Buttigieg on Baltimore bridge collapse and plans to rebuild

Fulton County DA Fani Willis plans to take a lead role in trying Trump case

Two weeks after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis survived a bid by defense lawyers to have her disqualified from the Georgia election interference case, she has all but taken over the case personally, focusing intensely on legal strategy and getting her team in fighting form for trial.

In a significant move along these lines, according to a source close to her, Willis has decided to play a leading courtroom role herself in the sprawling conspiracy case against Donald Trump and 14 co-defendants.

“I think there are efforts to slow down the train, but the train is coming,” Willis said with characteristic bravado during impromptu remarks to CNN as she was leaving a Georgia Easter egg hunt on March 23.

“I guess my greatest crime is that I had a relationship with a man, but that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way,” she added.

Willis had just endured a lengthy legal soap opera after lawyers for one of the defendants filed a motion on Jan. 8 alleging that she had a clandestine romantic relationship with outside lawyer Nathan Wade, whom she had tapped to lead the case. Over two months of withering testimony and legal argument, Willis had intimate details of her private life publicly aired, her judgment and integrity questioned, and saw the most high-stakes prosecution of her career teeter on the brink of collapse because of an indiscretion in her personal life.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in court in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday, March 1, 2024.

Alex Slitz/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the end, Judge Scott McAfee ruled there was no actual conflict of interest that would have required disqualification of Willis and her entire office from the case. But he did conclude that Willis’ conduct created an “appearance of impropriety” that needed to be “cured” for her to continue. The solution was for Wade to resign from the case, which he did a few hours after the judge’s ruling.

Instead of replacing Wade with another lawyer from inside or outside the office, Willis is stepping up her own role in quarterbacking the case, CBS News has learned. She has already plunged into the nuts and bolts of trial strategy, including starting to lay out how evidence, including witnesses and documents, will be presented, a process known as “order of proof.”

At the same time, she is thinking about how to communicate the stakes of a case about protecting the democratic rights of Georgians — a far more abstract concept than typical murder or gang prosecutions — to a Fulton County jury.

Moreover, according to one knowledgeable source, Willis will now be the primary point of contact for defense lawyers in any future plea negotiations, a role that Wade had previously played.

Perhaps most consequentially, she is gaming out her own role in trying the case. Her appearance in the courtroom will not just be symbolic. Willis is seriously considering handling opening statements for the prosecution and examining key witnesses herself, according to sources familiar with her thinking, who requested anonymity to speak freely about her approach to the case.

Those who know the pugnacious and competitive DA well say a star turn in the courtroom — in the only case against Trump that will be televised — may put the distracting disqualification drama fully behind her. They say she is intent on shifting the public’s focus back onto Trump and his co-defendants for their alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election. It was a strategy she already showcased when she testified combatively in the disqualification hearing last month.

“You’re confused, you think I’m on trial,” she told defense lawyer Ashley Merchant. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election.”

Willis’ stepped-up, high-profile public role in the case would also come as she runs for reelection in Fulton County. While it seems unlikely the trial would begin before the general election in November, she will likely have opportunities to argue pre-trial motions and procedural matters before then.

Any remarks about the case she makes inside the courtroom carry far less risk than whatever she might be tempted to say in the public arena, where she feels less restrained. She has already been admonished by McAfee for making “unorthodox” public remarks. The judge has hinted that he might impose a gag order on the case.

“Given the fact that she just barely walked away legally unscathed and that there is an appeal, I think a little extra caution would pay off dividends,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of law at Georgia State College of Law, who has been following the election interference case closely. But at the same time, Kreis said Willis has every “right and prerogative” to try the case herself and called doing so a potential “rehabilitation moment.”

Willis was always likely to play at least some public-facing role in the trial, if for no other reason than to show her constituents how seriously she was taking a case that she regards as core to their rights as Americans and Georgians, according to a close friend of Willis’. But it was only after going through the searing two-month disqualification ordeal that she decided to play a leading, if not the leading trial role, sources tell CBS News.

Willis earned a reputation as a courtroom practitioner over a two-decade career of trying and winning hundreds of murder, rape and gang cases, but also leading some of the most complex prosecutions ever brought in Georgia. Chief among them was the Atlanta Public Schools cheating case, a Georgia RICO prosecution — involving the same conspiracy statute under which Trump and his co-defendants were charged — against more than a dozen teachers, principals and administrators. All but one of the 12 defendants who went to trial were convicted in what still stands as the longest trial in Georgia history.

“She combines a level of preparation unmatched by any attorney I have ever seen, with a very rare ability to connect with a jury at that gut level,” said Charley Bailey, a former Fulton County assistant DA who has tried cases with Willis and is a close friend.

