Former Marine from Georgia pleads guilty to Jan. 6 charges
A Fulton County resident pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., to assaulting two police officers during the Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Kevin Douglas Creek, 47, faces between 24 and 30 months in prison, according to the terms of a plea agreement entered before U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich. Creek will be sentenced on March 10 and remains free on bond.
Creek, who served in the Marines from 1995 to 1999, was charged with seven felony and misdemeanor crimes, a combination of which could have landed him in prison for much longer. The plea agreement dismisses all of them except for the charge that he hit an officer from D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department and kicked a U.S. Capitol Police officer who were attempting to stop the rioters. That charge carried a possible eight-year sentence if Creek had been convicted at trial.
It is not clear what led Creek to take part in the riot. He has no known connections to extremist groups and has no prior criminal convictions. Court records say he admitted being armed with mace and a knife in his boot while at the U.S. Capitol.
A father of two, Creek owns his own roofing contracting business that he operates out of his Johns Creek home.
When contacted by the FBI, Creek admitted to participating in the riot but said he did not remember assaulting the officers. When agents asked him if he regretted his participation in the unrest, he reportedly responded “50/50.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
McConnell slows ‘must-pass’ defense bill as deadline looms
WASHINGTON — Back in early October, Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to thrash Democrats for leaving the annual bill that funds national defense “in procedural limbo for months.”
His No. 2, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, joined him weeks later to complain, “We can’t afford to wait any longer to deal with it.”
Yet now, as Democrats attempt to push through the $768 billion stipend for the Pentagon as the year careens toward a close, it’s McConnell who wants to slow things down, requesting a “reasonable number of amendments” during a “normal process” on the Senate floor.
“The Democratic Leader wants to block the Senate from fully and robustly debating a number of important issues,” McConnell charged. “The [National Defense Authorization Act] is not finished yet. So the Senate cannot be finished yet either.”
Democrats have a hunch as to why the Republican leader is pumping the brakes on legislation he’s even said must pass — and eventually will pass. The more time Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is consumed with hammering out an agreement on the defense appropriation, the less time he has to muscle through President Joe Biden’s largest legislative prize: the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better social spending bonanza, which cleared the U.S. House just before Thanksgiving.
—McClatchy Washington Bureau
Prince Harry thanks doctors, scientists for fight against AIDS
Prince Harry marked World AIDS Day by honoring the lives of those lost to the pandemic, a health crisis that was important to his late mom, Princess Diana.
He also applauded the work of doctors and scientists in the fight against HIV and brought attention to the similarities between that and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“On this World AIDS Day we recognize the 40 years that have shaped life for many,” the Duke of Sussex wrote in an open letter addressed to World Health Organization chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS.
“We honor those whose lives have been cut short and reaffirm our commitment to a scientific community that has worked tirelessly against this disease. My mother would be deeply grateful for everything you stand for and have accomplished. We all share that gratitude, so thank you,” he added.
Harry is also one of the narrators of a video that was played at the beginning of the UNAIDS conference Wednesday, in which he talks about the “striking parallels between COVID-19 and another deadly pandemic. One that emerged 40 years ago — HIV.”
The 37-year-old grandson of Queen Elizabeth II urged world leaders to unite and make sure that science for both pandemics also reach underdeveloped nations.
The short video features scenes of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales — a powerful early voice in AIDS/HIV activism who used her platform as one of the world’s most famous faces to fight against stigma and prejudice.
—New York Daily News
Trump reportedly tested positive for COVID before debate
Former President Donald Trump reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 and was suffering symptoms of the disease before his chaotic first debate with then-candidate Joe Biden.
Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, says in his forthcoming memoir that Trump tested positive for the deadly virus the weekend before the debate but then also tested negative soon afterward, the Guardian reported Wednesday.
Trump refused to tell the American people about the positive test and the then-president and his relatives infamously refused to undergo COVID testing on the day of the debate in Cleveland.
”Nothing was going to stop (Trump) from going out there (for the debate),” Meadows writes in the book, titled "The Chief’s Chief."
Trump did not deny the report that he tested positive for COVID but derided it as “fake news” anyway.
Meadows concedes in the book that Trump was displaying possible symptoms of COVID-19 before, during and after receiving the mixed test results.
—New York Daily News
