A4 eZ su the washington post.saturday, november 16 , 2019
teXAsAppeals court puts hold
on scheduled executionTe xas’s top a ppeals c ourt on
Friday halted the scheduled
execution o f inmate R odney
Reed, whose c onviction is being
questioned by new evidence that
his supporters say raises serious
doubt a bout h is guilt.
The stay o f execution i ssued
Friday by the Te xas Court of
Criminal Appeals came just hours
after the Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles recommended
delaying the lethal injection.
The parole board u nanimously
recommended a 120-day reprieve
for R eed. T he board rejected
Reed’s request t o commute h is
sentence to life in prison.
Reed, 51, is set for lethal
injection Wednesday f or the 1996
killing of Stacey S tites, 1 9.
The board’s decision was to go
next to Gov. G reg Abbott ( R), who
had n ot said whether he would
accept i t, r eject it or do nothing.
The stay p robably makes Abbott’s
decision moot until R eed’s
appeals are exhausted.
Reed’s efforts to stop h is
execution h ave received s upport
from such celebrities as Beyoncé
and K im Kardashian.
— A ssociated PressMiLitARYSupreme Court to
review old rape casesThe Supreme Court o n Friday
agreed t o consider w hether
military personnel can b e
prosecuted for rape long a fter the
crime o ccurred in a n appeal of a
lower-court ruling that
overturned t he rape conviction of
an Air Force captain.
The justices w ill h ear the
administration’s bid to reinstate
the c onviction of F-16 instructor
pilot Michael Briggs after the
Washington-based U.S. C ourt o f
Appeals for t he Armed Forces, the
top m ilitary appeals court, placed
a five-year time l imit on f iling
charges for o lder rape claims.
That c ourt ruled t hat even
though a 2006 change t o U. S.
military law specified that rape
claims c an be prosecuted i n the
armed forces without a time limit,
the c hange d id not apply
retroactively. The rape f or which
Briggs had been convicted i n 20 14
occurred i n 2005.
The justices o n Friday a lso took
up the administration’s a ppeals in
two other military cases involving
rape c onvictions in 1998 a nd
2000 that were a lso reversed b y
the a rmed forces c ourt.
— ReutersCALiFORNiASuspected gunman in
school shooting diesThe 16-year-old w ho opened
fire Thursday a t a high s chool in
Santa Clarita, Calif., killing two
people and wounding three
others, has died of a self-inflicted
gunshot wound to the h ead,
authorities s aid.
Nathaniel Te nnosuke Berhow
shot himself on his 16th birthday
after p ulling a gun f rom h is
backpack at S augus High School,
where h e was a junior, the Los
Angeles C ounty S heriff’s
Department said. Berhow
received treatment, but h e died
Friday at a bout 3 :30 p .m. l ocal
time, t he department said.
— H annah KnowlesJury awards $1 million
to Planned ParenthoodA federal jury has found t hat an
antiabortion a ctivist illegally
secretly r ecorded workers at
Planned Parenthood clinics and is
liable f or violating federal and
state laws. T he jury o rdered him
and o thers to p ay n early
$1 million i n damages.
After a six-week civil trial, t he
San Francisco jury f ound that
David Daleiden trespassed o n
private property a nd committed
other crimes in recording the
2015 v ideos. He a nd the Center for
Medical Progress claimed
Planned Parenthood illegally s ells
fetal t issue, w hich t he group says
it does not do.
Daleiden a nd Sandra Merritt
face 14 c riminal charges each o f
invasion of p rivacy in a trial t o
begin Dec. 6. T hey have p leaded
not g uilty.
— A ssociated PressShooting suspect unfit to stand
trial: The teenager accused of
fatally s hooting 10 p eople a t a
Te xas high s chool has b een f ound
mentally incompetent t o stand
trial. State District Judge John
Ellison ordered D imitrios
Pagourtzis to be committed t o a
state mental facility for u p to f our
months after three experts found
him m entally incompetent t o
stand trial f or t he May 2018
shootings at S anta Fe High
School.