Daniel Klaidman

Daniel Klaidman, an investigative reporter based in New York, is the former editor-in-chief of Yahoo News and former managing editor of Newsweek. He has over two decades of experience covering politics, foreign affairs, national security and law.

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Biden plans to visit Baltimore next week after devastating bridge collapse

BALTIMORE — President Joe Biden on Friday told reporters that he plans to head next week to Baltimore, the site of a deadly bridge collapse.

Speaking to reporters as he deplaned Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews following several campaign stops on Thursday and Friday in New York, the president said, “I’m going to Baltimore next week.”

The Maryland city is the site of a major bridge collapse that happened in the early morning hours on Tuesday after the cargo ship Dali struck a support pillar on the Francis Scott Key bridge after losing power.

Six construction workers who were on the bridge as it was struck have died following the incident.

On Tuesday, Biden told reporters that he told Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and other state officials that, “we’re going to send all the federal resources they need as we respond to this emergency, and I mean all the federal resources. And we’re going to rebuild that port together.”

He also called the incident a “terrible accident” and confirmed that there was no evidence that the ship intentionally struck the bridge.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was in Baltimore with Maryland officials on Tuesday. During a press briefing Wednesday at the White House told Buttigieg reporters, “From the very beginning [Biden] has been acting to make sure that we have a whole-of-government response to support the people of Baltimore.”

On Thursday, Moore spoke about the six victims, saying, “They were fathers, they were sons, they were husbands, They were people who their families relied on.”

“They had no idea that them going to work was gonna turn to a deadly occurrence,” he said.

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The EU plans to fast-track some financial aid to Egypt. The usual funding safeguards will not apply

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union intends to fast-track some of its aid money to Egypt using an urgent funding procedure that bypasses parliamentary oversight and other safeguards, according to the president of the bloc’s executive branch.

The 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) intended for this is part of a larger package of 7.4 billion euros ($8 billion) in financial assistance to the North African country that the EU announced on March 17.

Egypt has for years relied on cash handouts, often from wealthy Gulf Arab states, as concerns mount that economic pressure and regional conflicts could drive more migrants from the region to Europe’s shores.

The EU package includes three year’s worth of grants and favorable loans for the Arab world’s most populous country. Most of the funds — 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion) — are known as macro-financial assistance, or MFA, and would be paid directly to Egypt’s Central Bank.

It’s rare for the EU to sidestep safeguards, but European Parliament elections are due June 6-9 — a timeline that if the checks were implemented, would slow the delivery of that money.

With those polls in mind, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans for “an urgent MFA operation for up to 1 billion euros” for Egypt, noting in a letter to EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola the country’s “rapidly deteriorating economic and fiscal situation.”

The letter, seen by The Associated Press, preceded the announcement of the deal with Egypt.

Von der Leyen blamed “a very large exposure to the economic effects of Russia ’s full-scale war of aggression on Ukraine, the wars in Gaza and Sudan, and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea,” and said it was “imperative to make sure that a first significant contribution” would get to Egypt by the end of 2024.

To do so, the commission would employ a seldom-used part of the EU treaties, Article 213, which stipulates that the 27 member countries must endorse the funds — but not the parliament, the bloc’s only democratically elected institution.

Not even when COVID-19 spread in 2020 and the EU bailed out governments from the Balkans to the Middle East was this path taken. Nor is it used to keep Ukraine’s war-shattered economy afloat, although Kyiv did benefit from it a decade ago, when Russia annexed Crimea and hiked natural gas prices.

Apart from removing the need for parliamentary oversight, the urgent funding procedure also side-steps a requirement for an impact assessment on the effects of the assistance.

Von der Leyen said the new parliament that will be formed after the EU elections would be “fully involved” for the remaining 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) of MFAs to Egypt, to be disbursed when Cairo agrees to implement “more comprehensive” reforms.

The deal also includes a 1.8 billion euro ($1.9 billion) investment plan and 600 million euros ($647 million) in loans, including at least 200 million euros ($217 million) that will go to Egypt for “migration management.”

The fast-track money would inject much-needed funds into the Egyptian economy, which has been hit hard by years of government austerity, the coronavirus pandemic, the fallout from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and most recently, the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Usually, MFAs are meant for governments with dire economic woes and to encourage them to introduce reforms. Yet the commission acknowledges that Egypt is “sluggish” on policy revision and already has a “backlog of domestic reforms” to address.

Migration is a key factor driving the EU-Egypt deal. As in previous years, it will be an election issue in the EU and mainstream parties want to keep arrivals down to deprive the far-right of campaign fuel.

