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OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Both Trump, critics find things to like in report
By JONATHAN LEMIRE
and ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A
Justice Department watchdog
report has turned into Wash-
ington’s latest Rorschach test,
with President Donald Trump
and his critics each cherry
picking what they want to see
from its findings to either dis-
credit or defend investigators
conducting the probe into the
White House.
The 500-page report,
which was more than a year
in the making, offered a
nuanced conclusion about the
bureau’s handling of the Hil-
lary Clinton email probe, crit-
icizing the FBI and its for-
mer director James Comey
personally but not finding
evidence that political bias
tainted the investigation in
the months and days leading
up to Trump’s election.
But Trump wielded it as
a blunt instrument on Fri-
day, bludgeoning the integ-
rity of the Justice Department
by pointing to the political-
ly-charged communication
among FBI employees as
proof that the FBI was biased
“at the top level” and “plot-
ting against my election.”
“The end result was wrong.
There was total bias,” Trump
declared Friday. “Comey was
the ring leader of this whole,
you know, den of thieves. It
was a den of thieves.”
Trump allies seized upon
text messages between
agents, pointing to one from
August 2016 that said “We’ll
stop it” with regard to a
potential Trump victory and
another from a bureau lawyer
that said “Viva le resistance.”
And Trump took it one step
further, barreling out of the
White House Friday for an
unannounced, early-morn-
ing television interview that
turned into a nearly hour-long
freewheeling give-and-take
with reporters, during which
he returned time and again to
assert that report had exon-
erated him amid Mueller’s
ongoing probe into Russian
election interference.
“There was no collu-
sion. There was no obstruc-
tion. The IG report yes-
terday went a long way to
show that,’ Trump said on the
White House North Lawn.
“And I think that the Mueller
investigation has been totally
discredited.”
But Trump’s claim was
baseless: the report made no
conclusions about the presi-
dent’s involvement. But its crit-
icism of Comey — levied by
an inspector general appointed
by President Barack Obama
— is important to Trump as
he tries to inoculate himself
against accusations that he
obstructed justice by firing the
FBI director last May.
The president’s lawyers
want to paint the dismissal as
something he was both autho-
rized to do under the Consti-
tution and correct to do based
on Comey’s performance.
The White House initially
said Trump fired Comey
over his handling of the Clin-
ton investigation, though the
president himself later mud-
died that explanation when he
said he was thinking of “this
Russia thing.”
The report did scold
Comey for announcing his
conclusion that Clinton should
not face charges, saying it was
insubordinate and extraordi-
nary that he would not have
coordinated the statement
with his Justice Department
bosses. It also chastised him
for announcing, again without
Justice Department backing,
that the investigation would
be reopened because of newly
discovered emails on Anthony
Weiner’s laptop.
Judgments on how the
report would impact Trump’s
legal future predictably broke
down along party lines.
Rep. Mark Meadows,
a North Carolina Republi-
can, said he thinks the report
may exonerate Trump even
though it passes no judgment
on his guilt or innocence.
“If you look at the fruit
of the poisoned tree, you
can’t have that kind of bias
in somebody wanting to
make sure the president gets
defeated leading an investiga-
tion,” Meadows said. “I don’t
think any of us would want
our enemy investigating us.”
But Sen. Richard Blumen-
thal, Democrat from Connecti-
cut, declared that “any effort
to use this report as an excuse
for shutting down the special
counsel’s investigation is both
disingenuous and dangerous.”
“Nothing in this report
detracts from the credibility
of the special counsel’s inves-
tigation,” Blumenthal said,
“and nothing here suggests
the special counsel investiga-
tion resulted from FBI bias or
improper conduct.
Though the report doesn’t
validate all of Trump’s
claims, it does make clear that
some employees involved in
the Clinton and subsequent
Russia investigation commu-
nicated to each other about
wanting Trump to lose.
Much of the public atten-
tion has been focused on
Peter Strzok, a seasoned FBI
counterintelligence investiga-
tor who worked the Clinton
investigation and was later
on Mueller’s team until anti-
Trump text messages with an
FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, were
discovered and brought to the
special counsel’s attention.
Among the text exchanges
that have been made public
is one from August 2016 in
which Page said, “(Trump’s)
not ever going to become pres-
ident, right? Right?!” Strzok
responded by saying, “No. No
he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
Those text exchanges
caused the inspector gen-
eral to evaluate whether any
of Strzok’s decisions were
affected by political consid-
erations, and raised concerns
that there was a “willing-
ness to take official action to
impact the presidential candi-
date’s electoral prospects.”
The watchdog office said
it could not be certain that
the decision to prioritize the
Russia investigation in Octo-
ber 2016 over scouring the
Weiner laptop for possible
evidence against Clinton was
free from bias. But the report
also noted that Strzok was not
the sole decision-maker and
that he and Page sometimes
advocated for more aggressive
investigative steps than others
in the Clinton investigation.
His lawyer also issued a state-
ment saying there was no evi-
dence that Strzok’s political
views affected his actions.
SCHOOL: Students help translate for monolingual classmates
Continued from 1A
Because of the short ses-
sion, program coordinator
Loretta Fitterer said teach-
ers have to target specific
concepts.
“At the lowest level it may
be letter sounds,” she said.
“The next step may be sight
words, and for older students
it may be comprehension.”
Kara Nichols, who has
taught at the migrant educa-
tion program for four years,
said with her fourth grade
class she is focusing on vocab-
ulary, and on place value in
math lessons.
She said she has taught the
same group of students since
they were in first grade, and
has enjoyed the connection
she’s developed with them.
“The smaller size class
makes it more personable,”
she said.
She added that language
barriers can be a challenge.
“I speak Spanish, but I
can’t teach in it,” she said. “I
have to try to make sure their
time is valuable.”
For students who don’t
speak English, Fitterer said in
addition to a math and reading
goal, they will work toward an
English goal by the end of the
program.
“We work on preposi-
tions, pronouns and verbs,”
she said. “We’ve had pretty
good success with monolin-
gual students.”
She noted that in the last
few years, they’ve seen an
increase in students who only
speak a language other than
English or Spanish, such as
K’iche’ or Mam, Mayan lan-
guages spoken in Guatemala
and parts of Mexico.
Kyllian Wood, the sev-
enth- and eighth-grade class
instructor, said the students
help each other out, too.
“There are three monolin-
gual students in here,” he said.
“The rest of them are almost
all bilingual, and they try and
translate — that helps.”
In the first grade class, stu-
dents are working in small
groups at five different sta-
tions on reading assignments.
Some sound out words with
the teacher, and some do a
word recognition game called
“smelly sight words,” where
they roll a dice, and the num-
ber corresponds with a certain
color and word. They then use
a “smelly” marker to write that
word, helping them develop
an association between the
word and the number.
Students
also
com-
plete assignments on a pro-
gram called “Stride,” which
was created specifically for
migrant education programs.
“They can continue to use
it for the rest of the summer on
their computer, laptop or even
cell phone,” Fitterer said. The
program has lessons in math,
phonics and science.
“Many of the families will
go to Texas to sell Christ-
mas trees, then migrate back
here for asparagus, and over
to Washington for apples,”
Fitterer said. “So the kids’
instruction is interrupted.”
Thanking our Sponsors
Our annual Old Iron Show is a vital regional and community event,
free to all. The Umatilla County Historical Society thanks our
2018 sponsors, whose support carries on the tradition.
MAJOR SPONSORS
Baxter Auto Parts
Hill Meat Company
Les Schwab Tire Center
Olsen’s Auto Parts
RDO Equipment
Umatilla Electric Coop
SUPPORTING SPONSORS
Blue Mountain Machine & Welding
David & Shari Dallas
Doherty Welding LLC
Doherty Recycling LLC
Hatley Construction
Hodgen Distributing
Holton Secret Lab
Inland Auto Electric, Inc
J&B Automotive
John & Vickie Merry
PJ Rohde Ranch
Patrick & Kim Straughan
Western Antique Iron Trader
Winn Farming LLC
Premium Tire & Lube
Mark & Kelli Rosenberg
We also thank the hard-working volunteers,
who make this show possible
She said the Stride pro-
gram helps bridge that gap,
allowing students to have
some continuity in their edu-
cation even if they are moving
schools.
The day is split up, with
about an hour a day devoted
to reading and math. The rest
is split up between science,
Stride activities, and visits
from local organizations and
speakers. The final week will
be devoted to cultural aware-
ness, Fitterer said.
Wood praised the students’
efforts to get the most out of
class.
“They’re really hard work-
ers,” he said. “In a short
time period, we see a lot of
growth.”
–——
Contact
Jayati
Ramakrishnan at 541-564-
4534 or jramakrishnan@
eastoregonian.com
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Sixth-grader Oxiris Damian gives a suggestion to fifth-grader Sherlyn Estrada on
how to make a boat out of tin foil during a science class for ESL students at Sunset
Elementary School on Friday in Hermiston.