7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 2018
Serving on
corporate
board
while in
Congress?
That’s
allowed
By RICHARD
LARDNER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
—
The indictment of Rep.
Chris Collins on insider
trading charges is drawing
new attention to the free-
dom members of Congress
have to serve on corporate
boards or to buy and sell
stock in industries they’re
responsible for overseeing.
Collins, a New York
Republican and a mem-
ber of the House Energy
and Commerce Commit-
tee, was arrested Wednes-
day and charged with con-
spiracy, securities fraud,
wire fraud and making
false statements to the FBI.
Parallel charges were filed
against two other people,
including Collins’ son.
Collins has denied any
wrongdoing
stemming
from his involvement with
Innate Immunotherapeutics
Limited, a biotechnology
company based in Sydney,
Australia. He was Innate’s
largest shareholder, hold-
ing nearly 17 percent of its
shares. He also was a mem-
ber of the company’s board
of directors — an arrange-
ment that itself isn’t a vio-
lation of the law. Yet it’s a
connection that can create
the potential for conflicts of
interest.
Members of Congress
are not prohibited from
serving on corporate boards
as long as they don’t receive
compensation for doing so.
The thinking behind this
exception, which doesn’t
extend to top-level exec-
utive branch officials, is
to ensure that lawmak-
ers aren’t prevented from
accepting positions on the
boards of charities or other
philanthropic
organiza-
tions, according to Craig
Holman of the nonparti-
san advocacy group Public
Citizen.
Holman, who lobbies
in Washington for stricter
government ethics and lob-
bying rules, noted that law-
makers are often privy
to sensitive information
before it becomes public.
That makes the opportunity
for insider trading “very
prevalent,” he said.
“My own office was
stunned” by Collins’ posi-
tion, said Holman. “‘Really,
they can sit on a board of
directors?’”
Government ethics law-
yer Kathleen Clark said
another downside of per-
mitting members of Con-
gress to be on corpo-
rate boards is that they
may feel a sense of loy-
alty to the business, spur-
ring them to share informa-
tion with the company they
obtained through govern-
ment service.
Clark, a law professor at
Washington University in
St. Louis, also challenged
the notion that service on
noncommercial organiza-
tions is inherently altruis-
tic and doesn’t come with
potential conflicts of inter-
est. Even nonprofits can
have an interest in see-
ing particular legislation
passed, she said.
“In almost every situ-
ation, the ethics standards
members of Congress
impose on themselves are
more lax than what they
require of high-level execu-
tive branch officials,” Clark
said.
For now, Army suspends immigrant discharges
The U.S. Army has stopped
discharging
immigrant
recruits who enlisted seek-
ing a path to citizenship —
at least temporarily.
A memo spells out orders
to high-ranking Army offi-
cials to stop processing dis-
charges of men and women
who enlisted in the special
immigrant program.
“Effective immediately,
you will suspend processing
of all involuntary separa-
tion actions,” read the memo
signed July 20 by Mar-
shall Williams, acting assis-
tant Secretary of the Army
for Manpower and Reserve
Affairs.
The disclosure comes
one month after a report that
dozens of immigrant enlist-
ees were being discharged
or had their contracts can-
celled. Some said they were
given no reason for their
discharge. Others said the
Army informed them they’d
been labeled as security
risks because they have rel-
atives abroad or because the
Defense Department had
not completed background
checks on them.
In a statement Thursday,
Army Lt. Col. Nina L. Hill
said they were stopping the
discharges in order to review
the administrative separa-
tion process. The decision
could impact hundreds of
enlistees.
“We continue to abide by
all requirements to include
completing a thorough back-
ground investigation” on all
recruits, she said.
said he was filing for asy-
lum. He asked that his name
be withheld because he fears
he might be forced to return
to Pakistan, where he could
face danger as a former U.S.
Army enlistee.
The reversal comes as
the Defense Department
has attempted to strengthen
security
requirements
for the program, through
which historically immi-
grants vowed to risk their
lives for the promise of U.S.
citizenship.
President George W.