The deal in Cairo came just weeks after a pact was sealed with Mauritania involving money to help the country — a major transit hub for people moving through Africa toward Europe — beef up border security.

A more substantial agreement was clinched with Tunisia last July, expanding on a model the bloc developed with Turkey in 2015 to stop migrants reaching Europe.

While the Egyptian coast has not been a key launching pad for human traffickers sending overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, Egypt faces migratory pressures from the region, with the added looming threat that the Israel-Hamas war could spill across its borders.

The commission, asked by the AP what conditions Egypt should respect to receive urgent funding, said that “relevant and feasible reform priorities would need (to) be selected taking into account the corresponding time horizon.”

The commission’s website says macro-financial assistance must be “exceptional in nature” and that “a pre-condition for granting MFA is the respect of human rights and effective democratic mechanisms.”

Amnesty International has implored the EU to put rights abuses at the center of relations with Egypt — and the commission concedes that “human rights challenges in Egypt remain significant.”

Still, the EU’s executive branch maintains that “the political leadership in Egypt has taken several steps putting greater emphasis on the importance of the respect for human rights” in recent years.

Earlier this month, Egypt floated its currency and announced a deal with the International Monetary Fund to increase its bailout loan from $3 billion to $8 billion, moving to shore up an economy hit by a staggering shortage of foreign currency and soaring inflation.

Cairo’s coffers will also be replenished with $35 billion from a massive project involving an Emirati consortium to jointly develop the Mediterranean city of Ras el-Hekma.

Since coming to power in 2013, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has relied heavily on Gulf Arab states, from where an estimated more than $100 billion entered Egypt via Central Bank deposits, fuel aid and other support.

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Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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Expansion plans for Porsche test track in Italy halted

The expansion of a huge Porsche test track in southern Italy has been halted for the time being by the authorities in the region of Apulia, following protests by environmentalists.

Activists recently collected around 40,000 signatures to oppose the plans of the German car manufacturer. The president of the region has now decided to suspend the agreement on the project at the test site, according to a statement issued on Wednesday evening.

“The region is once again showing that it wants to reconcile the public interest underlying the realization of the project with environmental protection,” said Michele Emiliano, according to the statement.

In agreement with the Ministry of the Environment in Rome, the region had taken a decision to reconsider some aspects of the procedure.

Porsche has taken note of the Puglia region’s decision, a spokesman said on Thursday. “We are open to further dialogue with all parties involved in the development plan and the public.”

The company insisted that its aims had not changed. “We want to ensure the future viability of the Nardò Technical Centre and strengthen its role as an important employer and economic factor in the region,” the spokesman continued.

Porsche operates one of the most modern test centres in the world not far from the town of Nardò, just a few kilometres from the Gulf of Taranto.

The Nardò Technical Centre includes a circular test track with a length of 12.6 kilometres and a diameter of around 4 kilometres. The site also has other vehicle test tracks.

Porsche says it intends to spend around €450 million ($486 milion) on the expansion of the facility. However, environmentalists complain that a huge area of countryside, including parts of a forest, will have to be sacrificed for the project.

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Buttigieg on Baltimore bridge collapse and plans to rebuild

Buttigieg on Baltimore bridge collapse and plans to rebuild – CBS News

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Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said the path to rebuild after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore will be “long and difficult.” Buttigieg took questions on federal efforts in Maryland during Wednesday’s White House press briefing.

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Biden admin has no plans to change how it treats Haitian migrants despite outrage from advocates

The Biden administration is under increasing pressure from human rights organizations to rethink its treatment of Haitian migrants trying to flee Haiti or currently living undocumented inside the U.S., but so far there are no plans to change course, three U.S. officials told NBC News.

More than 480 human rights organizations sent a letter to the Biden administration on Wednesday asking for a moratorium on deportations to Haiti, the immediate release of detained Haitian migrants, the closure of pending deportation cases for Haitian migrants and a new designation of Temporary Protected Status that would let more Haitian migrants already living in the U.S. remain in the U.S.

“If the United States cannot keep its personnel safe in Haiti, then the Haitian government is unlikely to keep Haitian nationals safe,” said the letter, referring to the U.S. mission to airlift Americans out of Haiti.

For more on this story, tune in to NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT or check your local listings.

U.S. officials say there has been moral handwringing inside the administration, both at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, over the issue.

“It’s heartbreaking,” one U.S. official said, adding that there are no plans to allow more Haitian migrants into the U.S.

“There are no good options here,” said another U.S. official.

