Nashville Voice

TSU President Glenda Glover helped break ground Wednesday for two new co-educational residence halls, the first of three groundbreakings taking place during the university’s annual homecoming week festivities.

Construction of the residence halls was initially announced last fall after the State Building Commission approved construction of the $75.3 million project.

“We break ground this morning for student residence life,” said Glover at a ceremony before the groundbreaking. “We break this ground for student success. And we break this ground because it is altogether fitting and proper for upgrading student life on the campus of Tennessee State University.”

Wednesday’s groundbreaking, the first for a new residence hall at TSU since 1995, took place on the lawn of the Strange Performing Arts Building. The groundbreaking for a Health Sciences Building is scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 18, in the Hankal Hall courtyard. Also, a groundbreaking for an Alumni Welcome Center will take place around 1:30 p.m. the same day at the corner of 31st and John Merritt Blvd.

Tracy Ford, vice president for student affairs at TSU, said the groundbreaking for the residence halls and the other planned construction is indeed “reason to celebrate.”

“Today doesn’t just mark the groundbreaking of a physical structure, but it shines a light on the amazing future of TSU and represents one of the many exciting and strategic changes to come,” Ford said.

Braxton Simpson, student representative on the TSU Board of Trustees, expressed a similar sentiment.

“This is a very exciting moment for all of the students here at Tennessee State University,” she said.

Besides TSU’s faculty and staff, Wednesday’s groundbreaking was also attended by local and state officials.

“This is a wonderful day,” said State Sen. Thelma Harper, a TSU alumna. “TSU is No. 1!”

State Rep. Harold Love Jr., a TSU graduate, lauded Dr. Glover and “all those involved in the intricacies of getting this done.”

“Residence halls represent a university’s commitment to student success just as much as other educational buildings,” Love said. “Tennessee State continues to invest in facilities to increase the opportunities for students to find a home away from home.”

By Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez,
CNN Newsource

Ever since reaching a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, Paul Manafort has kept the Russia prosecutors busy.

The former Trump campaign chairman and his lawyers have visited Mueller’s office in Washington at least nine times in the last four weeks, a strong indication that the special counsel is moving at a steady clip.

September and October at first glance appear to be quiet periods for the investigation, under the Justice Department’s guidelines to avoid public political acts before the midterm elections.

But the quiet period has seen a persistent murmur of activity, based on near-daily sightings of Mueller’s prosecutors and sources involved in the investigation.

In addition to Manafort, Mueller’s team has kept interviewing witnesses, gathered a grand jury weekly to meet in Washington on most Fridays, and kicked up other still-secret court action.

Plus, the discussions between the President’s legal team and the special counsel’s office have intensified in recent weeks, including after the special counsel sent questions about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

The President’s attorneys are expected to reply to the questions in writing.

People around Trump and other witnesses believe more criminal indictments will come from Mueller.

Attorneys who have dealt with Mueller’s investigators and other officials expect that the special counsel’s efforts, now 17 months in the works, will include an active post-election period a much-anticipated report where Mueller will outline what his investigators decided to prosecute and what they declined.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation, on Wednesday called the probe “appropriate and independent,” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“[A]t the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence and that it was an appropriate use of resources.”

A frequent cooperator

At least nine times since he pleaded guilty on Sept. 14, a black Ford SUV has brought Manafort to Mueller’s office in southwest DC around 10 am.

Manafort’s lawyers arrive around the same time, waiting in the lobby for the car to arrive. There they remain inside the offices, typically for six hours.

It’s not entirely clear yet what Manafort has shared with prosecutors, and if his interviews check facts that haven’t yet come to light outside of the prosecutors’ own notes.

Among the questions, investigators have asked Manafort about his dealings with Russians, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Attorneys for Manafort would not discuss their activities for this story.

The visits amount to what could total dozens of hours of interviews between Mueller’s prosecutors and Manafort since he finalized his plea agreement.

Manafort agreed to fully cooperate with the Justice Department as it investigates the Trump campaign and the Russian government’s actions before the 2016 election.

At the same time, Trump has distanced himself from crimes investigators still may be pursuing. He publicly claimed this week that criminal charges so far brought by Mueller’s team have nothing to do with him.

Trump attorneys declined to comment for this story.

Other help

The flurry of interviews with Manafort and other cooperating defendants leaves Trump’s legal team somewhat in the dark on what Mueller is pursuing.

Manafort’s lawyers have shared information with the Trump legal team, but according to sources familiar with the case, there is no formal joint defense agreement.

Manafort’s criminal confessions and separate conviction by a jury dealt with his Ukrainian lobbying work and financial dealings largely before 2016.

Yet his cooperation is widely expected to include helping the prosecutors build potential criminal cases about coordination between the Russian government and Trump campaign.

Aside from Manafort, three other Trump campaign officials have pleaded guilty to charges.

Two of them, campaign deputy Rick Gates and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, also agreed to broadly help Mueller’s team with its investigation and have visited the special counsel’s office to give interviews since their pleas.

Mueller’s team has also been speaking with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, who has spent hours with Mueller’s team since his own guilty plea in August, in which he accused President Donald Trump of directing him to commit a crime.

Trump legal team

Meanwhile, Trump’s team is working up answers to Mueller’s questions. Even if the defense team were to sign and deliver their answers soon, Mueller’s office may have follow-up questions that drag out their discussions.

The legal team, comprised of personal and White House lawyers Jay Sekulow, Marty and Jane Raskin and Emmet Flood, still hasn’t reached an agreement on whether the President will be interviewed in person or must respond to questions about possible obstruction of justice related to his firing of FBI Director James Comey.

While they’re in investigatory limbo, expectations have grown in Washington legal circles that Mueller will issue a report soon after the November election or even before the end of the year.

When it’s finished, Mueller’s report is expected to explain the decisions of the Justice Department to bring or to decline to bring criminal cases during the course of the investigation.

Mueller’s findings and decisions will be confidential unless higher-up officials in the Justice Department will decide to make the report public.

As of now, the Trump legal team operates under the belief that Mueller won’t finish his work without bringing indictments that hit closer to the Trump campaign.

Activity in the DC courthouse

The next campaign contact in Mueller’s crosshairs may be Trump adviser Roger Stone, who’s publicly said he expects to be indicted after nine of his friends and aides spoke to Mueller’s office or received grand jury subpoenas.

In the last two weeks, multiple contacts of Stone have been in touch with the special counsel’s office about them providing information, according to CNN’s reporting.

Special counsel prosecutors have also visited the federal courthouse in downtown Washington almost daily.

Once in early September and once in early October, Chief Judge Beryl Howell held hour-long sealed hearings in her courtroom featuring trial and appellate prosecutors from Mueller’s office.

Both times, the lawyers opposite the Justice Department declined to share with CNN their names, clients names or law firms. Howell oversees court action related to the federal grand jury that Mueller has used to approve indictments in DC.

Previously she has ordered two witnesses — a real estate agent and a lawyer — to testify against Manafort before the grand jury, and she held Andrew Miller, a Stone associate, in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena.

The real estate and lawyer orders became public on the eve of Manafort’s indictment last October, and Miller’s attorneys spoke publicly about his subpoena challenge as it was ongoing.

Other times in the courthouse in recent weeks, the Mueller investigators visit the chief judge’s chambers and then the clerk’s office, indicating a flurry of court paperwork.

A spokesperson for Howell and the federal court in DC declined to comment on the nature of the recent sealed court activity, as did a spokesman for the special counsel’s office.

As the court action moves forward, Trump himself has said he is working on giving information to Mueller.

When asked by the Associated Press on Tuesday if he would sit for an interview with Mueller or simply answer written questions, as his lawyers have agreed to do, Trump said: “You know that’s in process. It’s a tremendous waste of time for the president of the United States.”

CNN’s Sara Murray, Erica Orden, Kara Scannell, Laura Robinson, Em Steck and Sam Fossum contributed to this report.

By Sophie Tatum
CNN Newsource

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday criticized “judicial activism” and condemned attempts to depose or question senior executive branch officials, including President Donald Trump.

“Simply put, discovery against the President of the United States should not be treated lightly. The man is busy, in case you’d like to know,” Sessions said while speaking to the Heritage Foundation.

Sessions added that preparing for a deposition is “a monumental disruption.”

“Subjecting the executive branch to this kind of discovery is unacceptable,” he said.

His comments also addressed a number of upcoming cases and decisions, including a challenge to the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Last week, the Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to block Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from having to be deposed on the matter.
However, days after the administration filed its request with the court, new questions arose about previous comments Ross had made to Congress about the controversial census question.

A Justice Department filing revealed that Steve Bannon contacted Ross in the spring of 2017 — when Bannon was a senior Trump adviser — asking him to speak with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach about including a citizenship question.

Ross previously denied to Congress that anyone from the White House had discussed adding that type of question to the census with him, later adding that it was an initiative from the Justice Department.

CNN previously reported that a Commerce Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Ross’ comments before Congress were not misleading.

The spokesman said that the Justice Department “response supplements the record but does not change the secretary’s story, it only adds to it.”

Directly addressing the census case during his remarks on Monday, Sessions criticized “an increasing number of judges,” who he said, “view themselves as something akin to roving inspectors general for the entire Executive Branch.”

“For example, right now we are litigating one case where the district court has authorized a deposition of the Secretary of Commerce about the decision to reinstate a question on the Census. The court believes this is proper because it wants to probe the Secretary’s motives,” he said.

Sessions went on to defend the census question, noting that it “has appeared in one form or another on the census for over a hundred years.”

“The words on the page don’t have a motive; they are either permitted or they are not. But the judge has decided to hold a trial over the inner-workings of a Cabinet Secretary’s mind.”

CNN’s Ariane de Vogue, Gregory Wallace and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.

By Chris Cillizza,
CNN Newsource

On Monday morning, we learned that Elizabeth Warren is probably-almost-definitely-I-mean-nothing-is-100-percent partially Native American.

