Former White House senior strategist will defy subpoena, citing lack of agreement on scope of questioning, says individual familiar with matter.
The former White House senior strategistĀ Steve BannonĀ will not testify before the intelligence committee of the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, according to sources ā defying a subpoena requiring him to appear.
President Donald Trump reportedly asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein whether he was “on my team” during a meeting in December.
The interaction is the third known instance during which Trump asked a top law-enforcement official where their loyalties lie.
Rosenstein is increasingly emerging as a crucial witness in the Russia investigation, and experts said the reported interaction is an important new piece of evidence for special counsel Robert Mueller as he examines whether Trump sought to obstruct justice in the Russia probe.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Preliminary discussions are under way for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to potentially interview U.S. President Donald Trump as part of the probe of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, NBC News reported on Monday.
Citing three people familiar with the situation, NBC said lawyers for Trump had met with representatives of Muellerās office in late December to talk about the logistics of any such interview.
The discussions included the possible location and length of any interview as well as legal standards and options for its format, including written responses instead of a formal sit-down, according to the news network.
Scene: Bikers lay dead by their motorcycles in the parking lot of Twin Peaks Bar and Grill in Waco, Texas, just after midday on Sunday
One gang ‘ambushed the other’ at recruitment event hosted by Twin Peaks Bar and Grill in Waco, Texas
It started as a physical fight and escalated to involve chains, knives and guns
Diners and employees scrambled for shelter in the freezer as more than 100 rounds were fired
8 bikers died at the scene and a 9th in hospital, another 18 bikers were hospitalized, no civilians were injured
Police were monitoring the meeting outside but said owners refused to cooperate with them until shooting started
Twin Peaks insists they had ‘positive communication with the police’. The police said that was nonsense
Police surrounded the place and detained gunmen as fighting spilled out into the parking lot
The gangs’ allies were flocking from across the state to continue confrontation after it ended, police warned
A shootout between three rival biker gangs at a bar in Waco, Texas, on Sunday afternoon left at least nine gang members dead. Eighteen others were taken to the hospital with gunshot and stab wounds, the Associated Press reports.
Shoot out: What started as a physical fight shortly after midday in Twin Peak restaurant rapidly escalated to involve chains, clubs, knives and gunfire, police said. The fight spilled into the parking lot where a SWAT team shot dead at least one biker and surrounded the rest
Texas is an emerging battleground for outlaw motorcycle gangs, said Steve Cook, executive director of the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association. Next month, Cook, who works in law enforcement in Kansas City and worked undercover in a motorcycle gang in the early 2000s, was supposed to travel to Waco to hold a conference for local police.
Waco historically hasn’t been a hot spot for gang rivalries, Cook said. In a 2013 national survey of law enforcement, Texas didn’t show up as an area of intense gang activity. But in an interview Sunday night, Cook said he knew something was coming:
“We were pretty certain that some kind of incident was on the horizon.”
Outlaw motorcycle gangs are a small slice of gang activity in the US
Motorcycle clubs have been accused of lawlessness since at least 1947, when a Fourth of July motorcycle race in Hollister, California, got national attention for drunkenness and disorder and became the inspiration for the 1953 Marlon Brando movie The Wild One.
A biker sits next to what appears to be a covered body after several people were killed during the shoot-out
An enduring pattern was set: motorcycle gangs were both a perceived larger-than-life menace and an object of media fascination. The Hell’s Angels were excoriated by the California attorney general in 1965 and infiltrated by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara says the nine dead were members of the Bandidos or Cossacks gangs.
Violent motorcycle gangs call themselves the “1 percent” ā a defiant reference to a (possibly apocryphal) statement from the American Motorcycle Association that 99 percent of motorcyclists are law-abiding.
There are hundreds of motorcycle gangs in the US, but the Department of Justice considers eight national groups to be a serious threat.
Police believe five gangs were involved in the shoot-out which has led to restaurants closing across the city
The gangs, which originated in the US but have spread abroad, are best known for trafficking in drugs and sometimes people.
But they’re a relatively small part of the American gang landscape. A 2013Ā survey from the National Gang Intelligence Center found that about 2.5 percent of gang members nationwide are in outlaw motorcycle gangs.
All the same, police consider them to be more threatening than their small numbers might suggest. About 10 percent of jurisdictions said they considered the motorcycle gangs a serious threat.
(National Gang Intelligence Center) – OMG stands for Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.
Cook thinks that law enforcement should be more concerned.
“I think a lot of people just donāt take these guys seriously,” he says. “They just look at them and say theyāre bikers and they ride motorcycles and theyāre tattooed and theyāre dirty, and thatās the end of it.”