The Biden administration is facing sharp backlash on its immigration policies, including from some Democratic mayors, heading into the November presidential election. Customs and Border Protection has made more than 10 million apprehensions of undocumented migrants trying to cross the southern border since the beginning of the administration, many of them Haitian. Crossings hit record monthly levels in late 2023, though they have now dropped.

Since gangs took over Haiti this month, forcing Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce his resignation, the Caribbean nation has been engulfed in violence.

The charred remains of vehicles in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 25, 2024.Clarens Siffroy / AFP – Getty Images

The Biden administration has not deported Haitian migrants back to their home country by plane since the violence began, in large part because the airport in the capital and largest city, Port-au-Prince, has been taken over by gangs. But it has continued sending migrants who are interdicted at sea back to Haiti by boat.

On March 14, the U.S. Coast Guard returned 65 Haitians found on a sailboat at sea.

“Those interdicted at sea are subject to immediate repatriation pursuant to our longstanding policy and procedures,” a spokeswoman for DHS said. “The United States returns or repatriates migrants interdicted at sea to The Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.”

A spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council said the Biden administration’s approach is to help Haitians pave a path to democracy.

“If our goal was to bring everyone from around the world whenever there’s a crisis, we would have a huge problem,” the NSC spokeswoman said.

She noted that the U.S. has been working to help the situation for over a year. The U.S. government has provided more than $170 million in humanitarian aid since October 2022, making it the single largest humanitarian assistance provider to Haiti.

No protected status

Two U.S. officials told NBC News that the Biden administration will not change the policy of returning Haitians interdicted at sea because they do not want to trigger mass migration.

The officials also said that the current crisis has not yet spurred the U.S. to consider granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to an additional group of undocumented Haitians.

TPS has historically been used to let nationals from a country facing a humanitarian crisis legally live and work inside the U.S, whether the crisis at home is due to political upheaval or a natural disaster. TPS is granted by the president.

Many Haitian migrants who arrived in the U.S. in the past already have TPS, including those who came after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

Advocates for Haitian refugees argue the administration set a double standard by granting TPS to a new group of Venezuelans last summer, when conditions in Venezuela were less dire than the current situation in Haiti.

People, including many Haitians, leave Mexico to cross into the United States on March 13, 2024, in Tijuana, Mexico.Gregory Bull / AP file

The fear of using TPS for Haitians now, two officials said, is that it will send the wrong message to Haitians that they will be allowed to stay in the U.S. if they can make it here. But, they acknowledged, it is a terribly violent situation to which to return anyone.

“There’s an acknowledgement this is really difficult,” said a U.S. official. “But we don’t want to encourage more people to take to the sea.”

Guerline Jozef, a human rights advocate and co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which led the letter sent Wednesday, said the Biden administration should rethink its policy. She said accepting desperate migrants who are lucky enough to escape would not trigger mass migration because it is so hard to get out.

“It is almost impossible to leave Haiti,” Jozef said.

U.S. officials noted that those recently interdicted at sea are not being sent back to Port-au-Prince, where most of the violence is concentrated, but in other parts of Haiti like the northern city of Cap-Haïtien.

“There is no excuse to send anyone to anywhere in Haiti right now. They are using this as an excuse for the inexcusable,” Jozef said. “The whole country is unstable.”

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China to challenge Biden’s electric vehicle plans at the WTO

BEIJING — China filed a World Trade Organization complaint against the United States on Tuesday over what it says are discriminatory requirements for electric vehicle subsidies.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry did not say what prompted the move. But under a new U.S. rule that took effect Jan. 1, electric car buyers are not eligible for tax credits of $3,750 to $7,500 if critical minerals or other battery components were made by Chinese, Russian, North Korean or Iranian companies. The credits are part of President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, named the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

A ministry statement did not mention the specific restriction. It said, though, that under the act and its implementing rules, the U.S. had formulated discriminatory subsidy policies for new energy vehicles in the name of responding to climate change. It said the U.S. move excluded Chinese products, distorted fair competition and disrupted the global supply chain for new energy vehicles.

Member countries of the Geneva-based WTO can file complaints about the trade practices of other members and seek relief through a dispute settlement process.

The real-world impact of the case is uncertain. If the United States loses and appeals the ruling, China’s case most likely would go nowhere. That is because the WTO’s Appellate Body, its supreme court, hasn’t functioned since late 2019, when the U.S. blocked the appointment of new judges to the panel.

China is the dominant player in batteries for electric vehicles and has a rapidly expanding auto industry that could challenge the world’s established carmakers as it goes global. Its strength is in electric vehicles and its companies have become leaders in battery technology.

The European Union, concerned about the potential threat to its auto industry, launched its own investigation into Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles last year.