— A ssociated PressDigest“reorder the very structure of the
Constitution” and “enfeeble the
legislative branch.”
“The dissent cites nothing in
the Constitution or case law —
and there is nothing — that com-
pels Congress to abandon its leg-
islative role at the first scent of
potential illegality and confine
itself exclusively to the impeach-
ment process. Nor does anything
in the dissent’s lengthy recitation
of historical examples dictate
th at result,” Tatel wrote.
Trump’s lawyers requested a
rehearing, but only two other
judges publicly joined Rao in
saying the full circuit should hear
the case.
The committee’s acting chair-
woman, Carolyn B. Maloney
(D-N.Y.), said it was the president
who should stop resisting.
“It has now been seven months
since the Oversight Committee
asked for these records. It is time
for the president to let us do our
job and stop blocking Mazars
from complying with the commit-
tee’s l awful subpoena,” s he said in
a statement.
[email protected]
[email protected]Millett. Both were nominated to
the bench by Democratic presi-
dents.
“It is not at all suspicious that
the committee would focus an
investigation into presidential fi-
nancial disclosures on the accu-
racy and sufficiency of the sitting
president’s filings. That the com-
mittee began its inquiry at a
logical starting point betrays no
hidden law-enforcement pur-
pose.”
Ta tel said the court did not
need to decide whether Congress
can subpoena a sitting president
because the order was directed at
the accounting firm — not
Trump.
In her dissent, Judge Neomi
Rao, a Tr ump nominee, said if the
House wants to investigate possi-
ble wrongdoing by the president,
it should do so by invoking its
constitutional impeachment
powers — not through legislative
oversight. (The House subse-
quently opened an impeachment
inquiry but focused on Tr ump’s
dealings with Ukraine, not finan-
cial impropriety.)
The majority said Rao’s view
laid out in her dissent wouldcommittee had exceeded its legis-
lative role a nd was acting in a law
enforcement capacity r ather than
serving a “legitimate legislative
purpose.”
Trump’s attorneys warned that
validating the subpoena would
mean “Congress is free to investi-
gate every detail of a president’s
personal life, with endless sub-
poenas to his accountants, bank-
ers, lawyers, doctors, family,
friends and anyone else with in-
formation that a committee finds
interesting.”
The Justice Department filed a
brief in support of the president’s
position that the subpoena can-
not be enforced because the com-
mittee didn’t sufficiently justify
its purpose.
In October, the panel’s 2-to-
ruling traced the long history of
courts upholding Congress’s in-
vestigative authority.
“We conclude that in issuing
the challenged subpoena, the
committee was engaged in a ‘le-
gitimate legislative investiga-
tion,’ rather than an impermissi-
ble law-enforcement inquiry,”
wrote Judge David S. Ta tel, who
was joined by Judge Patricia A.Trump’s stay request to preserve
the status quo if it considered the
issue worthy of full briefing.
On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers
tried to block Manhattan District
Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s at-
tempt to enforce a grand jury
subpoena.
Vance has said his office needs
the records for its investigation
into alleged hush-money pay-
ments during the 2016 campaign
to Stormy Daniels, an adult film
actress, and to former Playboy
model Karen McDougal.
Both women said they had
affairs with Trump, and Vance’s
office is examining whether any
Trump Organization officials
filed falsified business records, in
violation of state law, related to
the payments. Trump has denied
the affairs and any wrongdoing.
Friday’s filing concerned a
Democratic-led House commit-
tee’s attempt to get Trump’s fi-
nancial records. The committee
said it is looking into possible
conflicts of interest and irregu-
larities in the president’s finan-
cial disclosure reports.
At the D.C. Circuit, Consovoy,
the president’s l awyer, argued theBY ROBERT BARNES
AND ANN E. MARIMOWFor the second day in a row,
President Trump asked the Su-
preme Court on Friday to protect
his personal and business finan-
cial records from disclosure, this
time to a congressional commit-
tee.
Trump’s private lawyers asked
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
to put a hold on an appeals court
decision that said the House
Oversight and Reform Commit-
tee was within its rights to sub-
poena the information from
Trump’s longtime accounting
firm, Mazars USA.