Bush ordered “expedited
naturalization” for immi-
grant soldiers after 9/11 in
an effort to swell military
ranks. Seven years later the
Military Accessions Vital to
the National Interest pro-
gram, known as MAVNI,
lated federal law by ignoring
the conclusions of agency
scientists that chlorpyrifos is
harmful.
“The panel held that there
was no justification for the
EPA’s decision in its 2017
order to maintain a tolerance
for chlorpyrifos in the face
of scientific evidence that its
residue on food causes neu-
rodevelopmental
damage
to children,” Judge Jed S.
Rakoff wrote in the court’s
opinion.
Michael Abboud, spokes-
man for acting EPA Admin-
istrator Andrew Wheeler,
said the agency was review-
ing the decision, but it had
been unable to “fully eval-
uate the pesticide using the
best available, transparent
science.”
EPA could potentially
appeal to the Supreme
Court since one member of
the three-judge panel dis-
sented from the majority
ruling.
permanent residents.
Lawyer Michael Wil-
des said the Knavses applied
for citizenship on their own
and didn’t get any special
treatment.
He confirmed that Mela-
nia Trump sponsored their
green cards. Her husband,
President Donald Trump,
has proposed ending most
family-based immigration,
which he refers to as “chain
migration.”
“This golden experiment,
these doors that are in Amer-
ica, remain hinged open to
beautiful people as they have
today,” Wildes said after the
ceremony.
Amid a bitter debate over
immigration — particularly
the Trump administration’s
separation of children from
families crossing the border
illegally — Wildes said the
Knavses’ attaining citizen-
ship was “an example of it
going right.”
Melania Trump’s spokes-
woman, Stephanie Grisham,
declined to comment. She
said the first lady’s par-
ents “are not part of the
administration and deserve
privacy.”
Along with targeting
illegal immigration, Presi-
dent Donald Trump has pro-
posed sharply curbing legal
immigration.
The Republican pres-
ident proposed replacing
most family-based immi-
gration with a skills-based
system after an attempted
bombing by a Bangladeshi
immigrant in New York last
December.
He also called for elimi-
nating a visa lottery program
for people from countries
under-represented in the U.S.
The plan, which Trump
reiterated last week at a Wil-
kes-Barre,
Pennsylvania
rally, would limit immigrants
like his wife to sponsoring
only their spouses and under-
age children to join them in
the U.S. — not their parents,
adult children or siblings.
AP Photo/Mike Knaak
A Pakistani recruit, 22, who was recently discharged from the Army, holds an American flag.
The Army has reversed
one discharge, for Brazilian
reservist Lucas Calixto, 28,
who had sued. Nonetheless,
discharges of other immi-
grant enlistees continued.
Attorneys sought to bring
a class-action lawsuit last
week to offer protections to
a broader group of reserv-
ists and recruits in the pro-
gram, demanding that prior
discharges be revoked and
that further separations be
halted.
A judge’s order refer-
ences the July 20 memo,
and asks the Army to clar-
ify how it impacts the dis-
charge status of Calixto and
other plaintiffs. As part of
the memo, Williams also
instructed Army officials
to recommend whether the
military should issue fur-
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Russian PM
strongly warns
US against
ramping up
sanctions
MOSCOW — Russia’s
prime minister sternly warned
the United States against
ramping up sanctions, saying
today that Moscow would
retaliate with economic,
political and unspecified
“other” means.
The tough message from
Prime Minister Dmitry Med-
vedev marked what the
Kremlin sees as a red line,
reflecting growing dismay
with announced U.S. sanc-
tions that have sent the Rus-
sian ruble plummeting to its
lowest level in two years.
The U.S. State Depart-
ment said Wednesday that
Washington would impose
new sanctions this month
after determining this week
that Moscow used a military
grade nerve agent in March
to poison an ex-Russian spy
in England.
Russia has strongly denied
involvement in the poison-
ings of Sergei Skripal and his
adult daughter.
The sanctions will include
the presumed denial of
export licenses for Russia to
purchase many items with
national security implica-
tions, according to the State
Department.
