Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris said President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr are “spending full time” in a different reality when it comes to racism in the justice system.
“The reality of America today is what we have seen over generations and, frankly, since our inception, which is we do have two systems of justice in America,” Harris said to CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that aired Sunday on “State of the Union,“ in response to Barr’s comments that there are not two systems of justice for Black and white Americans.
“I don't think that most reasonable people who are paying attention to the facts would dispute that there are racial disparities and a system that has engaged in racism,” she added. “There's no question that we have seen an unacceptable incidence for generations of unarmed Black men being killed. Nobody can deny that.”
In an interview Wednesday on CNN, Barr acknowledged “there are some situations where statistics would suggest” people of color are treated differently than white people but said the justice system was not inherently racist.
Harris, a former prosecutor who served as attorney general of California, also said charges should be considered for the white police officer who shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old unarmed Black man, in Kenosha, Wis.
“I am not in full position of the facts of the case,” Harris said. “But based on what I've seen, I think that charges very much should be considered and should be considered in a very serious way and that there should be accountability and consequence.”
When asked about the suspension of a group of police officers involved in the suffocation death of a 41-year-old Black man, Daniel Prude, in Rochester, New York, Harris said she expects the state’s attorney general to “review all of the evidence and make the appropriate decision.”
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Donald Trumps former ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen is set to release a tell-all book about his experiences working with the businessman-turned-president
President Donald Trump‘s disgraced former lawyer Michael Cohen is the latest Trump ex-insider to craft a book detailing their experiences in the Trump orbit, and the forthcoming tell-all goes into detail about Trump’s hatred for his predecessor, according to CNN.
In the book, which CNN says it obtained a copy prior to its Tuesday release, Cohen wrote that Trump, years before he jumped onto the campaign trail, went so far as to hire a lookalike of then-President Barack Obama to ridicule and fire what he called a “Faux-Bama.”
Cohen, who was Trump’s personal lawyer, writes in his book “Disloyal: A Memoir” that Trump was enamored with contempt for Obama, something that Trump has put on display as a notorious sounding board of the “birther” movement that questioned if Obama was born in America.
In the book, Cohen, a self-described “fixer,” writes that Trump felt Obama only received his education at Columbia University and Harvard Law School due to “f—ing affirmative action,” as stated by Business Insider. He even called Obama a “Manchurian candidate,” meaning that he was a puppet to enemy powers.
Cohen, who was convicted of campaign finance violations and tax fraud in 2018 for his part in Trump’s 2016 campaign, said that he once hired, what he called, a “Faux-Bama,” to come to his office so he could ridicule him.
Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump testifies before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill February 27, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The book states that Trump intended to use the actor in a video in which he “ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him,” according to the CNN report.
According to Deadline, the video was intended to play at the 2012 Republican National Convention, when Mitt Romney was running against Obama for his second term. The video didn’t air due to the RNC being canceled for a day due to Hurricane Isaac.
The video has since resurfaced on the internet. Trump is seen interrogating the “Faux-Obama” in a performance review-style set-up of his first term, holding an Obama resume, grilling him about how “the private sector is dying,” and how to improve his golf swing.
In the end, Trump tells the lookalike “You’re fired,” mimicking his catchphrase from his popular ABC reality show, “The Apprentice.“
Trump has worn his contempt for former Obama on his sleeve ever since he took office in 2009.
Aside from the birther movement and attempting to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Trump constantly tweeted disparaging critiques about Obama during his two terms in the White House and continues to this day.
One of those tweets, “President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States,” was humorously read by Obama on NBC‘s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” weeks before the election in 2016.
“Well, @realdonaldtrump, At least I will go down as a president,” Obama quipped in reaction, simultaneously dropping the phone like dropping the mic.
We all know how that turned out.
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Brian Argrett, chief executive of City First Bank, talks merging with Broadway Financial and the importance of minority-led banks
NEW YORK (AP) — Last month majority Black-owned banks City First Bank of Washington DC and Broadway Financial of Los Angeles said they would merge to create the U.S.’s largest minority deposit institution, or MDI.
MDIs are banks and financial service companies majority owned by racial and ethnic minorities. They often function as conduits to poverty-stricken neighborhoods, providing low cost loans and access to capital that wouldn’t typically be available.
City First CEO Brian Argrett will be CEO of the new bank once the merger is completed in early 2021. The combined bank will have roughly $850 million in deposits and $1 billion in assets. He spoke to The Associated Press about the merger and why minority-led institutions are important for racial and ethnic minorities to get a leg up.
Q: How did you start working at City First?
A: I like to call myself an accidental banker. I ran a small business investment company for many years. We were focused on providing financing to women and minority entrepreneurs. I joined City in 2011, after the financial crisis. City First was a lot smaller when I joined, so we worked to grow on that foundation.
A: Minority communities have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. More deaths. More wealth destruction. We saw this as an opportunity to help our communities even more. We did $30 million in loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, most of that going to minority-led businesses, non-profits and advocacy groups. We also did 1,300 loans through a program started by the Washington, D.C. mayor’s office.
CFBanc CEO Brian Argrett (CFBanc Corporation via AP)
Q: Why does the country need minority deposit institutions?
A: We have all seen the compounding impacts from centuries of racial inequities in this country – social unrest, higher unemployment, poverty. Economic injustice is at the root of racial injustice. That’s why the work of MDIs and community deposit financial institutions are more important than ever – they are squarely focused on these inequities like getting capital to those who truly need it.
Q: Why did City First and Broadway pursue this merger?
A: This merger was in discussion for over a year, well before COVID. We focus on housing, non-profit finance and small business financing. Broadway also focuses on commercial lending and has a very strong affordable housing practice in Southern California. We’ll be able to increase the amounts of capital we can offer and offer more systemic solutions for the issues we talked about earlier. This is about creating a national platform where we can scale our solutions to help with these problems impacting these communities.
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A jury will investigate the death of Prude after video shows Rochester police placed a hood over his head and held him down.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — New York’s attorney general on Saturday moved to form a grand jury to investigate the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died earlier this year after Rochester police placed a hood over his head and held him down.
“The Prude family and the Rochester community have been through great pain and anguish,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement about Prude’s death, which has sparked nightly protests and calls for reform. She said the grand jury would be part of an “exhaustive investigation.”
State Attorney General Letitia James announces a lawsuit against e-cigarette giant Juul on November 19, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Prude’s death after his brother called for help for his erratic behavior in March has roiled New York’s third-largest city since video of the encounter was made public earlier this week, with protesters demanding more accountability for how it happened and legislation to change how authorities respond to mental health emergencies.
“This is just the beginning,” Ashley Gantt, a protest organizer, said by email after James’ announcement. “We will not be stopped in our quest for truth and justice.”
Hundreds of protesters gathered Saturday for a fourth night on the street where Prude, naked and handcuffed, was held face-down as snow fell. Policy body camera video shows officers covering Prude’s head with a “spit hood,” designed to protect police from bodily fluids, then pressing his face into the pavement for two minutes.
Prude died a week later after he was taken off life support.
The Monroe County medical examiner listed the manner of death as homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” Excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, were contributing factors, the report said.
A police internal affairs investigation cleared the officers involved of any wrongdoing, concluding in April that their “actions and conduct displayed when dealing with Prude appear to be appropriate and consistent with their training.”
James’ office opened its investigation the same month. Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are often turned over to the attorney general’s office, rather than handled by local officials.
Police union officials have said the officers were strictly following department training and protocols.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier this week called on James to expedite the probe.
“Today, I applaud Attorney General Tish James for taking swift, decisive action in empaneling a grand jury,” Cuomo said in a statement Saturday. “Justice delayed is justice denied and the people of New York deserve the truth.”
Mayor Lovely Warren, who is under pressure to resign over how long it took for Prude’s death to become public, thanked James for taking the action in what she called “a trying time in Rochester.”
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren. (Photo: Spectrum News)
Protesters on Saturday continued to criticize Warren and Police Chief La’Ron Singletary, walking and bicycling from the site of Prude’s detention to City Hall, where they again called for them to step down.
Also Saturday, the attorney for several people struck by a car as they protested Prude’s death in New York City said police have opened a criminal investigation now that victims have come forward to file a police report. Sanford Rubenstein said two of those struck Thursday when the Ford Taurus drove through the crowd in Times Square have been interviewed by police and three others will meet with investigators next week.
The group wants the driver charged with reckless endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon.
Advocates say Prude’s death and the actions of the seven now-suspended Rochester police officers demonstrate how police are ill-equipped to deal with people suffering mental problems.
Activists have marched nightly in the city of 210,000 on Lake Ontario since the police body camera footage of the encounter with Prude was released by his family Wednesday.
Friday night’s protest resulted in 11 arrests, police said. As they had the night before, officers doused activists at police headquarters with a chemical spray and fired what appeared to be pepper balls to drive them from barricades around the building.
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It’s not over.Power Book II: Ghost picks up shortly after the earth-shattering events of the original series’ finale as Tariq St. Patrick grapples with a new world order: his father dead and his mother, Tasha, facing charges for the murder her son committed.
Tariq is front and center. We may be tired of Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) and his antics but he’s leading the charge this time around. He’ll be struggling to do what he needs to do to get his inheritance at the Ivy League university he’s attending while he works to get his mom out of jail.
Famous faces. Truly on his own for the first time in his life, Tariq is forced to split his time between school and hustling to pay for Davis MacLean (Method Man), the fame-hungry defense lawyer who is Tasha’s only hope of getting out of jail and escaping prosecution by newly minted U.S. Attorney Cooper Saxe.
Method Man stars as defense attorney Davis Maclean in Power Book II: Ghost. (Photo: Starz)
With no better options, Tariq turns to the familiar drug game, entangling himself with a cutthroat family headed by Monet Stewart Tejada (Mary J. Blige), that’s been at it for far longer than him. As Tariq tries to balance his drug operation with his grades, love life, and family, he figures out that the only way to avoid the same fate his father met is to become him — only better.
New faces. The Tejada family is bringing brand new drama and several new faces to the franchise. Expect new characters Lauren Baldwin (Paige Hurd), Dru Tejada (Lovell Adams-Gray), and Diana Tejada (LaToya Tonodeo), and Cane Tejada (Woody McClain) to breathe new life into the series.
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