“The facts suggest that you absolutely have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree,” Carlos Bustamante, a professor of genetics at Stanford University, tells Warren in a video released by her campaign.

The release of the video — and its contents — mean that Warren was probably right when she claimed — to much criticism — during her 2012 Senate campaign that she is part Native American. But it definitely means that she is running for president in 2020. And running hard.

Let’s dig in.

The presence of President Donald Trump — and other Republicans — making fun of Warren’s supposed heritage is everywhere in this video.

It features video of Trump repeatedly referring to Warren as “Pocahontas” and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders suggesting that Warren used her questionable Native American heritage to get a series of teaching jobs at prominent universities.

This all began back in Warren’s 2012 Senate campaign, when the Boston Herald ran a piece noting that Harvard Law School listed Warren as a minority professor — and used her status as such to boost their diversity numbers amid criticism.

Within a week, Warren acknowledged that she had listed herself as a minority in a listing of law professors.

When asked for documentation of that heritage, her campaign was unable to produce any.

“I am very proud of my heritage,” Warren said in 2012. “These are my family stories. is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.”

Warren also changed her story on whether or not she had informed Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania of her Native American heritage; she initially said she had no idea how either school had received the information before later acknowledging that she had told the schools sometime after she was hired.

What Warren knew — and what she said — about her Cherokee heritage was a major issue during her 2012 campaign against then Sen. Scott Brown (R). He ran ads attacking her story and confronted her in a debate over the issue as well. She won easily.

So why is Warren re-addressing this now? And doing so in a slickly produced, campaign-style video in which,

• a) she travels back to her hometown of Norman, Oklahoma to talk to her brothers — and others — about her mother, who she has long contended was part Native American,
• b) she interviews a series of professors involved in her hiring processes at various universities who insist her claimed Native American background had nothing to do with why she was hired, and
• c) she submits to a DNA test that seems to suggest that her past heritage claims are likely to be true, and
• d) she releases a series of documents aimed at bolstering her heritage claims?

The answer, of course, is because she is running for president in 2020. And she wants to do two things with this video:

1) Stamp out a whisper campaign (or more) from her likely Democratic opponents — and Trump — about whether she lied about her background

2) Send a message to Democratic activists and donors that she is 100% going to fight back — and fight back hard.

Make no mistake: The timing of the release of this video is not accidental. (Almost nothing in politics is.) Trump has been going after Warren — he dubbed her “Pocahontas” during the 2016 campaign — of late, as reports suggest she is gearing up to run against him in 2020.

“I want to apologize,” Trump said during a campaign speech in Montana over the summer. “Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize to you. To you I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize.”

Asked to respond to news of the DNA test, Trump said Monday morning, “Who cares?”

Whether Warren wants to admit it or not — and my strong guess is “not” — Trump’s attacks were clearly doing some damage. You don’t respond — with a 5+-minute video, a DNA test and loads of documentation — if you think that this whole Native American thing is just so much GOP conspiracy theorizing.

Warren knows she has a weakness — whether perceived or real is harder to tell — on her origin story. And she and her team know that presidential campaign often hinges on just those origin stories.

The American public tends to buy into the person as opposed to the specific policy when considering their vote for president; if Warren has a major problem in that origin story, it could well hamstring attempts to get people to connect with her.

And so, we get this video. And the DNA test. And all the documents. To show, yes, that Warren’s claim that she had some Native American blood is almost certainly true, but also to show that she has a full campaign team who understands how modern campaigns work and is at the ready to deal — and deal effectively — with any sorts of problems that arise during the course of the campaign.

Warren said recently that after the 2018 midterms she planned to “take a hard look at running for president.”

Which left some wiggle room and uncertainty. But this video is all the proof anyone paying attention should need to know that Warren’s hedge on whether she will run is simply political talk.

She’s in. You don’t produce a video like this if you aren’t.

WPLN Nashville Public Radio 

Middle Tennessee State University’s plans to open a law school have been rejected by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, who voted 8-5 today against a proposal to transfer Indiana-based Valparaiso Law School to MTSU’s campus.

“THEC’s decision denies a legal education to Nashville-area students financially unable to attend an expensive, nearby accredited private institution or unable to relocate to a public institution hundreds of miles away in Knoxville or Memphis,” MTSU President Sidney McPhee said in a statement. 

WPLN Nashville Public Radio reports:

The commission looked at these criteria, among others, in making the decision: Alignment with state master plan and institutional mission, sustainable demand, program costs and revenue and no unnecessary duplication. The commission also solicited comments from expert legal reviewers.

Based on comments and these criteria, the commission denied MTSU’s proposal. The biggest critics of the transfer came from lawyers and law schools in Memphis and Knoxville, where the state’s only other public law schools are located.
Comments generally regarded concerns of a watered down law school market for the state, since Nashville is already home to three law schools — Belmont University, Vanderbilt University and Nashville School of Law. Another school in the city, many said, would take away from other schools’ ability to compete, even if it’s a public option.