New sanctions proposals
in the U.S. Congress include
legislation targeting Russia’s
state-controlled banks and
freezing their operations in
dollars — a move that would
deal a heavy blow to the Rus-
sian economy.
Medvedev warned the
U.S. that such a move would
cross a red line.
“If something like a ban
on bank operations or cur-
rency use follows, it will
amount to a declaration of
economic war,” the Russian
prime minister said.
Fre
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Est Fast
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Call me
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Jeff Hale Painting
•
•
•
•
ther guidance related to the
program.
Margaret Stock, an Alas-
ka-based immigration attor-
ney and a retired Army
Reserve lieutenant colo-
nel who helped create the
immigrant recruitment pro-
gram, said Wednesday the
memo proves there was a
policy.
“It’s an admission by the
Army that they’ve improp-
erly discharged hundreds of
soldiers,” she said. “The next
step should be go back and
rescind the people who were
improperly discharged.”
Discharged recruits and
reservists reached Thursday
said their discharges were
still in place as far as they
knew.
One Pakistani man caught
by surprise by his discharge
became an official recruiting
program.
It came under fire from
conservatives when Presi-
dent Barack Obama added
DACA recipients — young
immigrants
who
were
brought to the U.S. ille-
gally as children — to the
list of eligible enlistees. In
response, the military lay-
ered on additional security
clearances for recruits to
pass before heading to boot
camp.
The Trump Administra-
tion added even more hur-
dles, creating a backlog
within the Defense Depart-
ment. Last fall, hundreds of
recruits still in the enlist-
ment process had their con-
tracts canceled.
Government
attorneys
called the recruitment pro-
gram an “elevated security
risk” in another case involv-
ing 17 foreign-born military
recruits who enlisted through
the program but have not
been able to clear addi-
tional security requirements.
Some recruits had falsified
their background records
and were connected to
state-sponsored intelligence
agencies, the court filing
said.
Eligible recruits are
required to have legal status
in the U.S., such as a student
visa, before enlisting. More
than 5,000 immigrants were
recruited into the program
in 2016, and an estimated
10,000 are currently serving.
Nearly 110,000 members
of the Armed Forces have
gained citizenship by serv-
ing in the U.S. military since
Sept. 11, 2001, according to
the Defense Department.
By MARTHA MENDOZA
and GARANCE BURKE
Associated Press
Residential
Commercial
Cedar Roof Treatments
Exterior Repaint Specialist
Russia-U.S. ties have
sunk to their lowest level
since Cold War times amid
tensions over Ukraine, the
war in Syria and the allega-
tions of Russian meddling
in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election.
Appeals
court tells
EPA to stop
pesticide sales
WASHINGTON — A fed-
eral appeals court has ruled
that the Trump administration
endangered public health by
keeping a widely used pes-
ticide on the market despite
extensive scientific evi-
dence that even tiny levels
of exposure can harm babies’
brains.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in San Francisco
on Thursday ordered the
Environmental
Protection
Agency to remove chlorpyr-
ifos from sale in the United
States within 60 days.
A coalition of farmwork-
ers and environmental groups
sued last year after then-EPA
chief Scott Pruitt reversed
an Obama-era effort to ban
chlorpyrifos, which is widely
sprayed on citrus fruit, apples
and other crops.
The attorneys general for
several states including Cal-
ifornia, New York and Mas-
sachusetts joined the case
against EPA.
In a split decision, the
court said Thursday that
Pruitt, a Republican forced
to resign earlier this summer
amid ethics scandals, vio-
Meet the newest
citizens: first
lady’s parents
NEW YORK — First lady
Melania Trump’s parents
were sworn in as U.S. citi-
zens on Thursday, complet-
ing a legal path to citizenship
that their son-in-law has sug-
gested eliminating.
Viktor
and
Amalija
Knavs, both in their 70s, took
the citizenship oath at a pri-
vate ceremony in New York
City. The Slovenian immi-
grants, a former car dealer
and textile factory worker,
had been living in the U.S. as
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