Amid Fetal Tissue Investigation, Republicans Seek Legal Action Against StemExpress

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Republicans on a special House panel are recommending that StemExpress and its CEO be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over accounting records. The company came under scrutiny after last year’s undercover videos of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s top abortion provider.

Republicans on the panel, which is investigating the market for tissue from aborted babies, see the accounting records as crucial for the investigation.

“To date, the panel has never received a single accounting record from StemExpress,” Republicans on the Select Investigative Panel said in a new staff report. “No names of key personnel have been provided by [StemExpress CEO] Ms. Dyer so that the panel might conduct interviews, and the cost estimates have been ambiguous and inadequate.”

StemExpress is a for-profit biotechnology company that procures tissue from abortion clinics such as Planned Parenthood. StemExpress then transfers that tissue to medical researchers.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, chairman of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, will hold a procedural vote on Wednesday to hold the biotechnology company in contempt of Congress. Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, is aiming to force StemExpress and its CEO Catherine Dyer to comply with congressional subpoenas by using the force of the U.S. Justice Department in order to make the company release its full accounting records.

Before the Justice Department would take action against StemExpress, several more steps would need to occur after Wednesday’s vote. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will also need to hold a procedural vote before it can advance to the full U.S. House of Representatives. It is unclear when Republicans would schedule those votes with the House planning to recess at the end of September or earlier.

The Daily Signal reached out to StemExpress, which claimed it has already complied with congressional records requests.

“StemExpress offered to testify before the select panel, but this offer was ignored,” a spokesman for the company said. “Several House and Senate committees have reviewed our accounting records and closed their investigations. We have provided hundreds of documents to the select panel, including accounting records, both voluntarily and in response to subpoenas. All Americans should be concerned that a congressional panel can use the threat of contempt proceedings to support a narrative that flies in the face of the facts.”

Republicans claim that StemExpress has failed to provide investigators complete copies of accounting records in an attempt to slow walk or stonewall their efforts.

Instead, as they outlined in their latest staff report, StemExpress has provided investigators summary documents of the company’s financial records that “fell far short of actual accounting documents.” Throughout the investigation, StemExpress has maintained that releasing documents with personal information could put individuals at risk.

Questions about whether middleman companies such as StemExpress profit off the sale of fetal tissue were raised in a series of undercover videos produced by the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress. The videos featured employees at StemExpress and Planned Parenthood discussing the sale of fetal tissue. Both companies have denied illegal activity, and Planned Parenthood has since stopped taking reimbursements for fetal tissue donations.

Accounting documents, Republicans say, are needed to determine whether StemExpress profited from the sale of fetal tissue, which the 1993 National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act prohibits. However, it is legal to provide and accept payment to cover reasonable costs for “transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.”

The panel’s ranking member Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, blasted Blackburn and the select panel for attempting to hold StemExpress in criminal contempt of Congress.

“Chair Blackburn has manufactured a controversy over information that she does not need,” Schakowsky said in a press release. “Her threat to punish a small biotechnology company and its owner is particularly outrageous given the company’s compliance with her unilateral subpoena demands. The McCarthyesque threat that StemExpress ‘name names’ of all employees or face congressional contempt is disgraceful.”

Republicans sent StemExpress multiple document requests—including subpoenas—since the panel was established on Oct. 7, 2015. On Sept. 8, 2016, Blackburn “provided one last offer to Stem Express and Ms. Dyer to comply with the subpoenas.”

“Having exhausted its efforts to obtain compliance from the subpoena recipients,” the majority’s staff report reads, “Chairman Blackburn recommends that StemExpress, LLC, and Catherine Spears Dyer be held in contempt for their willful failure to fully comply with the panel’s subpoenas issued to them.” (For more from the author of “Amid Fetal Tissue Investigation, Republicans Seek Legal Action Against StemExpress” please click HERE)

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Inspired Attacks Show Strength of Islamic State, Experts Say

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After the terrorist attacks this weekend, President Barack Obama acknowledged a link between the central Islamic State and lone bad actors, even as the administration has frequently drawn a distinction in the past.

National security experts believe terror attacks “inspired” by the radical groups are just as dangerous—potentially more so—than if ISIS draws up the plan of attack.

The independent bad actors are clearly “executing the will of the organization,” said Bill Roggio, the editor of The Long War Journal.

