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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 13, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2018 Trump replaces Tillerson with Pompeo in dramatic shake-up Fired in a tweet By JOSH LEDERMAN and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press WASHINGTON — Pres- ident Donald Trump uncere- moniously dumped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by tweet today and picked CIA Direc- tor Mike Pompeo to take his place, abruptly ending Tiller- son’s turbulent tenure as Amer- ica’s top diplomat and escalat- ing the administration’s chaotic second-year shake-up. Tillerson was ousted barely four hours after he returned from an Africa mission and with no face-to-face conversa- tion with the president, the lat- est casualty of an unruly White House that has seen multiple top officials depart in recent weeks. Citing the Iran nuclear deal and other issues, Trump said he and Tillerson were “not really thinking the same.” “We disagreed on things,” Trump told reporters at the White House — a diplomatic take on a fractious relationship that included reports that Til- lerson had privately called the president a “moron.” In an illustration of the gulf that has long separated Tiller- son and Trump, aides to both couldn’t even on agree on the circumstances of his firing. Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein and other State Department officials said that Tillerson hadn’t learned he was dismissed until he saw Trump’s early-morning tweet, and hadn’t discussed it directly with the president. Goldstein said the former Exxon Mobil CEO was “unaware of the rea- son” he was fired and “had had every intention of staying,” feeling he was making prog- ress on national security. Hours later, Goldstein was fired, too. Multiple White House offi- cials said that Tillerson had been informed of the decision Friday, while he was in Ethi- opia. One official said chief of staff John Kelly had called Tillerson on Friday and again on Saturday to warn him that Trump was about to take imminent action if he did not step aside, and that a replace- ment had already been identi- fied. When Tillerson didn’t act, Trump fired him, that official said. All of the officials demanded anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Trump’s change puts Pompeo, an ardent foe of the Iran nuclear deal, in charge of U.S. diplomacy as the president decides whether to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before board- ing Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House today. Trump faces another dead- line in May to decide whether to remain in the Obama-era nuclear agreement that he cam- paigned aggressively against. Tillerson has pushed Trump to remain in the agreement and had been pursuing a delicate strategy with European allies and others to try to improve or augment it to Trump’s lik- ing. The president mentioned differences over how to han- dle the Iran agreement, “so we were not really thinking the same.” Though Trump and other officials said he’d been con- sidering replacing Tillerson for some time, the president said he made the decision only recently and “by myself.” Til- lerson will be “much happier now,” he said. The reshuffle also comes amid a dramatic diplomatic opening with North Korea, with Trump set to hold a his- toric meeting with leader Kim Jong Un in May. Pressur- ing North Korea with sanc- tions and other isolation mea- sures had been a top Tillerson priority, and he had been one of the administration’s more vocal advocates for holding talks in some form with the North. When Trump ultimately accepted Kim’s invitation for a meeting, Tillerson was in Ethi- opia, though he said he spoke with Trump about it shortly before it was announced. Tillerson’s departure adds to a period of intense turnover within Trump’s administration that has alarmed those both in and out of the White House. Top economic adviser Gary Cohn announced his resigna- tion last week, not long after communications director Hope Hicks and staff secretary Rob Porter both departed near the start of Trump’s second year in office. The president said he was nominating the CIA’s deputy director, Gina Haspel, to take over for Pompeo at the intel- ligence agency. If confirmed, Haspel would be the CIA’s first female director Pompeo, a former Republi- can congressman from Kansas, has already been confirmed by the Senate for his current role at the CIA, making it extremely likely that he will be confirmed for the State Department role. Trump tweeted, “He will do a fantastic job!” Pompeo said he was “deeply grateful” to be nomi- nated and looked “forward to guiding the world’s finest dip- lomatic corps” if confirmed. He also praised Trump. “His leadership has made America safer, and I look for- ward to representing him and the American people to the rest of the world to further Ameri- ca’s prosperity,” Pompeo said. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a state- ment that he would oppose the nominations of Pompeo and Haspel. “Before and after his confirmation as CIA direc- tor, Mike Pompeo has demon- strated a casual relationship to truth and principle,” the sena- tor said. “He has downplayed Russia’s attack on our democ- racy, at times contradicting the intelligence community he is supposed to lead. He has also made inconsistent and deeply concerning statements about torture and mass spying on Americans. “Ms. Haspel’s background makes her unsuitable to serve as CIA director. Her nomina- tion must include total trans- parency about this back- ground, which I called for more than a year ago when she was appointed deputy director. If Ms. Haspel seeks to serve at the highest levels of U.S. intel- ligence, the government can no longer cover up disturbing facts from her