The Los Angeles district attorney declined to prosecute attorney Michael Avenatti on felony domestic abuse charges Wednesday and referred allegations that he roughed up his girlfriend to the city attorney for a possible misdemeanor case. 

Avenatti, 47, was arrested on suspicion of felony domestic violence last week after his girlfriend told police he abused her at his Los Angeles apartment following an argument. 

A restraining order against Avenatti was issued after actress Mareli Miniutti said he dragged her by the arm across a bedroom floor. 

Avenatti, who had called the allegations “completely false” and a fabrication, said in a statement he was thankful the district attorney had rejected the charges. 

“This Thanksgiving,” he said, “I am especially grateful for justice.” 

A spokeswoman for the district attorney would not say why prosecutors declined to take the case from Los Angeles police. Documents supporting the decision were not released because the case was referred to the city attorney and is still under investigation. 

Avenatti, who is mulling a presidential run, is best known as the attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, who has said she had sex with President Donald Trump in 2006, a claim Trump denies. 

As Daniels’ lawyer, Avenatti has pursued the president and those close to him relentlessly for months, taunting Trump in interviews and baiting him and his lawyers in tweets. 

Miniutti said in her request for a restraining order that she was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear when he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the bed. She said she was scratched on her side and leg. Court papers include photographs that appear to show bruises. 

The order was granted Monday. 

Avenatti said that he would be vindicated once footage from security cameras in the building was reviewed, even though the violence described by Miniutti would not have occurred in the building’s public areas. 
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A U.S. government agency said Wednesday that abortion rates among American women of all ages fell to a decade low in 2015, which both opponents and supporters of abortion rights attributed in part to individual states’ efforts to restrict women’s access to the procedure. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that statistics for 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, showed the abortion rate was 11.8 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. That was down 26 percent from 2006, when the study began and the rate was 15.9 abortions per 1,000 women. 

Teens aged 15 to 19 experienced a greater decrease than older women, with the rate falling 54 percent from 2006 to 2015, the CDC said. 

“This decrease in abortion rate was greater than the decreases for women in any older age group,” the CDC said in a statement. 

The CDC did not provide any reason for the decline, but abortion rights advocates attributed it to increased use of contraceptives as well as decreased access to abortion services in some states. 

“Affordable access to the full range of contraception and family planning options is critical for people deciding if and when they’d like to become parents, develop their careers, plan for their futures and manage their health,” said Rachel Jones, a research scientist at Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights. 

Opponents of abortion rights said the decrease was primarily the result of many states’ efforts to restrict women’s access to the procedure. 

“That is due, in a significant way, to pro-life legislation that seeks to provide life-affirming solutions to abortion, combined with pro-life efforts that educate Americans about the effects of abortion and the humanity of the unborn child,” Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said in an email. 

Total yearly number sinks

The total number of reported abortions fell to 638,169 in 2015, from 842,855 in 2006, a 24 percent decrease. In 2015, there were 188 abortions per 1,000 live births, compared with 233 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2006, a drop of 19 percent. 

In 2015, all measures reached their lowest level for the entire period of analysis from 2006 to 2015, the CDC said of the annual study, Abortion Surveillance — United States 2015.  

Conservative state lawmakers are passing increasingly restrictive abortion laws in a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision that established that women have a constitutional right to have abortions. 

The Republican-controlled Ohio House of Representatives last week approved a measure that would ban abortions at six weeks, while an Iowa law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected is tied up in a court battle. 

Such laws are designed to end up before the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative following President Donald Trump’s appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. 

The CDC study also showed 91.1 percent of abortions performed in 2015 were in a woman’s first 13 weeks of pregnancy. There was also a shift toward earlier abortions, with the number performed at six weeks or less increasing 11 percent. 
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Interpol’s general assembly is voting to choose a new president at a meeting Wednesday in Dubai, with a member of Russia’s Interior Ministry considered the front-runner in the race.

Alexander Prokopchuk currently serves as one of Interpol’s vice presidents. Kremlin critics say putting Prokopchuk in charge of Interpol would politicize the organization.

