The Rundown: Cop Could Face Death Penalty

➤ATLANTA OFFICER CHARGED WITH MURDER IN DEATH OF RAYSHARD BROOKS: Murder charges were brought yesterday against the Atlanta police officer who fatally shot 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks in the back in a Wendy's parking lot last Friday. District Attorney Paul Howard said that Brooks, while having fired a Taser that he'd grabbed from one of the officers back at them, wasn't a deadly threat and was running away when he was shot.

Howard said that after shooting Brooks, Officer Garrett Rolfe said, "I got him," and kicked him as he lay wounded and dying. Rolfe and the officer with him, Devin Brosnan, didn't offer any medical treatment for over two minutes. Howard also said Brosnan stood on Brooks' shoulder as he was dying, and he's been charged with aggravated assault. Rolfe could face life in prison or potentially the death penalty. His attorneys said in a statement that he'd feared for his safety and that of others around hm, and that he fired after he heard a sound, quote, "like a gunshot and saw a flash in front of him," apparently from the Taser fired by Brooks. But Howard said the Taser had already been fired twice and was empty, so it was no longer a threat.

Brooks' widow, Tomika Miller, was emotional as she spoke about hearing the new details of what had happened to her husband. She said, "I felt everything that he felt, just by hearing what he went through, and it hurt. It hurt really bad."

"I'm really hurt."

Tomika Miller, Rayshard Brooks’ widow, is overcome with emotion as she describes how she felt hearing the new details about her husband's death from the district attorney pic.twitter.com/6x0VqjtEs2

— Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) June 17, 2020

Rolfe and Brosnan had responded to complaints about a car blocking a Wendy's drive-thru and found Brooks asleep in the vehicle. Although their interaction was calm and Brooks agreed to a sobriety test, a struggle began when they tried to handcuff him after the test showed a too high blood alcohol reading. Brooks grabbed the Taser from Brosnan and started running. He fired the Taser at the officers, after which Rolfe fatally shot him.

➤SENATE REPUBLICANS UNVEIL POLICE REFORM PROPOSAL: Senate Republicans on Wednesday unveiled their proposal for reforming police procedures and accountability, after House Democrats a week earlier had put forward their own, more far-reaching package. The GOP's effort, which was led by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, includes establishing a database that tracks officers with excessive use-of-force complaints, something that's also in the House proposal and in an executive order on policing signed by President Trump this week. Also like the House bill, it seeks to change police tactics, including by eliminating chokeholds, but while the House measure requires the changes, the Republican ones encourages them through either taking away or providing funding. The Republican proposal includes a "duty to intervene" by other officers if they see an officer doing wrong. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the Republican package "inadequate," but also said the House Democrats, quote, "hope to work in a bipartisan way" to get legislation passed.

➤10 STATES HAVE HIGHEST AVERAGE OF NEW CASES SINCE PANDEMIC BEGAN: Ten states are having their highest seven-day average of new coronavirus cases per day since the pandemic began, according to a CNN analysis of the data: Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas. Additionally, there are 21 states overall with increasing trends in newly-reported cases from one week to the next and eight states with steady numbers of new cases. On the positive side, 21 states are seeing fewer cases, many of them those in the Northeast that were hard hit early on. As of last night, there have been more than 117,600 deaths in the U.S., and more than 2,161,500 confirmed cases.

➤BOLTON: TRUMP 'PLEADED' WITH CHINA TO HELP HIM GET REELECTED: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes in his new book that President Trump, quote, "pleaded" with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a June 2019 summit to help him get reelected, stating, "He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome."

Bolton, who was the NSA from April 2018 to September 2019, charged Trump made national security decisions based on how it would affect his political prospects, saying, "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations." The White House is trying to block the release of the book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, which is due out next week, asking a federal court for an emergency temporary restraining order yesterday (June 17th), claiming it contains classified information.

Other Bolton disclosures from the book:

• Uighurs: In December 2018, Trump asked why the U.S. was sanctioning China over its treatment of its minority Uighurs, who are predominantly Muslim, who China suspects of having separatist aspirations. China has detained more than one million Uighurs in internment camps and prisons in recent years. Bolton wrote: "At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting, with only interpreters present, Xi explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do."
• "Impeachment Malpractice": Bolton said Democrats committed, quote, "impeachment malpractice" by limiting their impeachment investigation just to the Ukraine issue, in which they accused Trump of tying military aid to Ukraine to the country investigating Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Bolton says that is what Trump did, but says Democrats should have also looked into other foreign policy issues, suggesting he did similar things with Turkey and China. Bolton was called to testify in the impeachment inquiry, but he refused, saying he wanted a federal court to decide whether he had to follow a White House directive not to cooperate with it.
• Journalists are 'Scumbags': Trump suggested in a meeting that journalists should be arrested and put in jail so the government could force them to reveal their sources. Trump then further said: "These people should be executed. They are scumbags."

➤MLB, PLAYERS REACH FRAMEWORK FOR SEASON: After weeks of back-and-forth proposals between MLB and the players union before a breakdown in talks that led Commissioner Rob Manfred to say Monday there was "real risk" there might not be a season this year, the two sides have agreed on what MLB considers a framework to play a coronavirus-delayed season, the Associated Press reported last night. Under the plan, each team would play 60 games over 10 weeks starting July 20th, and players would get full prorated pay. The postseason would expand from 10 teams to 16, and the two wild card games would become an eight-team wild-card round with eight best-of-three series.

➤SERENA WILLIAMS WILL PLAY IN U.S. OPEN: The U.S. Tennis Association was given the go-ahead Tuesday to hold the U.S. Open in Queens, New York, in late August, but it's been unclear which players will show up, as some top players have expressed concern about doing so amid the coronavirus pandemic. One who will be there is superstar Serena Williams, who said in a video shown Wednesday during a USTA presentation of its plans for the event: "Ultimately, I really cannot wait to return to New York. I feel like the USTA is going to do a really good job of ensuring everything is amazing and everything is perfect and everyone is safe." However, Simona Halep, the second-ranked women's player, said to AP she's currently not planning to go. But she added, "this situation is fluid" and her decision "is not set in stone."

➤REPORT: KOBE HELICOPTER PILOT MAY HAVE BEEN DISORIENTED IN FOG: A National Transportation Safety Board report on the January helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter and seven other people says the pilot reported they were ascending when the helicopter was actually heading for the ground, indicating he may have become disoriented in the thick fog. Pilot Ara Zobayan radioed to air traffic controllers that he was climbing to 4,000 feet to get above the clouds when he was actually plunging toward the California hillside where they crashed. A conclusion on the cause of the crash will come in a final report that's due later.