NATION/WORLD
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Trump-Russia interview
decision not soon says Giuliani
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) —
President Donald Trump
and his lawyers likely won’t
decide whether he will
answer questions from Rus-
sia probe investigators until
after his summit with North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un
next month, according to the
president’s legal team.
Rudy Giuliani, the presi-
dent’s new attorney, said in
an interview with The Asso-
ciated Press on Friday that
any preparation with Trump
for a possible interview with
federal investigators would
likely be delayed until after
the June 12 summit in Sin-
gapore because “I wouldn’t
want to take his concentra-
tion off something far, far
more important.”
Giuliani, who also sug-
gested that special coun-
sel Robert Mueller’s team
had indicated it would not
attempt to indict Trump,
said he had hoped to resolve
the question of a possi-
ble interview by May 17,
the one-year anniversary of
Mueller’s appointment, but
that was no longer feasible.
“Several things delayed
us, with the primary one
being the whole situa-
tion with North Korea,”
Giuliani said. “The presi-
dent has been very busy. It
really would be pretty close
to impossible to spend the
amount of time on it we
would need.”
The president’s lawyers
have not decided whether
it would be in Trump’s best
interest to sit for an inter-
view. Giuliani warned that it
could be a “perjury trap” and
suggested that “lies told by
others” could land the presi-
dent in legal trouble, though
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, applauds at the Iran Freedom Con-
vention for Human Rights and democracy at the Grand Hyatt on Saturday in Washington.
he said that Trump himself
would not close the door
entirely on an interview.
“The president would
probably like the resolu-
tion,” the former New York
City mayor said. “If we were
convinced it would speed up
the process, we may do it.
If we believed they would
go into it honestly and with
an open mind, we would be
inclined to do it. But right
now, we’re not there.”
Mueller’s
investiga-
tion has operated largely in
secrecy, with the public get-
ting only glimpses into its
operation through witnesses
who are questioned or when
indictments and guilty pleas
are unsealed. But Giuliani
suggested that a recent con-
versation with Mueller’s
team led him to believe that
the special counsel, citing a
Justice Department opinion,
had ruled out the possibility
of trying to indict a sitting
president.
Mueller has floated the
idea of issuing a grand jury
subpoena for Trump to
answer questions, former
Trump attorney John Dowd
has said, though it is unclear
how serious prosecutors
were about such a move.
Even if Mueller’s team
decided to subpoena Trump
as part of the investigation,
the president could still fight
it in court or refuse to answer
questions by invoking his
Fifth Amendment protec-
tion from self-incrimination.
Giuliani said Friday that
if a subpoena were issued
to get Trump to appear,
the president’s legal team
would oppose it unless
they could “reach agree-
ment on the ground rules.”
He argued that Trump could
invoke executive privilege,
and the team would point to
Justice Department opinions
in fighting a subpoena and
“on both law and the facts,
we would have the stron-
gest case you could imag-
ine.” He noted the handover
of 1.2 million documents as
evidence of cooperation.
He also indicated that
the president’s lawyers may
be “more likely” to agree
to an interview if Mueller’s
team narrowed the scope
of what it was investigat-
ing. Though Giuliani would
not provide an exact date
for when a determination
would be made about the
interview, he said it proba-
bly “would be silly to make
a decision” much before the
highly anticipated summit.
He said that the demands on
Trump’s time meant that his
legal team had “not done a
lot” in terms of preparing
the president for a possible
in-person interview.
“It would take a while
and he’s focused on North
Korea,” said Giuliani.
AT&T chief lobbyist out after
hiring of Trump’s attorney Cohen
NEW YORK (AP) —
The chief lobbyist for AT&T
is leaving the company after
overseeing a $50,000-per-
month contract for President
Donald Trump’s attorney
Michael Cohen to serve as a
political consultant.
In a memo to employ-
ees, AT&T CEO Randall Ste-
phenson said the company
made a “big mistake” in hir-
ing Cohen as a political con-
sultant. While everything the
company did was legal, Ste-
phenson said that the associa-
tion with Cohen was “a serious
misjudgment.”
Stephenson noted that the
company’s reputation has
been damaged and that the vet-
ting process used by
U.S. District Judge
its team in Wash-
Richard Leon is
ington
“clearly
expected to rule
failed.” The Wash-
next month.
ington team had
AT&T
said
hired Cohen under
Cohen approached
a one-year contract
the company after
that paid $50,000 a
the 2016 presiden-
tial election and
month.
said he was leav-
Stephenson said Stephenson
ing the Trump orga-
Bob Quinn, senior
executive vice president of the nization to do consulting for
external and legislative affairs a “select few” companies that
wanted his opinion on Trump
group, “will be retiring.”
The Justice Department and the administration. AT&T
is seeking to block AT&T’s said it had been looking for
$85 billion purchase of Time consultants who could help
Warner on the grounds that it understand the president’s
it would stifle competition. approach to regulatory reform
AT&T disagreed, sending at the Federal Communica-
the battle into a federal trial. tions Commission, tax reform
and antitrust enforcement —
“specifically our Time Warner
deal.”
AT&T has said it needs to
buy Time Warner to compete
with the likes of Amazon, Net-
flix and Google in the rapidly
evolving world of video enter-
tainment. The Justice Depart-
ment’s antitrust lawyers worry
that consumers will end up
paying more to watch their
favorite shows, whether on
a TV screen, smartphone or
tablet.
The company said it was
contacted by investigators with
special counsel Robert Muel-
ler and provided “all infor-
mation requested in Novem-
ber and December of 2017.”
