by Dave Williams | Jun 27, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Rules aimed at making Thursday night’s presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump more civil than their debates four years ago didn’t stop the two combatants from mixing it up.
No audience was present to rile up the candidates during the 90-minute debate hosted by CNN. When the moderator asked a question of Biden or Trump, the other candidate’s microphone was turned off to keep them from interrupting each other.
But the two still managed to fire a barrage of accusations, blaming each other for the rise in inflation and calling each other the worst president in U.S. history.
The debate was held in Atlanta, where Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted last summer on charges of participating in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The Fulton County case is just one of four criminal indictments of Trump, including his conviction in New York City last month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to an ex-porn star to cover up a sexual relationship.
Trump blamed his legal woes on Biden.
“He goes after his political opponent because he can’t beat him fair and square,” he said.
Trump also noted that the conviction boosted his standing with voters.
“My poll numbers went up and we took in more money in the last two weeks than we’ve ever taken in in the history of my campaign because the public knows it’s a scam,” he said.
Biden called out Trump for his response to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by Trump supporters – the subject of one of the indictments facing the former president.
“There was no effort on his part to stop what was going on on Capitol Hill,” Biden said. “He sat there for three hours watching (television), being begged by his vice president and a number of his colleagues to do something.”
The president also brought up the civil lawsuits Trump has lost in addition to the criminal prosecutions.
“How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, for having sex with a porn star while your wife was pregnant?” Biden asked Trump. “You have the morals of an alley cat.”
Each said the other should be in jail, Trump for the crimes he has been charged with in the various indictments, and Biden for allowing an influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border.
While the personal acrimony took up much of the middle portion of the debate, the two candidates also discussed the issues.
Trump said the nation’s economy was humming along nicely on his watch until the COVID pandemic struck early in 2020. He blamed Biden for the inflation that followed.
“I gave him a country with essentially no inflation,” Trump said.
Biden said the economic downturn that accompanied COVID was Trump’s fault for mishandling the pandemic.
“By the time he left, things were in chaos,” Biden said. “We put things back together.”
Trump said America’s border was secure on his watch, but a crisis erupted along the southern border when Biden became president.
“We had the safest border in the history of our country,” Trump said. “(Biden) decided to open up our borders … to people from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorists. … We’re living in a rat’s nest. They’re killing our people in New York, California, and every state in the union because we don’t have borders anymore.”
Biden said a bipartisan agreement he worked out with members of Congress would have fixed the problem, but Trump killed it for his own political gain because he wanted to run on the issue.
Trump defended the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, arguing it leaves the issue up to the states.
“They’re all making their own decisions,” he said. “The states control it. That’s the vote of the people.”
Biden supported codifying Roe v. Wade into federal law so women and their doctors rather than politicians could make decisions on abortion.
“The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying, ‘We’re going to turn civil rights back to the states and let each state have a different rule,’ ” he said.
On foreign policy, Trump blamed the messy U.S. exit from Afghanistan on Biden’s watch for encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Trump also criticized Biden for approving at least $200 billion in U.S. aid to help Ukraine defend itself.
Biden warned that Putin will invade nearby NATO counties and expand the European war if he wins in Ukraine.
“All that money we give Ukraine is for weapons made in the United States,” Biden said.
Biden said his administration is continuing to push the terrorist organization Hamas to accept his three-part plan to end the war with Israel in Gaza. Trump accused Biden of taking a pro-Palestinian position on the conflict.
by Dave Williams | Jun 27, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Newton County Commission Chairman Marcello Banes and a local real estate broker have been indicted on federal charges of laundering money obtained through a fraud scheme.
Banes, 48, and Stephanie Lindsey, 52, both of Covington, are charged with conspiracy to launder money and with money laundering. A federal grand jury also indicted Lindsey for income tax fraud and charged Banes with lying to FBI special agents.
According to the indictment, Banes and Lindsey misled a company interested in purchasing about 40 acres of land from the Joint Development Authority of Jasper County, Morgan County, Newton County and Walton County in 2018 about the terms of a brokerage agreement.
The company was led to believe that a commission resulting from the agreement would be paid only to Lindsey. In reality, Lindsey was planning to pay most of the commission to Banes. Had the company’s owners known Banes would receive any of the commission, they would not have entered into the brokerage agreement, according to the indictment.
As chairman of the Newton County Commission, Banes represented Newton County on the development authority. At an authority board meeting in 2019, Banes voted to allow the purchase without disclosing that he was going to receive $100,000 of the $150,000 commission through a newly formed business entity he and Lindsey created.
Banes subsequently used a substantial amount of that money to pay for a new house he was building in Newton County,
“By allegedly laundering proceeds obtained from a fraud conspiracy, these defendants violated the trust placed in them by their client, their constituents, and their fellow commissioners,” said Ryan Buchanan, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
“Public officials who undermine the public’s faith in our institutions by abusing their power for personal gain must be held accountable.”
