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Friday, February 16, 2024

2/16 WAKE-UP CALL: Fani's Furor..Prosecutor Gives Fiery Testimony

The district attorney in Donald Trump’s Georgia election-interference case rebutted allegations that her romantic relationship with another prosecutor should disqualify them. Fani Willis testified that defense lawyers seeking to sideline her had made false and offensive statements about her history with Nathan Wade, whom she hired to be the chief prosecutor against the former president and his associates in the racketeering case. Trump has called the case a witch hunt. Separately in New York, Trump’s hush-money trial is set to begin on March 25, making it the first of the four criminal cases the former president faces to be heard by a jury.

Trump has argued that the case is politically driven.

➤TRUMP LAWYERS SKEWER SMITH:  Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Thursday lashed out at special counsel Jack Smith after he opposed Trump’s request that the Supreme Court delay a trial into whether he tried to steal the 2020 election. In Trump’s final brief before the Supreme Court will consider that delay, his lawyers told the court Smith has created “the appearance of partisanship.”

“As before, there is no mystery about the Special Counsel’s motivation,” they wrote. “Commentators across the political spectrum point to the obvious −the Special Counsel seeks to bring President Trump to trial and to secure a conviction before the November election in which President Trump is the leading candidate against President Biden.”

➤BIDEN-BIBI RIFT GETTING TENSE: The looming Israeli military plans to invade Rafah have exacerbated tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration, which has grown increasingly frustrated with its attempts to rein in Israel’s military campaign. The consequences of the distrust between President Biden and Netanyahu, who have spoken 19 times since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, have grown only starker in recent days. Biden now appears to be trying to draw a line with Israel’s proposed military operation on Rafah where 1.1 million Palestinians—many of them displaced—now reside. In their latest call Thursday, Biden “reiterated his view that a military operation should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the civilians in Rafah,” the White House said in a statement. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has vowed to forge ahead, saying Wednesday that Israel would mount a “powerful” operation in the city once residents are allowed to evacuate.

➤EGYPT BUILDING GAZA WALL: Egyptian authorities are building a walled enclosure near the border with Gaza, according to Egyptian officials and security analysts. Fearful that an Israeli military push further south in the enclave will set off a flood of refugees, Cairo has for weeks sought to bolster security there to keep Palestinians out. The new compound is part of contingency plans if large numbers of Gazans do get in. The governor of Egypt’s North Sinai region said that the construction was part of an effort to take an inventory of houses destroyed during Egypt’s past military campaign against Islamic State extremists. Meanwhile, Israeli troops entered the main hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis after its intelligence indicated that hostages kidnapped by Hamas, as well as bodies, were being held there. Hamas called Israel’s incursion part of a systematic policy of targeting hospitals and destroying civilian infrastructure in Gaza and a violation of international law.

➤U-S SHOPPERS CUT BACK IN JANUARY: Retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 0.8% from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said. The larger-than-expected loss came after a strong round of holiday shopping in December, which the report revised to a 0.4% gain. Excluding autos, sales were down 0.6%; economists expected an increase. The economic data appeared to have had little impact on U.S. markets. Meanwhile, a 2024 immigration wave is expected to deliver an economic windfall for the U.S.—but with recent migrants earning and producing less than their predecessors, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The world’s major economies fell behind the U.S.’s, and in China, leader Xi Jinping wants to put the state back in charge of the crumbling real-estate market as part of a push to rein in the private sector.

➤RIVALRY LED TO K-C SHOOTING: A dispute between several people led to yesterday’s Super Bowl rally shooting in Kansas City, preliminary findings suggest. The incident that killed at least one person and wounded more than 20 others had no link to terrorism or homegrown violent extremism, according to preliminary findings. Two teens are currently detained, officials said. Their relationship to one another, and whether they were previously known to law enforcement, is under investigation.


➤F-B URGES ADVERTISERS HOW TO AVOID PAYING APPLE: Facebook parent Meta is encouraging advertisers to use a workaround to avoid paying a 30% service charge to Apple.Meta has long offered so-called boosted posts for Facebook and Instagram that users can purchase on their smartphones to amplify their content’s reach. They account for billions of dollars annually for Meta, according to people familiar with the matter. Later this month, Meta will begin levying an extra surcharge on U.S. advertisers who purchase boosted posts from apps on iPhones and iPads. The money will go to Apple, which announced in 2022 that it would start treating boosted posts as in-app purchases, entitling Apple to 30% of Meta’s revenue from them. Meta says that boosted posts should be considered a form of advertising in part because small businesses often use them to reach bigger audiences.

➤FBI INFORMAT INDICTED FOR LYING: A former FBI informant has been indicted by a Justice Department special counsel for allegedly lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings in a major setback for House Republicans' impeachment inquiry of the president.


Alexander Smirnov, 43, was charged with two counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for information he fed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Smirnov, who is described in the indictment as an FBI informant beginning in 2010, was arrested Wednesday at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas after a federal grand jury in the Central District of California returned the indictment.

🏀CAITLIN CLARK BREAKS THE RECORD: Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA women’s basketball career scoring record in yesterday’s Iowa vs. Michigan game. And she did it at the start of the game by scoring Iowa’s first eight points. The previous record was set at 3,527 in 2017 by Kelsey Plum, then at the University of Washington and now a pro with the Las Vegas Aces.

By the end of the game Clark had scored 49 points, breaking another record for most points scored by an Iowa player in a single game. Iowa won 106-89.

➤START YOUR ENGINES: The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series kicks off this Sunday with the Daytona 500. There are 35 more races on this year’s calendar, including a first-ever Cup race at Iowa Speedway on June 16. At last night’s qualifying session, Team Penske’s Joey Logano secured his first Pole Award at Daytona with a final-round lap of 181.947 miles per hour, edging Front Row Motorsports’ Michael McDowell by 0.071 seconds. 

🏀PISTONS’ STEWART CITED FOR ASSAULT: Wednesday’s game between the Detroit Pistons and the Phoenix Suns had all kinds of off-court action. Pistons center Isaiah Stewart punched Suns reserve Drew Eubanks in the face while they were in the back tunnels of Footprint Center. Stewart was later arrested for assault and was released after being issued with a citation. The Suns won 116-100. No action from either team yet, but the tape is being reviewed.

➤FRIDAY'S WEATHER MAP:



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