A panel of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled
2 to 1 against Trump’s efforts to
stop Mazars from turning over
the information, and the full cir-
cuit earlier this week declined to
reconsider that decision. Roberts
is the justice who hears emergen-
cy requests arising from that
court.
Mazars has said it will comply
with court orders to release the
requested eight years of informa-
tion, but the final decision seems
likely to come from the Supreme
Court.
The president’s l awyer William
S. Consovoy said the Supreme
Court’s intervention was impera-
tive. Under the lower court’s deci-
sion, “any committee of Congress
can subpoena any personal infor-
mation from the president; all
the committee needs t o say is that
it’s considering legislation that
would force Presidents to dis-
close that same information,”
Consovoy wrote in the Friday
filing.
“Given the temptation to dig
up dirt on political rivals, intru-
sive subpoenas into personal
li ves of presidents will become
our new normal in times of divid-
ed government — no matter
which party is in power. If every
committee chairman is going to
have this unbounded authority,
this Court should be the one to
say so.”
The new filing from the presi-
dent means the court now faces
perhaps historic separation-of-
powers decisions with two differ-
ent demands over largely the
same information. One involves a
state prosecutor’s investigatory
powers, the other Congress’s
oversight ability.
The high court is not required
to review either lower-court deci-
sion. In the congressional case,
however, it would have to rule on
Trump again appeals to justices on finances
ricky carioti/the Washington Post
Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, left, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. outside the court in June 20 17. Roberts is the justice
who hears emergency requests from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a panel of which ruled against the president in this case.Request to shield records
from Congress sets upseparation-of-powers test
a military mission... he wants to
highlight. I know what he has
signed off on.”
As explained by officials from
several coalition members,
speaking on the condition of ano-
nymity about diplomatic discus-
sions, the strategy is to continue
to support the Kurdish-led Syrian
Democratic Forces and to main-
tain coalition control of north-
eastern Syria.
That area no longer includes a
strip at least 20 miles deep along
the border with Turkey, where
Turkish and Russian forces are
now conducting joint patrols. The
Russian Defense Ministry on Fri-
day ran video footage of Russian
helicopters landing at a former
U.S. base near the border city of
Kobane.
The footage, according to the
Russian news service Interfax,
showed Russian troops entering a
former U.S. facility strewn with
leftover equipment and personal
belongings, indicating a rapid
U.S. withdrawal. The newly arriv-
ing troops raised a Russian flag
over the base.
In addition to counterterror-
ism operations, the area still con-
trolled by Kurdish-led forces —
and overseen by U.S., French and
British troops — is seen as lever-
age in U.N.-led negotiations over
Syria’s political future. Ta lks be-
gan early this month among dele-
gations representing the Syrian
opposition, civil society r epresen-
tatives and the government of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
which is backed by Russia and
Iran.
That leverage is far less than it
once was, as Assad has retaken
much of the territory lost early in
Syria’s eight-year civil war and as
Russia has become a much larger
regional player. On Friday, t he day
after Erdogan returned from
Washington, his office an-
nounced that Russian President
Vladi mir Putin would visit him in
Ankara in January.
[email protected]withdrawal announcement,
movement by Russia and Syrian
government forces into areas va-
cated by U.S. troops and Kurdish
fighters, along with reports of
Islamic State resurgence in Syria
and Iraq, led to heightened con-
cern throughout the coalition
that the situation was spinning
out of control.
Some militant detainees es-
caped in the chaos. While atten-
tion has focused on northern Syr-
ia and the explosive mix of forces
there, hundreds of Islamic State
and forces allied with al-Qaeda
are said to be moving southward
toward Syria’s border with Jor-
dan.
Iranian-allied forces have set
up checkpoints near Daraa, in
southwestern Syria, and along
the border with the Israeli-occu-
pied Golan Heights. There are
reports that militants and Iranian
proxies have stepped up drug
smuggling across the southern
border to finance their activities.