Besides the money laundering offense, Lindsey is also charged with two federal tax violations for allegedly claiming false business deductions to reduce her tax liability for the $150,000 payment.
Banes is also charged with lying to FBI special agents by falsely telling them he was unaware that Lindsey was involved as a broker in the land deal.
by Dave Williams | Jun 27, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s two U.S. senators launched an inquiry Thursday aimed at strengthening tracking and data collection about deaths of inmates in federal, state, and local custody.
Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, are asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to improve reporting practices under a law that requires the Justice Department to collect data from states and localities about the deaths of inmates in their custody to help identify potential violations of civil or human rights.
Ossoff, chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led a 10-month investigation in 2022 that found the Justice Department failed to count nearly 1,000 deaths of inmates in state or local custody in 2021, despite those deaths being publicly reported elsewhere.
“In prior outreach, we have urged the Department of Justice to investigate ongoing disturbing reports of deaths in custody in Georgia’s Clayton County and Fulton County jails,” the senators wrote in a letter to Merrick.
“Tragically, deaths have continued. In just the first six months of 2024, at least six individuals have died in custody in Clayton County Jail. Another three have died in Fulton County Jail this year, following the deaths of 10 individuals in custody in Fulton County in 2023. These alarming numbers underscore the necessity of stronger reporting … to help identify the causes of these deaths and possible interventions to prevent future tragedies.”
Earlier this year, a report from National Public Radio (NPR) found some deaths classified as “natural” may trace back to factors such as inadequate medical treatment, neglect, or poor living conditions.
However, according to Justice Department documents, reporting forms do not call for information about medical treatment or other factors that could shed more light on the causes of “natural” deaths, making it harder to determine the scope of the problem.
In 2022, Congress passed bipartisan legislation Ossoff introduced requiring the Federal Bureau of Prisons to upgrade prison camera systems to provide secure storage, logging, preservation, and accessibility of recordings for future investigators pursuing allegations of misconduct, abuse, or other criminal activity in prisons.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill last month providing independent oversight of the prison agency.
by Dave Williams | Jun 27, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Port of Brunswick handled an all-time high of 86,577 units of Roll-on/Roll-off cargo last month, a 26% increase over May of last year, the Georgia Ports Authority announced this week.
About half of the machinery increase and approximately 15% of the increase in autos were related to the bridge collapse in Baltimore, which shut down that port for 11 weeks. But other factors were involved as well.
“Brunswick’s proximity to domestic manufacturers and to vibrant sales markets make it a critical partner for the auto industry in driving new business,” said Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s president and CEO.
“The recent addition of 120 acres of processing space, along with hundreds more acres available for development, make Colonel’s Island Terminal uniquely able to expand along with the needs of car manufacturers.”
The auto port at Colonel’s Island handled 57 vessels last month, an increase of 12% compared to May of last year.
The strong numbers in May brought Georgia Ports volumes for the first 11 months of the current fiscal year to 796,000 units of autos and heavy machinery, up 20% compared to the same period in fiscal 2023.
“Our increasing Ro/Ro volumes are a testament to the outstanding work of our auto port partners and the reliable service customers have come to expect at Brunswick,” said Kent Fountain, the authority’s board chairman.
Overall, Brunswick imported 54,550 autos in May and exported just over 23,000.
by Dave Williams | Jun 26, 2024 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A nonprofit organization dedicated to land conservation has acquired two parcels of land in Middle Georgia that will support efforts to establish the Ocmulgee Mounds as Georgia’s first national park.
The “Branson Tracts” occupy 931 acres in Bibb and Twiggs counties. The Open Space Institute has acquired the properties from conservation-minded landowner Martha Bond Branson with plans to transfer them to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as additions to the 8,600-acre Bond Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
The tracts are located a short distance from traditional Muscogee (Creek) Nation lands and Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.
More than half a million people live in close proximity to the Bond Swamp, which will allow easy public access to an outdoor recreation opportunity.
“The benefits of protected land should be for everyone,” said Maria Whitehead, the Open Space Institute’s senior vice president of land in the Southeast. “The protection of the Branson Tracts … is a meaningful conservation accomplishment and the next step in creating the national park and preserve.”
Georgia’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, introduced legislation into Congress last month to create a national park and preserve at the Ocmulgee Mounds.
The area is the ancestral home of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and has been inhabited continuously by humans for more than 12,000 years. The Muskogean people built mounds there during the Mississippian Period, which began around 900 AD, for meeting, living, burial, and agricultural purposes.
The Branson properties were saved with help from the Knobloch Family Foundation, the Green South Foundation and the Peyton Anderson Foundation.
