About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (April 5, 2023)
8A Midweek Edition-April 5-6, 2023 The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com NATION Dangerous storms again hitting Midwest, South Volunteers clean up at Wynne High School, Saturday, April 1, near the front entrance of the school on E. Jackson Avenue in Wynne, Ark., following severe weather the previous night. BY SCOTT MCFETRIDGE AND SEAN MURPHY Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa — People still sorting through the wreckage of their homes after deadly weather hit over the weekend braced for another wave of strong storms, including tornadoes, that began rolling into parts of the Midwest and South beginning Tuesday evening. Officials warned residents to have shelter ready before going to sleep. “This could be a night to just set up down in the base ment to be safe,” said Tom Philip, a meteorologist in Davenport, Iowa. The National Weather Service on Tuesday evening began issuing tornado warn ings in Iowa and Illinois and said a confirmed twister was spotted southwest of Chicago near Bryant, Illi nois. No damage was imme diately reported. The storms were expected to hammer some areas hit by severe weather and possibly dozens of tor nadoes just days ago that killed at least 32 people, meaning more misery for those whose homes were destroyed in Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois. Danger ous conditions Tuesday also could stretch into parts of Missouri, southwestern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. Farther south and west, fire danger remained high. When a tornado hit Little Rock, Arkansas, last Fri day, Kimberly Shaw peeked outside to film the storm, then suffered a painful foot injury that required stiches when a glass door behind her shattered and wind nearly sucked her away. With another storm coming, Shaw said she intends to be far more cautious this time and will rush to an under ground shelter at her home. “The original plan was NENA ZIMMER I Associated Press just, ‘If we see a tornado coming, we’ll get in the shel ter,’” Shaw said. “But now it’s like you’re not going to see it coming. You’re not going to hear it coming. You just need to get (inside the shelter) as soon as the warn ing goes out or if you just feel unsafe.” Shaw added: “And there will be no videotaping.” Ryan Bunker, a meteo rologist with the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, predicted that Tuesday’s storm system could start as isolated super cells — with possible torna does, wind and hail — and “form into a line (of thun derstorms) and continue moving eastward.” Earlier Tuesday, strong thunderstorms swept through the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois with winds up to 90 mph and baseball size hail. No inju ries were reported but trees were downed and some businesses were damaged in Moline, Illinois. The weather service and Illinois Emergency Man agement also said a tornado touched down Tuesday morning in the western Illi nois community of Colona. Local news reports showed wind damage to some businesses. Northern Illinois, from Moline to Chicago, saw 75-80 mph winds and hail 2 to 3 inches in diameter on Tues day afternoon, National Weather Service meteorolo gist Scott Baker said. The agency received reports of semi trucks tipped over by winds in Lee County, about 95 miles west of Chicago. The tornado risk in the Upper Midwest was expected to be highest in the evening and late night Tues day with storms targeting northern Illinois, eastern Iowa and southwest Wiscon sin. Areas of southern Mis souri and Arkansas were most at risk overnight. In Keokuk County, Iowa, where 19 homes were destroyed and more were damaged Friday, emer gency management official Marissa Reisen worried how those cleaning up the damage will cope if another storm hits. “All of the people who have been impacted by the storms Friday night are doing all this work, to clean up, to gather their stuff, to pile up the debris,” Rei sen said. “If a storm comes through and hits them again and throws all that hard work all over the place again, it will be so deflating to those people.” Severe storms could pro duce strong tornadoes and large hail Wednesday across eastern Illinois and lower Michigan and in the Ohio Valley, including Indiana and Ohio, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The weather threat extends southwestward across parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Ten nessee and Arkansas. Trump arraigned on 34 felony counts, pleads not guilty BY MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER, JENNIFER PELTZ AND WILL WEISSERT Associated Press NEW YORK — A stone faced Donald Trump made a momentous courtroom appearance Tuesday when he was confronted with a 34-count felony indictment charging him in a scheme to bury allegations of extra marital affairs that arose during his first White House campaign. The arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom was a stunning — and humbling — spectacle for the first ex president to ever face crimi nal charges. With Trump watching in silence, prosecu tors bluntly accused him of criminal conduct and set the stage for a possible criminal trial in the city where he became a celebrity decades ago. The indictment centers on allegations that Trump falsified internal business records at his private com pany while trying to cover up an effort to illegally influ ence the 2016 election by arranging payments that silenced claims potentially harmful to his candidacy. It includes 34 counts of fudging records related to checks Trump sent to his personal lawyer and problem-solver to reimburse him for his role in paying off a porn actor who said she had an extra marital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. “The defendant, Donald J. Trump, falsified New York business records in order to conceal an illegal conspir acy to undermine the integ rity of the 2016 presidential election and other violations of election laws,” said Assis tant District Attorney Chris topher Conroy. Trump, somber and silent as he entered and exited the Manhattan courtroom, said “not guilty” in a firm voice while facing a judge who warned him to refrain from rhetoric that could inflame or cause civil unrest. All told, the ever-verbose Trump, who for weeks before Tues day’s arraignment had assailed the case against him as political persecution, uttered only 10 words in the courtroom. He appeared to glare for a period at Manhat tan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case. As he returned to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where he delivered a pri metime address to hundreds of supporters, Trump again protested his innocence and asserted on his Truth Social platform that the “hearing was shocking to many in that they had no ‘surprises,’ and therefore, no case.” In his speech, Trump lashed out anew at the prosecution and attacked in bitter terms the prosecu tor and the judge presiding over the case despite being admonished hours earlier about incendiary rhetoric. In a sign of that other probes are weighing on him, Trump also steered his speech into a broadside against a separate Justice Department investi gation into the mishandling of classified documents. “I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump said of the New York indictment. “This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately.” The crowd at Mar-a-Lago included supporters like failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and longtime ally Roger Stone. Trump’s wife, Melania, was absent from his side and was also not seen with him in New York. Even so, the indictment amounts to a remarkable reckoning for Trump after years of investigations into his personal, business and political dealings. It shows how even as Trump is look ing to reclaim the White House in 2024, he is shad owed by investigations related to his behavior in the two prior elections, with prosecutors in Atlanta and Washington scrutinizing efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the 2020 presi dential election — probes that could produce even more charges. In the New York case, each count of falsifying business records, a felony, is punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if a judge would impose any prison time if Trump is convicted. The next court date is Dec. 4 — two months before Republicans begin their nominating process in ear nest — and Trump will again be expected to appear. A conviction would not prevent Trump from run ning for or winning the presi dency in 2024. The arraignment also delved into Trump’s rheto ric on the case, with pros ecutors at one point handing printouts of his social media posts to the judge and defense lawyers as Trump looked on. Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan did not impose a gag order but told Trump’s lawyers to urge him to refrain from posts that could encourage unrest. The broad contours of the case have long been known, focusing on a scheme that prosecutors say began months into his candidacy in 2015, as his celebrity past collided with his presiden tial ambitions. Though prosecutors expressed confidence in the case, a conviction is no sure thing given the legal com plexities of the allegations, the application of state elec tion laws to a federal elec tion and prosecutors’ likely reliance on a key witness, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to false statements. It centers on payoffs to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extra marital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged the former president had out of wedlock. “It’s not just about one payment. It is 34 false state ments and business records that were concealing crimi nal conduct,” Bragg told reporters, when asked how the three separate cases were connected. All 34 counts against Trump are linked to a series of checks that were written to Cohen to reimburse him for his role in paying off Daniels. Those payments, made over 12 months, were recorded in various internal company docu ments as being for a legal retainer that prosecutors say didn’t exist. Cohen testi fied before the grand jury and is expected to be a star prosecution witness. Nine of those monthly checks were paid out of Trump’s personal accounts, but records related to them were maintained in the Trump Organization’s data system. ROBOTIC HEART SURGERY DEMONSTRATION FREE HEART MURMUR & AFIB SCREENINGS TUESDAY APRIL 11 2023 JOIN NORTHEAST GEORGIA PHYSICIANS GROUP CARDIOVASCULAR AND THORACIC SURGERY AND GEORGIA HEART INSTITUTE to learn more about minimally invasive robotic heart surgery. Free heart murmur and atrial fibrilation (AFib) screenings will be offered! 9AM - 12PM - Heart murmur and Afib screenings 10AM - Heart murmur and robotic heart surgery presentation featuring Dr. T. Sloane Guy, Dr. Naga Kommuri, & Dr. Ronnie Ramadan The Venue at Friendship Springs 7340 Friendship Springs Boulevard Flowery Branch, GA 30542 Learn more and pre-register at nqhs.com/robotic-event Northeast Georgia Physicians Group Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery is an integral part of Georgia Heart Institute. GEORGIA HEART^-INSTITUTE