Last week, the U.S. military
reported that an estimated
$3.5 million in drugs in a truck
was seized on Oct. 23 in southern
Syria near a small U.S. garrison at
Ta nf.
U.S. defense officials have said
that up to 600 U.S. troops would
remain in northeastern Syria,
down from about 1,000 at the
time of Trump’s announcement.
Their mission remains the “en-
during defeat” of the militants,
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
Sunday.
Trump has said he reversed his
full withdrawal decision to pro-
tect oil reserves that are under
Syrian Kurdish control. In a meet-
ing Wednesday with Turkish
President Recep Ta yyip Erdogan,
Trump said: “We’re keeping the
oil.... We left troops behind only
for the oil.”
Jeffrey, asked about the seem-
ingly different directives, said it
was “absolutely legitimate for the
president to decide which part ofenvoy to the coalition. Members
“reaffirmed their commitment to
this coalition” and “acknowl-
edged the great success we have
had with the destruction of the
caliphate” and other achieve-ments, he said.
“But the third major point that
they made was that we have a
long way to go b efore we can write
off Daesh as a terrorist threat in
Iraq and Syria and around the
world,” Jeffrey said in a briefing
for reporters he held with Sales.
Daesh is an Arabic term for the
Islamic State.
Turkey’s invasion of northeast-
ern Syria in October, Trump’sia may seem relatively stable, but
it’s Syria,” Sales said. “We think
there should be a sense of urgency
to repatriate now while we still
can.”
France called for the coalition
meeting because of concerns over
“trust and the ability of the coali-
tion to continue the fight” i n the
wake of coalition member Tur-
key’s invasion of northeastern
Syria and the U.S. indication “that
it would retreat,” French Foreign
Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
“The question I asked today,”
he told reporters after the meet-
ing, was: “A re we still all together
in a coalition?”
Le Drian said he was satisfied
with commitments by all to
“avoid any unilateral initiatives
without consulting the others,”
provide the military, civilian and
monetary means to maintain the
fight against the Islamic State and
stabilize areas of northern Syria
under the control of the coalition
and its Syrian Kurdish allies.
The meeting, hosted by Secre-
tary of State Mike Pompeo, “gave
us a chance to recalibrate where
we are and where we’re going,”
said James Jeffrey, t he U.S. specialBY KAREN DEYOUNGAllies worried about the direc-
tion of U.S. policy in Syria in the
wake of President Trump’s order
to withdraw U.S. troops there,
and its subsequent partial rever-
sal, were told this week that the
administration remained com-
mitted to defeating the Islamic
State.
But the meeting Thursday in
Washington of about 35 members
of the coalition fighting the mili-
tants left yawning questions
about how they plan to achieve
that objective and worries that
Trump might again spring a ma-
jor policy change on them with-
out any consultation.
The coalition partners were
unable to reach an agreement on
what to do about one of the most
urgent issues on their agenda —
the detention of thousands of
militants in makeshift prisons in
Syria amid reports that Islamic
State fighters are resurgent in
Syria and Iraq, and that some are
slipping away to Libya and other
areas in Africa and the Middle
East.
Of more than 10,000 detainees,
most of whom are Syrian and
Iraqi, several thousand are for-
eigners, including Europeans.
Nathan Sales, the State Depart-
ment’s counterterrorism coordi-
nator, said he reiterated to the
coalition partners at the meeting
that “countries have an obligation
to take back their citizens and
prosecute them for crimes they’ve
committed.”
France and other European co-
alition members have refused,
saying that they should be tried in
the countries where their crimes
were committed: Iraq or Syria.
While Iraq has tried a number of
its own citizens, Syria remains a
war zone and there is no capable
judicial structure in the area
where the detainees are being
held.
“Today, t he situation with FTFs
[foreign terrorist fighters] in Syr-
Allies seek reassurances after Trump’s policy on Syria shifts
yara nardi/reuters
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, right, and French Foreign
Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian meet this week on events in Syria.“Countries have an
obligation to take back
their citizens and
prosecute them.”
state Department official Nathan
sales, at a meeting with members of
the coalition to fight the islamic stateUPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws