours of time spent with the president, came in third behind the U.S. Open on Fox and CBS’ 60 Minutes during the coveted Sunday time slot.

Trump himself promoted the interview on Twitter, but it still brought in only 3.91 million viewers, according to TV by the Numbers—a sharp drop from Celebrity Family Feud, which pulled in 6.1 million viewers in the same time slot the week prior.

The most revelatory aspects of the interview were released in advance by ABC as promotional excerpts, including the headline-making news that Trump is open to receiving information from foreign entities on his 2020 opponents. Despite being an overall ratings disappointment, the special did best 60 Minutes in the target demographics of adults 18-49 and 25-54. The ratings-obsessed president has promised he will do more network interviews throughout his re-election campaign.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is refusing calls to fire Assistant DA Elizabeth Lederer, the lawyer who led the 1989 Central Park Five prosecution, amid heightened attention spurred by When They See Us, a Netflix miniseries about the case. Vance has also rejected demands to reopen thousands of cases overseen by former Assistant DA Linda Fairstein from 1976 to 2002 in the sex-crimes unit, the New York Daily News reports. The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the Legal Aid Society, and the New York County Defender Services called for a review of 26 years’ worth of cases. Vance turned a request by the city’s public advocate for both actions, writing in a statement that Lederer is “an attorney in good standing in this office.”

Ava DuVernay’s dramatized miniseries has reignited outrage and created fallout for those involved in the wrongful conviction of five black youths for the 1989 rape of a white jogger in Central Park. Lederer announced last week she will not return to teach at Columbia Law School after students protested her position, and Fairstein, whose office was in charge of the prosecutions, was dropped from her book publisher and resigned from several charity boards due to backlash.

A bipartisan group of key congressional staffers are meeting with Trump administration officials Monday for a briefing on the latest developments on Iran, sources told The Daily Beast.   

The House and the Senate requested briefings Friday after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Iran was behind not only attacks on two petrochemical tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, but was also a car bombing that injured four U.S. service members in Afghanistan. The meeting will be attended by staff from congressional leadership offices as well as those affiliated with key committees, according to two Democratic aides.

Lawmakers told The Daily Beast that Pompeo is also expected to make an appearance on Capitol Hill this week to answer questions about the intelligence that lead him to make those claims, including a video published by U.S. Central Command. That video, officials said, showed an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boat pulling up to the side of a tanker and removing an alleged unexploded limpet mine from the hull.

Members of Congress are particularly eager to hear from the State Department after being left in the dark last month as the administration took an increasingly aggressive stance toward Iran. In May, Washington sent B-52 bombers and tankers to the Persian Gulf in a show of force against Tehran after the Trump administration claimed there were new “threat streams” that called for the deployment.

Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has died after appearing at a court session in Cairo and fainting afterwards, Reuters reports. He was 67. According to The Washington Post, local Egyptian media is reporting he was stricken by a heart attack. Morsi was the first democratically elected president of Egypt, and took office after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. Morsi himself was overthrown by the Egyptian army in 2013 amid mass protests against his government. A top figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi was in custody since he was removed as president, and was since convicted of multiple offenses, including a three-year sentence for insulting the judiciary, a 20-year sentence for inciting the killing of protesters, and a 25-year sentence for espionage. He was on trial for espionage charges when he died on Monday.

Cardi B suffered a very severe wardrobe mishap during her appearance at Bonnaroo on Sunday night—but she styled it out in the best way possible. The rapper’s multi-colored bodysuit tore at the seams along her backside just a few songs into her set at the Tennessee music festival. “I just wanna let y’all know that my outfit rip,” she told her audience, and she pressed on for a few minutes before disappearing from the stage, according to The Tennessean. She eventually re-emerged in a white bathrobe. “We gonna keep it moving, baby,” she said. “We gonna keep it sexy. I don’t know how in this [expletive] robe, but we gonna do it!”

Video that concertgoers posted on social media shows the before and after:

View this cheat in a browser to see this video.

