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AP Photo/Evan Vucci

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has asked trade officials to explore the possibility of the United States rejoining negotiations on the Pacific Rim agreement after he pulled out last year as part of his “America first” agenda.

Farm-state lawmakers said Thursday after a White House meeting with Trump that he had given that assignment to his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and his new chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. The Trans-Pacific Partnership would open more overseas markets for American farmers.

“I’m sure there are lots of particulars that they’d want to negotiate, but the president multiple times reaffirmed in general to all of us and looked right at Larry Kudlow and said, ‘Larry, go get it done,'” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.

Eleven countries signed the agreement last month. Trump’s rejection of the deal has rattled allies and raised questions at home about whether protectionism will impede U.S. economic growth.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said he was “very impressed” that Trump had assigned Kudlow and Lighthizer “the task to see if we couldn’t take another look at TPP. And that certainly would be good news all throughout farm country.”

The discussions came during a meeting in which Trump told farm-state governors and lawmakers that he was pressing China to treat the American agriculture industry fairly. Midwest farmers fear becoming caught up in a trade war as Beijing threatens to impose tariffs on soybeans and other U.S. crops, a big blow to Midwestern farmers, many of whom are strong Trump supporters.

Trump has mused about re-joining TPP negotiations in the past but his request to his top aides show a greater level of interest in rejoining the pact he railed against during his 2016 campaign.

During a February news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump raised the possibility of rejoining TPP if the negotiators offered more favorable terms. In a CNBC interview in January, Trump said, “I would do TPP if we were able to make a substantially better deal. The deal was terrible.”

The White House meeting was aimed at appealing to the Midwest lawmakers at a time of high anxiety because of the China trade dispute.

During the exchange, Trump suggested the possibility of directing the Environmental Protection Agency to allow year-round sales of renewable fuel with blends of 15 percent ethanol.

The EPA currently bans the 15-percent blend, called E15, during the summer because of concerns that it contributes to smog on hot days. Gasoline typically contains 10 percent ethanol. Farm state lawmakers have pushed for greater sales of the higher ethanol blend to boost demand for the corn-based fuel.

The oil and natural gas industries have pressed Trump to waive some of the requirements in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard law that would ease gasoline and diesel refiners’ volume mandates. Farm state lawmakers fear that would reduce demand for the biofuels and violate the RFS law.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Trump made some “pretty positive statements” about allowing the year-round use of E-15 ethanol, which could help corn growers.

The administration is also considering the possibility of the federal government aiding farmers harmed by retaliatory tariffs from China, according to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and advocacy groups. But some key senators oppose the approach. “We don’t need that. We do not want another subsidy program. What we want is a market,” Roberts said during a congressional hearing this week.

The meetings came as an array of business executives and trade groups expressed alarm to federal lawmakers Thursday about the impact that tariffs will have on their business.

Kevin Kennedy, president of a steel fabrication business in Texas, said tariffs on steel and aluminum imports have led U.S. steel producers to raise their prices by 40 percent. He said that’s shifting work to competitors outside the U.S. including in Canada and Mexico because they now enjoy a big edge on material costs.

Representatives for chemical manufacturers and soybean farmers also expressed their concerns to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is examining the impact of the tariffs.

The U.S. and China are in the early stages of what could be the biggest trade battle in more than a half century. Trump campaigned on promises to bring down America’s massive trade deficit – $566 billion last year – by rewriting trade agreements and cracking down on what he called abusive practices by U.S. trading partners.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, urged lawmakers and the administration to stay the course in getting tough on China. He said China’s theft of intellectual property has inflicted serious damage to U.S. companies and threatens the country’s future economic outlook.

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Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey, Jill Colvin and Matthew Daly in Washington and James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed.

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On Twitter follow Ken Thomas at https://twitter.com/KThomasDC and Kevin Freking at https://twitter.com/apkfreking

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Lawmakers say Trump exploring rejoining Pacific trade talks
Lawmakers say Trump exploring rejoining Pacific trade talks
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/Matt Slocum

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The day before Bill Cosby’s chief accuser was to take the witness stand at his sexual assault retrial, a former model and TV personality on Thursday gave jurors her own harrowing account of being drugged and raped by the comedy star in 1982.

Janice Dickinson, one of five other accusers who testified against Cosby, told jurors that the comedian gave her a pill he claimed would ease her menstrual cramps but instead left her immobilized and unable to stop an assault she called “gross.”

“I didn’t consent to this. Here was ‘America’s Dad,’ on top of me. A married man, father of five kids, on top of me,” Dickinson said. “I was thinking how wrong it was. How very wrong it was.”

Dickinson’s testimony helped prosecutors tee up a climactic courtroom appearance by Andrea Constand, the former Temple University women’s basketball administrator whom Cosby is charged with drugging and molesting at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. Constand was expected to testify Friday – the second time she will face a jury after Cosby’s first trial ended without a verdict.

Cosby says his sexual encounter with Constand was consensual, asserting through his lawyers that she set him up to score a big payday. Cosby settled her civil suit for $3.4 million in 2006.

On Thursday, it was Dickinson’s turn to tell jurors that Cosby had taken advantage of her after knocking her out with drugs. She said he smelled of cigars and espresso as he got on top of her in his Lake Tahoe, Nevada, hotel room.

Dickinson, 27 at the time, testified she felt vaginal pain and, after waking up the next morning, noticed semen between her legs. She said Cosby looked at her “like I was crazy” when she confronted him about what had happened.

“I wanted to hit him. I wanted to punch him in the face,” she said.

A former reality TV personality who has called herself the “world’s first supermodel,” Dickinson became one of the first women to go public with her allegations against Cosby when she told her story on “Entertainment Tonight” in 2014.

She testified that she got to know Cosby after he called her agent and said he wanted to meet and possibly mentor her as she looked to expand her career into singing and acting.

She said Cosby invited her to Lake Tahoe after an initial meeting at his New York City townhouse, where he had given her an acting manual. Cosby tracked her down to Bali, where she was modeling for an oil company calendar, and asked her to Lake Tahoe “to further talk about my career.”

In Tahoe, she tested out her vocal range with Cosby’s musical director, watched Cosby perform and then joined the two men for dinner at the hotel. She said that’s where she started to get cramps, and that’s when Cosby produced a little blue pill. She took it and soon became woozy and “slightly out of it.”

Cosby’s musical director left, Dickinson said, and Cosby told her, “We’ll continue this conversation upstairs.”

Dickinson had a Polaroid camera with her, she said, and snapped photos of Cosby in the room wearing a colorful robe and talking on the telephone. Then Cosby pounced.

“Shortly after I took the pictures and he finished the conversation, he got on top of me,” Dickinson said. “His robe opened up. … I couldn’t move.

“I didn’t fly to Tahoe to have sex with Mr. Cosby,” she said.

Dickinson, the only celebrity accuser to testify against Cosby, parried with defense attorneys who seized on discrepancies between her testimony Thursday and what she wrote about their encounter in her 2002 autobiography.

She told jurors she wanted to include details about the assault, but wound up telling a highly sanitized version in which there was no sex at all, let alone a rape, because her publisher told her the legal department would never let the allegations against Cosby make it to print.

Dickinson said she went along because she needed the money – and feared Cosby would ruin her career.

“It’s all a fabrication there. It was written by ghostwriters. I wanted a paycheck,” she said.

Another accuser, taking the witness stand after Dickinson, said Cosby prodded her to drink two shots in his Las Vegas hotel suite, then had her sit between his knees and started petting her head.

Lise-Lotte Lublin told jurors she lost consciousness and doesn’t remember anything else about that night in 1989 – a time when Cosby was at the height of his fame starring as sweater-wearing father-of-five Dr. Cliff Huxtable on America’s top-rated TV show, “The Cosby Show.”

“I trusted him because he’s ‘America’s Dad,'” Lublin said. “I trusted him because he’s a figure people trusted for many years, including myself.”

Dickinson and Lublin were among five additional accusers whom prosecutors called to the stand to show Cosby had a history of drugging and molesting women long before he was charged with violating Constand.

The defense has dismissed the other women’s testimony as “prosecution by distraction.”

“These women proved that they were here to back up their sister – they got their sister’s back,” Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said Thursday outside court.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand and the other women have done.

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This story has been corrected to show the alleged assault of Dickinson took place in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, not California.

—

Follow Mike Sisak at www.twitter.com/mikesisak .

—

For more coverage visit www.apnews.com/tag/CosbyonTrial .

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Model says Cosby raped her; chief accuser to testify Friday
Model says Cosby raped her; chief accuser to testify Friday
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey blasts President Donald Trump as unethical and “untethered to truth” and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and about personal loyalty” in a forthcoming book.

Comey reveals new details about his interactions with Trump and his own decision-making in handling the Hillary Clinton email investigation before the 2016 election. He casts Trump as a mafia boss-like figure who sought to blur the line between law enforcement and politics and tried to pressure him personally regarding his investigation into Russian election interference.

The book adheres closely to Comey’s public testimony and written statements about his contacts with the president during the early days of the administration and his growing concern about Trump’s integrity. It also includes strikingly personal jabs at Trump that appear sure to irritate the president.

The 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a “too long” tie and “bright white half-moons” under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles. He also says he made a conscious effort to check the president’s hand size, saying it was “smaller than mine but did not seem unusually so.”

The book, “A Higher Loyalty,” is to be released next week. The Associated Press purchased a copy this week.

Comey also describes Trump weighing whether to ask the FBI to investigate, with an eye toward debunking, a salacious allegation involving Trump and Russian prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel. Trump has strongly denied the allegation, and Comey says that it appeared the president wanted it investigated to reassure his wife, Melania Trump.

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, setting off a scramble at the Justice Department that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Mueller’s probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, an idea the president denies.

Trump has assailed Comey as a “showboat” and a “liar.”

