Archives for December 2022

The panel also issued a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for conservative attorney John Eastman.

By Scott Wong and Alex Seitz-Wald

WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously Monday to recommend the Justice Department pursue a batch of criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in an effort to overturn the 2020 election and the fomenting of a deadly mob at the Capitol.

The select committee also took aim at Trump’s top allies — on and off Capitol Hill — who worked with the 45th president to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory and illegitimately keep Trump in power.

“We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today, just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who led the Jan. 6 subcommittee that examined referrals. “But we have gone where the facts and the law lead us, and inescapably they lead us here.” 

The Jan. 6 panel also issued a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for conservative attorney John Eastman, who the committee says was the architect of the scheme to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject states’ electoral votes on Jan. 6 and have fake electors submitted to the Congress instead. 

“This committee is nearing the end of its work. But as a country, we remain in strange and uncharted waters. We’ve never had a President of the United States stir up a violent attempt to block the transfer of power,” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy, this can never happen again.”

This marks the first time in history that a congressional committee has recommended that DOJ launch a criminal investigation into a former American president. The Jan. 6 committee is urging DOJ to consider charges against Trump, including conspiracy to defraud the federal government; obstruction of an official proceeding, in this case Congress’ certification of electoral votes; conspiracy to make a false statement; and inciting or assisting those in an insurrection.

The criminal referrals do not carry any legal weight but represent a symbolic rebuke of Trump, who remains the most influential Republican in the country and has launched another bid for president in 2024. Jack Smith, the independent special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is already investigating Trump on numerous fronts, including for his role in the Jan. 6 riot.

The final meeting of the committee served as the panel trying to build their case against Trump.

“At the heart of our republic is the guarantee of the peaceful transfer of power… Every President in our history has accepted this peaceful transfer of power — except one,” the committee’s co-Chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said of Trump.

Cheney said that “among the most shameful” findings of the committee was that Trump sat in the White House watching the violence unfold on TV on Jan. 6, but did nothing, even as advisors and allies begged him to call off the rioters.

“This was an utter moral failure,” Cheney said of Trump’s inaction. “No man who would behave that way, at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office.”

In their final meeting, committee members summarized key findings of their investigation, which were first laid out in nine high-profile televised hearings over months, beginning in June.

Witnesses, most of them Republicans, testified to the Jan. 6 panel that Trump and his inner circle had furiously worked to sow doubt about Joe Biden’s legitimate election victory; launched a multi-pronged campaign to pressure state officials, senior Justice Department officials and Vice President Mike Pence to help overturn the election; directed a mob of thousands of his supporters to march on the Capitol to disrupt lawmakers from certifying the results of the election; and refused to call off his supporters as they brutally assaulted police officers and stormed the Capitol building.

During one of the panel’s summer hearings, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump had been informed some of his supporters were armed with guns when he directed the angry mob toward the Capitol that day.    

Trump recently took to his Truth Social platform to slam the Jan. 6 investigators as “corrupt cowards who hate this country.” The House impeached him for his role in the attack but he was acquitted by the Senate. He’s now running for president again in 2024.

The report represents the culmination of an 18-month congressional investigation that included more than 100 subpoenas, interviews with more than 1,200 witnesses and the collection of hundreds of thousands of documents.Mosttranscripts from those depositions and voluntary interviews, as well as other written and video evidence, will also be shared with the public.

“They conducted the business with the seriousness it deserves, the fact that it’s about our national security, it’s about our democracy,” said outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was targeted during the attack and who created the Jan. 6 committee.

“They did so in ways that I think was done with dignity, and with a factual basis, and in a totally nonpartisan way.”

Like past reports on the John F. Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Jan. 6 report will be zipped off to numerous book publishers and is expected to become an instant best seller.

But Chair Thompson said his report will be different in one significant way: The committee first will release it digitally, which will allow the panel to link to evidence that can provide the public with greater context.

“I think what we present to the public is important. That’s why we put a digital version to the report to add more direction and flavor to the public’s understanding of what all we looked at,” Thompson told reporters. “So whereas other reports have just been a bunch of pages, we think the digital part will add another dimension to it.”

Thompson also spoke directly to the American people, saying they will now decide on accountability for Trump’s actions as he seeks the White House once again.