East Oregonian
Page 9A
RIVER: ‘Visioning’ project
for north side could help
Continued from 1A
the strip didn’t attract any
new developments.
By 2015, the consensus
was that the design stan-
dards, while ambitious,
were simply too onerous
for developers.
More than three years
later, the Pendleton Plan-
ning Commission returned
to the drawing board at a
Thursday meeting.
The time was mostly
used to plot out how the
commission would handle
the issue, but a few ideas
at revising the plan were
discussed.
Maureen McCormmach,
the only member who was
on the commission when
the river quarter plan was
originally adopted, sug-
gested they keep the aes-
thetic requirements while
allowing developers to
build either retail spaces or
housing without needing to
commit to both.
But some of the existing
businesses felt like the plan
was beyond repair.
Mason Carlson, the
co-owner of The Muffler
Shop at 915 S.W. Court
Ave., told the commission
that the city should scrap
the plan entirely and allow
businesses to develop their
properties without the addi-
tional regulations.
“Get rid of this so we
can go back to our normal
lives and build the empires
we want to build,” he said.
A group of river quar-
ter businesses advocating
for the full repeal of the
plan have organized as the
“Court St. Business Asso-
ciation,” which is being led
by the owners of Sign Men
at 803 S.W. Court Ave.
Pendleton resident Jeff
Ball said he owns a busi-
ness on the southern side
of Court and he’s interested
in developing river quar-
ter properties, but he feels
hamstrung by the zoning.
Although the river quar-
ter plan has spent years in
limbo, it may take a while
longer before any changes
are made.
Planning aide Julie
Chase estimated that it may
take eight meetings over
four months to address all
the issues with the river
quarter plan.
North
bank
conservation
As wind rattled the win-
dows and thunder crackled
over city hall on Tuesday,
the Pendleton City Coun-
cil talked about whether the
city’s approach to the Uma-
tilla River should be more
in tune with Mother Nature.
At a workshop, the
council met with Blue
Mountain Land Trust Exec-
utive Director Tim Cope-
land about the north bank
of the river.
Copeland said he and his
Walla Walla-based conser-
vation nonprofit had their
interest piqued when a cit-
izen group asked them to
get involved in an effort
to prevent development on
a half-acre parcel of river-
front land south of North-
west Bailey Avenue owned
by the Pendleton Develop-
ment Commission.
Speaking via telecon-
ference, he told the council
that it’s not the land trust’s
prerogative to get involved
in a land dispute, preferring
to work with cooperative
land owners.
But he was interested
enough in the situation to
take a trip down to Pend-
leton and see the river for
himself.
He noticed a river with
a lot of natural beauty, but
also an abundance of trash,
graffiti and abandoned drug
paraphernalia, and a lack of
clear access to the river’s
edge.
“It’s a diamond in the
rough,” Copeland said.
“The operative word being
‘rough.’”
The citizen group scored
a victory in March when
the council agreed to take
the land off the market in
March, but the group also
presented a broader plan
to conserve the entire north
bank.
Copeland said the doc-
ument was always meant
more as a collection of
notes rather than a defin-
itive plan, but he said a
“visioning” process for
the north bank of the river
could be a good idea.
He said he was involved
with public input processes
for Walla Walla-area proj-
ects like a downtown revi-
talization plan and the Blue
Mountain Region Trails,
and found that a series of
public meetings helped
bring people together in
solving issues.
The city council was
skeptical.
Councilor
McKen-
non McDonald said she
attended previous meet-
ings on the Pendleton River
Parkway and said there
wasn’t much public interest
in trails on the north side of
the river. She always wor-
ried about how the city
would deal with private
land owners along the river.
Mayor John Turner
said north bank conser-
vation didn’t really fit in
with the city’s official
goals — improving hous-
ing, infrastructure, land
development and economic
development.
“On a scale of 1 to 10,
I’d rate this a 1,” he said.
One member of the cit-
izen group wasn’t too keen
on Copeland’s ideas either.
Although the group
remains interested in con-
serving a wider swath of
the north bank, resident
Peg Willis said the group
is focused on getting a con-
servation easement for the
city-owned property.
Few teeth in Trump’s prescription to reduce drug prices
WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Donald Trump’s
long-promised plan to bring
down drug prices, unveiled
Friday, would mostly spare
the pharmaceutical indus-
try he previously accused of
“getting away with murder.”
Instead he focuses on pri-
vate competition and more
openness to reduce Ameri-
ca’s prescription pain.
In Rose Garden remarks
at the White House, Trump
called his plan the “most
sweeping action in his-
tory to lower the price of
prescription drugs for the
American people.” But it
does not include his cam-
paign pledge to use the
massive buying power of
the government’s Medicare
program to directly negoti-
ate lower prices for seniors.
That idea has long been
supported by Democrats
but is a non-starter for drug-
makers and most Republi-
cans in Congress. Demo-
cratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett
of Texas dismissed Trump’s
plan as “a sugar-coated
nothing pill.”
The administration will
pursue a raft of old and
new measures intended to
improve competition and
transparency in the notori-
ously complex drug pricing
system.
But most of the mea-
sures could take months
or years to implement, and
none would stop drugmak-
ers from setting sky-high
initial prices.
“There are some things
in this set of proposals that
can move us in the direc-
tion of lower prices for some
people,” said David Mitch-
ell, founder of Patients for
Affordable Drugs. “At the
same time, it is not clear at
all how they are going to
lower list prices.”
Drugmakers generally
can charge as much as the
market will bear because
the U.S. government doesn’t
regulate medicine prices,
unlike most other developed
countries.
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