“ISIS says, if you can’t come down here and fight with us, fight at home, it might even be better,” Roggio, also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “ISIS and al-Qaeda are a greater movement where in many cases these people pledge their allegiance to the groups.”

Roggio noted the attacks in New York and New Jersey are certainly similar to past terror attacks.

“The attack patterns follow the past patterns; a bomb in a populated area, similar to Boston. The execution was sloppy. but the planning and coordination were good,” Roggio said.

Over the weekend, a pipe bomb exploded at the location where a charity race for Marines and sailors was set to take place later in New Jersey. No one was harmed because the area was empty at the time of the explosion. Also, a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel—similar to what was used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack—exploded in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, where 29 people were injured.

Additionally, in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a man stabbed eight people at a shopping center, talking about Allah and Islam. All of the victims survived. The attacker was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer before he could harm anyone else. The Islamic State claimed credit for the attack.

But there is no evidence that any of the attacks were linked to a foreign terror organization or cell.

Obama addressed the weekend’s terror attacks on Monday in New York ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, asserting the Islamic State is losing. Obama said:

We will continue to lead the global coalition in the fight to destroy ISIL, which is instigating a lot of people over the internet to carry out attacks. We are going to continue to go after them. We’re going to take out their leaders. We’re going to take out their infrastructure. They are continuing to lose ground in Iraq and in Syria … As we take away more of their territory, it exposes ISIL as the failed cause that it is, and it helps to undermine their ideology, which over time will make it harder for them to recruit and inspire people to violence.

In July, CNN host Jake Tapper challenged Secretary of State John Kerry’s insistence that the Islamic State is “on the run,” pointing out several terrorist attacks that were inspired by the Sunni militant group.

Kerry responded, “It depends on where you mean ISIS,” drawing a distinction between an inspired attack and one plotted and carried out by the central organization.

“If people are inspired, they’re inspired, but ISIL which is based in Syria is under huge pressure and that is just a fact … If you’re saying that one person standing up one day and killing people is a reflection of ISIS moving in Iraq and Syria, I think you’re dead wrong.”

In two high-profile cases this summer, an ISIS-inspired attacker killed 49 in Orlando and another ISIS-inspired attacker murdered 84 in Nice, France, during a Bastille Day celebration.

Inspired attacks are actually worse, argued James Carafano, vice president for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

“It is way worse when an organization doesn’t have to invest its assets and infrastructure, and can simply outsource terror for free,” Carafano told The Daily Signal. “The notion that ISIS didn’t draw up the attack plans so we are somehow better off is utterly stupid. For ISIS this is free lunch.”

The Islamic State is still able to energize people to join its fight, which demonstrates that the United States and the West haven’t sufficiently weakened the group to the point that it is perceived as weak, Carafano said.

“The inspired attacks show that ISIS is able to take the fight to the enemy and hurt the enemy when people are acting on its behalf,” Carafano said.

In some respects, if anyone is winning, it would be the Islamic State by virtue of still being in existence after two years of fighting with the United States and other powerful Western countries, said Jim Hanson, executive vice president at the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank.

“Whether it is al-Qaeda or ISIS, this is a civil jihad movement that doesn’t have to have a hierarchy like a Fortune 500 corporation, it’s the ideology that links them,” Hanson said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.

“The ideology links them enough to say online, ‘If you believe as we do in Sharia law and that Islam should dominate, you are one of us,’” Hanson, a former Army Special Forces sergeant, added. (For more from the author of “Inspired Attacks Show Strength of Islamic State, Experts Say” please click HERE)

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Retired Navy Chaplain Says Military Is Now Hostile to Christianity

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Newly retired Navy chaplain Wes Modder said in a recent interview that the military has become openly hostile to Christianity.

In an interview with OneNewsNow, Modder, who the Navy tried to fire in 2015 for failing to act properly “in [a] diverse and pluralistic environment,” said that Christians need to understand if they remain in uniform, they will be attacked by military officials hostile to their beliefs.

The problem is even worse for Christians just now joining the military.

“If you’re a Christian and you come into the military today, it’s going to be difficult for you,” Modder added.

Modder was serving at the Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston, South Carolina, with regard from his superiors, but that all changed in 2014. A gay lieutenant junior grade officer poked and prodded Modder during private counseling sessions to answer questions about homosexuality and same-sex marriage the officer knew would land him in hot water.