He was once the plucky upstart candidate—but now Pete Buttigieg is reaching levels of fundraising to match the meteoric rise in his profile. Politico reports the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s campaign raised $7 million in the month of April alone—that equals the money he raised in the entire first quarter. In an email to fundraisers, the campaign’s Mid-Atlantic investment director, Josh Kramer, wrote: “If you remember back to 2007, then Senator Obama outraised Hillary Clinton in the 2nd quarter. It truly established him as a real competitor to her and elevated him in the mind of the media and the public to a top tier contender. This quarter has the same potential for Pete.” Buttigieg’s campaign has scheduled 28 events, including 21 before the end of the current fundraising quarter, to help him achieve that goal.

Tensions with Iran just keep on escalating. In the latest major development, Iran on Monday morning threatened to break the uranium stockpile limit it agreed to in its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization announced Monday that its low-enriched uranium stockpile would surpass a limit set in the agreement over the next 10 days. Low-enriched uranium can be used in a nuclear reactor—but not in an atomic bomb. It’s the latest tactic from Iran to force European countries to follow through on plans to give the country access to international financial systems, which would allow it to work around U.S. sanctions. “As long as they comply by their commitments, these [limits] will go back,” said organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi. It’s the first time Iran’s government had said explicitly that it would break the pact.

The U.S. ships hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic to poorly regulated developing countries around the globe every year, according to a new investigation by The Guardian. The equivalent of 68,000 shipping containers of American plastic was reportedly sent from the U.S. to developing countries last year, with new hot spots including Bangladesh, Laos, Ethiopia, and Senegal. The countries are being chosen because they have limited environmental regulation and cheap labor to sort through the trash. “We are trying so desperately to get rid of this stuff that we are looking for new frontiers,” said Jan Dell, who works with investors and environmental groups to reduce plastic pollution. “The path of least resistance is to put it on a ship and send it somewhere else—and the ships are going further and further to find some place to put it.”

If he wins in 2020, Pete Buttigieg is pretty sure he won’t be the first gay president. Speaking to Axios on its HBO program, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor was asked how he’s going to respond to people who attack him during the campaign for being too young, too liberal, or too gay to be the American president. “We have had excellent presidents who have been young,” he said. “We have had excellent presidents who have been liberal. I would imagine we’ve probably had excellent presidents who were gay—we just didn’t know which ones.” He went on to say that it was statistically “almost certain” that there had been gay presidents, but he couldn’t name names. “My gaydar even doesn’t work that well in the present, let alone retroactively,” he lamented.

Celebration turned to disaster in Philadelphia on Sunday night when a mass shooting at a graduation party left one person dead and at least five others injured. Around 60 people were attending the party at around 10 p.m. Sunday when an unidentified gunman opened fire, NBC reports. The person who died was 24, while four teenagers ages 15 to 17 were wounded as well as a 21-year-old. The wounded are in stable condition and expected to survive. “What you got to get at is the hearts and minds of people who want to pull out a gun and fire at a group of 60 people,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross. “That’s something that’s even more troubling.” No arrests have been made as of Monday morning.

Father’s Day turned out to be far, far creepier than it had to be this year. First, O.J. Simpson apparently joined Twitter and sent out a Father’s Day message—then Bill Cosby joined in the festivities. A tweet from the sex offender’s account sent late Sunday night read: “Hey, Hey, Hey... It’s America’s Dad... I know it’s late, but to all of the Dads... It’s an honor to be called a Father, so let’s make today a renewed oath to fulfilling our purpose—strengthening our families and communities.” Cosby is locked up in Pennsylvania for sexual assault and it’s unclear if he actually sent the tweet, but it was still enough to send a shiver up the spine.

The man who was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer at a Southern California Costco was a “gentle giant,” according to his cousin, The Press-Enterprise reports. The victim, 32-year-old Kenneth French, was mentally disabled, his cousin Rick Shureih told the Press-Enterprise. Shureih also identified the shooting’s other two victims as French’s parents, Russell and Paola French, who were critically wounded. Shureih said the family is seeking an attorney and declined to provide specifics about his cousin’s mental condition. The officer’s identity has not been released. The incident took place after French allegedly attacked the Los Angeles Police Department officer without provocation at a Costco in Corona, California, near Los Angeles. The off-duty officer then shot and killed French. The LAPD is conducting an administrative investigation, and the Corona Police and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office are also conducting separate investigations.