Comey’s account lands at a particularly sensitive moment for Trump and the White House. Officials there describe Trump as enraged over a recent FBI raid of his personal lawyer’s home and office, raising the prospect that he could fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, or try to shut down the probe on his own. The Republican National Committee is poised to lead the pushback effort against Comey, who is set to do a series of interviews to promote the book, by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question the former director’s credibility.�

Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email practices. Trump used the investigation as a cudgel in the campaign and repeatedly said Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation, and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.

Comey writes that he regrets his approach and some of the wording he used in his July 2016 press conference in which he announced the decision not to prosecute Clinton. But he says he believes he did the right thing by going before the cameras and making his statement, noting that the Justice Department had done so in other high profile cases.

Every person on the investigative team, Comey writes, found that there was no prosecutable case against Clinton and that the FBI didn’t find that she lied under its questioning.

He also reveals new details about how the government had unverified classified information that he believes could have been used to cast doubt on Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s independence in the Clinton probe. While Comey does not outline the details of the information – and says he didn’t see indications of Lynch inappropriately influencing the investigation – he says it worried him that the material could be used to attack the integrity of the probe and the FBI’s independence.

Comey’s book will be heavily scrutinized by the president’s legal team looking for any inconsistencies between it and his public testimony, under oath, before Congress. They will be looking to impeach Comey’s credibility as a key witness in Mueller’s obstruction investigation, which the president has cast as a political motivated witch hunt.

The former FBI director provides new details of his firing. He writes that then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly – now Trump’s chief of staff – offered to quit out of disgust at how Comey was dismissed. Kelly has been increasingly marginalized in the White House and the president has mused to confidants about firing him.

Comey also writes extensively about his first meeting with Trump after the election, a briefing in January 2017 at Trump Tower in New York City. Others in the meeting included Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn, who would become national security adviser, and incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer. Comey was also joined by NSA Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

After Clapper briefed the team on the intelligence community’s findings of Russian election interference, Comey said he was taken aback by what the Trump team didn’t ask.

“They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be,” Comey writes. Instead, they launched into a strategy session about how to “spin what we’d just told them” for the public.

Comey then describes talking to Trump one-on-one after the broader meeting.

He says he described the allegations about Russian prostitutes. He writes that he told Trump about the dossier because it was the FBI’s responsibility to protect the presidency from coercion related to harmful allegations, whether supported or not. Comey said he left out one detail involving an allegation that the prostitutes had urinated on a bed once used by the Obamas.

Trump raised the subject again a week later, after the dossier had been made public. He then told Comey, the director writes, that he had not stayed in the hotel and that the most salacious charge could not have been true because, Trump said, “I’m a germaphobe. There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way.”

Comey writes that Trump raised the issue again, unprompted, during their one-on-one dinner at the White House and it bothered the president that there might be even “a one percent chance” his wife might think it was true.

Comey then registers surprise, writing that he thought to himself “why his wife would think there was any chance, even a small one, that he had been with prostitutes urinating on each other in a Moscow hotel room.”

—

Lemire reported from New York.

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In new book, Comey says Trump 'untethered to truth'
In new book, Comey says Trump 'untethered to truth'
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

WASHINGTON (AP) — When House Speaker Paul Ryan announced his retirement decision, he did so on his own terms. The political fallout may not be so easy to control.

Ryan’s relinquishing of one of the most powerful positions in Washington left Republicans reeling Thursday over not just who will replace him but whether Ryan’s lame-duck status will jeopardize the GOP’s pitch to voters and donors, and worsen their chance of keeping the majority.

Control of the House was already at risk in a tough midterm election. Voters are fired up amid rising opposition to President Donald Trump and sagging GOP accomplishments. Now some wonder aloud if the GOP grip on the House majority is already lost.

“It’s like Eisenhower resigning right before D-Day,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who once headed the House GOP’s campaign committee.

“Paul Ryan was the franchise,” Davis said. “With Paul, this was a Republican Party they could still give to. He’s a great brand for the party. He’s gone.”

On some level the impact is symbolic. Ryan was once viewed as the future of the party, and he currently is a rudder for a party regularly tossed about by Trump’s shifting impulses. For Republicans fighting for their political survival, it’s hard not to take Ryan’s decision as vote of no confidence.

One Republican in the long list of those already retiring, Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, said the speaker didn’t try to walk him off his decision, and in fact seemed to identify with his preference for returning home to family. Some four dozen House Republicans – including powerful committee chairmen – are calling it quits.

Add Ryan’s retirement to the mix, and donors, lawmakers and strategists are raising red flags about and a prolonged period of uncertainty unlike anything ever seen in modern House history.

“It’s not confidence building,” said Ron Nehring, a former party chairman in California, who says Republicans need to boost their legislative accomplishments, especially after having failed to keep their promise to voters to repeal Obamacare, if they hope to motivate Republicans to the polls. “Democrats are going to walk a mile on broken glass to vote against the president.”

On Thursday, Ryan dismissed suggestions from some corners, including lawmakers, that maybe it would be best if he stepped aside rather than stick around until January, when the new Congress is seated, as he intends to do.

“My plan is to stay here and run through the tape,” Ryan told reporters, noting he had “shattered” fundraising efforts by previous speakers, more than doubling his $20 million goal.

