Manhattan DA rejects GOP demands for Trump case info

• March 23, 2023

By Farnoush Amiri | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Manhattan district attorney investigating Donald Trump rebuffed House Republicans’ request Thursday for documents and testimony about the case, dismissing it as an “unprecedented inquiry” with no legitimate basis.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, the general counsel for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg slammed the congressional request as “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.”

“The Letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene,” Leslie Dubeck wrote in the letter. “Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”

The Republican chairmen of three House committees on Monday sent a letter to Bragg seeking information about his actions in the Trump case. The Republicans criticized the grand jury investigation as an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”

The chairmen requested testimony as well as documents and copies of any communications with the Justice Department to be turned over by Thursday. The request came as Republicans in the House quickly rallied around the former president as a grand jury in New York weighs whether to bring an indictment against him.

“If a grand jury brings charges against Donald Trump, the DA’s Office will have an obligation, as in every case, to provide a significant amount of discovery from its files to the defendant so that he may prepare a defense,” Dubeck wrote.

The five-page response from Bragg’s office provides a rare insight into what has remained a secret grand jury process, marking one of the first public acknowledgments that there is a sitting grand jury currently investigating Trump. The DA’s office has adhered closely to centuries-old rules that have kept grand juries under wraps to protect the reputations of people who end up not being charged and to encourage reluctant witnesses to testify.

In proceedings closed to the public and members of the media, grand jurors listen to evidence presented by prosecutors and hear from witnesses. There is no judge present nor anyone representing the accused, and prosecutors do not have to offer any evidence favorable to the defense.

The disclosure comes as the grand jury appears close to finishing its work, after hearing last week from Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, but the timing of a possible decision on whether to charge the ex-president remains uncertain. Prosecutors canceled a scheduled grand jury session Wednesday and planned to hear testimony on other matters Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. But law enforcement in New York has been making preparations for any unrest, should Trump face charges.

The case revolves around hush money payments during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to women who alleged sexual encounters with him. Bragg’s team appears to be looking at whether Trump or anyone committed crimes in New York state in arranging the payments, or in the way they accounted for them internally at the Trump Organization.

On Thursday, one of the GOP chairmen, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, expanded his probe into the handling of the Trump case by demanding testimony and documents from Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, two former Manhattan prosecutors who had been leading the Trump case before quitting last year in a clash over the direction of the probe.

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“Last year, you resigned from the office over Bragg’s initial reluctance to move forward with charges, shaming Bragg in your resignation letter — which was subsequently leaked — into bringing charges,” Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote in the letter to Pomerantz late Wednesday. “It now appears that your efforts to shame Bragg have worked as he is reportedly resurrecting a so-called ‘zombie’ case against President Trump using a tenuous and untested legal theory.”

Requests for comment from Pomerantz and Dunne were not returned.

Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

UC Berkeley investigating AD Jim Knowlton, associate AD Jennifer Simon-O’Neill

• March 23, 2023

The University of California-Berkeley has launched a formal investigation into Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton and executive associate athletic director Jennifer Simon-O’Neill’s handling of dozens of allegations over the course of years that former Golden Bears women’s swimming head coach Teri McKeever bullied swimmers on an almost daily basis, the Southern California News Group has learned.

Attorneys hired by the university have begun contacting current and former Cal swimmers and their parents as part of a follow-up investigation to an eight-month, $2-million probe that led to McKeever’s firing on January 31, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

The current investigation comes against the backdrop of months of mounting criticism of Cal from former and current swimmers, including Olympic gold medalists, and prominent financial boosters of the Golden Bears athletic program that Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill and other university employees prioritized athletic success over athlete well-being. Specifically, swimmers and their parents maintain that Simon-O’Neill and Knowlton’s inaction led to dozens of athletes being subjected to McKeever’s verbal, emotional and physical abuse and in some cases even enabled the coach’s bullying.

Golden Bears boosters, some of whom have made seven-figure donations to the Cal athletic program, have lobbied Chancellor Carol T. Christ for months to fire Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill, arguing their failure to effectively address McKeever’s behavior caused swimmers to be endangered and damaged the university’s reputation.

The McKeever investigation’s heavily redacted nearly 500-page report substantiated allegations of bullying and discrimination over a period of decades first disclosed by the SCNG last May, finding that McKeever, who coached Cal to four NCAA team titles, discriminated against swimmers on the basis of race, national origin and disability, including using the n-word, and abused athletes in violation of university policy.