Under the new U.S. rule, only 13 of the more than 50 EVs on sale in the U.S. were eligible for tax credits, down from about two dozen models in 2023. Automakers have been scrambling to source parts that would make their models eligible for the credits.

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Lukashenko hints at Moscow attackers’ plans to flee to Belarus

Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday that the gunmen who attacked a concert hall near Moscow last week may have wanted to flee to his country, according to state news agency Belta.

Lukashenko said that security measures were put in place along Belarus’ border with Russia when it became apparent, after the attack on the Crocus City Hall last Friday, that the perpetrators had driven a car into the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Belarus and Ukraine.

The authoritarian long-term ruler of the ex-Soviet republic, which is allied with Russia, said that the attackers “were therefore unable to enter Belarus. They saw that. That’s why they turned around and drove towards the Ukrainian-Russian border.”

At least 139 people were killed and around 200 others injured when four gunmen opened fire on concert-goers at the Crocus City Hall venue in the city of Krasnogorsk near Moscow on Friday evening shortly before a rock concert was set to start. They also set fire to the building, causing its roof to collapse.

The alleged shooters were arrested in Bryansk shortly afterwards, according to the authorities. They have been presented to a Moscow court and given pre-trial detention.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been claiming for days that the suspects had wanted to flee to Ukraine and were expected there. The Ukrainian leadership has rejected this allegation.

Although the Islamic State terrorist militia has claimed several times that it carried out the attack, and Western experts consider that claim to be credible, Russian representatives continue to insist that Ukraine is involved. They have not provided any evidence to support the allegation.

Western security authorities and experts suspect the offshoot Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) to be behind the attack.

The secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, continued to blame Ukraine for the attack on Tuesday.

When asked by journalists whether the Islamic State terrorist militia or Ukraine was behind the attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall, Patrushev replied: “Ukraine, of course,” according to state news agency TASS.

The 72-year-old, who repeatedly appears as an ardent supporter of the Russian war against Ukraine, did not explain how he arrived at this assessment.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been somewhat more circumspect. He said he was counting on the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office to do everything possible “to ensure that the criminals receive a just punishment, as prescribed by Russian law.”

On Monday, Putin confirmed that the attack was carried out by Islamist terrorists. At the same time, he made it clear, as he had done at the weekend, that he sees a Ukrainian link.

Russia wants to know “who ordered the attack,” he said. Putin therefore assumes that Islamists carried out the order for the mass murder, but that the masterminds are located elsewhere. He sees the motive in Ukraine, not in Islamic State.

Earlier Tuesday, a Russian court ordered the detention of an eighth suspect following the deadly attack. In total, 11 suspects have been arrested.

The man is a 31-year-old Russian citizen born in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, the Russian news agency Interfax reported on Tuesday, citing Moscow’s Basmanny District Court.

He is accused of having provided the attackers with a flat before the offence. Interfax reported that the man had denied in court that he knew about the plans, and believed the people who rented the flat were normal tenants.

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Lukashenko hints at Moscow attackers’ plans to flee to Belarus

Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday that the gunmen who attacked a concert hall near Moscow last week may have wanted to flee to his country, according to state news agency Belta.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been claiming for days that the suspects had wanted to flee to Ukraine and were expected there. The Ukrainian leadership has rejected this allegation.

Although the Islamic State terrorist militia has claimed several times that it carried out the attack, and experts consider that claim to be credible, Russian representatives continue to insist that Ukraine is involved. They have not provided any evidence to support the allegation.

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Niger’s junta shuts airspace, accuses nations of plans to invade as regional deadline passes

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Niger’s mutinous soldiers closed the country’s airspace and accused foreign powers of preparing an attack, as the junta defied a deadline to restore the ousted president and said any attempt to fly over the country will be met with “an energetic and immediate response.”

Niger’s state television announced the move Sunday night, hours before West African regional bloc ECOWAS had demanded that the coup leaders reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum or face military force.

A spokesman for the coup leaders, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, warned of “the threat of intervention being prepared in a neighbouring country” and said Niger’s airspace is closed until further notice. The junta asserted that two central African countries have joined preparations for an invasion, but did not say which ones, and called on the country’s population to defend it.

It was not immediately clear what ECOWAS will do now that the deadline has passed.

Thousands of people in Niger’s capital, Niamey, attended a stadium rally with coup leaders on Sunday.

Niger had been seen by the United States, France and other partners as their last major counterterrorism partner in the vast Sahel region, south of the Sahara Desert, where groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic Group state have been expanding their range.

The future of some 1,500 French military personnel and 1,100 U.S. military personnel in Niger is not immediately known, though the junta leaders have severed security arrangements with Paris.

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