Justice Department ordered to release memo on why Trump wasn’t charged in Mueller probe
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release a confidential memo that former Attorney General William Barr cited as justification for not charging ex-President Donald Trump with obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
The March 24, 2019, memo was crafted by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to review the Mueller report’s refusal to exonerate Trump of obstruction — and Barr leaned heavily on the document in declining to charge the former president with a crime.
Still, Barr never released the memo publicly, prompting government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to sue the Justice Department on freedom of information grounds.
In a ruling released Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson sided with CREW and ordered the department to release the memo because she wrote that it obscured the document’s “true purpose” in withholding it.
Despite Barr’s claims to the contrary, Berman wrote that the memo contained “strategic, as opposed to legal advice” and that both the Office of Legal Counsel and the attorney general knew beforehand that there would not be any attempt by the Justice Department to charge Trump with a crime.
—New York Daily News
Biden says he expects to meet Putin during June Europe trip
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said his team is working to schedule a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Europe next month.
A June meeting is “my hope and expectation,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “We’re working on it,” he added.
After the two leaders spoke last month, the White House said Biden had proposed a meeting in a third country in the coming months. Biden is set to travel in June to the U.K. and Belgium for summits with the leaders of the G-7, NATO and the European Union.
The Biden administration has imposed additional sanctions on Russia in retaliation for the SolarWinds Corp. hack and the treatment of dissident Alexey Navalny. But Biden has said that while the U.S. and Russia have their differences, he wants to work with Moscow on a range of issues, including nuclear arms reduction and climate change.
A meeting between the two leaders will be tense. Biden said in an interview in March that he considered Putin to be a killer and warned the Russian leader would “pay a price” for his efforts to undermine U.S. elections.
The Kremlin responded by recalling its ambassador to the U.S.; Putin offered a wish for Biden’s “good health” and proposed a live televised debate between the two leaders.
—Bloomberg News
Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked in cities around the US, study finds
LOS ANGELES — Denny Kim was walking to dinner in Koreatown when he was attacked in February.
Two men approached Kim, a 27-year-old Air Force veteran, and shouted anti-Asian slurs, including “Chinese virus,” before taking a swing at him. He was left with a black eye and injured nose.
“(It was) absolutely unprovoked,” Kim, who is Asian American, told KTLA-TV at the time. “I didn’t know who these guys are.”
He had become one of a growing number of victims of anti-Asian hate crimes, which are continuing to surge in Los Angeles and around the country, a new study has found.
The study, by the Center for the Study of Hate in Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, examined police data from 16 jurisdictions across the country, finding a 164% increase in reports of anti-Asian hate crimes in the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period last year.
New York saw the greatest increase at 223%, followed by 140% in San Francisco, 80% in Los Angeles and 60% in Boston.
Some cities, including Phoenix, Seattle and Miami, reported no change, year over year.
—Los Angeles Times