The recruitment event was hosted by the restaurant but despite police fears of conflict, management wouldn’t let officers in
But he calls them domestic terrorists.
“They can pretend like theyāre these fraternal organizations,” he said. “I canāt tell you the last time the Kiwanis and the Shriners had a shootout at a public venue.”
Based on their leathers, it appears the Pirados, the Veterans (one sitting), and the Leathernecks (one standing, center) were involved
The Department of Justice portrays the gangs as the Mafia on motorcycles, saying they traffic in cocaine, methamphetamine, and prescription drugs: in Indianapolis in 2013, federal agents arrested 42 members of the Outlaws gang on charges that included drug trafficking, extortion, and money laundering.
Witnesses described the scene in the quiet commercial shopping strip as a war zone
Clashes occur when biker gangs fight over territory
A nine-year battle in Canada between rival gangs, known as the Quebec Biker Wars, left 160 people dead. In California in 2010, biker gangs fought over who would control a Starbucks in Santa Cruz, which led to gang members hitting each other with hammers in the parking lot.
Panic: Families scrambled and some hid in the freezer of the diner as more than 100 rounds were fired
Cook said Texas hasn’t historically been a hotspot for this kind of battle ā at least, no more than anywhere else. But he said he’d seen signs that a confrontation was coming.
Texas, he said, has historically been controlled by the Bandidos, one of the largest outlaw motorcycle gangs in the US.
By late Sunday afternoon two groups of gunmen were sat unceremoniously on the tarmac at opposite ends of the parking lot
At least five motorcycle gangs comprising 150 members were meeting at the Twin Peaks bar and restaurant in Waco to discuss recruitment. Local officials haven’t yet said which gangs were involved in the shooting.
The Cossacks (pictured at the scene) and the Scimitars were working in alliance
The Cossacks, a local Texas gang, had been challenging the Bandidos’ dominance, including discussing a possible alliance with the Hell’s Angels, a rival of the Bandidos, Cook said.
The biggest provocation came when the Cossacks began wearing a Texas patch on their clothing ā “basically a slap in the face to the Bandidos,” said Cook, who says he was an undercover investigator of the Bandidos and some of their support groups.
The Bandidos (file image)
“We knew the tensions with the Cossacks were as high as they’d ever been,” he said. “I donāt think anybody could have forecasted it to the degree that it happened.”
ā During a press conference in Mexico City on Tuesday, Murillo Karam said there will be āno problem to process the request to decide, at the right time, what would be most appropriate.ā
The āright time,ā according to Mexican sources, would be after GuzmĆ”n is fully prosecuted and sentenced in Mexico, where he faces eight active criminal cases.
GuzmĆ”n, who topped the list of most wanted drug criminals in the world and was captured last year, would not need to finish serving his sentence in Mexico in order to be sent to the U.S., according to Mexican diplomatic sources.Ā Therefore, if the prosecutions proceed as expected, he could be extradited as soon as this year.
Murillo Karamās remarks represent a sharp policy about-face. In 2014 he said that Mexico had āno intentionā of extraditing GuzmĆ”n because the Mexican government disagreed with U.S. prosecutors āreaching deals with criminalsā as the U.S. has with several top Mexican drug lords in U.S. custody.
The formal diplomatic extradition request is expected to be submitted by the U.S. State Department to Mexicoās Ministry of Foreign Affairs as soon as this week. The State Department declined to comment as per its policy of not commenting on extraditions.
Once in the U.S., where he faces multiple criminal charges from coast to coast, El Chapo could be hopping from one federal district court to another to face trials.
GuzmƔn has been indicted in at least seven U.S. federal district courts in New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas and California on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, money laundering, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit homicide and homicide.
It is unclear which or how many districts asked the Department of Justice to solicit the Department of State to request GuzmĆ”nās extradition, the formal bureaucratic process that precedes any extradition request.Ā New York prosecutors said last year they planned to submit an extradition request to the Justice Department.
After 13 years of running away from the law, GuzmĆ”n was arrested in February 2014 in his home state of Sinaloa.Ā U.S. law enforcement agencies played a key role in finding the then powerful drug lord.
Last week marked a troubling first inĀ the long and sordid history of theĀ Mexican drug world. There was no bloodshed, corruption, torture, or any of the grislyĀ hallmarks of the country’s ongoing narcoĀ war. There was only a plant, or rather many plants ā aĀ field ofĀ small shrubs with greenĀ oval-shaped leaves and bright red berries. For the first time ever in Mexico, the authorities discovered a coca plantation.
Until now, coca ā the raw plantĀ material used toĀ manufactureĀ cocaine ā has been grown almost exclusivelyĀ in the Andes. But there is virtuallyĀ nothing to stopĀ Mexican drugĀ cartels from cultivating the plant domestically, and experts say it’s actually surprising that it has taken this long for the crop to migrate north from South America. Now that the shift has seeminglyĀ begun, the consequences could be profound.
It’s got cheap labor, remote land, and good climate. Add corruption, crushing poverty, and poor infrastructure for other types of commerce and you’ve got a perfect storm.
The cocaĀ crop in Mexico was located in Chiapas state in the southwest corner of the country, not far from the border with Guatemala. According to the Mexican newspaperĀ Reforma,Ā 1,639 plants were found on approximatelyĀ 1,250 square metersĀ of land (about one-third of an acre)Ā near the tinyĀ municipality of Tuxtla Chico.
The crops were destroyed by the Mexican military and border police, and three suspects were detained at a nearby residence where unprocessed coca leaves were also found.Ā
Both the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and a Mexican military commander confirmed to VICE NewsĀ that the discovery ofĀ coca cropsĀ was a first for Mexico.
But that’s not to say the find comes as any sort of shock.Ā Sanho Tree,Ā director of the Drug Policy Project and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, says conditions in Mexico have long been ripe for coca production.
“My only question is why it took so long,” Tree told VICE News. “It’s got cheap labor, remote land, and good climate. Add corruption, crushing poverty, and poor infrastructure for other types of commerce and you’ve got a perfect storm.”
The Mexican crop was actually quite small by South American standards.Ā It takes betweenĀ 450 and 600 kilograms of coca leavesĀ to produce oneĀ kilogram of cocaine, depending on the varietyĀ of coca that is being used, so the patch discovered in Mexico would hardly be enough to manufacture any significant quantity of finished product. But its mere existence shows that the country’sĀ drug cartels are working to cut out the Colombian middlemen who supply them with what isĀ perhapsĀ their most lucrative product.
Put in pure business terms, Mexican cartels are vertically integrated around most other commodities they distribute. They grow pot and poppies ā mostly in the so-called Golden Triangle region of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Durango ā and produce meth by the ton in domestic labs stocked with chemicals from Asia.
Cocaine is only a part of their business because the lengthy border with the United States is the most efficient way to bring to market goods produced in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia by other criminal organizations.
Mexico’sĀ cocaine trade didn’t trulyĀ flourishĀ untilĀ a US crackdown on Colombian cartels and theirĀ smuggling routes through the Caribbean redirected the flow of the product from sea to land and enabled Mexican organized crime to assert its dominance over much of theĀ supply chain.
Once mere couriers for the Colombian cartels and now the wholesalers, Mexico’s drug gangs seem to have turnedĀ their ambitions to the biggest prize of all.
“We can assume that some groups of Mexican drug traffickers are trying to see if they can develop coca cultivations in different territories than the traditional ones, so they can dominate the only rung on the cocaine production ladder that they still don’t dominate, which is the cultivation end,” Antonio Mazzitelli, a representative of the UN Office on Drugs and CrimeĀ in Mexico and Central America, told VICE News.
Jeremy McDermott, co-director ofĀ InSight Crime, an independent research group that tracks organized crime in Latin America, told VICE News that the recent discovery seems to reflect recent trends in the underworld.
As Colombia’s mafias have increased cocaine distribution to Europe and burgeoning domestic markets in Brazil and Argentina, the finite supply of the drug and growing demand has forced the Mexican narcos to seek out new sources. McDermott cited the case of suspected Sinaloa Cartel members who were caughtĀ recently in Peru and linked to a seizure ofĀ nearly eight tons of cocaine.
“It’s clear the Mexicans are keen to get their hands on more product,” McDermott said. “It would be a game-changer if ā and it’s a very big if ā the Mexicans were able to produce their own coca and therefore their own cocaine.”
There are more thanĀ 200 varieties of coca plant, but only 17 lend themselves to cocaine production and just four are commonly cultivated. Like any other plant, coca grows differently depending on climate, altitude, soil, and other factors. Coca grown on the slopes of the Andes generally contains more cocaine alkaloids (the chemical compound that delivers the buzz) than the stuff from low-lying areas.
Coca has grown for thousands of years in the Andes and is still an important part of the culture there. Cocaine wasn’t discovered until 1859, and the ensuing medicinal and recreational demand spawned plantations around the globe. In the early 1900s, Dutch-controlled IndonesiaĀ briefly surpassed PeruĀ as the world’s leading coca supplier. Tree said the plant was also grown in Sri Lanka, Japan, and even Hawaii. Today, virtually all of the world’s cocaine originates in the Andean nations. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.
“Any Colombian peasant coca farmer can be brought in to show Mexicans how to grow it,” Tree said. “Even videos would work. Then it’s just a matter of fine-tuning the adaptation to local soil and climate conditions. I suspect this may have been a test plot or trial run, but that’s speculative. They might even innovate new efficiencies. It makes sense for traffickers to spread cultivation to Mexico. Coca isn’t as recognizable as cannabis or poppy ā it looks like a generic bush or ficus.”
Prior to the rise of Pablo Escobar and his MedellĆn Cartel in the 1980s, coca was actually not common in Colombia. It was introduced as a way to streamline the cocaine supply chain, and it changed everything.
The struggle for control of the remote coca plantations and clandestine jungle laboratories that process the leaves into powder spawned paramilitary groups, warring drug gangs, and a decades-long conflict that has only recently simmered down. It’s impossible to predictĀ whether the introduction of coca to Mexico would have the same destabilizing effect.
McDermott explained that it has taken years of tinkering to optimize the plant for the tropical Colombian climate, and recent advances have allowed Colombian farmers to increase their yield from two or three crops per year to five or six with an alkaloid content higher than before.
“The Colombians have been playing with the coca, crossbreeding it with Peruvian strains,” McDermott said. “I would be interested to see if the Mexicans are doing the same thing and have found a strain that takes to the conditions in Chiapas.”
Edgar Moreno/VICE NewsOne of the coca plants ā known for their distinctive red berries.
Chiapas is generally regarded as territory of Los Zetas, a gang known more for savagery – they acted as the enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel before breaking with their former employers in 2010 –Ā than agricultural ingenuity. They have also been weakened by the loss of top leaders and a prolonged campaign against them by the Mexican government and rival cartels.
“I don’t know if the Zetas have the know-how to be able to crossbreed strains,” McDermott said. “This would not be something that would not be done by some knuckle-dragging thug. This would have an agronomist involved.”
Nevertheless, as a gang founded by deserters from the Mexican army,Ā the Zetas are renowned for their efficiency and technical expertise. They also have an extraordinary international reach,so procuring a helping hand from producers in Colombia or elsewhere would not prove too troublesome.
Mexican cartels already have the knowledge and resources to process the dried coca leaves into cocaine. According toĀ a 2013 reportĀ from the intelligence company Stratfor, the cartels run processing facilities in Honduras and Guatemala that turn coca paste smuggled from Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia into finished product.
The refining of coca paste was previously the domain of Colombians, but police there have reportedly cracked down on the labs and restricted the availability of the requisite precursor chemicals. Even with the crackdown, the Department of Justice still estimates thatĀ 95.5 percent of cocaineĀ seized in the US originates in Colombian labs.
Tree made the point that aerial eradication of coca crops by the Colombian government, paid for by more than $5 billion in US taxpayer money through theĀ Plan ColombiaĀ program, has done virtually nothing beyond spur an increase of coca production in Peru.
The enormous profits generated by the drug trade ā Mexican cartels buy kilos of coke wholesale for around $2,000 in South America and sell them for $24,000 or more in the United States ā means that there will always be a will and a way to manufacture the drug.
“Forced eradication is an exercise in futility,” Tree said. “There simply too much poverty, demand, and ungoverned territory on this planet. Combine that with the astronomical ‘price support’ offered by drug prohibition and we’ve accomplished what the alchemists couldn’t do: We turned minimally processed agricultural commodities into gold. Cocaine should cost pennies per dose, but the risk premium created by our ever escalating drug war gives us the modern alchemy.”
Tree also speculated that, even if the US were to somehow stamp out coca in Latin America, it wouldn’t take long to appear elsewhere.
“I suspect sub-Saharan Africa could be next,” Tree said. “Lots of cheap labor and ungoverned territory.”
The discovery of one small field of coca in Mexico is not going to change anything overnight, but it could certainly be a harbinger of things to come.
Gaining further control over the cocaine supply chain would make the country’s drug cartels even more rich and powerful, a nightmare scenario for both the US and Mexican governments.
It is important to make the distinction that last week’s find was the “first known” coca crop in Mexican history. The implication, of course, is that other fields could already be growing elsewhere in the country, perhaps on a much larger scale.
After all, if campesinos in the isolated corners Sierra Madre can tend massive plantations of pot and poppies without interference from the government, what’s to stop them from sowing another lucrative illicit crop in their fields?
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Edgar Moreno/VICE NewsThe Mexican military destroys piles of cut coca plants.
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