Trump gets more time to appeal lawsuit over sealed Mueller notes
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court gave the Trump administration 10 more days to seek U.S. Supreme Court intervention to block House Democrats from gaining access to confidential materials from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
If the high court doesn’t agree to hear the administration’s challenge by May 11, the Justice Department must follow through on an earlier ruling and hand over grand jury records to the House, according to a notice posted Friday by the U.S. appeals court in Washington. The deadline is a day before the Supreme Court will hear another major case in which House Democrats are seeking access to Trump’s financial records.
The House Judiciary Committee sought the grand jury records as part of its impeachment inquiry, claiming it needed access to the information to better understand Trump’s knowledge of and role in events chronicled in Mueller’s 448-page report. Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
The Washington appeals court in March said Trump’s impeachment proceeding met the legal standard for granting access to sealed grand jury records. In a 2-1 decision, the court rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the court lacked authority over the case.
Grand jury records typically remain sealed to protect the identity of those who are investigated but not charged, as well as details of ongoing investigations.
—Bloomberg News
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2 detained in killing of 2 trans women found inside burned car in Puerto Rico
Two men have been detained by police in connection with the killing of two transgender women in Puerto Rico last month.
The bodies of Layla Peláez, 21, and Serena Angelique Velázquez, 32, were found inside a charred Hyundai Elantra on April 22 in the city of Humacao, on Puerto Rico’s eastern coast.
On Thursday, local authorities announced that 21-year-old Juan Carlos Pagán Bonilla, and 19-year-old Sean Díaz de León had been taken into custody.
Capt. Teddy Morales, the chief of criminal investigations for the police in Humacao, said that police has classified the killings as hate crimes.
One of the suspects confessed that the slayings were “revenge,” according to local newspaper Primera Hora.
They were socializing with the victims, “and once they found out they were transgender women, they decided to kill them,” he said.
An autopsy to determine how exactly the women were killed is still pending.
The case was handed over to FBI on Thursday, the Latin news site The Americano reported.
According to a GoFundMe page to pay for the funeral cost of Peláez, she was a good friend of Velázquez.
The two were visiting Puerto Rico and planned to fly back to their homes in New York City at the end of the month. Velázquez lived in Queens and Peláez in the Bronx.
Five of the nine U.S. murders of transgender and gender non-conforming people in 2020 have occurred in Puerto Rico, which to local LGBTQ activist Pedro Julio Serrano constitutes “without a doubt an epidemic” of anti-LGBTQ violence.
—New York Daily News
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10-year-old boy among armed carjackers in St. Louis who led police on chase
ST. LOUIS — A 10-year-old boy was among the carjackers who robbed a woman at gunpoint in the Soulard neighborhood, then led police on a brief car chase, authorities said Friday.
The child was with a 15-year-old boy and two 14-year-old boys who were taken into custody Thursday. They were turned over to juvenile authorities.
St. Louis police Sgt. Keith Barrett said the 10-year-old is the youngest carjacking suspect in the city in recent years. Police said last year a 13-year-old boy took a woman’s car in the Benton Park West neighborhood.
The carjacking Thursday happened about 3 p.m., police said. The victim told police she had just parked her car when someone behind her pushed her to the ground. One of the youths pointed a gun at her and took the keys to her 2017 Volkswagen Passat. The four boys got into her car and drove away, and the woman called police, authorities said.
Officers spotted the car nearby and tried to stop it, but the driver sped off. Police recovered the Passat about a mile from the carjacking, police said.
Officers took the boys into custody and recovered a gun, police said.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Stanford considers holding classes in outdoor tents this fall, provost says
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Stanford University is considering teaching some classes outdoors in tents during the fall as it plans for a partial resumption of campus activity amid the coronavirus pandemic, the school’s provost said.
Provost Persis Drell mentioned the tents option in a virtual conversation with President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and school of medicine Dean Lloyd Minor on Wednesday, according to a university spokesman.
The comments were first reported by the university’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily.
Drell said using the tents for instruction would allow the university to “take advantage of the weather” and possibly help slow the spread of the disease, according to the Daily.
“Absolutely nothing is off the table,” Drell said.
However, the use of tents is “not a formal proposal or a plan,” at this point, and was brought up “within a broader discussion of many possible options,” according to E.J. Miranda, a spokesman for the college.
“If people have good ideas, we want to hear them. As yet, no decisions have been made,” Miranda said in an email Friday.
—The Mercury News
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