“The future of our democracy rests in your hands,” the Jan. 6 Committee chairman said during the hearing. “It’s up to the people of this country to decide who deserves the public trust. Who will put fidelity to the constitution and democracy above all else. Who will abide by the rule of law, no matter the outcome

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/jan-6-committee-prepares-release-criminal-referrals-final-report-rcna61494?cid=eml_nbn_20221219&user_email=84c3d67de2d6c2696a2542c01dec02b79989244842ce623f17a7011e1361e2be&utm_campaign=breakingnews&%243p=e_sailthru&_branch_match_id=1108455302827886615&utm_medium=Email%20Sailthru&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAzWP0W6FIAyGn8bdoVIYHpecLEuW8xqmYvWwA0gKxtcfJlvSi%2Fb727%2Fts5SUP7ouzjbSmVtMqfUuvjqVPhvQKt1pyuh8efLxVsHObnMR%2FXSwvz%2Bv4UZ9NfCocZ5n%2B29j91BJ2r0rzuaa2j1uTPlKfzAKI2pHcKUQicSUsGqCyRNmEpZduHZUsBIz%2BizWvzrtXATbiEbqUTfqYd3SqG8KfopznKAHkCDHBsyRiScK9fSq37RVixkWgsVYMKNBeNdge7mQ7WEexvE2gta3ysiAWuWAQy8lSWUkwUyXXwmTxZDQbbE6zkz4cnG7vv0Fk4PEJEQBAAA%3D

By Marut Vanyan

On 12 December, Azerbaijani civilians claiming to be ‘eco-activists’ descended on the Lachin Corridor, placing Nagorno-Karabakh under de facto blockade. With their lifeline to Armenia and the world cut off, some in the region fear a looming humanitarian crisis.

‘If it continues like this, we won’t be able to last long’, says Karen Melkumyan, the director of the Arevik Medical Centre. ‘Autumn-winter is the season of acute respiratory diseases and the hospital is overloaded.’

The Arevik Centre is the only pediatric hospital in Nagorno-Karabakh. When OC Media spoke with Melkumyan on 16 December, the gas supply to Nagorno-Karabakh had been cut off for three days. The pipes bringing gas from Armenia to the region pass through land now controlled by the Azerbaijani government, a fact apparently used in the past to exert pressure.

‘We heat the wards with electricity so that the children don’t get cold. You see that the corridors of the hospital building are cold and we sit here in double clothes’, Melkumyan says.

Later that day, the gas supply was restored.

‘We’re using our medicines sparingly’, Melkumyan says, ‘so that if a child suddenly appears in critical condition, we can help them first’. 

The Arevik Centre has only one ambulance, which is now stranded on the other side of the blockade after having transported a patient to Yerevan before the road was blocked.

But even if the ambulance were available, it is not clear if it would be of any use. The blockade has led to acute fuel shortages.

While the streets of Stepanakert are silent and empty, with few cars to be seen, just outside the city, where the Lachin Corridor to Armenia begins, people are waiting for the road to reopen.

‘We are from the regions of Armenia. We come to Karabakh to sell goods, vegetables, meat, fruits’, says one stranded man, huddled around a fire with several other drivers. ‘We can neither go forward nor back.’

‘We are already smelling of smoke, we have been sitting by this fire for three days day and night; we cannot bathe’, he says.

‘They say they want to open Stepanakert airport. Well, will I transport the bulls by Boeing to sell in Karabakh?’, he asks. 

‘Clearly aimed at creating a humanitarian disaster’

The Azerbaijani government has denied all responsibility for both the road closure and the gas cut, blaming the Russian peacekeeping mission for the former and the Armenian authorities for the latter.

These are claims dismissed by officials in Stepanakert.

‘It’s been five days already that Azerbaijan has kept the 120,000 population of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh] under total blockade with an “emotional” and attention-grabbing agenda, flavoured with fake environmental pretexts, thus putting the Armenians of Artsakh before a humanitarian disaster’, President Araik Harutyunyan said in a post on 16 December. 

‘However, as we can see, the people of Artsakh do not kneel and are honourably overcoming the current processes, which are incompatible with the 21st century and almost unimaginable for a civilized people’, the President said.

Marina Simonyan, a representative of the Human Rights Defender’s Office, warns of a looming humanitarian catastrophe if the road is not reopened.

She said the region’s population, including 30,000 children, 20,000 elderly people and 9,000 people with disabilities ‘are simply deprived of any humanitarian access’.