At the time, Modder had no idea the officer was gay.

“I came to find out later that he was a gay activist, and I was targeted,” Modder told OneNewsNow. “And, of course, the chaplain I was working with at this Navy Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston — she was a very liberal United Methodist command chaplain. She decided to escalate it, brought charges that I was intolerant [and] not able to function in a diverse pluralistic environment.”

The officer then carefully noted the answers provided and used them to build a case against Modder, who previously had earned high praise from his commander officer Capt. Jon R. Fahs, namely that as a chaplain he was “the best of the best.”

Five months later, Fahs turned on Modder and said he discriminated against his students, creating an open controversy about religious freedom in the military.

With a complaint in hand from Equal Opportunity representatives, the Navy removed Modder from his duties.

The Navy attempted to fire the chaplain, but the investigation found that the case was remarkably weak, leading to the removal of the “Detachment for Cause” action against him. First Liberty, a legal defense group focused on religious liberty, provided representation for Modder, allowing him to retire after 20 years of service on September 6 with an honorable discharge and medal of accommodation. (For more from the author of “Retired Navy Chaplain Says Military Is Now Hostile to Christianity” please click HERE)

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Appeals Court Reverses Ruling Banning NC County’s Prayers

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit yesterday reversed and remanded a lower court’s decision that Rowan County, North Carolina, commissioners’ prayers before public meetings violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

In a 2-1 ruling written by Judge Steven Agee, with Judge Dennis Shedd concurring, the court determined that Rowan County’s practice of an invocation before meetings was not unconstitutional, as plaintiffs, who were represented by the ACLU, had charged. Judge Wilkinson dissented.

In February of 2012, the ACLU sent a letter to the Rowan County Board of Commissioners objecting to the pre-meeting prayers. Although the Board didn’t respond formally, several commissioners stated their intent to continue to express their Christian faith through prayers. According to the majority opinion, one then-commissioner stated, “I will continue to pray in Jesus’ name. I am not perfect so I need all the help I can get, and asking for guidance for my decisions from Jesus is the best I, and Rowan County, can ever hope for.”

Plaintiffs “alleged that the prayer practice unconstitutionally affiliated the Board with one particular faith and caused them to feel excluded as ‘outsiders.’” Plaintiffs sought an injunction preventing any future prayers, and moved for a preliminary injunction on the basis that “sectarian legislative prayer was a constitutional violation.”

Judge James A. Beaty, Jr., Senior District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, ruled in May of 2015 that the Rowan County commissioners violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment since almost all of the prayers offered before public meetings invoked the Christian faith.

Yesterday’s majority opinion recalled, citing an earlier case as support, that the Founders appointed official chaplains to open sessions in prayer and it is a tradition continued today:

Observing that legislative invocations containing explicitly religious themes were accepted at the time of the first Congress and remain vibrant today, the Court concluded, “[a]n insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with [our accepted] tradition of legislative prayer.”

The Court reversed and remanded the earlier ruling, stating that:

The Board’s legislative prayer practice falls within our recognized tradition and does not coerce participation by nonadherents. It is therefore constitutional. The district court erred in concluding to the contrary.

Chris Brook, Legal Director for the ACLU of North Carolina, was disappointed with the ruling and pledged to ask the Fourth Circuit to review the decision en banc, or by all 15 judges. “Today’s ruling is out of step with the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty for all, and we will ask the full appellate court to review this decision,” he said, adding that, “Rowan County residents should be able to attend local government meetings without being coerced to participate in a sectarian prayer or worry that the commissioners may discriminate against them if they do not.”

Brett Harvey, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom and co-counsel for Defendants, stated that “All Americans, including public servants, should have the freedom to pray without being censored … the First Amendment affirms the liberty of Americans to pray according to their consciences before public meetings. For that reason, the 4th Circuit rightly upheld Rowan County’s prayer policy, which is clearly constitutional.”

Rowan County Commission Chairman Greg Edds said the Board was very pleased with the court’s decision, adding that, “Our attorneys are currently working through the decision and we will know more about it in the coming days.”

