The Biden administration has told Congress it is preparing the potential $20 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, sparking an immediate objection from a senior U.S. lawmaker who has long opposed the deal.

The State Department sent the informal notice to Congress on Thursday, three sources said, informing committees overseeing arms sales in the Senate and House of Representatives of its intention to proceed with the proposed deal.

NATO member Turkey requested in October 2021 to buy 40 Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes. Technical talks between the two sides recently concluded.

The Biden administration has said it supports the sale and has been in touch for months with Congress on an informal basis to win its approval. However, it has failed so far to secure a green light.

“As I have repeatedly made clear, I strongly oppose the Biden administration’s proposed sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey,” Senator Bob Menendez, Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

While the sale is still in the informal review process, Congress is also unlikely to approve the sale as long as Turkey refuses to proceed with the ratification of Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership.

The two countries ended decades of neutrality last May and applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Turkey objected and accused the countries of harboring militants, including from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and demanded steps be taken.

The notification, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu prepares to visit Washington on Wednesday for talks as the two NATO allies struggle with a host of disagreements including over Syria and weapons purchases.

Following the informal review, a process during which committee leaders can ask questions or raise concerns about the sale, the administration can technically go ahead with a formal notification. But a senior U.S. official said he was “doubtful” the administration would be in a position to proceed unless Menendez dropped his objection.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was disregarding human rights and democratic norms and engaging in “alarming and destabilizing behavior in Turkey and against neighboring NATO allies,” Menendez said in his statement.

“Until Erdogan ceases his threats… and begins to act like a trusted ally should, I will not approve this sale.”

Menendez also said he welcomed news of the sale of new F-35 fighter aircraft for Greece, referring to Athens as a “trusted NATO ally” and saying the sale “strengthens our two nations’ abilities to defend shared principles including our collective defense, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

Turkey’s 2019 acquisition of Russian air defense systems resulted in Ankara being kicked out of the next-generation F-35 fighter jet program and antagonized the U.S. Congress. Disagreements with Washington over Syria policy and Turkey’s deteriorating record on human rights and freedom of expression also weighs on congressional sentiment.

Under U.S. law, Congress can block a sale by passing a resolution of disapproval after a formal notification of a sale, but it is unlikely to do so if President Joe Biden decides to go ahead despite lawmakers’ objections. While Congress has passed such resolutions in the past, it has never mustered the two-thirds majorities needed in both chambers to overcome a presidential veto.

A 25-pound (11.3-kg) clouded leopard that escaped its habitat at the Dallas zoo and remained at large for more than six hours while officials shut down the park and issued a special “Code Blue” alert, was found safe on Friday afternoon, zoo officials said.

Nova, a 3- to 4-year-old female, had been reported missing shortly after 10 a.m. local time, prompting a “Code Blue” alert, which notifies all staff that a non-dangerous animal is missing. The big cat was ultimately found close to its mesh-enclosed home, the zoo said.

“We are thrilled to report we located clouded leopard Nova on-grounds at the Zoo this afternoon at approximated 4:40 p.m. She was located very near the original habitat, and teams were able to safely secure her just before 5:15 p.m.,” the zoo said in a statement posted to social media.

Zoo staff and local police spent much of the day searching the 106-acre (43-hectare) park for the escapee, predicting that Nova would stay close to home due to the territorial nature of cats — and a fence surrounding the entire perimeter of the grounds.

“More likely than not when she’s scared she’s going to climb a tree, stay out of our way, hunt some squirrels and birds and hope not to be noticed,” Harrison Edell, the zoo’s vice president for animal care and conservation, said earlier in the day. It was not immediately clear if Nova had been found in a tree.

Edell said it unknown exactly when the cat made its getaway, but appeared to have slipped through a tear in the mesh fence of her habitat sometime overnight. The second clouded leopard, Nova’s sister, did not escape, he said.

He said it was not clear how the mesh became torn but added it was too soon to rule out human involvement.

Clouded leopards, so-called because of their cloud-like fur patterns, are in decline in the wild where they inhabit dense forests in the foothills of the Himalayas, Southeast Asia and South China.

Getty/Getty

• Excerpts of Trump’s deposition were released Friday in author E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case.
• Asked by Carroll’s lawyer if he ever forcibly kissed a woman, Trump said he “can’t think of any complaints.”
• At least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual assaults dating back to the 1970s; he has denied them all.

Donald Trump was asked by a lawyer for rape accuser E. Jean Carroll if he’d ever forcibly kissed a woman, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The former president said he was unaware of any “complaints,” according to newly-released excerpts from his deposition in Carroll’s ongoing defamation lawsuit.

The answer was surprising because at least 26 women have accused Trump of sexually assaulting him in alleged attacks going back to the 1970s.

Trump was also caught on the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape bragging about grabbing and kissing women without their consent.

Trump has repeatedly denied any accusations of sexual assault, calling Carroll and others liars; he has brushed off the Access Hollywood tape as “locker room banter.”

“Have you ever kissed a woman without her consent?” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, asked Trump during the October 19 sworn deposition, which he taped from Mar-a-Lago.

“Well, I don’t — I can’t think of any complaints,” Trump answered, according to the transcript unsealed Friday.

“But no. I mean, I don’t think so,” he said.

Then he added, “I think it’s an inappropriate question, but I don’t think so.” 

An excerpt from Donald Trump’s October, 2022 deposition in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Insider

Carroll sued Trump in federal court in Manhattan in November 2019, after he publicly denied her accusation that he’d raped her, calling her a liar and saying she was “not my type.”

A federal appeals court in DC weighing if Carroll’s lawsuit can proceed.

The longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine had come forward earlier that year with a memoir and a front-page New York magazine story alleging that Trump, who’d recognized her from her television appearances, had chatted her up at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-90s.

He forced himself on her in a dressing room, she alleges. While she never told the police about the incident, she did immediately tell friends. Carroll’s legal team has requested a sample of Trump’s DNA in hopes of comparing it to a sample from the dress Carroll says she wore that day.

Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Trump in November, adding an accusation of battery under New York’s new Adult Survivors Act.

Trump’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yesterday, I reread a classic favorite of mine, called Allegory of the cave by Plato. I will not go into too much detail about it, but the central plot concerns the acquirement of knowledge — and how one goes about acquiring it.

The republicans would absolutely get an F in the knowledge category. This is because knowledge involves critical thinking and self-analysis. Republicans have proven time, and again they are incapable of doing that. If there is one thing we know, it’s that Republicans have learned nothing from their extreme flop in the midterms.

And flop they did. Yes, they won the house, but they lost the senate and won the House only by the skin of their teeth. The American people, for the most part, rejected them. But if there’s one thing we know about republicans, it is that they simply do not learn from their mistakes. They lack the elemental core of critical thinking.

We can see that in their utterly stupid doubling down on abortion bills. The GOP in the house passed two pieces of legislation that will go nowhere, both centered on abortion. Can you imagine? The issue that doomed the GOP in the midterms is the one they chose to concentrate on their first week in power. One might ask why. One might ask WHO would do this? My answer would be ones lacking in knowledge. Ones who are arrogant, who refuse to even look at themselves and their errors.

Neither of these bills will ever pass in the Senate. But the fact is that the republicans refusal to learn from their mistakes, their stubborn holding on to issues that are resoundingly unpopular show their weak spot. And it’s a gigantic weak spot. Their weak spot is knowledge. The fact is they simply don’t have any.

We can exploit this weakness as generals would in wartime. We have much knowledge. We know the GOP does not. And we know that they will continue to focus with laser-like precision on unpopular things the American people don’t want and never have wanted. This is how we win by turning their failures to our advantage.

The post The GOP’s weak spot appeared first on Palmer Report.

Peru’s attorney general has launched 11 inquiries to identify those responsible for more than three dozen mostly civilian deaths during some of the country’s most violent social protests in years, her office said on Friday, as some of the president’s top Cabinet members announced their resignation.

The ouster of leftist former President Pedro Castillo last month triggered the unrest, which has claimed the lives of at least 41 civilians and one police officer.

The office of Peru’s attorney general, Patricia Benavides, announced the investigations focused on the violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the southern heavily-indigenous regions of Puno, Cusco, Arequipa, Apurimac and Ucayali, as well as the country’s capital Lima.

This week, Benavides opened a preliminary “genocide” investigation against President Dina Boluarte and several ministers.

Boluarte, Castillo’s former vice president, took over after lawmakers voted her embattled predecessor out of office after he sought to dissolve Congress and rule by decree on Dec. 7.

On Friday, the country’s interior minister, labor minister, and women’s minister all resigned, Boluarte said. She named Vicente Romero, a retired national police general, as the incoming interior minister.

Benavides’ office said 355 civilians and 176 police officers have been injured, with another 329 citizens arrested, all linked to the anti-government street protests since Castillo’s removal.

Edgar Stuardo, the head of an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights mission visiting Peru, called for a broad national dialogue, saying clashes between the country’s Congress and executive had undermined public confidence in the institutions.

This power struggle has resulted in six presidents and three parliaments in just five years.

“We are waiting to see what happens in the next few days,” Stuardo told reporters, after three days of meetings with victims’ relatives, state authorities and civil groups. “We hope there are no more deaths.”

Human rights groups accuse police and soldiers of using excessive force, including live ammunition and dropping tear gas from helicopters, while security forces say protesters, mostly in Peru’s southern Andes, have used homemade weapons and explosives against them.

Many of the angry and sometimes violent protests have played out in key southern mining regions, but on Thursday thousands marched through the streets of Lima demanding the closure of Congress, and Boluarte’s resignation.

(This story has been refiled to correct the spelling of the attorney general’s last name to Benavides in paragraphs 4 and 6)

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A group of more than 120 U.S. lawmakers told the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) its computer outage on Wednesday that disrupted 11,000 flights was “completely unacceptable” and demanded the agency explain how it will avoid future incidents.

House Transportation Committee Chair Sam Graves and the top Democrat on the panel Rick Larsen said in a Friday letter from committee and other House colleagues to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that they intend to “conduct vigorous oversight of the Department of Transportation’s plan to prevent these disruptions from occurring again.”

Lawmakers want details of what went wrong with a pilot messaging database that led to the first nationwide grounding of departing flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

They want Buttigieg to provide an “estimated cost to commercial airlines and passengers due to the delays resulting from the outage” even though Buttigieg has said the government will not compensate passengers for delays caused by an FAA computer issue.

The House lawmakers want a briefing and detailed responses to questions including about the causes of the system failure, the FAA’s response to the problem and the redundancy built into the system.

Buttigieg’s office and the FAA did not immediately comment on Friday.

On Thursday, the FAA said its preliminary analysis showed the computer outage was caused by a procedural error related to a corrupted data file. The FAA has not answered questions about the specifics of the problem.

Separately, a senior aide to Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell on Friday asked the FAA for a briefing by Jan. 20 on the outage of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) database, according to an email seen by Reuters.

The email said Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen on Wednesday held a conference call with airlines advising individual carriers and pilots they could choose whether or not to fly despite the NOTAM system outage.

“Why were airlines put in a position where they could have the option of choosing to operate when the NOTAM system was down?” the email asked.

The Senate committee email also said it appears the groundstop actually lasted from 7:21 a.m. ET to 10:06 a.m. ET but Buttigieg has said it was lifted after 90 minutes.

“When Sec. Buttigieg tweeted at approximately 8:50am that the groundstop had been lifted, was the NOTAM system full operational at that point?”

Earlier on Friday, Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) Chief Executive Ed Bastian said the incident showed the FAA needs more funding to address legacy computer issues.

The Senate email asked “what additional resources does FAA need to expeditiously update the NOTAM system?”

The House letter noted the FAA’s most recent budget request included nearly $30 million to replace “vintage hardware” that currently supports the system that failed.

“Coupled with this week’s failure, significant questions are raised about how long these issues have existed and what is needed to prevent such issues from occurring again,” the House letter said.

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Twitter Inc is offering free advertisements to brands that advertise on its platform, an attempt to woo brands back to the social-media platform, which has seen its ad business deteriorate following Elon Musk’s takeover, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Twitter is dangling free ad space by offering to match advertisers’ ad spending up to $250,000, the report said, citing emails reviewed by the Journal.

Twitter did not respond to Reuters request for a comment after business hours.

WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said on Friday the body’s investigation into President Joe Biden will happen, and that subpoenas could come in the next few weeks. The committee also hopes to get additional answers connected to the president’s recent controversy involving the handling of classified materials during his time as vice president.

In an interview with NewsNation, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said the Oversight Committee wants to know “what types” of documents there are and “who had access” to them.

“This is a national security concern,” said Comer. “The fact that they had classified documents improperly stored and in their possession only adds to the urgency of our investigation.”

Instead of attention being focused on a Friday meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House, the Biden administration continued to face questions about the handful of classified documents from his time as vice president that were found at his Delaware home and his former office in Washington, D.C.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday again referred questions on the discovery of the documents to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“What I will say from here is any — any questions that you may have about the review, about the process, I would refer you to the Department of Justice,” said Jean-Pierre. “I would also refer you to my colleagues over at the White House counsel. I’m not going to get into any specifics from here.”

Comer, who now leads the Oversight Committee as the GOP has gained control of the chamber, said he wants to know why documents weren’t publicly disclosed until weeks after the president’s lawyers first discovered them.

Comer also acknowledged the similarities between the investigation into President Biden and the ongoing investigation into the hundreds of classified documents that were recovered from former President Donald Trump’s private estate at Mar-a-Lago.

Despite many members of the GOP downplaying the Trump documents, Comer said he believes similar attention should be paid to Biden’s controversial handling of classified material.

“There are plenty of people investigating Donald Trump, including this new special prosecutor (Jack Smith),” said Comer. “We want to know why we didn’t learn about the fact that Joe Biden had these classified documents earlier.”

An investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents during his time as vice president isn’t the only investigation House Republicans have in store for the president.

Several Republicans have called for investigations into the Biden family’s overseas business dealings and the president’s son, Hunter Biden’s, time on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

“We’re following the money,” said Comer. “And I think the American people are going to be outraged when they realize how much anonymous money has flowed from China directly into the Biden’s back pockets.”

At the time Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, the company was led by an oligarch who was under investigation for corruption, The New York Times has reported. The newspaper also reported Hunter Biden accepted the board position while his father was serving as vice president.

The president and his family aside, Comer said the committee may also open investigations into the origins of COVID-19.

“We’re pretty certain that (the virus) originated in the lab in Wuhan,” he said. “But (the Biden) administration has done everything to block any type of credible investigation of the origins of COVID-19.

The Chinese government has tightly controlled the dissemination of research on the virus, impeding cooperation with international scientists, according to The Associated Press. A World Health Organization expert group said in a report this year that “key pieces of data” were missing on how the pandemic began and called for a more in-depth investigation.

Comer also said an investigation into security at the U.S.-Mexico border — along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — is on the table.