‘Azerbaijan’s closure of the Lachin Corridor seriously violates the norms of international humanitarian law and is clearly aimed at creating a humanitarian disaster in Karabakh’, Simonyan tells OC Media 

Simonyan says that around 1,100 people, including 270 children, are currently stranded, unable to return home.

‘Four-hundred tonnes of essential goods are imported from the Republic of Armenia to Karabakh daily,  including grain, flour, vegetables, fruit, economic goods’, she continues. ‘Currently, the supply of these goods to Karabakh has been completely stopped.’

By 18 December, shortages of essential goods and medicines were already being

Simonyan warns that the blockade had already created a ‘serious medical crisis’.

‘Transportation of critically ill patients who need urgent treatment and hospitalisation has become impossible, as a result of which the lives of these patients are in danger.’

‘Let them cut our electricity’

Despite the hardship inside the blockade, an air of defiance persists.

‘Let them cut off the gas for a couple of days, the electricity for a couple of days, it’s OK, we will burn wood to get warm, as long as we stay in our homes’, says Ella Ghambaryan.

‘They say we should live peacefully together, but they want to suffocate us like that pigeon she strangled to death. It was a hint, many just didn’t get it. They just want to do the same with us.’

‘I will not leave here, I have nowhere to go’, Ghambaryan says, recounting the life-changing injuries her sons suffered during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

‘We did not leave this land during such a difficult time, even for our family’, she says. ‘Moreover, I want to return to my native village, Chayli’ Ghambaryan says.

Almira Khachatryan, a market trader in Stepanakert, strikes a similar tone.

‘They closed the road; turned off the gas — let them turn off the electricity as well, no worries, I will survive’, she says. ‘I won’t leave here. We will live by candlelight, we will enter the bed to get warm. We endure, we are a creative people.’

But the spectre of war still casts a long shadow.

‘In the 1990s, we lived closed off for years; as we endured then, we will endure now’, Khachatryan says. ‘I just don’t wish for so many young guys to die again.’

 For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.

By Marut Vanyan

Marut Vanyan is a freelance journalist based in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh. He has worked in journalism since 2015.

A little while ago, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Minister of State Ruben Vardanyan said during his live broadcast that he has good news.

“Without any preconditions, the neighboring country [i.e., Azerbaijan] has restored the [natural] gas supply in Artsakh—and this is our victory because we showed unity. We showed that we are strong, that we will not be depressed,” Vardanyan said.

He added that the Lachin corridor may be reopened during the day.

“The road may be [re]opened today. They [the Azerbaijanis] decided it themselves because they felt what a mistake they made. They have come under great pressure both internally and externally. I want to thank the people who supported us in various countries,” the Artsakh state minister said.

Vardanyan noted that they, in Artsakh, already have the experience of being under a blockade for 96 hours.

“We must definitely study it well, and learn from it because we must always be ready because our neighbor will not rest. But they learned a good lesson that it is impossible to break the will of the people of Artsakh”, he said.

Also, the Artsakh Minister of State thanked everyone who did a great job during these four days—sometimes even without sleeping.

“These four days enabled us to sense that we are all together,” Ruben Vardanyan emphasized, in particular.

Since Monday, Azerbaijanis under the guise of “environmentalists” have closed the Lachin corridor, which is the only motorway that connects Artsakh with Armenia. In addition, Azerbaijan had cut off natural gas supply to Artsakh.

It is already the fourth day that Azerbaijan continues to block the only motorway connecting Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to Armenia.

“Considering that the supply of [natural] gas from Armenia to Artsakh is also blocked in the Azerbaijani sector and Artsakh is deprived of [natural] gas, we call on the residents of Artsakh to use electricity and fuel sparingly,” the Artsakh Information Center reports.

In case of additional questions, people can contact the hotline at 119.

ISTANBUL (AP) — A Turkish court has sentenced the mayor of Istanbul to two years and seven months in prison on charges of insulting members of Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council.

The court convicted Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Wednesday and also imposed a political ban that could lead to his removal from office. Imamoglu is expected to appeal the verdict. Critics alleged the mayor’s trial was an attempt to eliminate a key opponent of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is expected to hold a presidential election next year. Imamoglu was elected to lead Istanbul in March 2019. His win was a blow to Erdogan and the president’s Justice and Development Party, which had controlled Istanbul for a quarter-century.

Source: https://www.voiceofalexandria.com/news/world/istanbul-mayor-sentenced-for-insulting-turkish-officials/article_97f249a4-f08d-5e05-b3c6-5cd8a2328877.html