AFP

A jury was selected Monday for the trial of former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena to testify before lawmakers investigating the attack on the US Capitol.

Bannon, who led Trump’s successful 2016 presidential election campaign, was among dozens of people called by a congressional committee to testify about the 2021 storming of Congress by Trump supporters.

The 68-year-old refused the summons and was indicted on two charges of contempt of Congress.

A 22-person jury was selected on Monday to hear the case. The panel will be cut down to 12 jurors and two alternates on Tuesday, and opening arguments will begin in what is expected to be a speedy trial.

Bannon’s lawyers sought to delay the start of the trial so it would not take place at the same time as the House committee’s public hearings into the Capitol attack, but the judge refused the request last week.

Thousands of Trump supporters, many associated with ultra-nationalist and white supremacist groups, stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to block the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory. 

They had been egged on by Trump in a fiery speech near the White House, during which he repeated his false claims of election fraud.

According to the House committee probing the riot, Bannon spoke to Trump the previous day.

Investigators believe Bannon and other Trump advisors could have information on links between the White House and the rioters.

After refusing to testify for months, Bannon finally agreed this month to cooperate with the House investigation, a move prosecutors said was a “last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability” by stalling his trial for contempt.

Judge Carl Nichols ruled the trial should go ahead anyway, saying, “I see no reason for extending this case any longer.”

If convicted of contempt, Bannon faces a minimum sentence of 30 days and a maximum of one year in prison on each count.

He was Trump’s strategy chief at the White House before being sacked in 2017.

Bannon was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering after allegedly defrauding thousands of donors to a campaign to fund Trump’s anti-migrant wall along the southern border.

In Trump’s final hours in office, he pardoned Bannon.

More than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the attack on Congress. The assault left at least five people dead and 140 police officers injured.

Trump was impeached for a historic second time by the House after the riot — he was charged with inciting an insurrection — but was acquitted by the Senate.

Uber will offer several million dollars in compensation to tens of thousands of passengers with disabilities who were charged extra fees, US prosecutors said Monday.

The case brought by the US Department of Justice centered on disabled passengers allegedly being made to pay wait charges because they needed extra time to board vehicles.

Under the settlement, Uber will issue credits to more than 65,000 eligible riders that are worth double the amount of wait time fees they were ever charged, which could potentially amount to millions of dollars.

The ride-share company also agreed to pay over $1.7 million to riders who complained to Uber about the fees, and $500,000 to other impacted people.

“People with disabilities should not be made to feel like second-class citizens or punished because of their disability, which is exactly what Uber’s wait time fee policy did,” said assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke.

Uber said it was “pleased” by the settlement.

“Prior to this matter being filed we made changes so that any rider who shares that they have a disability would have wait time fees waived automatically,” the company said.

Uber charges a fee if a driver has to wait more than two minutes to pick up any passenger, but the Department of Justice said applying those fees to riders with disabilities amounts to unlawful discrimination.

Under the terms of a two-year agreement, Uber will continue to waive wait time fees for riders who need more time to board because of disabilities, and ensure refunds are easily available in event such fees are wrongly charged, prosecutors said.

The US gun lobby on Monday seized on the “heroic” acts of a civilian who used a pistol to shoot dead a young man who had opened fire in a shopping mall, pushing its case in the midst of a fierce debate over the regulation of firearms.

On Sunday evening, Jonathan Sapriman, a 20-year-old white man whose motives remain unknown, opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in an Indiana shopping mall.

He killed a 30-year-old man and a couple seated in a restaurant space, and injured two more, before being shot dead himself by Elisjsha Dicken, a 22-year-old customer who was carrying an unlicensed pistol, as recently authorized under local laws.

“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen that took action very quickly within the first two minutes of the shooting,” said Greenwood police chief James Ison during a press briefing.

Ison said the shooter appeared to have prepared for his deadly assault by dropping his cell phone in a toilet and burning his computer in an oven before he set out. He also had a second assault rifle, a pistol and a large amount of ammunition, the police official said.

The powerful lobby group, the National Rifle Association (NRA), immediately seized on the tragedy to reassert its line that an armed public is good for public security. 

“We will say it again: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the NRA said on Twitter.

Another group pushing against any restrictions on firearms ownership, the CCRKBA, echoed the NRA line.

“We carry guns to defend ourselves and others from criminals and crazy people in sudden emergencies,” its chief, Alan Gottlieb, said in a statement.

“That courageous young man is rightfully being hailed as a hero,” he said.

Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign, which is pushing for stricter gun-control laws, hit back on Twitter. “Let me be clear: If more guns made us safer, America would be the safest country in the WORLD,” he said.

In the same vein, Shannon Watts, founder of the organization Moms Demand Action, shared graphs placing the United States at the head of the developed countries in terms of weapons per capita but also for deaths by firearms. 

Nearly 400 million guns were in circulation among the civilian population in the United States in 2017, or 120 guns for every 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey project. 

More than 24,000 people have been shot dead since the start of the year, including 13,000 by suicide, according to the Gun Violence Archives site. 

Several of the recent gun rampages, including the shooting in a school in Texas and a supermarket frequented by African-Americans in Buffalo, caused particular shock across the country, prompting lawmakers to agree in June, for the first time in 30 years, to pass modest reform of gun laws.

The US Navy’s famed aerial display team, the Blue Angels, named Lieutenant Amanda Lee on Monday as its first female pilot to fly fighter aircraft.

Lee, of Mounds View, Minnesota, was one of six new officers selected for the 2023 air show season, the navy said in a statement.

After a five-month training program, she will fly F/A-18 “Super Hornet” for the navy’s elite demonstration team founded in 1946.

Lee was commissioned as an officer in 2013 after being trained as an aviation electronics technician, the navy said.

She became a naval aviator in 2016.

Lee, whose call sign is “Stalin,” will be the first woman to fly fighter aircraft for the Blue Angels.

Another woman, Marine Major Katie Cook, joined the Blue Angels in 2015 and flew C-130 support aircraft known as “Fat Albert.”

A harrowing video of the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting at a high school in Florida that left 17 people dead was played at the sentencing trial on Monday of the troubled young man who admitted to carrying out the massacre.

Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder for the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

A 12-person jury is to decide whether the now 23-year-old should receive the death penalty or a life sentence for what prosecutor Mike Satz called a “cold, calculated, manipulative and deadly” massacre.

“I’m going to speak to you about the unspeakable, about this defendant’s goal-directed, planned, systematic murder, mass murder, of 14 children, an athletic director, a teacher and a coach,” Satz said in opening arguments.

A cell phone video recorded by a student, Danielle Gilbert, was played for the jury. The audio was made available to the public gallery and reporters.

Screams, cries and moans were punctuated by multiple shots as students huddled in their classroom trying to seek cover from bullets coming through the door.

“This can’t be real,” someone was heard whispering.

Gilbert, who broke down in tears as the video was played, said one person was killed in the classroom and three wounded.

Cruz, who was wearing a black Covid mask, covered his face with his hands and stared down at the table in front of him as the video was played.

Several anguished relatives of the victims fled the courtroom while others wept openly and hugged their loved ones.

– ‘Next school shooter’ –

Satz, the prosecutor, told the jury that three days before the shooting, Cruz made a cellphone video in which he said  “I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018.

“My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds,” Cruz said in the video. “It’s going to be a big event and when you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am.”

Satz said that Cruz, after fleeing the school, ordered a drink at a Subway sandwich shop and then went to a McDonald’s, where he asked the brother of a girl he had just shot for a ride.

The boy, who was not aware at the time that Cruz was the assailant, declined. Cruz was arrested shortly afterwards.

The trial in Fort Lauderdale is the rare instance of a mass shooter facing a jury, as they often either take their own lives or are killed by police.

The death penalty requires the jury to be unanimous. Cruz will otherwise be handed life without parole.

The Florida shooting stunned a country accustomed to gun violence and sparked new efforts, led by students from the school itself, to get lawmakers to pass tougher gun control laws.

– ‘March for Our Lives’ –

Parkland survivors founded “March for Our Lives,” organizing a rally that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the nation’s capital, Washington, in 2018.

Thousands turned out for demonstrations organized by the group last month following two other mass shootings: one at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers, and another at a New York supermarket that left 10 Black people dead.

Those shootings helped galvanize support for the first significant federal bill on gun safety in decades.

President Joe Biden signed the bill into law in June but it fell far short of steps he had called for, including a ban on assault weapons.

Cruz bought the AR-15 semi-automatic he used in the attack legally, despite having a documented history of mental health problems.

Expelled from school for disciplinary reasons, Cruz was known to be fixated on firearms — and had been identified as a potential threat to his classmates.

On the day of the attack, he arrived at the school in an Uber, began shooting indiscriminately at students and staff, and fled nine minutes later, leaving behind a scene of carnage.

The Justice Department reached a $127.5 million settlement in March with survivors and relatives of Parkland victims who had accused the FBI of negligence for failing to act on tips received prior to the attack that Cruz was dangerous.