After interviewing 147 people and reviewing 1,700 documents, attorneys for Munger, Tolles & Olson, the Los Angeles-based law firm hired by the university, concluded “by a preponderance of the evidence that Coach McKeever discriminated against certain student-athletes, in certain instances, on the basis of race, national origin and disability.” The attorneys also found McKeever’s behavior “toward some, but not all, student-athletes in some instances was abuse and violated University policy.”

To date, 44 current or former Cal swimmers, including Olympic medalists and NCAA champions, 23 parents, a member of the school’s men’s team, three former Cal coaches, a former administrator and an athletic department employee have told SCNG that McKeever, the only woman to serve as head coach of a U.S. Olympic swim team, routinely bullied swimmers, often in deeply personal terms, or used embarrassing or traumatic experiences from their past against them, used racial epithets, body-shamed and pressured athletes to compete or train while injured. Swimmers and parents have also alleged that McKeever revealed medical information about athletes to other team members and coaches without their permission in violation of federal, state and university privacy laws and guidelines.

Nine Cal women’s swimmers, six since 2018, have told SCNG they made plans to kill themselves or obsessed about suicide for weeks or months because of what they describe as McKeever’s bullying.

Cal declined to comment. Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill have repeatedly declined to comment on the McKeever investigation and criticism of their handling of athlete and parent complaints.

McKeever has denied any wrongdoing. Her attorney said she will pursue a wrongful termination lawsuit against the university. McKeever’s firing did not include a financial settlement.

In recent weeks and months, Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill have privately tried to distance themselves from McKeever, according to multiple sources.

But university administration and athletic department officials including Knowlton, Simon-O’Neill and Sandy Barbour, Cal’s athletic director from 2004 to 2014, received between 2010 and 2022 more than 30 complaints from Cal swimmers or their parents alleging bullying behavior by McKeever, according to interviews, university documents and emails obtained by SCNG.

Despite the repeated complaints, Cal has paid McKeever just under $3 million in total compensation since 2010 and has given her eight raises in her base pay between 2010 and 2019, according to her contract and other university financial records. McKeever’s annual base salary has increased by more than 77% since 2010.

McKeever is a godmother to one of Simon-O’Neill’s children. Simon-O’Neill was hired by Cal in 2008 as director of Olympic sports operations. She was named associate athletic director in 2013 and after additional promotions was named to her current position, executive senior associate AD, chief of staff and senior women’s administrator in 2019. She was the direct supervisor of the women’s swimming program until the responsibility was removed from her last May, a day after the publication of an SCNG report in which 19 current and former Cal swimmers, six parents, and a former member of the Golden Bears men’s team portrayed McKeever as a bully who for decades has allegedly verbally and emotionally abused, swore at and threatened swimmers on an almost daily basis.

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Knowlton has been Cal’s AD since 2018.

At the time of McKeever’s firing, Knowlton wrote to Cal swimmers that he “was disturbed by what I learned in the course of reading through the report’s 482 pages that substantiate far too many allegations of unacceptable behavior. I want to apologize, on behalf of Cal Athletics, to every student-athlete who was subject to this conduct in the past, and I want to thank everyone who had the courage to come forward and share their story with the investigators.”

Thomas Newkirk, McKeever’s attorney, said he was surprised by Knowlton’s letter.

“Jim Knowlton, why he is apologizing to athletes when he knew how Teri coached the entire time he was there is beyond me,” Newkirk said. “It makes no sense.”

RELATED:

UC Berkeley swimmers allege coach Teri McKeever bullied and verbally abused them for years

UC Berkeley places swim coach Teri McKeever on administrative leave

Ex-UC Berkeley swimmer on McKeever: ‘I honestly didn’t know how far she would go’

McKeever’s bullying led to lifelong issues, more former UC Berkeley swimmers allege

NCAA swimming champion details coach Teri McKeever’s bullying last season at UC Berkeley

​ Orange County Register 

What’s black and white and running around Seoul?

• March 23, 2023

Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — A young zebra walked, trotted, and galloped for hours in the busy streets of South Korea’s capital before emergency workers tranquilized the animal and brought it back to a zoo.

The zebra — a male named Sero that was born in the zoo in 2021 — was in stable condition and being examined by veterinarians as of Thursday evening, said Choi Ye-ra, an official at the Children’s Grand Park in Seoul.

She said the zoo was investigating how the zebra managed to escape. She didn’t immediately confirm media reports that the animal partially destroyed the wooden fencing surrounding its pen before busting out around 2:50 p.m.

Social media was flowing with smartphone videos of the zebra trotting alongside lines of cars that were waiting for the greenlight at an intersection, and galloping through a street surrounded by commercial buildings as pedestrians stopped and gasped.