“I talked to a lot of members – a lot of members – who think it’s in all of our best interest for this leadership team to stay in place,” Ryan said. “It makes no sense to take the biggest fundraiser off the field.”

Money will be channeled to counter a blue wave of Democrats, who need to pick up 23 seats to flip the majority. The midterm is expected to be tougher, and costlier, than ever, especially amid the expanding battleground of open seats, which usually lack the built-in campaign apparatus of incumbency.

Few Republicans talk any more of retaining control of the House as a certainty. Those doubts are clear in the way they talk about the fight to replace Ryan.

Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said he won’t worry much about whom he will support for the leadership post until House Republicans figure out if they’ll be choosing their new speaker in fall — or simply the minority leader.

“At that point we’ll know if we’re going to elect a Republican or Democratic speaker,” he said.

Ryan’s allies insist the party’s top fundraiser and champion of a crisp GOP message remains in full force.

If anything, Ryan’s decision “frees up the speaker to raise more money for Republicans across the country,” said Corry Bliss, executive director at the Congressional Leadership Fund, the political action committee at the forefront of Republican efforts to maintain a House majority.

And besides, the strategist said, the GOP message heading to November is the same. “The central thematic still remains: The American people simply do not want Nancy Pelosi to be the speaker.”

But a fight between two Republicans – for lawmakers’ affections and donor dollars – would certainly be a distraction. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader, is seen as a leading contender. Majority Whip Steve Scalise is viewed as the likely alternative, and his team noted Thursday that he, too, had broken first-quarter fundraising records, hauling in $3 million.

Already discord is showing. Some conservatives are rallying behind Rep. Jim Jordon, R-Ohio, a long-shot who could inject new uncertainty to the outcome, splinter the vote so no single leader wins a majority.

One rank-and-file lawmaker, Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said he doesn’t mind Ryan’s prolonged departure because it creates an opening for lawmakers to tailor their own campaign message. But he acknowledged others prefer the leadership race settled with a unified party message heading into fall. “A lot of people want it over swiftly,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow Mascaro on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LisaMascaro and Barrow at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

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Ryan's departure sparks unrest, GOP fears losing House
Ryan's departure sparks unrest, GOP fears losing House
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/Gregory Bull

SAN DIEGO (AP) — California Gov. Jerry Brown is crystal clear that his National Guard will help President Trump go after drugs and thugs on the Mexican border, but not immigrants. Drawing that line may be hazy.

Brown’s pledge of 400 troops allows the president to boast that governors in all four border states back his mission to send the Guard on its third large-scale deployment since 2006. It helped bring commitments from Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to about 2,400 troops – above the low end of Trump’s target of sending 2,000 to 4,000 troops to the border shared by the four states.

The Democratic governor, who cast his decision as a welcome infusion of federal support to fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers, broke from his Republican counterparts from the three other states by insisting that his troops will have nothing to do with immigration enforcement.

But some experts were skeptical that Brown will be able to force his vision of the mission on California’s Guard members participating in Trump’s operation.

“I think it’ll be very difficult for the California National Guard to be able to walk that fine line because those things in the field are indistinguishable,” said Eric Olson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America program, who specializes in organized crime and security. “It’s not like someone crossing the border says, ‘I’m carrying drugs.’ How can you tell?”

Trump praised Brown on Twitter Thursday, but did not address the governor’s conditions for not taking an immigration role for California troops. The president said Brown was “doing the right thing and sending the National Guard to the Border. Thank you Jerry, good move for the safety of our Country!”

The Border Patrol’s mission of preventing people from entering the U.S. illegally has not changed in its 94-year history. But its nearly 20,000 agents also seize hundreds of tons of marijuana every year, along with other drugs. The agency has also emphasized anti-terrorism efforts since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said Brown’s move is clearly about how it will be seen politically in a state that overwhelmingly opposes Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The governor, in his decision to let the California troops participate, gave himself “wiggle room” to withdraw the Guard members if they get involved with immigration, which Trump will definitely want to prevent.

“Everyone has an interest in this working out,” Selee said. “The lines will blur a bit but federal and state governments will try to make sure this doesn’t blow up. That doesn’t work for anyone.”

Other border governors have fully embraced Trump’s directive. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who will contribute about 1,400 troops, has said troops will “help ensure we are doing everything we can to stem the flow of illegal immigration.”

Details on the Guard’s exact assignments have been trickling out since Trump last week announced his plan to send troops to the border on April 4.

The Arizona National Guard said Wednesday that 112 of its 338 troops will provide air support, like flying helicopters, from a base in the town of Marana, near Tucson. Another 60 are being sent to border town of Nogales for what Maj. Gen. Michael McGuire called ground-based missions, without providing details.

They are not required to carry guns for their duties but can do so if they feel they need to for their own protection, McGuire said.

The Texas National Guard, which already has troops in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo area, scouts for illegal activity by air and land and reports any findings to the Border Patrol.

Abbott said Thursday that he was waiting for instructions from the federal government but that his understanding was that the troops “will in no way be involved in any type of apprehension or confrontation process.”

The New Mexico National Guard has not yet publicly defined a precise role for its 250 troops.

Federal law, notably the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, sharply limits military involvement in civilian law enforcement, creating a supporting role for Guard members. The Pentagon said last week that troops won’t perform law enforcement functions or interact with people detained by border authorities without its approval.

From 2006 to 2008 under the administration of former President George W. Bush, the Guard went to the Mexico border and fixed vehicles, maintained roads, repaired fences and performed ground surveillance.

Its second southern border mission in 2010 and 2011 ordered by former President Barack Obama involved more aerial surveillance and intelligence work. People involved in both operations say the Guard was the Border Patrol’s “eyes and ears.”

Brown said Wednesday that the California troops cannot guard anyone in custody for immigration violations, participate in construction of border barriers or have any other supporting role in immigration enforcement. He did not elaborate on the Guard’s specific assignments or how troops would be insulated against immigration work.

California National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Keegan said Thursday officials “generally do not discuss the specifics of operations, tactics, techniques and procedures and we certainly do not want to tip our hand to the transnational criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearm and drug smugglers we’re targeting.”

Jobs for the about 55 California troops already at the border include engineering to repair roads, fences and culverts and working with federal and state law enforcement on anti-terrorism and anti-drug operations, Keegan said.

—

Associated Press writers Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and Kathleen Ronanye in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.

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Guard faces tricky dance in California border mission
Guard faces tricky dance in California border mission
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Source: AP HEADLINES

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a person familiar with the president’s decision.

The person said the announcement could come as early as Friday. The person, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the decision ahead of its public announcement and demanded anonymity, said the pardon has been under consideration at the White House for months.

The move would mark the third pardon by Trump . He granted one last year for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was awaiting sentencing for contempt of court. Trump also has pardoned a U.S. Navy sailor, who was convicted after taking photos of classified portions of a submarine.

Libby, who served as Cheney’s chief of staff, was convicted in 2007 of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to FBI investigators. The case stemmed from a probe into the leak of the covert identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, though no one was charged for the leak.

The Libby case has been criticized by conservatives, who argue he was the victim of an overly zealous and politically motivated prosecution by a special counsel.

Some of those criticisms mirror Trump’s own attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference, possible coordination with Trump associates and potential obstruction of justice by the president. Trump has called that probe a “witch hunt.”

President George W. Bush had previously commuted Libby’s prison sentence. Bush wrote in his 2010 memoir that Cheney lashed out at him in private for not granting Libby a full pardon.

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AP source: Trump expected to pardon former Cheney aide Libby
AP source: Trump expected to pardon former Cheney aide Libby
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Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/Balint Szlanko

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — Authorities in Mosul have buried more than 1,000 bodies in a mass grave in a desert valley outside the city, most of them believed to be Islamic State group militants, according to a city official. More remains are being dug out of the rubble of the district where the fighters made their final stand last year.

Hundreds more bodies are still strewn across or buried in Maydan district nine months after it was flattened in the final battles to retake Mosul, creating one of the grimmest scenes from a brutal war that was compared to the worst urban combat of World War II.

During a recent visit by The Associated Press, pieces of desiccated bodies, often in shreds of fighters’ uniforms, were visible scattered in the ruins, which are also laced with unexploded bombs and unused suicide belts. In one place, the crown of a skull stuck out of the dirt, brilliant white with a fringe of leathery scalp and hair. One man lay crushed under the wreck of a car, his legs sticking up in the air.

Most of the bodies appeared to belong to IS fighters killed by airstrikes or shelling, their remains half-buried. But there were also women and small children. The body of baby girl, turned ghoulish brown, lay on the balcony of a half-collapsed building, covered by bits of rubble.

The scene is testimony to Iraqi authorities’ lack of resources and the overwhelming task they face in just digging out from the destruction wreaked across Mosul in the 9-month offensive by Iraqi forces backed by the U.S.-led coalition that finally defeated IS here. Multiple neighborhoods suffered heavy damage. Clearing of rubble is largely financed by the United Nations’ development agency, and repairs are proceeding slowly. In some areas, streets have been cleared but many buildings remain shattered.

Maydan is at a further disadvantage because Iraqi officials don’t appear to see removing bodies of IS fighters as a high priority. The provincial council’s office told the AP that clearing the area was the job of the civil defense; the civil defense said it was the job of the morgue; the head of the morgue declined to comment.

Faris Abdulrazzaq, mayor of Maydan, said the failure to clear the area – not just the bodies, but also the huge amount of unexploded ordnance – was preventing residents from returning to rebuild what they can, as others have in other districts.

“Even when you pass by a dead cat, you feel the smell and you try to get rid of it. How do you think hundreds of dead bodies smell?” he said. “I wonder why all these government officials are leaving this problem to fester all this time. This is the first thing they should take care of.”

He expressed fears over the health impact of the bodies. The World Health Organization has often noted that even large numbers of bodies left after a disaster do not pose a major health risk, since the victims die of trauma not epidemic and bacteria involved in decomposition are not dangerous.

But the stench of decay rising from the ruins is oppressive, and temperatures are only now starting to rise into the upper 20s Celsius (80s Fahrenheit).

Even by the awful standards of Mosul, the devastation is shocking in this part of the Old City stretching roughly a kilometer (half mile) along the Tigris River. The piles of dirt, rubble, smashed concrete, metal and vehicle skeletons are so high it is barely possible in many places to tell where the street ended and the buildings once began.

Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition forces dropped vast amounts of explosives on this small area to break IS fighters’ resistance last July in the last weeks of the 9-month-long assault that free Mosul from the militant group’s rule. The fighters held out the longest in Maydan, a neighborhood of tiny, winding alleyways and closely built homes.

Bashar al-Kiki, the head of the provincial council for Nineveh governorate, told the AP on Thursday that the municipal government had no resources to clean up the site. The bodies are collected by civilian volunteers, then taken by the municipality to the city morgue and finally to a mass burial site in a desert valley near Sahaji, a town west of Mosul, he said.

He estimated that 1,000 bodies had been buried at the site.

Al-Kiki said the morgue makes an effort to identify the bodies or at least to tell if they belonged to fighters or civilians, but lack of resources prevents them from carrying out a proper identification process.

This week, a band of young volunteers wearing plastic gloves worked amid the rubble, pulling corpses cut in half out from under piles of bricks and putting them into white body bags. Some said that occasionally during their work in the past months they’ve been harassed by security forces asking why they are bothering to deal with IS bodies.

The leader of the team, 23-year-old Surur Abdulkarim, said that in the past six months they had collected 650 bodies. She said the aim was to clear out as many as possible before the heat of summer.

She said their operation was entirely self-financed except for a one-off donation of some body bags and protective clothing by the aid group Medicines Sans Frontieres. Several times a week they turn up at the site with a few bags, fill them with corpses, and then leave them by the roadside for the municipality to pick up.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have never given a detailed estimate of how many IS militants were killed in Mosul, only putting the figure in the thousands. Thousands more escaped and continued to fight elsewhere in Iraq or in Syria.

An AP investigation last year found that between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians died in the battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group, at least a third of them killed by Iraqi or coalition bombardment.

The extremists had controlled the city, Iraq’s second largest, since June 2014, when they declared their “caliphate” over a third of Iraq and Syria. Nearly all of that territory has been wrested back in the campaign led by U.S.-backed Iraqi and Syrian forces, except for small pockets held by IS in Syria.

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1,000 bodies of militant fighters buried in Mosul mass grave
1,000 bodies of militant fighters buried in Mosul mass grave
{$excerpt:n}
Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/Hassan Ammar

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria (all times local):

9:50 p.m.

Explosions are being heard to the east, west and south of Damascus as the U.S., U.K. and France conduct airstrikes in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government on its own people.

Witnesses saw blasts surrounding much of the Syrian capital and a huge fire could be seen from a distance to the east. An AP reporter in Damascus says the attacks turned the sky orange. Syrian television reported that a scientific research center had been hit.

Syrian media reported that Syrian defenses hit 13 rockets south of Damascus. After the attack ceased and the early morning skies went dark once more, vehicles with loudspeakers roamed the streets of Damascus blaring nationalist songs.

—

9:40 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron says his nation, the United States and Britain have launched a military operation against the Syrian government’s “clandestine chemical arsenal.”

Macron says in a statement Saturday that France’s “red line has been crossed” after a suspected chemical attack last week in the Syrian town of Douma.

He says there is “no doubt” that the Syrian government is responsible. President Bashar Assad’s government denies responsibility.

Macron says the operation is limited to Syria’s abilities to produce chemical weapons. He is not giving details about what equipment is involved in the operation or what sites it is targeting.

—

9:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump is reiterating his call to have other nations take on more of the burden in Syria.

Trump says he has asked U.S. partners “to take greater responsibility for securing their home region, including contributing large amounts of money for the resources, equipment and all of the anti-ISIS effort.”

He says increased engagement from countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt can ensure that Iran does not profit from the defeat of the Islamic State group.

He adds that, “America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria – under no circumstances” and says that, “As other nations step up our contributions, we look forward to the day when we can bring our warriors home.”

—

9:20 p.m.

Syria’s capital has been rocked by loud explosions that lit up the sky with heavy smoke as U.S. President Donald Trump announced airstrikes in retaliation for the country’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

Associated Press reporters in Damascus saw smoke rising from east Damascus early Saturday morning local time. Syrian state TV says the attack has begun on the capital, though it wasn’t immediately clear what was targeted.

Trump announced Friday night that the U.S., France and Britain have launched military strikes in Syria to punish President Bashar Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians and to deter him from doing it again.

—

9:15 p.m.

President Donald Trump is warning Russia and Iran about their association with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad’s government, as he announces the launch of retaliatory strikes after an apparent chemical weapons attack last week.

Speaking from the White House, Trump says, “To Iran and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?”

Trump calls the two countries those “most responsible for supporting, equipping and financing the criminal Assad regime.”

Trump says, “The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep.”

He adds ominously, “Hopefully someday we’ll get along with Russia, and maybe even Iran, but maybe not.”

—

9:10 p.m.

President Donald Trump is asking for a “prayer for our noble warriors” as he concludes his remarks announcing strikes on targets associated with the Syrian chemical weapons program.

Trump announced the strikes, in coordination with France and Britain, from the White House Friday night. He said the three nations have “marshaled their righteous power.”

Trump is also offering prayers for the Middle East and for the United States.

—

9:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he is “prepared to sustain” strikes against Syria until the use of chemical agents stops.

The United States, along with assurance from France and the United Kingdom, launched a response Friday against the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad days after his government allegedly used chemical weapons on its citizens.

But Trump says America does not seek “an indefinite presence” in Syria and will look to pull out its troops once the Islamic State is totally defeated.

Trump has signaled in recent weeks that, despite advice from his national security team, he wanted to accelerate the timetable of the withdrawal of American forces.

—

9 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the United States has “launched precision strikes” on targets associated with Syrian chemical weapons program.

Trump spoke from the White House Friday night. He says a “combined operation” with France and the United Kingdom is underway.

Trump says that last Saturday, Syrian President Bashar Assad deployed chemical weapons in what was a “significant escalation in a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime.”

—

8:55 p.m.

President Donald Trump is set to address the nation Friday night amid anticipation of a retaliatory strike for an apparent Syrian chemical weapon attack last week.

That’s according to a source familiar with the president’s plans, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump has said he will hold the Syrian government, as well as its Russian and Iranian allies, accountable for the suspected attack.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said Friday afternoon that Trump “is going to hold the Syrian government accountable. He’s also going to hold the Russians and the Iranians who are propping up this regime responsible.”

—

5 p.m.

The U.S. Navy was moving an additional Tomahawk missile-armed ship within striking range of Syria as President Donald Trump and his national security aides mulled the scope and timing of an expected military assault in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack.

Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, said the president had not yet made a final decision, two days after he tweeted that Russia should “get ready” because a missile attack “will be coming” at Moscow’s chief Middle East ally.

The presence of Russian troops and air defenses in Syria were among numerous complications weighing on Trump, who must also consider the dangers to roughly 2,000 American troops in the country if Russia were to retaliate for U.S. strikes.

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The Latest: Blasts from airstrikes turn Damascus sky orange
The Latest: Blasts from airstrikes turn Damascus sky orange
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Source: AP HEADLINES

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States, Britain and France opted to strike Syria for its apparent use of chemical weapons without waiting for a report from U.N. inspectors because they were convinced that the Assad government had used chlorine and sarin nerve gas against a rebel-held Damascus suburb, American officials said Saturday.

The allies also acted because of concerns that Russian and Syrian forces may already have tried to clean up important evidence in Douma, where more than 40 people died in last weekend’s attack, the officials said.

The three countries launched their missiles even as the fact-finding team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was in the Syrian capital and had been expected to head on Saturday to Douma.

Russia and Syria have denied that chemical weapons were used at all and said their own investigators had been to the area and found no trace of them. Those assertions have been denounced as lies by Western officials.

The West’s assessments of what happened April 7 in Douma rely mainly on open source information. That includes witness testimony, as well as video and photos shot by aid workers, victims of the attacks and unspecified additional intelligence about barrel bombs and chlorine canisters found in the aftermath.

Barrel bombs are large containers packed with fuel, explosives and scraps of metal, and British Prime Minister Theresa May said reports indicated the Syrian government had used one to deliver the chemicals.

The White House said doctors and aid organizations on the ground in Douma reported “the strong smell of chlorine and described symptoms consistent with exposure to sarin.” A senior administration official told reporters Saturday that while there was more publicly available evidence pointing to the use of chlorine, the U.S. has “significant information that also points to sarin use.”

The official did not elaborate on what that information entailed.

Chlorine use has been a recurring footnote in the course of Syria’s civil war, but rarely has it generated the same outrage as reports of sarin use.

Chlorine has legitimate industrial and other civilian uses, so it is not banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. The treaty does, however, prohibit the use of chlorine as a weapon.

One senior U.S. official familiar with the decision to act on Friday said the U.S., British and French intelligence services were unanimous in their assessments of the attack and were “eager” to move when they did because of concerns about contamination of the site.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss specifics beyond those contained in the formal statements.

Despite the strikes, the chemical weapons watchdog agency said its experts would go ahead with their mission. The Russian foreign ministry, however, accused the allies of acting when they did “to hamper the work of the OPCW inspectors.”

The U.S. has denied that assertion and called the group’s mission “essential” to a complete understanding of what chemical agents were used.

A second U.S. official said Britain, France and the U.S. are confident that the inspectors’ eventual report will confirm their findings that chlorine was used, likely in conjunction with sarin.

The three governments noted dozens previous, smaller-scale chlorine and other chemical weapons attacks over the course of the past year, since President Donald Trump first ordered airstrikes against Syria last April.

Reports of major chlorine attacks began emerging in 2014, soon after Syria’s declaration of complete chemical disarmament, which was the result of an Obama administration agreement between the U.S. and Russia. The agreement only covered declared chemical weapons. Syria is widely suspected of hiding some stocks, manufacturing more as well as holding on to chlorine.

“The pictures of dead children were not fake news. They were the result of the Syrian regime’s barbaric inhumanity,” Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, said Saturday. “And they were the result of the regime and Russia’s failure to live up to their international commitments to remove all chemical weapons from Syria. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom acted after careful evaluation of these facts. “

In August 2015, the U.N. Security Council first authorized the OPCW and U.N. investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as witnesses began to circulate increasing accounts of chlorine attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas.

A year later, the joint OPCW-U.N. panel determined the Syrian government had twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine against its opponents in civilian areas in northern Idlib province. A later report held the government responsible for a third attack.

There have been dozens of attacks with chlorine gas since then, including an attack in Aleppo in 2016 that reportedly killed a woman and two children, and at least two attacks on the town of Saraqeb in northern Syria that injured dozens.

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Certain of gas attack, allies struck Syria before UN report
Certain of gas attack, allies struck Syria before UN report
{$excerpt:n}
Source: AP HEADLINES

AP Photo/Susan Walsh

WASHINGTON (AP) — In heated exchanges with his national security team in recent weeks, President Donald Trump repeatedly made clear he saw little incentive for the United States to be involved in Syria’s intractable civil war.

Then he pushed the U.S. military back into the quagmire.

In doing so, Trump is trying to confront a dilemma that haunted his predecessor, Barack Obama. Syria’s seven-year civil war presents few fast or easy solutions for the U.S., yet the geopolitical rivalries at play, the presence of the Islamic State group and other extremists, and the atrocities perpetrated by the Assad government make the situation impossible to ignore.

Thus far, Trump and his top advisers have sent mixed messages about what Friday’s U.S., British and French strikes may mean for his administration’s future commitment in Syria.

The strikes themselves were limited – 105 weapons launched against three targets. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis described the action as a “one-time shot” in retaliation for the Syrian government’s apparent use of chemical weapons in an April 7 attack that killed more than 40 people.

Trump, however, cast the strikes in more sweeping terms, promising he was ready to keep the U.S. military engaged if Syrian President Bashar Assad were to use deadly gases again.

“We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,” Trump said in a televised address to the nation from the White House on Friday night.

His comments were echoed Saturday by Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who said the president told her the military was “locked and loaded” if Syria launched another chemical weapons attack.

The president’s statement was a marked shift from his recent posture on Syria.

Earlier this month, he privately told advisers that the U.S. was getting “nothing” out of being involved in Syria and he made clear he wanted the 2,000 American troops currently there combating IS militants out by the fall.

That order left many of Trump’s national security advisers on edge, concerned that pulling out even that small U.S. force would result in a power vacuum that Iran could fill.

It did win him praise from political supporters who perceive Syria as a costly wasteland and see Trump as a president who promised an “America First” agenda that did not include sustained American military commitments overseas.

The importance of that pledge to some Trump backers quickly became apparent, with even the relatively limited American intervention in Syria leaving them deeply frustrated.

“This is not why Donald Trump got elected,” said Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host who has been supportive of the president.

Ann Coulter, another conservative commentator, spent the weekend highlighting angry messages on Twitter from apparent Trump supporters, including one who wrote that while the “the direct damage was some buildings in Damascus; the collateral damage was Trump’s political support base.”

If Trump was bothered by the growing criticism, he didn’t show it.

He took to Twitter on Saturday morning and wrote “Mission Accomplished” – adopting a phrase that haunted President George W. Bush during the Iraq war. For some, those two words represent the short-sightedness about how quickly the U.S. can become entangled in a protracted Middle East conflict.

Trump’s view of the situation on Syria has shifted repeatedly in recent years. As a private citizen in 2013, he said Obama should “stay the hell out of Syria.” Trump condemned Obama for declaring that Syria’s use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” for the United States and he said it made Obama look weak when he didn’t follow through with a military strike after Assad used deadly gases against civilians.

Less than three months after Trump took office, the U.S. assessed that Assad had again used chemical weapons to kill Syrians.

Moved by the images of dead children, Trump stunned many of his own supporters by saying that the action had crossed “many, many lines” for him. He ordered an U.S. airstrike on a Syrian air base.

Since then, Trump’s views on the situation in Syria have evolved. Earlier this year, he began telling advisers that as soon as the U.S. could declare victory against IS, which has taken hold in Syria amid the chaos of the civil war, he wanted American troops out.

At a recent event in Ohio, Trump said of Syria: “Let other people take care of it now.”

Just one week later came the attack that drew Trump back in.

—

EDITOR’S NOTE – AP Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace has covered the White House and politics since 2007. Follow her at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

An AP News Analysis

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Analysis: Trump wanted out of Syria, but he's drawn back in
Analysis: Trump wanted out of Syria, but he's drawn back in
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Source: AP HEADLINES