The daily Astorian., March 19, 2018, Page 4A, Image 4

4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2018
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Trump tweets revive
chatter he’s preparing
to fire Mueller
WASHINGTON — President Donald
Trump is not considering firing the special
counsel investigating Russian election inter-
ference, a top White House lawyer said, after
a cascade of Trump tweets revived chatter that
the deeply frustrated president may be prepar-
ing to get rid of the veteran prosecutor.
In a first for Trump, he jabbed directly
at special counsel Robert Mueller by name
in weekend tweets that both challenged the
investigation’s existence and suggested politi-
cal bias on the part of Mueller’s investigators.
Trump has long been frustrated by the lengthy
and intensifying probe, and insists his 2016
Republican presidential campaign did not col-
lude with Russia to influence the election in his
favor.
“The Mueller probe should never have been
started in that there was no collusion and there
was no crime,” he said in a late Saturday tweet
he ended with “WITCH HUNT!”
Likely contributing to Trump’s sense of
frustration, The New York Times reported last
week that Mueller had subpoenaed the Trump
Organization for Russia-related documents.
Trump had said Mueller would cross a red line
with such a step.
“Why does the Mueller team have 13 hard-
ened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary
supporters, and Zero Republicans?” he tweeted
Sunday.
Former FBI deputy director Andrew
McCabe’s attorney criticized the president’s
weekend tweets as evidence that McCabe’s fir-
ing was improper.
In a tweet Sunday, Michael Bromwich
says McCabe won’t be responding to Trump’s
“childish, defamatory, disgusting & false”
tweets. But he says the tweets confirm a “cor-
rupted” process in which McCabe was fired
by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last Friday.
Bromwich promises the “whole truth will come
out in due course.”
Over the weekend, Trump called McCabe’s
firing “a great day for democracy.”
McCabe has been a frequent target of
Trump’s anger and criticism. The Associated
Press reported that McCabe’s memos have
been provided to Mueller, who’s investigating
possible collusion between Trump’s campaign
and Russia.
Another explosion
injures 2 in Texas capital
AUSTIN, Texas — Authorities have called
on the person or people behind the bombings
in Austin to reach out to the police to let them
know why they’re setting off the explosives.
Police Chief Brian Manley said Monday
that it’s too soon to say whether Sunday night’s
bombing that injured two men could have
been a response to his call for those behind the
bombings to reach out.
Manley says investigators see “similari-
ties” between Sunday night’s bomb and three
others this month that killed two people and
injured two others. But he says Sunday’s dif-
fered in that it involved a tripwire whereas the
others were package bombs left on people’s
doorsteps.
Frederick Milanowski, the special agent in
charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms, says the latest bomb is “more sophis-
ticated” because it used a tripwire.
Kushner Cos. filed
false documents on
rent-regulated tenants
NEW YORK — When the Kushner Cos.
bought three apartment buildings in a gentrifying
neighborhood of Queens in 2015, most of the ten-
ants were protected by special rules that prevent
developers from pushing them out, raising rents
and turning a tidy profit.
But that’s exactly what the company then
run by Jared Kushner did, and with remarkable
speed. Two years later, it sold all three buildings
for $60 million, nearly 50 percent more than it
paid.
Now a clue has emerged as to how President
Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s firm was able to
move so fast: The Kushner Cos. routinely filed
false paperwork with the city declaring it had
zero rent-regulated tenants in dozens of build-
ings it owned across the city when, in fact, it had
hundreds.
While none of the documents during a three-
year period when Kushner was CEO bore his per-
sonal signature, they provide a window into the
ethics of the business empire he ran before he
went on to become one of the most trusted advis-
ers to the president of the United States.
“It’s bare-faced greed,” said Aaron Carr,
founder of Housing Rights Initiative, a tenants’
rights watchdog that compiled the work permit
application documents and shared them with The
Associated Press. “The fact that the company was
falsifying all these applications with the govern-
ment shows a sordid attempt to avert accountabil-
ity and get a rapid return on its investment.”
EU criticizes Turkey’s
offensive in Syrian town
BEIRUT — The European Union’s top dip-
lomat criticized Turkey on Monday over its mil-
itary offensive in a northern Syrian town, call-
ing on Ankara to ensure that fighting eases in the
conflict-torn country.
The appeal came as looting was widely
reported in the town captured a day earlier by
Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters, accord-
ing to residents and monitors. Meanwhile, Tur-
key’s state-run news agency said 11 people —
seven civilians and four Turkish-backed Syrian
fighters — were killed in an explosion in a build-
ing in Afrin town center as it was being cleared
of booby traps. Anadolu News agency said the
bomb was reportedly left by Syrian Kurdish
fighters.
Pollack: ‘There’s no plan so
I’m working on creating one’
Continued from Page 1A
preparation, information gath-
ering and public education. It
cost Astoria $23,500 to bring
him here, and he began his
work in September.
For Pollack the program is
“an opportunity to see the inner
workings of government.” He
had hoped he would be placed
in Astoria. The interview had
gone well and, he said, “They
had a better understanding
of what the program was and
what could be achieved.”
For the work in front of
him, Astoria represents a
unique challenge with “water
on one side and a hill on the
other.” It’s easy to get locked
in if access along Highway
30 or across either of the two
bridges — the massive Asto-
ria Bridge over the Columbia
River or the New Youngs Bay
Bridge into Warrenton — is
blocked.
“A lot of this is about where
do you go if your main facil-
ities are interrupted,” Pollack
said.
In his research, many of
the cities that do this kind of
planning are much larger than
Astoria, with more staff and
more layers of governance.
Here, Pollack said, one of
the challenges beyond geogra-
phy is that “you just have less
staff so you have less people to
respond.”
He hopes to create a living,
mutable document that will
help the city adapt to a variety
of situations down the road.
“There’s no plan so I’m
working on creating one.”
SUNSET EMPIRE
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