Police and emergency workers managed to corner the zebra after it entered a narrow alleyway between houses and shot it with tranquilizers, ending its three hours of freedom.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or property damage caused by the zebra running loose.

​ Orange County Register 

University, Corona del Mar lead Orange County into All-American boys tennis tournament

• March 23, 2023

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Defending champion University, featuring a new singles player to watch, is seeded third for the 22nd National High School Tennis All-American Boys Team Tournament set for Friday and Saturday in Orange County.

Punahou of Hawaii and Menlo of Atherton are the top two seeds for the 16-team tournament, which includes schools from Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland and Tennessee.

The tournament will mostly be played at University and Corona del Mar high schools before shifting to Palisades Tennis Club in Newport Beach for the championship and third-place match on Saturday.

Those last two matches are scheduled for 2:30 p.m., with the final set to be streamed at tennisallamerican.org.

University, ranked No. 1 in CIF-SS Open/Division 1, has added senior transfer James MacDonald, a former standout at Brentwood.

MacDonald is listed as five-star recruit by Tennis Recruiting Network and owns a UTR of 12.

He joins a lineup that includes senior Ani Gupta, a Claremont-Mudd-Scripps commit, and junior SangHyuk Im.

University opens the tournament Friday by playing host to Catalina Foothills of Arizona. If the Trojans win, they would face the winner of Harvard-Westlake-Memphis School of Tennessee in the quarterfinals later Friday.

Last season, University defeated Menlo 6-3 in the finals and went onto to claim the Ojai and CIF-SS Open Division.

Corona del Mar is Orange County’s other team to watch.

The Sea Kings, ranked fourth in the Open/Division 1, play host to Brophy Prep of Arizona in the first round on Friday. If the Sea Kings win, they will face the winner of Brunswick of Connecticut-Peninsula.

Corona del Mar is led by junior Niels Hoffmann, who recently committed to USC and holds a UTR of 12.

Peninsula’s lineup could feature Keaton Hance, the No. 1 freshman in California, according to Tennis Recruiting.

The teams will play matches featuring five singles sets and three doubles sets.

Please send tennis news to Dan Albano at [email protected] or @ocvarsityguy on Twitter

​ Orange County Register 

Steve Bisheff, longtime Southern California sports columnist, dies

• March 23, 2023

Steve Bisheff, who had a 42-year career as a sportswriter and columnist in Southern California, died Wednesday, March 22.

He was 81.

Bisheff wrote for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and for the San Diego Union-Tribune before joining the Orange County Register as a sports columnist. He retired from the Register in 2006.

He wrote many books. John Wooden, whom Bisheff got to know when he covered UCLA basketball for the Herald-Examiner, was a favorite subject.

Bisheff had battled cancer for the past three years, first being diagnosed with leukemia and later colon cancer.

He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Marsha, sons Scott and Greg, daughter Julie and grandson Wes. Services are pending.

Bisheff, a longtime resident of Irvine, was known as a sports fans’ sports columnist and that pleased him.

In his farewell column published in The Register in November of 2006, Bisheff wrote:

“I always felt my mission was to be the fan’s conduit, having access to clubhouses and locker rooms they couldn’t visit. It was my job to ask the questions they’d want to ask, to probe the issues they were talking and thinking about.”

Former Register sports columnist Mark Whicker, who worked with Bisheff for many years, said Bisheff was a fine teammate.

“He was an excellent columnist,” Whicker said. “Always current, always had a great feel for what was going on, and he had such a great history with the teams here and of course with the Chargers, too, when he was in San Diego. He had a great sense of humor, he was very proud of his family, and he was very well respected.”

In that farewell column, Bisheff looked back at the many moments he witnessed and chronicled in person …

“I was there for all of it. I covered Wooden and Auerbach. Koufax and Gibson. Ali and Frazier. Unitas and Montana.

“From the best seat in the house, I watched Reggie Jackson and Reggie Bush. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. Gary Beban and Matt Leinart. Bruce Jenner and Greg Louganis. Affirmed and Barbaro.”

Even in retirement, Bisheff continued to write. Bisheff’s Facebook posts about sports were really just Bisheff columns.

Bisheff’s farewell column included his memory of being a 13-year-old at the Los Angeles Coliseum for a Rams game and, looking up at the writers in the press box, figuring that being in that press box would be a very cool job.

“It’s funny, but the other day, sitting in the Coliseum before a USC game, I looked out into the stands and found myself drifting back all those years ago to when I was that crewcut teenager pointing up to the press box.

“I smiled and shook my head at the memory. I know I was very naive back then, but I was right about one thing.

“This has been a very cool job.”

​ Orange County Register 

Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland’s hypocritical housing stance

• March 23, 2023

Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland, a former California state legislator, has become a top voice for NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) as he leads his city in a taxpayer-funded legal battle against California housing mandates. It’s off-putting that a supposed conservative would take an extreme anti-property rights position, but that’s just the tip of his hypocrisy iceberg.

The Register reported this month that Strickland lives in a condominium “which was built for those who qualify to purchase units based on family income limits.” We don’t begrudge Strickland for living in this home, which his wife purchased with her former husband in 2000. But this type of project might not get off the ground if Strickland’s slow-growth policies take hold.

Related: Huntington Beach Republicans support local government tyranny over property rights

We’re not fans of government-subsidized housing, but we support efforts by the state to deregulate land uses and allow builders to create projects the market demands. Under Strickland’s leadership, Huntington Beach is using the “local control” mantra to defy housing laws – and keep owners from exercising their property rights. The city has even refused to process applications for granny flats.

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“This rapid, reckless, state-mandated re-development scheme threatens the health, safety and welfare of the city; it overburdens existing city infrastructure, damages environmentally sensitive areas of the city, and devalues affected private properties,” the city argued in its lawsuit against the state. Egads. Such attitudes explain why the state needed to pass a package of housing laws in the first place.

“The housing crisis facing families across the state demands that all cities and counties do their part, and those that flagrantly violate state housing laws will be held to account,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. It’s hard to disagree. What would Huntington Beach do if its residents flagrantly violated the city’s laws?

In response to news of his living situation, Strickland denies there’s hypocrisy because he supports affordable housing – but not the type “that guts our suburban coastal community.” So he’s fine with the kind of housing he likes and against the kind he doesn’t. Fortunately, one anti-property-rights mayor is unlikely to have the final say.

​ Orange County Register 

Janet Yellen’s (Johnny) Cash problem

• March 23, 2023

Johnny Cash has a lesson for Secretary Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department. In his classic rendition of Wayne Kemp’s “One Piece at a Time,” Cash describes how a worker on a Detroit assembly line put together a rather novel automobile by taking car parts from the factory over many years. If Secretary Yellen isn’t careful, a similar thing could happen to the U.S. tax base.

The administration’s budget, released just last week, proposes nearly $5 trillion in tax increases, including more than half a trillion specifically for multinational companies.

One of these tax hikes is a new global minimum tax, agreed to by OECD countries in 2021. Even though economists have warned of the anti-competitive consequences of this global minimum tax agreement, and Congress rejected such an approach last year,  Yellen doubled down on her support of the tax in her testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that, in part, it will help fund the president’s budget.

Revenue ambitions aside,   Yellen seems determined to downplay what will happen to U.S. tax revenues when foreign countries begin to adopt the global minimum tax. She told the tax-writing committee that the U.S. is not ceding taxing rights. I strongly disagree. Through this tax, the administration is giving away the U.S. tax base in two ways.

First, the new global minimum tax rules take priority over the U.S.’s current rules for taxing the foreign profits of U.S. companies. One such rule, the tax on global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI), was put in place during the 2017 tax reform to ensure U.S. foreign profits were sufficiently taxed even if firms paid low taxes abroad. The international tax agreement would supersede rules like this, and a slice of the current U.S. tax base would fall into the hands of foreign governments.

Second, the secretary has given foreign governments the ability to tax parts of the U.S. tax base that Congress has explicitly chosen not to tax. It’s no secret the corporate income tax system allows numerous credits and deductions that reduce tax revenue (often in an effort to spur investment and create jobs). Pundits call these “loopholes,” but we should really just call them “the law.” Regardless of one’s opinion of these provisions, they were put in place by elected members of Congress and signed into law by various presidents.

Now, large companies that take advantage of Congress’s incentives could get punished with higher taxes abroad. For example, say a U.S. company with a subsidiary in France claims a U.S. credit for research and development that puts them below the global minimum tax threshold. The French government would collect the difference. In other words, the global minimum tax would dull the U.S. government’s tax incentives — to the benefit of foreign countries. (The administration proposes ways to address this problem, but it’s a problem of their own design.)

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At a virtual event in March, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff for Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, confirmed these views. As the global minimum tax collects more money, U.S. provisions (like GILTI and the Inflation Reduction Act’s book income minimum tax) collect less — meaning less revenue for the U.S. The global minimum tax isn’t just diminishing taxes put in place by Trump, it’s undercutting those put into law by Biden too.

Dr. Barthold also pointed to other potential effects this global tax will have on the U.S. tax base. The carve-outs for investment and payroll costs in the global minimum tax will play a role in the decisions that multinationals make regarding where to invest or hire employees, potentially hurting investment in the U.S. and decreasing employment.

Unless the administration and Congress get on the same page about U.S. competitiveness and who holds authority over the U.S. tax base (hint: it’s Congress), then any new round of tax competition could favor foreign jurisdictions. American policymakers should focus on ensuring the U.S. remains an attractive destination for investment and employment by large companies.

If other countries increase taxes on the foreign income of U.S. companies and claw back U.S. credits for research and development, then soon those countries will have reassembled the U.S. tax base into a tax base of their own.

They’ll get it one piece at a time, and it won’t cost them a dime.

Daniel Bunn is president and CEO of the Tax Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

​ Orange County Register 

Lakers top Suns with a free-throw bonanza

• March 23, 2023

LOS ANGELES — On Wednesday night, the Lakers heard no sweeter sound than a whistle.

The sharp, staccato bursts from the officials were a soundtrack to another needed win.

In the next few weeks, the Lakers (36-37) might just be built best to play ugly: Against the Phoenix Suns (38-34), they pushed it to an entirely new level with a season-high 46 free-throw attempts in a 122-111 victory, their second straight.

Anthony Davis paced the evening with a team-best 27 points, going 10 for 18 from the field including a few tough floaters against a Suns team with an undermanned frontcourt. But the biggest mark was his 7-for-10 contribution to the Lakers’ 36-for-46 performance from the foul line, which punished the Suns early, to the point that they were bubbling over on the sideline in frustration.

Overall, the Lakers attempted 26 more free throws than the visitors and made 21 more of them. There’s a well-known rivalry between Suns point guard Chris Paul and chief official Scott Foster that was sure to be stoked anew after the game – Paul has complained before that Foster shows bias against his teams – but the Lakers weren’t complaining.

In fact, the Lakers moved back into play-in position after the Utah Jazz lost to Portland, another standings shuffle in a tight race that has half the teams in the Western Conference biting their fingernails – including, perhaps, Phoenix, which will have to endure injuries for the final few weeks of the season. With the win, the Lakers broke a nine-game losing streak against the Suns that dated to their 2021 first-round playoff series.

Fresh off of 46 points in his previous game, All-Star Devin Booker scorched the Lakers in the second half with 25 of his 33 points, finding a rhythm in his jumper after primary defender Jarred Vanderbilt struck foul trouble. The Suns needed Booker to be hot, with Paul facing foul issues of his own, and the team down Kevin Durant and Deandre Ayton to injury (neither traveled to Los Angeles).

The Lakers – who improved to 7-5 during LeBron James’ latest injury absence – were able to counter with a high-scoring night from their own backcourt, including Austin Reaves who cracked the starting lineup after a career night against Orlando. For a guard with a penchant to get to the line, it was the perfect night to stand out: Reaves enjoyed his third straight game with double-digit free-throw attempts, making 12 of 13.  He also made his mark making plays, drawing up a career-best 11 assists.

D’Angelo Russell had one of his better nights as a shooter, going 9 for 13 from the floor, including three 3-pointers. The guard had 18 of his points in the second half, bringing a shot of energy into an often plodding game.

The whistles were a factor early: By halftime, the Lakers had 27 attempts from the line, and it helped them gain ground after a largely back-and-forth start.

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The third quarter was starting to look like the one when everything clicked for the Lakers, especially Davis. The big man finally got a head of steam going against Phoenix’s short-handed frontcourt after getting looks at the free-throw line. In the span of a few minutes, he spun baseline against an overmatched Joc Landale for a dunk, then grabbed his own miss for a slam on the head of T.J. Warren. Back-to-back jumpers toward the end of the third were an indicator of his rhythm: Davis wound up scoring 14 points in the quarter.

But the Lakers have had a nasty habit of finishing quarters poorly, a trend that continued in the third on a six-point swing. After Cam Payne knocked down a 3-pointer, Wenyen Gabriel put the ball down on the court to waste clock – without realizing Landry Shamet was positioned for a snatch. The Suns guard finished with an and-one layup, and the Lakers were just a slightly off-target Booker 3-point attempt away from going into the fourth quarter in a tie.

The Lakers have another key game on Friday against the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team they can earn a tiebreaker against, and one they might need down the stretch.

More to come on this story.

​ Orange County Register