past.” U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said in a post on Twitter: “Nothing in Pompeo’s record indicates he believes in diplomacy as an effective tool. He’s acted as a hardline partisan, defended torture & warrantless surveil- lance, and tried to blow up the deal that has kept Iran from developing nuclear weap- ons. So this news is deeply concerning.” Waiver trials: Marquis says prosecutors will no longer do waiver trials Continued from Page 1A A hook Clatsop County used the waivers for years as a hook to persuade misdemeanor defendants to honor their court dates. The 60-bed jail in Astoria is chronically overcrowded, with as many as 70 percent of inmates awaiting trial. People accused of misdemeanors are often released when the jail approaches capacity. The waivers were a reflec- tion of jail overcrowding and the high percentage of defen- dants who live outside the county. The Daily Astorian found that roughly 40 percent of drunken-driving cases, for example, involve visitors to the coast. Up until about a year ago, the court would enforce waiv- ers signed by defendants — like Medina, the Washing- ton state woman — who were in custody after an arrest but not yet arraigned on charges, a process some found trou- bling. Someone arrested after a night of drinking or a fight with a loved one and eager to get out of jail may not realize the risks of waiving their right to appear at trial. Waivers signed by defen- dants after arraignment in court, by contrast, came with explicit warnings from judges about the possible conse- quences. The waiver form — in bold, capital letters — stated: “I authorize the court to go ahead without me and to have the trial on the original date or on any other date.” Defendants were advised that if they signed the waiver and did not show up for trial, they gave up the right to be represented by an attorney, to challenge evidence, to ques- tion witnesses and to mount a defense. Even though judges explained the gravity, Win- termute doubts defendants — some who appear at arraign- ment from a video link from jail — fully understood. The choice was especially cloudy for people with drug or alco- hol problems, mental health issues, or precarious job or housing situations. “I wonder how much it gets through to some people when they’re sitting there, on a camera, and they just want to get the hell out of jail,” he said. For prosecutors, the waiv- ers provided some assur- ance that misdemeanor cases would inch toward conclusion even if defendants repeatedly missed court dates. “The question is, do they knowingly, voluntarily and freely weigh in their minds — with legal representation, although it’s not absolutely necessary — that getting out of jail without paying a dime is worth it?” Marquis said. Defendants who waived their right to appear at trial were almost always convicted if their cases reached the courtroom in their absence, since prosecutors had the luxury of arguing against an empty chair. The Circuit Court used the waivers to help close mis- demeanor cases rather than keeping them open indefi- nitely. On reflection, Judge Brownhill said it looks as if the waivers did not achieve that goal. Of the 11 waiver tri- als last year, the judge said, seven are still on warrant status. Judges do not sentence defendants convicted in absentia, so, until they are arrested again or turn them- selves in, the convictions stay in the background, like a shadow. Five years after Medina, the Washington state woman, was found guilty after she didn’t show up for her drunk- en-driving trial, she still has not been sentenced. to appear for trial. “This idea of trial in absentia is just so un-Amer- ican,” she said. “I think peo- ple would be hard-pressed to believe that we try people without them being there and without their lawyers being there.” House Bill 4149, which Williamson sponsored, would ban the waivers. The bill would also bar prosecutors from requiring defendants to agree that a law is unconstitu- tional as a condition of a plea offer. The state House voted 56-0 in favor of the bill in Febru- ary. The Senate voted 27-1 earlier this month, with state Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scap- poose, the only “no” vote. Johnson spoke with Mar- quis about the potential downside for Clatsop County. “This bill, the way that it’s written, would give criminal defendants — including those accused of domestic violence — an easy way to avoid con- sequences,” the senator said. ‘Wrong thing to do’ Marquis, in anticipation of Gov. Kate Brown allow- ing HB 4149 to become law, informed judges last week that prosecutors will no lon- ger do waiver trials. “My lawyers will be ask- ing for warrants if a defendant fails to appear and we will urge the jail to seriously con- sider whether to release peo- ple who have shown over and over again their refusal to fol- low court orders to appear,” the district attorney wrote in an email. Wintermute said defen- dants often have to choose between a bad outcome and a worse one, and should not be coerced into giving up import- ant rights so the courts might function more efficiently. “It’s the wrong thing to do, is what it comes down to,” the defense attorney said. ‘Outrageous’ The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that Clatsop County’s use of the waivers was legal. The opin- ion — in State of Oregon v. Skillstad, written by Ellen Rosenblum, now the state’s attorney general — hinged on whether the waiver in a crim- inal mischief trial was valid and voluntary. The state Legislature took up the issue this year as part of a wider discussion on plea bargains. State House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, said she heard about the waivers in Clatsop County after one of the mis- demeanor convictions bub- bled up on appeal. 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