Actress Bella Thorne posted several topless photos to her social media on Saturday after an alleged hacker threatened to release the images. Thorne's Twitter account was allegedly hacked on Friday, with the culprit posting a number of tweets, some with racist language, and changing the profile picture to a man. “For the last 24 hours I have been threatened with my own nudes,” Thorne wrote in a note posted on Twitter with screenshots of text messages with the alleged hacker. “I feel gross. I feel watched, I feel someone has taken something from me that I only wanted one special person to see.” Throne said she chose to post the photos herself in order to regain a sense of control. “I can sleep tonight better knowing I took my power back,” Thorne wrote. “U can't control my life u never will.”

View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet.

The bodies of missing Oregon mom Karissa Fretwell and her 3-year-old son were found Saturday in a remote wooded area. Police have been searching for Fretwell, 25, and her son, Billy, since May 17, when a family member discovered their Salem apartment unlocked, the television still on inside, and Fretwell’s glasses and credit card left behind. The state medical examiner determined that Karissa Fretwell died of a single gunshot to the head and ruled the death a homicide. Billy Fretwell’s cause of death has not been determined, according to authorities. Police had already arrested the boy’s father, Michael John Wolfe, 52, in connection with the disappearances. Wolfe was charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping in connection with the disappearances. Wolfe and Fretwell were in a child-support dispute prior to her disappearance. She had been awarded sole custody of their son, and Wolfe was ordered to pay $900 a month. Cellphone data placed Fretwell’s phone near Wolfe’s around the time of her disappearance, and video surveillance disputed Wolfe’s claim that he was at work during that time. He has denied any involvement.

Israel has officially named a settlement in the contested Golan Heights territory after President Trump. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gathered with U.S. Ambassador David Friedman on Sunday to inaugurate the name, made in appreciation for Trump’s recognition of Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the the strategic mountainous plateau. Trump signed an executive order recognizing the area as Israeli territory in March. Israel captured Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981. The international community largely does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the region. “It is simply obvious, it is indisputable and beyond any reasonable debate,” Friedman said at the ceremony.

Israel hopes the now rebranded “Ramat Trump,” Hebrew for “Trump Heights,” will encourage new residents to move to the Golan settlement, which currently has a population of 10 people. At the ceremony, Netanyahu called Trump a “great friend.” “The Golan Heights was and will always be an inseparable part of our country and homeland,” the prime minister said. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” said Ambassador Friedman. Noting that Trump celebrated his birthday on Friday, he added: “I can’t think of a more appropriate and a more beautiful birthday present.”

NASCAR has overturned its first driver victory in decades, after strict new rules were put into place at the start of this season to deter the sport’s culture of cheating. The decision marked the first time a victory has been overturned since 1960. Driver Brett Moffitt was declared the rightful winner of the Truck Series race at Iowa Speedway after Ross Chastain’s No. 44 truck failed a post-race inspection. Managing Director Brad Moran said Chastain’s truck was too low when it was measured with NASCAR’s height sticks. “The height sticks have warning yellows in them and reds and it was right off of all of them, so unfortunately it was extremely low,” Moran said. In February, NASCAR announced that thorough post-race inspections would take place right after the race at the track instead of midweek at the sanctioning body’s research and development center. Chastain led the final 141 laps of the 200-lap race. His team has until noon Monday to appeal the decision.

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said he would be open to starting a family while serving as president. This Sunday marks his one-year wedding anniversary with husband Chasten Buttigieg. “I don’t see why not,” the candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said in a Father’s Day television interview on CNN’s State of the Union. Buttigieg said “it wouldn’t be the first time that children have arrived to a first couple, but obviously that’s a conversation I had better have with Chasten before I go into it too much on television.” If nominated, Buttigieg would become the first openly gay presidential nominee from a major political party.

View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet.

Miami Beach police arrested a 41-year-old woman on Saturday for attacking a sea turtle nest with a wooden stake. According to police, Yaqun Lu, a Chinese citizen who lives in Michigan, was seen “jabbing at the sea turtle nest and stomping all over the nest with her bare feet,” the Miami Herald reported. Lu was charged with molesting or harassing marine turtles or their eggs, a violation of Florida law and the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973. She could face up to five years in prison if convicted of the third-degree felony. Lu is currently being held on a $5,000 bond.