Four U.S. Senators have called on the Trump administration to outright oppose Prokopchuk. They accuse him of being “personally involved” in what they call Russia’s routine “abuses of Interpol for the purpose of settling scores and harassing political opponents, dissidents, and journalists.”

Interpol presidents serve for a period of four years. The next president will replace China’s Meng Hongwei, who disappeared while visiting his native country in late September and was later said to be detained on bribery allegations.

South Korea’s Kim Jong Yang became Interpol’s acting leader, and on Tuesday U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo strongly endorsed him to win the election.

“We encourage all nations and organizations that are part of Interpol and that respect the rule of law to choose a leader of credibility and integrity that reflects one of the world’s most critical law enforcement bodies,” Pompeo said.

The Kremlin says opposition to a Russian candidate is election interference.

U.S.-born British fund manager and Kremlin critic Bill Browder, who has been the subject of several Interpol arrest warrants requested by Russia, says electing a Russian official to lead Interpol could intensify Russian government efforts to silence critics.

“This is a perfect way for Putin to basically breathe the fear of God into all of his enemies, so that they know they can’t even escape Russia if one of his guys is at the head of Interpol.”
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A senior Trump administration official says tough U.S. sanctions re-imposed on Iran earlier this month have been effective, with “almost entire compliance” from the international community. 

U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook made the comment in a sit-down interview with VOA’s Arabic-language sister network Alhurra in Dubai on Monday. 

“We have seen almost entire compliance with our sanctions regime,” Hook said. “And we don’t anticipate having to sanction any major companies, because we haven’t seen any evidence that these companies want to choose the Iranian market over the United States market.”

Washington re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s energy and banking sectors on Nov. 5 as part of a campaign to pressure Tehran into reaching a new agreement to stop its perceived malign behaviors. President Donald Trump withdrew in May from a 2015 deal in which his predecessor and five other world powers granted sanctions relief to Iran in return for a freeze on its sensitive nuclear activities.

Under the re-imposed energy sanctions, the Trump administration has threatened to penalize any entity that buys Iranian oil and gas  the main revenue sources for Iran’s government. But Washington also gave eight of Iran’s biggest energy customers, among international governments, another six months to reduce Iranian energy imports to zero.

Those governments include China, Taiwan, India, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Italy and Greece. U.S. officials said the move is intended to prevent a spike in oil prices.

“We’ve been working very well with China and India, who have dramatically reduced their imports of Iranian oil,” Hook said. “It’s very important to go after the money, and for Iran, that means going after the oil revenue.” 

In a sign of ongoing defiance toward the U.S. sanctions campaign, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Monday his government will “not yield to economic and psychological pressure.”

Iran’s state-run Press TV network said Rouhani was speaking to a large gathering in the northwestern city of Khoy. 

“We know you’re angry! [But] correct your mistakes! You cannot cut Iran’s oil exports,” Rouhani said, in reference to the U.S. 

In his Alhurra interview, Hook said the U.S. sanctions campaign has forced Iran to cut 1 million barrels of oil from its daily output, equivalent to $2 billion in lost revenue.  

“This is a regime that, since 2013, has spent $16 billion in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, supporting various militias and missile proliferation all sorts of threats to peace and security,” Hook said. “Our sanctions are the toughest that have been imposed in history against Iran … as part of a campaign of maximum economic pressure so that the regime changes its behavior.”

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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President Donald Trump has provided the special counsel with written answers to questions about his knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 election, his lawyers said Tuesday, avoiding, at least for now, a potentially risky Trump sit-down with prosecutors. It’s the first time he has directly cooperated with the long investigation.

The step is a milestone in the negotiations between Trump’s attorneys and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team over whether and when the president might sit for an interview.

The compromise outcome, nearly a year in the making, offers some benefit to both sides. If Trump’s responses are deemed satisfactory, he moves past the threat of an in-person interview, which he and his lawyers want to avoid. Mueller secures on-the-record statements whose accuracy the president will be expected to stand by for the duration of the investigation.

The responses may also help stave off a potential subpoena fight over Trump’s testimony. They represent the first time the president is known to have described to investigators his knowledge of key moments under scrutiny by prosecutors.

Investigators months ago presented Trump’s legal team with dozens of questions they wanted to ask the president related to whether his campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to tip the 2016 election and whether he sought to obstruct the Russia probe by actions including the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Mueller’s office agreed to accept written responses to questions about potential Russian collusion and tabled, for the moment, obstruction-related inquiries.

Mueller left open the possibility that he would follow up with additional questions on obstruction, though Trump’s lawyers — who had long resisted any face-to-face interview — have been especially adamant that the Constitution shields him from having to answer any questions about actions he took as president.

Trump’s lawyers say it’s time for the investigation to end, but Mueller’s team may well press for additional information.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow offered no details on the current Q&A, saying merely that “the written questions submitted by the special counsel’s office … dealt with issues regarding the Russia-related topics of the inquiry. The president responded in writing.”

He said the legal team would not release copies of the questions and answers or discuss any correspondence it has had with the special counsel’s office.

Another of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, said the lawyers continue to believe that “much of what has been asked raised serious constitutional issues and was beyond the scope of a legitimate inquiry.” He said Mueller’s office had received “unprecedented cooperation from the White House,” including about 1.4 million pages of materials.

“It is time to bring this inquiry to a conclusion,” Giuliani said.

The president told reporters last week that he had prepared the responses himself.

Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday that he was unlikely to answer questions about obstruction, saying, “I think we’ve wasted enough time on this witch hunt and the answer is probably, we’re finished.”

Past investigations

Trump joins a list of recent presidents who have submitted to questioning as part of a criminal investigation.

In 2004, George W. Bush was interviewed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s office during an investigation into the leaked identity of a covert CIA officer. In 1998, President Bill Clinton testified before a federal grand jury in independent counsel Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation.

“It’s very extraordinary if this were a regular case, but it’s not every day that you have an investigation that touches upon the White House,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a Washington lawyer who was part of Starr’s team and conducted the grand jury questioning of Clinton.

Mueller could theoretically still try to subpoena the president if he feels the answers are not satisfactory.

But Justice Department leaders, including acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker — who now oversees the investigation and has spoken pejoratively of it in the past — would have to sign off on such a move, and it’s far from clear that they would. It’s also not clear that Mueller’s team would prevail if a subpoena fight reached the Supreme Court.

“Mueller certainly could have forced the issue and issued a subpoena, but I think he wants to present a record of having bent over backwards to be fair,” Wisenberg said.

The Supreme Court has never directly ruled on whether a president can be subpoenaed to testify in a criminal case. Clinton was subpoenaed to appear before the Whitewater grand jury, but investigators withdrew the subpoena after he agreed to appear voluntarily.

Other cases involving Presidents Richard Nixon and Clinton have presented similar issues for the justices that could be instructive now.

In 1974, for instance, the court ruled that Nixon could be ordered to turn over subpoenaed recordings, a decision that hastened his resignation. The court in 1998 said Clinton could be questioned under oath in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones.
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The US president’s daughter and senior advisor Ivanka Trump used a personal email account for government business in violation of federal records rules, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The Post, citing anonymous sources, said the discovery was made by White House officials reviewing emails in response to a public records lawsuit.

When asked about it, Trump said she was unfamiliar with details of the rules, the Post said.

A spokesman for Trump’s attorney confirmed that she did use a private email account before she was informed of the rules, and said that all her government-related emails had been turned over months ago, the newspaper reported.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly pilloried Hillary Clinton, his rival in the 2016 presidential election, for her use of a private email server for government business while she was secretary of state.

Then FBI director James Comey — fired by the president last year — announced that the bureau would reopen an investigation into Clinton’s use of the private email server just 11 days before the 2016 presidential vote, a move that some say may have helped cost her the election.

Trump supporters still chant “Lock her up!” at rallies, mimicking one of Trump’s battle cries during the election campaign, indicating they believe Clinton should be jailed.

 
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