Monday’s decision overrules the injunction on prayer imposed by Judge Beaty. (For more from the author of “Appeals Court Reverses Ruling Banning NC County’s Prayers” please click HERE)

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John Boehner Rises From the Ashtray of Political Defeat to Become a Tobacco Lobbyist

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John Boehner has cashed out.

That is the news from The Intercept, which describes how the former Speaker of the House is “monetizing his decades of political relationships and cashing out to serve some of the most powerful special interests in the world.”

In other words, in less than one year since leaving Congress, Boehner has become a lobbyist. Lee Fang and The Intercept report:

Boehner is joining Squire Patton Boggs, a lobbying firm that peddles its considerable influence on behalf of a number of foreign nations, including most notably the People’s Republic of China. Serving Beijing is somewhat appropriate: Boehner has long been a supporter of unfettered trade, helping to lead the effort to grant Most Favored Nation status to China. Squire Patton Boggs also represents a long list of corporate clients, including AT&T, Amazon.com, Goldman Sachs & Co., Royal Dutch Shell, and the Managed Funds Association, a trade group for the largest hedge funds in the country.

Boehner is signing onto Squire Patton Boggs “as a strategic advisor to clients in the U.S. and abroad, and will focus on global business development.”

The news comes just a week after the announcement that Boehner will be joining the board of Reynolds American, the tobacco company responsible for brands such as Camel and Newport cigarettes. The tobacco board seat will likely earn Boehner over $400,000 a year in stock and cash. The Squire Patton Boggs salary has not been disclosed, but lawmakers of Boehner’s stature have easily obtained salaries at similar gigs in the seven-figure range.

This was entirely predictable. K Street is a revolving door for former politicians who seek to make a quick buck using the relationships they have built in the legislature to dance bills to the tune of lobbying firms.

Boehner has always served special interests. Now he’s just doing it from outside Congress, instead of inside. (For more from the author of “John Boehner Rises From the Ashtray of Political Defeat to Become a Tobacco Lobbyist” please click HERE)

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Senate Backroom Spending Deal Will Only Get Worse

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If Congressional Republicans lose the election, it won’t be because they were too conservative. In fact, quite the contrary. Since Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015, there have been embarrassingly few conservative victories.

Instead, this Republican Congress is better known for making deals with President Obama than for standing with conservatives. After all, in the first year Republicans controlled Congress since 2006, they helped add $1.2 trillion in new deficit spending. That’s not so conservative.

Yet, the 114th Congress is quickly coming to a close. But before Republicans can return to the campaign trail, they must pass a short-term spending bill, known as a Continuing Resolution (CR), before government funding runs dry on October 1. However, negotiations between Senate Republican leadership and Democrats are like perpetual moments of deja vu.

As in the past, Republicans seem resigned to surrender to Democrats in backroom deals; and Democrats appear to be comfortable with their ability to outwit Republicans.

We already know that Republicans have surrendered to Obama’s demands for a 10-week CR, which will require Congress to legislate during the lame-duck session. And the dangers of a lame duck, the time between the election and a new Congress, should be obvious by now.

A primary sticking point has been funding to fight the Zika virus. Earlier this summer, disagreements over how the funding could be utilized led to an impasse. In particular, Democrats wanted emergency Zika funding to be used for Planned Parenthood.

This impasse has now been ironed out, or at least the Democrats did the ironing. It didn’t take much for Republicans to surrender to Democrat demands to use part of the Zika funds for Planned Parenthood.

You may think that the Republican surrender on Planned Parenthood illustrates just how feckless Republicans truly are, but it gets worse.

If you didn’t already know, the Zika virus is spread by mosquitos. Republicans, sensibly, wanted funding to also include a temporary moratorium on the permits generally required for mosquito pesticides. The moratorium would have allowed farmers and others to spray specific pesticides near bodies of water. Instead, Democrats made clear they prioritize the environment over people’s health; Republicans caved to those demands too.

Really, you can’t make this up. The United States Congress wants to fight bugs, but won’t make it easy to get the permits that would allow homeowners, farmers, towns and cities to actually do it.

Then there’s the discussion involving more “emergency funding.” Republicans want additional money to fund Louisiana’s flood disaster, while Democrats are requesting additional federal funds for the Flint City water crisis.

This issue shouldn’t even be debated in a short term funding bill. The Disaster Relief Fund currently has $12 billion available, today, to address immediate needs and disaster mitigation. Instead of using money normally dedicated to long-term disaster needs, like housing and reconstruction, Congress should use the billions of dollars they already have set aside.

As conservatives, these constant charades over spending are what we have all come to expect. So, too, are the backroom deals negotiated by Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 42%) and Democrats. Far too often, these terrible deals are pieced together without the input of other Republican senators, and voted on merely hours later.

Republicans are negotiating these terrible deals just weeks before they have to stand for reelection and ask voters to send them back to Washington. If they’re already willing to sell out this close to the election, just imagine what they’ll feel free to do in the lame duck — once they’ve already been reelected.

Buckle your seat belts, guys. Congressional Republicans are about to take us all for a very bumpy ride. (For more from the author of “Senate Backroom Spending Deal Will Only Get Worse” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Three Worst Lies in His Last UN Address

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It was hard to pick only three of the worst lies from Barack Obama’s speech today, but we did it.

LIE ONE

Remember when Barack Obama said Republicans are afraid of widows and orphans, that was right before women and children became suicide bombers. He’s still saying it and it’s patently untrue.

The Breitbart London editor picked up this massive lie by Barack Obama. He actually lied to the UN with statistics that directly contradict those of the UN. He’s lied to them before. Take the lie about the video causing the Benghazi “protest”.

LIE TWO

Globalist Obama just plain lied about poverty in the U.S.

During his speech, the president said, “Last year, poverty in this country fell at the fastest rate in nearly 50 years. And with further investment in infrastructure and early childhood education and basic research, I’m confident that such progress will continue.”

It’s an absolutely provable lie. Poverty Levels Under Barack Obama SKYROCKET To 50-Year Record High, as The Washington Times reported,

LIE THREE

Obama thinks he solved the Iranian nuclear crisis. He’s made it worse. Look at how much the Iranians respect us now – constantly harassing our ships. We sure taught them.

His opening paragraph was a massive lie but my favorite was him saying he solved the Iranian nuclear crisis with diplomacy.

“From the depths of the greatest financial crisis of our time, we coordinated our response to avoid further catastrophe and return the global economy to growth. We’ve taken away terrorist safe havens, strengthened the nonproliferation regime, resolved the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy.”

The Iranian nuclear deal guarantees Iran will have the bomb and he sent them billions in wire transfers to help them proliferate and lied about it. How is that strengthening the nonproliferation regime?

Barack Obama doesn’t believe in the United States or any sovereign nation, he believes in globalism. He wants to redistribute our wealth throughout the world and the other nations will readily take it but if he thinks dictators will give up their little fiefdoms, he’s truly insane.

The entire speech proves he lives in an alternative universe. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Three Worst Lies in His Last UN Address” please click HERE)

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BOMBSHELL: The New York Times Dispels 3-Year-Long Accusation That Trump Bribed Fla. AG Bondi

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The mainstream media has been breathlessly running headlines like this one from The Chicago Times, “Trump signed improper charity check supporting Florida attorney general,” alleging that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump bribed Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (another Republican) in order to avoid prosecution. For three years now, zealous reporters have tried to find a smoking gun revealing impropriety in Trump’s campaign donation.

Now The New York Times says there’s almost certainly no smoking gun to find.

A Matter of Days

The US Supreme Court recently held in the landmark public corruption case, McDonnell v. U.S., that bribery requires that the person giving the donation get something for it. According to the Federal Code (18 U.S. Code § 201), not only must something of value have been offered to a public official, but it must be shown to have influenced that public official’s behavior for the contributor’s benefit.

The train of events began when several attorneys general filed complaints against Trump a few years ago, claiming that he fraudulently marketed Trump University’s real estate and wealth-building seminars. On September 13, 2013, a Florida newspaper published the story that Bondi’s office was investigating Trump and might join the other attorneys general in a suit.

Four days after that, Bondi’s PAC received $25,000 from Trump. (Several months later, Trump threw a $3,000 a plate fundraiser for her at Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and she’s become a prominent supporter.)

Complaints were filed with local authorities and the FBI’s public corruption unit alleging bribery to stop Bondi’s office from investigating him too. But after Bondi’s office released 8,000 documents in response to a public records request, even The New York Times admitted that the check had been written and signed four days before the story broke in the media that Bondi’s office was considering investigating Trump University.