She was seen attacking the eggs inside an area fenced-off with yellow tape and a “Do Not Disturb” sign in order to protect hatchlings. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials inspected the nest and determined the eggs were not harmed by Lu, according to the TV station WPLG. Seventy percent of the nation’s sea turtle nesting takes place in Florida. Thousands of female turtles lay their eggs on beaches, covering them with sand to protect from predators. Only one in 1,000 turtles make it to adulthood, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was sentenced Sunday to pay a fine of more than $15,000 for misusing state funds. The ruling settled allegations that she had used $100,000 of government money to expense lavish meals at restaurants, while the official state residence employed a full-time chef. The end settlement required her to admit to a more minor charge of “intentionally exploiting the mistake of someone else,” specifically by misleading officials who didn’t know she had chefs on the government payroll. The settlement also reduced the overspending charge to $50,000.

The sentencing resolves just one of the many corruption cases enveloping the prime minister’s family, who have a reputation for leading indulgent lives at public expense. Benjamin Netanyahu is facing an indictment on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, awaiting a hearing scheduled for early October. The prime minister is accused of accepting gifts from billionaires, as well as making promises to a major newspaper in exchange for favorable coverage. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company made a “mistake” in how it handled a problematic cockpit warning system in its 737 Max jets that led to two crashes, and killed 346 people. The Federal Aviation Administration faulted Boeing for not alerting regulators for more than year that an automated stall-prevention system on the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 models had issues. Muilenburg told reporters that Boeing’s communication with regulators, customers, and the public “was not consistent, and that’s unacceptable.” Pilots are angry with the company for not telling them about possible malfunctions with the implicated software before the crashes occurred. According to FAA officials the safety software can kick in and send a plane into a steep dive even if pilots are manually flying the aircraft. “We clearly had a mistake in the implementation of the alert,” Muilenburg said.

He promised transparency as they work to get the grounded Boeing 737 Max back in flight, and expressed confidence that the model would be cleared to fly again later this year. Regulators first need to approve Boeing’s long-awaited fix to the software on the model, which has been grounded worldwide for three months.

President Trump’s re-election campaign is letting go of some of its own pollsters after leaked internal polling showed the president behind Joe Biden in critical states, NBC News reports. Parts of the president’s expansive March polling was made public in recent days. The polls reportedly showed the president trailing across 2020 swing states, as well as in reliably red states that haven’t been competitive for decades in national elections. In states where Trump edged Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by narrow margins in 2016—such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan—Trump trails Biden by double-digits. Trump is also behind the former vice president by 7 percentage points in Iowa, but is holding a small lead in Texas. A person close to the Trump re-election team told NBC News that the campaign was would no longer be working with certain pollsters in response to the leaks.

A former Texas pastor who supported legislation that would have criminalized abortions in the state has been arrested on charges of child sex abuse. Stephen Bratton is accused of having “sexual intercourse multiple times a day or several times a week” with a teenage relative, over the course of two years, according to court records. Bratton was a pastor at Grace Family Baptist Church near Houston, and was an outspoken supporter this year of a bill that would have ended abortions in Texas and threatened to criminally charge women who have an abortion with homicide. Bratton reportedly came forward with the abuse to his wife on May 15, and confessed to three Southern Baptist clergy members the next day. He has since been excommunicated from the church, and is no longer living with his wife and their seven children. Bratton posted $50,000 bond and has been released from the Harris County Jail.

President Trump appeared to reference the infamous Saturday Night Massacre that featured Richard Nixon demanding the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during his interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. While insisting that the Constitution gives him the authority to “do whatever I want,” Trump told Stephanopoulos that he didn’t fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller because firings backfired on Nixon. “But I wasn’t gonna fire [Mueller],’ Trump declared. “You know why? Because I watched Richard Nixon go around firing everybody, and that didn't work out too well.”

While the president asserted in the interview that he wasn’t going to fire Mueller, the Mueller report details Trump’s efforts to terminate the special counsel, citing former White House counsel Don McGahn. Trump, meanwhile, claims McGahn lied under oath to the special counsel in order to “make himself look like a good lawyer.”

View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet.