Marjorie Taylor Greene’s accusers say she lied under oath in insurrection case
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for voters seeking to use the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist clause to block Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s return to Congress accused her of lying at a hearing last week and asked the judge to allow new evidence — a text she sent to ex-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Attorneys for Free Speech for People, an advocacy group, said in a brief filed Friday that the text proves Greene, R-Ga., was dishonest when she testified she couldn’t recall advocating for Trump to invoke martial law after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill.
Lawyers for the voters and for Greene sparred in their briefs, filed to a Georgia state administrative judge, over the meaning of “engage” and questioned the honesty of each others’ cases, as one of the most novel constitutional challenges in a century nears its end.
The court is being asked to decide whether Greene participated in an insurrection and, if so, whether that bars her from seeking reelection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
In the text, uncovered by the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6., Greene told Meadows that some members of Congress were saying in a private chat group that “the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him.”
—Bloomberg News
'Zoom-bombers' drop lewd video, racist comments at Sacramento candidate forum
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A virtual community forum for two candidates running for Sacramento City Council was disrupted Wednesday night in a "Zoom-bombing" incident when participants made racist, sexist and lewd comments, and displayed sexually explicit imagery.
The virtual event was hosted by the Natomas Community Association and was meant to provide a public forum for Karina Talamantes and Michael Lynch, two candidates for the council's 3rd District.
Jaycob Bytel, a spokesperson for Lynch's campaign, told The Times that organizers ran into technical problems that forced them to make Lynch and Talamantes the forum's hosts on Zoom.
Once the candidates were made hosts, participants were able to send them messages directly on the videoconferencing platform, Bytel said.
Lynch, who is Black, got two comments from different accounts at one point in his speaking period, his campaign spokesperson said. One comment read "kill black people." Another consisted of a racist slur.
—Los Angeles Times
Fort Lauderdale cops who claimed bias promoted, but union cries foul
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Just weeks after taking over as Fort Lauderdale’s new top cop, Patrick Lynn has promoted four veteran officers who filed federal discrimination complaints six months ago. The officers claim they were passed over for promotion by former Chief Larry Scirotto because they had the wrong skin color or were the wrong gender.
The officers — one white woman, two white men and one Hispanic man — had no inkling they were being promoted until the chief announced it on Wednesday, said attorney Tonja Haddad-Coleman, who represents the four officers.
“We won,” Haddad-Coleman said in an email to the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. By Thursday, she was singing a different tune.
“They were promoted,” Haddad-Coleman said of her clients. “I think that is a victory. I definitely consider that a win. But it’s not over.”
That’s partly because the police union challenged the promotions the very next day, less than 24 hours after they were announced. The promotions were “a shock” to the rank and file, union attorney Gene Gibbons said.
—South Florida Sun Sentinel
Cuba’s Communist Party promotes old guard general amid uncertainty after protests
Cuba’s Communist Party bent its own rules this week to promote an old-guard general to the organization’s top decision-making bodies, the latest in a number of recent changes reflecting the challenges of an aging military leadership’s grip on power.
Army corps general Ramon Espinosa, 83, the first vice minister of the Cuban armed forces, became a member of the Communist Party Politburo and its Central Committee during a Party meeting on Tuesday. His designation goes against the Party’s own rules modified in its latest Congress last year to ban officials 60 years and older from holding a seat at the Central Committee and those over 70 from becoming a member of the Politburo.
The secretary of the Central Committee, Roberto Morales Ojeda, asked members to select Espinosa despite the age limits, citing “his long record of service as a military commander inside and outside of Cuba” and “his fidelity to the leaders of the Revolution,” according to Granma, the Party’s daily newspaper.
Espinosa fought in Cuba’s incursions in Africa and is thought to be close to Raúl Castro, who officially retired as the Party’s secretary last year but is still the country’s ultimate leader.
—Miami Herald
