Growing up in the United States, I was not a big fan of Joe Biden.
I remember Biden at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991, looking out-of-depth as his colleagues berated and belittled Anita Hill. I recall him during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush years, holding forth in Senate hearings and casting about for middle ground that no one really wanted.
Biden was the face of establishment “meh,” the epitome of could-be-worse complacency. He vaguely sympathized with working people but went along with the neoliberal mania for lower taxes, fewer regulations and “freer” markets. He assumed the Civil Rights era had put America’s demons to rest, and he never saw the dark forces gathering behind his predecessor, Donald Trump, until it was too late.
One year ago, during a bruising primary against more progressive rivals, Biden looked like a man history had left behind.
Recently, however, Biden has shown that he understands how the modern U.S. presidency works, both in terms of policy and the nation’s psyche.
First among equals
Early U.S. presidents mostly focused on America’s relations with non-Americans. The Constitution of 1787 assigned domestic policy to Congress, not to the president. Besides, the early United States was a chaotic and ill-defined country, requiring most presidents to focus on enforcing federal law as best they could.
This changed for good under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who held the office between 1933 and 1945. In the face of the Great Depression and fascism, FDR moved away from his centrist impulses and shifted U.S. social and economic policy well to the left. His New Deal vastly expanded the executive branch of the U.S. government and made it far more relevant to most Americans.
To be sure, congressmen resisted, not just as rival Republicans but also as members of a separate and equal branch of government. So did governors who embraced the American tradition of local self-government over centralized rule.
The modern-day president lives with these duelling legacies. On one hand, he now sets the priorities for domestic as well as foreign affairs and wields enormous discretionary power over a sprawling federal government. On the other hand, he must work with allies in the House and Senate and respect the stubborn independence of each of the 50 states.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 relief package in the State Dining Room of the White House on March 15, 2021, in Washington.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Biden gets this.
He knows how and when to propose a bill and how and when to let others fight out the details. He understands how and when to frame an issue and how and when to let the arguments unfold on MSNBC and Fox News.
Most importantly, he understands that the dominant ideologies of the past 50 years, especially the neoliberal dictum that markets know better than nations, simply won’t do in the face of a pitiless virus and the human wreckage it has left behind.
This is why Biden, the ultimate moderate, was able to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, arguably the biggest decision made by the U.S. government since the the FDR era.
Consoler-in-chief
Besides making policy, the modern American president must console the people in times of trauma. This, too, traces back to FDR, who was the first president to address the people by radio. During his “fireside chats,” FDR spoke directly to a mass audience, trying to preserve some kind of emotional unity among the American people.
In this April 1943 photo, FDR speaks in Washington. (AP Photo/Robert Clover, File)(AP Photo/Robert Clover)
Canadians may well pause here to ask why such unity is necessary. Why does America require such emotional togetherness? Why can’t its 330 million people just feel what they feel and still agree to get along? Why can’t they live together as a big and complex society, different but not divided?
It’s complicated.
But after studying American nationalism for many years, I think the reason is that Americans aren’t nearly as nation-minded as we long to be. Our nationalism isn’t obvious or intuitive. We don’t have a distinctive language or ancient culture. We don’t even have a clear or stable sense of any homeland, a common patrie to which we can feel attached.
Much of American history and culture is about moving away from wherever we’re from to settle in the U.S., usually at the expense of Indigenous populations. (This is especially true for white settlers, although Black Americans also sought freedom by heading west or north.) Our cherished individualism and mythic frontier spirit makes us isolated and alienated, even — or especially — from other Americans.
That’s why someone needs to address us when something terrible happens. They need to look us in the eye and share our distress, in effect telling us that we’re not as alone as we feel.
In many ways, he became president the day before his inauguration, when he led a memorial for those lost to the virus.
He did the same thing when the death toll passed 500,000. And after recently signing the Rescue Plan into law, he talked about our shared hardships and common sadness.
Biden and his wife Jill Biden look out at lights during a COVID-19 memorial, with lights placed around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Jan. 19, 2021, the eve of his inauguration.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“I carry a card in my pocket with the number of Americans who have died from COVID to date,” he said.
He’s not the most eloquent man. But over his long career, Biden learned a thing or two about making policy. And at some point over his long life, he found the strength to carry on through tragedy, to walk through dark canyons in hope of dawn.
All of this makes him the right person to steer America out of its recent calamities and towards a better version of itself.
A demonstrator dressed as Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with blood on his hands protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2018. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman “approved an operation … to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” according to a scathing new report from the Biden administration. Yet President Joe Biden says the U.S. will not sanction the Saudi government, calculating that any direct punishment could risk Saudi Arabia’s cooperation in confronting Iran and in counterterrorism efforts.
Like his predecessors, Biden is grappling with the reality that Saudi Arabia is needed to achieve certain U.S. objectives in the Middle East.
This is a change from Biden’s criticism of Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail. He said his administration would turn this repressive kingdom – a longtime U.S. ally – into a global “pariah.”
The Khashoggi affair highlights a persistent oddity in American foreign policy, one I observed in many years working at the State Department and Department of Defense: selective morality in dealing with repressive regimes.
A panoply of dictators
The Trump administration was reluctant to confront Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia. Beyond revoking the visas of some Saudi officials implicated in Khashoggi’s death, Trump did nothing to punish the kingdom for Khashoggi’s torture, assassination and dismemberment.
Trump and other White House officials reminded critics that Saudi Arabia buys billions of dollars in weapons from the U.S. and is a crucial partner in the American pressure campaign on Iran. Biden has taken a slightly tougher line, approving the release of the intelligence report that blames bin Salman for Khashoggi’s murder and sanctioning 76 lower-level Saudi officials.
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only nation to get a free pass from the U.S. for its terrible misdeeds. The U.S. has for decades maintained close ties with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. Ever since the United States emerged from the Cold War as the world’s dominant military and economic power, consecutive American presidents have seen financial and geopolitical benefit in overlooking the bad deeds of brutal regimes.
Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran was a close U.S. ally. Shah Reza Pahlavi ruled harshly, using his secret police to torture and murder political dissidents.
But the shah was also a secular, anti-communist leader in a Muslim-dominated region. President Nixon hoped that Iran would be the “Western policeman in the Persian Gulf.”
Nixon hosted Iranian Shah Reza Pavlavi at the White House in 1969.AP Photo
After the shah’s overthrow, the Reagan administration in the 1980s became friendly with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The U.S. supported him with intelligence during Iraq’s war with Iran and looked the other way at his use of chemical weapons.
And before Syria’s intense bloody civil war – which has killed an estimated 400,000 people and featured grisly chemical weapon attacks by the government – its authoritarian regime enjoyed relatively friendly relations with the U.S.
Syria has been on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979. But presidents Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton all visited President Bashar al-Assad’s father, who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Why Saudi Arabia matters
Before the alleged assassination of Khashoggi by Saudi operatives, the 35-year-old crown prince was cultivating a reputation as a moderate reformer.
Salman has made newsworthy changes in the conservative Arab kingdom, allowing women to drive, combating corruption and curtailing some powers of the religious police.
Still, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes.
Though women may now obtain a passport without the permission of a male guardian, they still need a guardian’s approval to get married, leave prison or obtain certain medical procedures. And they must have the consent of a male guardian to enroll in college or look for a job.
The Saudi government also routinely arrests people without judicial review, according to Human Rights Watch. Citizens can be killed for nonviolent crimes, often in public. Between January and mid-November 2019, 81 people were executed for drug-related crimes.
Saudi Arabia ranks just above North Korea on political rights, civil liberties and other measures of freedom, according to the democracy watchdog Freedom House. The same report ranks both Iran and China ahead of the Saudis.
But its wealth, strategic Middle East location and petroleum exports keep the Saudis as a vital U.S. ally. President Obama visited Saudi Arabia more than any other American president – four times in eight years – to discuss everything from Iran to oil production.
The Obama administration had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia.AP Photo/Hassan Ammar
American realpolitik
This kind of foreign policy – one based on practical, self-interested principles rather than moral or ideological concerns – is called “realpolitik.”
Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Nixon, was a master of realpolitik, which drove that administration to normalize its relationship with China. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had ended in 1949 when Chinese communist revolutionaries took power.
Then, as now, China was incredibly repressive. Only 16 countries – including Saudi Arabia – are less free than China, according to Freedom House. Iran, a country the U.S. wants Saudis to help in keeping in check, ranks ahead of China.
But China is also the world’s most populous nation and a nuclear power. Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, sought to exploit a growing rift between China and the Soviet Union.
Today Washington retains the important, if occasionally rocky, relationship Kissinger forged with Beijing, despite its ongoing persecution of Muslim minority groups.
American realpolitik applies to Latin America, too. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the U.S. regularly backed Central and South American military dictators who tortured and killed citizens to “defend” the Americas from communism.
The U.S. supported Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup in Chile, which overthrew Socialist President Salvador Allende and ushered in a murderous regime.AP Photo/Enrique Aracena, File)
US not ‘so innocent’
U.S. presidents tend to underplay their relationships with repressive regimes, lauding lofty “American values” instead.
That’s the language former President Barack Obama used in 2018 to criticize Trump’s embrace of Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, citing America’s “commitment to certain values and principles like the rule of law and human rights and democracy.”
But Trump defended his relationship with Russia, tacitly invoking American realpolitik. “You think our country’s so innocent?” he asked on Fox News.
As Trump alluded to, the U.S. has maintained close ties to numerous regimes, and still does, whose values and policies conflict with America’s constitutional guarantees of democracy, freedom of speech, the right to due process and many others.
Digital health technology, such as electronic health records, is believed to enhance patient-centred care, improve integrated care and ensure financially sustainable health care. (Shutterstock)
Digital health is about applying advanced information technologies to enable free flow of patient information across the circle of care. For patients, that means every health-care provider they see at different locations should be able to access relevant health record information quickly and efficiently.
Digital health technology, such as electronic health records, is believed to enhance patient-centred care, improve integrated care and ensure financial sustainability of our health-care system. However, Ontarians are facing the tough reality that their health data are still fragmented, despite billions of dollars spent over the last two decades to enable fast and secure exchange of health information. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light even more data quality issues.
It is a tough pill to swallow after years of investment aimed at enabling fast and secure health data exchange.
Neither sustainable nor effective
The Ontario government is taking two approaches to improving data quality, examples of which include accuracy and timeliness of data reported across different service providers. The first approach centres on improving health data exchange across heterogeneous systems (systems developed by different vendors and requiring different hardware and software configurations to operate) by using common communication standards.
However, this approach is neither scalable nor sustainable as communications across these systems become increasingly complex, time-consuming and error-prone when more systems are added to the mix of systems. Inconsistent counts of COVID-19 infected cases and deaths provided by different levels of governments is a case in point. Not to mention that these standards evolve rapidly and even previous versions of the same standard cannot be easily mapped and migrated to current ones.
The second approach relies on the minimum common data set proposed in the Digital Health Playbook, a resource intended to guide health-care organizations to build their digital systems. The minimum data set contains data classes (such as individual patients) and their corresponding elements (such as date of birth) for clinical notes, laboratory information, medications, vital signs, patient demographics and procedures, to name a few uses.
Health-care providers need fast, secure access to medical records, including clinical notes, lab information, medications, vital signs, patient demographics and procedures.(Pixabay)
These data sets, while appropriate for the requirements of family physicians whose main responsibility is disease control and prevention, are not sufficient for treating complex patients who suffer from multiple health issues, which demand a vast amount of health data from various health-care providers.
These two approaches adopted by the Ontario government to address data quality issues are neither sustainable nor effective, so can hardly serve as a strategy guiding health digitalization.
As researchers focusing on IT in health governance, we propose that a data strategy encompass four pillars:
1. Data quality standards
First, data quality is an umbrella term that encompasses multiple dimensions that include things like accuracy, accessibility and timeliness. And there are trade-offs among these dimensions. For example, increasing timely data reports may affect data comprehensiveness, which demands time to cover all the required data.
While “fit for use” (meaning the quality of data fits the requirements of their intended users) is considered appropriate and pragmatic, it needs to be clearly spelled out what quality standards need to be reinforced. Given the limited resources and increasing pressures to curb health-care costs, it becomes increasingly urgent to decide which data quality standards should be the focus.
Third, measurable outcomes pertaining to data quality improvement efforts need to be defined. Improvement efforts could include training programs on best practices related to data entry, and introducing system features that enable data quality checking (for example, completeness or consistency). Measurable outcomes would ensure accountability and the achievement of the intended objectives, and inform future funding decisions.
4. Improvement process adopted by providers
Lastly, a data strategy needs to clearly define a data quality improvement and monitoring process where the quality of the data is continuously monitored and assessed to ensure that data support patient care and research. Data quality is a shared responsibility, so the quality assurance process needs to take place collectively across providers but also within each provider.
To define and implement the data strategy, meaningful engagement with all stakeholders is key. For example, patients and providers need to be involved to identify the data required to treat the diseases that claim the most of our health-care budget, define quality dimensions of the data, and specify roles and responsibilities of maintaining the quality of data.
In contrast to the Band-Aid approach adopted by the Ontario government, the four-pillar data strategy is long-term, focused and holistic. It would ensure that data quality is placed at the front and centre of Ontario’s effort in health digitization. Following the strategy, our health-care system would develop a sustainable mechanism and a scalable capability to continuously improve data quality.
Without such a data strategy, Ontarians will stand to lose another decade and billions more.
Saturday, 27 February 2021 04:22 Written by PREMIUM TIMES
The report finds that Muhammad bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill Mr Khashoggi.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, has been implicated in a new classified U.S. intelligence report on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The report finds that Muhammad bin Salman was responsible, saying he approved the operation to capture or kill Mr Khashoggi.
The findings could escalate pressure on the Biden administration in the U.S. to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for a murder that drew bipartisan and international outrage.
“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the reports executive summary states.
The assessment released Friday by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence was based on intelligence on Mr Salman’s “control of decision-making” in the Kingdom.
“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” the report said.
It added that the 15-person Saudi team that arrived in Istanbul in October 2018 when Mr Khashoggi was killed included members associated with the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC) at the Royal Court, led by Saud al-Qahtani, a close adviser to the prince.
The team also included “seven members of Muhammad bin Salman’s elite personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force.”
The crown prince viewed Mr Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him, the report added
“Although Saudi officials had pre-planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him,” the report concluded.
Saudi Arabia had repeatedly denied that the crown prince authorised the murder of Mr Khashoggi who was resident in the U.S. and was a columnist for the Washington Post.
Mr Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi embassy in Turkey. His body was never found and is believed to have been dismembered and dumped in a secret place by the Saudi killer squad.
Wednesday, 24 February 2021 02:44 Written by theconversation
Public banks around the world are working towards the public good during COVID-19. The Canada Infrastructure Bank, however, seems focused on privatizing critical public services instead of ensuring vital infrastructure across the country is built or maintained, like this project to repair the bridge spanning the Halifax harbour in 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
This is a shame. Much more could be done with them. In many parts of the world, public banks play a critical role in addressing major social, economic and environmental challenges (such as Germany’s transition to renewable energy), offering everything from retail services in remote communities to multi-billion-dollar financing for transformative projects.
There are more than 900 public banks around the world, with combined assets of about US$49 trillion. They are typically owned by governments or public agencies, and many have progressive public purpose mandates due to decades of institutional knowledge and expertise.
The COVID-19 pandemic has served to underscore the importance of public banks. In our new book, Public Banks and COVID-19: Combatting the Pandemic With Public Finance, we take a rapid-response snapshot of how public banks have responded to the crisis, drawing on case studies in more than 20 countries.
Five key lessons
The findings highlight five key lessons. First, public banks responded quickly to the pandemic. In January 2020, the People’s Bank of China and Chinese public commercial banks moved fast to maintain liquidity in the banking system and to provide low-cost lending. So too in Italy. Less than a week after the first case of COVID-19 was announced, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti set up measures to support enterprises and local authorities.
Second, when public banks had clear public purpose mandates, they were able to respond to the crisis with the full support of political authorities. By July 2020, for example, the Council of Europe Development Bank had provided 15 new loans worth three billion euros to 15 countries in support of health-care service provisions.
Third, many public banks took bold, generous and crisis-facing action by providing new loans and delaying payments on existing debts, often crafting innovative responses to support students, households, businesses, public service providers and local and national governments. Public banks offered time to breathe, time to adjust and time to overcome the worst of the immediate crisis.
In this March 2020 photo the logo of the ‘KfW’, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, bank (Credit Institute for Reconstruction) is pictured in Berlin, Germany.(AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Fourth, public banks accomplished these tasks because they had institutional capacity and historical legacies. The German government tasked its development bank, KfW, with expanding domestic financing by 757 billion euros (24 per cent of the country’s GDP) while increasing and co-ordinating its development support programs abroad — an impossible prospect without the experience to do so.
Finally, we see the advantages of solidarity that have emerged between public banks and other public service authorities. For example, Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depósitos worked closely with the country’s public health management departments.
Elsewhere, the Nordic Investment Bank, the Bank of North Dakota and Costa Rica’s Banco Popular have also demonstrated the socio-economic benefits of co-ordinating their responses with other public entities.
Canada’s public banks have also engaged in COVID-19 responses, but nothing on the scale or scope of public banks elsewhere in the world. Their mandates are also much narrower, providing little in the way of broad strategic support for major societal initiatives.
Even more problematic are the actions of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Rather than advancing public capacity through partnerships with other public organizations, its mandate is to “attract substantial private and institutional investment in new infrastructure.”
Its involvement in a recent attempt to privatize water in Mapleton, Ont., is one example of its aggressive multi-sector incursion into public services. Thankfully, this particular initiative has collapsed, in part because the COVID-19 crisis appears to have given local politicians pause about handing such a critical service over to a private operator.
Ironically, at a time when many other countries in the world are bringing services back into public ownership after decades of failed privatization, Canada appears to be heading the other way, with our public banks leading the charge.
Instead, we should listen to the advice of a group of UN Special Rapporteurs who recently published an op-ed arguing that “COVID-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatizing vital services.”
Strong, democratic and accountable public banks in Canada could help reverse this trend.
In February, extreme weather events highlighted the fragility of the Texas electrical grid. A deep freeze left millions without power, and dozens of people died. President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency and ordered that federal assistance be made available.
One way to improve the reliability and resilience of critical infrastructure is to increase the number of high voltage power lines and their maximum reliable capacity between jurisdictions. For example, there are currently 37 major transmission lines between the United States and Canada. According to the Canadian Electricity Association:
Every Canadian province along the U.S. border is electrically interconnected with a neighbouring U.S. state or states, with many provinces boasting multiple international connections. The result of the integrated Canada-U.S. electric grid is a flexible, reliable and secure grid on both sides of the border.
Maintaining grid infrastructure is expensive. In a 2015 report on grid modernization, the U.S. Department of Energy cites a study claiming that it could cost utility companies up to US$2 trillion by 2030 just to maintain current levels of service reliability.
Traditional grids suffer from line losses between generating stations and end users. Line loss is the amount of electricity lost during transmission and distribution across an electric grid.
Powerlines in Houston, Texas.(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
An alternative to expanding existing grid infrastructure is to shift towards smart microgrids at the community level. A microgrid is a local network of generators, often combined with energy storage. It can be disconnected from a large (macro) grid network easily, if required.
Such systems can increase reliability and drive down carbon emissions when renewable energy is used. When combined with smart meters that reconcile inflows and outflows of electricity, microgrids provide real-time energy data. When a microgrid goes down, it only affects the local region and not an entire state or province.
Because of their scalability and flexibility, microgrids may be less expensive to build when compared with energy mega projects and their associated transmission and distribution infrastructure. But for this shift to succeed, interconnection standards need to be developed to optimize a two-way flow of electricity.
A wind farm is shown near Pincher Creek, Alta.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Microgrids have the added benefit of being able to use a large percentage of existing wiring within communities to contain costs. Additionally, they may fit better with the wants and needs of communities, generate local employment opportunities, lower consumption of electricity and take advantage of regional energy sources.
Market mechanisms including peer-to-peer energy trading based on blockchain technologies like Bitcoin can be used within microgrids to track transactions and to increase market penetration. This has been demonstrated in Australia where owners of household solar arrays were able to buy and sell energy at an agreed upon price using real-time data.
When combined with a strategy to increase the adoption of electric vehicles, microgrids can take advantage of vehicle-to-grid technology by using energy stored in batteries of vehicles to reduce peak demand.
De-gridding and setting up a microgrid is challenging, as I learned in 2013 when I pushed to disconnect Gabriola Island from the provincial grid run by BC Hydro. By co-founding a solar non-proft called GabEnergy I was able to move the community in that direction somewhat. But provincial legislation granting the utility company exclusive rights in the region killed anything more ambitious.
Although microgrids have a lot of potential, they still face some challenges before they achieve wide-scale support.
Energy storage remains expensive. The cost of lithium ion batteries has dropped to about US$175 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of storage in 2019 from US$1,200 per kWh in 2010. But many industry experts say the cost must fall below US$100 per kWh to be competitive.
There are also several financial challenges, given the absence of a long track record. So far, investors have been reluctant to support microgrids, but this may be shifting. Schneider Electric is now partnering with investors to focus on microgrids to offer a hedge to companies who want longer term security with respect to the price they pay for electricity.
Legislation challenges also represent a barrier, and new regulatory frameworks and standardization are essential. Work to improve electrical codes for interconnecting with other grids will ensure safe operation of microgrids. Additionally, governments need to recognize that this approach can provide critical infrastructure to lower-income communities and regions most likely to be impacted by climate change. Microgrids represent a form of climate change adaptation.
In short, climate change represents a significant threat to electrical utilities and the communities they serve. It also offers the greatest opportunity for innovation, community development and risk minimization.
Smart microgrids are a leap forward in how we generate, transmit and consume electricity. We have the potential to make grid failures like what happened in Texas a thing of the past.
New details suggested that it was his dinner with American socialite, Blac Chyna, that led to his downfall, according to Black Sports Online.
Blac Chyna, Hushpuppi
A shocking discovery has revealed that suspected fraudster, Hushpuppi was caught by the FBI with the help of American model and entrepreneur, Blac Chyna.
This is coming days after US agents discovered that Hushpuppi had links with North Korean hackers, he allegedly helped to launder funds to the tune of $1.3 billion.
He is now being accused of helping three North Korean computer hackers steal the funds from companies and banks, including one in Malta, in February 2019, according to the Justice Department.
Last July, the Hushpuppi was arrested in still another, separate case.
He was extradited from Dubai to the U.S. where he was charged with “laundering hundreds of millions of dollars from business email compromise (BEC) frauds and other scams, including schemes targeting a US law firm, a foreign bank and an English Premier League soccer club,” according to the Justice Department.
Apparently, all of his woes would have been avoided if he had chosen to stay low rather than show off his extravagant lifestyle.
New details suggesed that it was his dinner with American socialite, Blac Chyna, that led to his downfall, according to Black Sports Online.
Well, not the dinner itself, but the fact that he posted it on his Instagram which exposed him to the FBI.
THE US Senate for the second time acquitted Donald Trump of inciting insurrection at the Capitol.
Senators voted 57-43 to acquit the former president.
Seven Republicans joined the 50 Democrats to find the former Republican President guilty.
But they fell short of the 67 votes needed to convict him.
Trump left office on Jan. 20, so impeachment could not be used to remove him from power.
But Democrats had hoped to secure a conviction to hold him responsible for a siege that left five people including a police officer dead and to set the stage for a vote to bar him from ever serving in public office again.
Given the chance to hold office in the future, they argued, Trump would not hesitate to encourage political violence again.
Trump’s attorneys argued that his words at the rally were protected by his constitutional right to free speech and said he was not given due process in the proceedings.
Republicans saved Trump in the Feb. 5, 2020, vote in his first impeachment trial, when only one senator from their ranks – Mitt Romney – voted to convict and remove him from office.
Romney voted for impeachment on Saturday along with fellow Republicans Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Pat Toomey, and Lisa Murkowski.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted “not guilty,” offered scathing remarks about the former president after the verdict.
“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said.
“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”
The drama on the Senate floor unfolded against a backdrop of gaping divisions in a pandemic-weary United States along political, racial, socioeconomic and regional lines.
The trial provided more partisan warfare even as Democratic President Joe Biden, who took office on Jan. 20 after defeating Trump in the November election, called for healing and unity after his predecessor’s four turbulent years in power and a caustic election campaign.
Seventy-one percent of American adults, including nearly half of all Republicans, believe Trump was at least partially responsible for starting the Capitol assault, but only about half of the country thought Trump should be convicted of inciting insurrection, according to an Ipsos poll conducted for Reuters.
Trump, 74, continues to hold a grip on his party with a right-wing populist appeal and “America First” message. The wealthy businessman-turned-politician has considered running for president again in 2024.
Trump is only the third president ever to be impeached by the House of Representatives – a step akin to a criminal indictment – as well as the first to be impeached twice and the first to face an impeachment trial after leaving office. But the Senate still has never convicted an impeached president.
Subscribe our Email News Letter to get Instant Update at anytime
About Oases News
OASES News is a News Agency with the central idea of diseminating credible, evidence-based, impeccable news and activities without stripping all technicalities involved in news reporting.