Additionally, the Times reports about Trump’s donations in Florida that “he has contributed at least $375,000 to state and federal candidates and political committees here since 1995, accounting for 19 percent of the roughly $2 million he has given to campaigns nationwide, other than his own.” Bondi said she personally solicited the donation from Trump, who had already contributed $500 to her campaign in July.

The Times isn’t giving Trump a clean bill of health, however. The press had reported in 2010 that “the attorneys general of Florida and Texas had gotten complaints from Trump University students. “His contribution, therefore, could have been a pre-emptive investment to discourage Ms. Bondi from joining the New York case.”

No Evidence of Bribery

In the article , the Times said it could find no evidence in the released records that Bondi herself even was aware of the initial review being done by her office. This was not unusual. Most of the complaints came to her predecessor, who said he had not known about them, the Times reported, as did his two top deputies and others in the consumer protection division.

In fact, the chief of the consumer protection section wrote in an internal email in 2011 that the office was holding off on any investigation of Trump University. When Mark Hamilton, a lawyer in the consumer protection division, heard about the media outcry in 2013, he advised the office that any lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General against Trump University would apply to Floridians, so there was no need for the Florida AG to duplicate the work.

Now, Trump did make a mistake in writing the check from his charitable organization, not his personal account, which he blamed on a staff clerical error, and reimbursed his charity with $25,000 in personal funds. He also paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS over the mistake.

Mac Stipanovich, who the Times describes as “a longtime Florida Republican strategist and lobbyist who disdains Mr. Trump and has never worked with Ms. Bondi,” observed, “The optics are terrible even though there is not a shred of evidence that Pam Bondi solicited a bribe or that Donald Trump provided one.”

Although the Times has (mostly) cleared Trump, most of the rest of the mainstream news outlets are still claiming he behaved improperly and they are exaggerating the seriousness of the check confusion. Fortunately for Trump, the top newspaper in the country, which is left-leaning, has told a different story. (For more from the author of “BOMBSHELL: The New York Times Dispels 3-Year-Long Accusation That Trump Bribed Fla. AG Bondi” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Is George H.W. Bush Planning to Vote for Hillary Clinton?

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Former President George H.W. Bush, a veteran Republican, plans to cast his ballot for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Election Day, according to a daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

According to several reports, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend, a Democrat, posted a photo to her private Facebook account Monday of her shaking hands with the former commander in chief, along with the caption, “The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!”

Bush, 92, has remained largely silent on the presidential election since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president, beating his son, Jeb Bush, and several other competitors in a bruising primary battle.

In a phone interview with Politico, Townsend confirmed the report, telling the outlet she met with the elder Bush in Maine earlier Monday, where she said he revealed his choice for president.

“That’s what he said,” Townsend, who served as Maryland’s lieutenant governor for eight years, told Politico. (Read more from “Is George H.W. Bush Planning to Vote for Hillary Clinton?” HERE)

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Suspect in New York, New Jersey Bombings Charged With Shooting Officer, Awaits Federal Charges

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The Afghan immigrant who authorities believe planted bombs in New Jersey and New York this weekend was captured Monday after a dramatic gun battle with police that sparked when officers found him sleeping in the doorway of a bar.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was charged late Monday in Union County with five counts of attempted murder of a police officer. He was being held on $5.2 million bail and remained at a hospital. It wasn’t known if Rahami had an attorney, as messages left with phone numbers listed for family members by the Associated Press weren’t returned. Federal charges in the bombings have yet to be filed.

Rahami is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was identified as the primary person of interest in the Saturday night blast in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, an explosion in New Jersey’s Seaside Park on Saturday morning and a foiled bomb attack Sunday night near a train station in Elizabeth, NJ.

The hunt for the alleged bomber turned out to be brief. A bar owner in Linden, NJ spotted a man sleeping in his doorway Monday morning and called police. An officer confronted the man around 10:45 a.m., and soon recognized the person as Rahami, officials said. Rahami pulled out a gun and shot the officer, identified by the Linden mayor’s office as Angel Padilla, in the abdomen. Padilla was wearing a bulletproof vest.

A second police officer, identified as Investigator Pete Hammer, had a bullet graze his head. Both officers were expected to be okay. (Read more from “Suspect in New York, New Jersey Bombings Charged With Shooting Officer, Awaits Federal Charges” HERE)

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