DEARBORN, Mich. — Former colleagues including Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia; Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, paid tribute to John Dingell at 30,000 feet on Tuesday as their flight to Michigan for the lawmaker’s funeral was turned back due to wintry weather.
The funeral for Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in US history, went ahead with former vice president Joe Biden eulogizing the Michigan Democrat.
‘‘Dignity was how John walked. Dignity was how John talked. Dignity was how John carried himself. And more than that, it was how he treated everyone — and I mean everyone,’’ Biden said.
Dingell died Feb. 7 at the age of 92. He had complications from prostate cancer.
According to two Democratic aides, the two military transport planes taking lawmakers to the funeral were unable to land in Detroit due to bad weather and were forced to return to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Representative Billy Long, Republican of Missouri, tweeted that lawmakers held an ‘‘impromptu service at 30,000 feet’’ for Dingell, led by Lewis, Upton, and Pelosi.
Several other lawmakers, including Michigan’s Democratic Senator Gary Peters and Representatives Daniel Kildee and Haley Stevens, tweeted that they were disappointed their plane was turned around and that they were unable to make it to the funeral.
‘‘We shared a prayer for him in the sky, and felt a bit closer to the Dean in heaven,’’ Stevens said in a tweet, referring to Dingell’s title as the longest-serving House member.
Dingell served in Congress from 1955 until retiring in 2015.
Washington Post
Trump critics to help House panel with inquiries
WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that they have retained two elite white collar litigators and prominent legal critics of President Trump to help begin inquiries into some of the most sensitive allegations involving the president, including ethics violations, corruption, and possible obstruction of justice.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has not committed to opening a formal impeachment inquiry, but the addition of the two lawyers, Norman L. Eisen and Barry H. Berke, indicates that the Democrats do not intend to wait for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to finish his work to begin weighing issues that could ultimately be wrapped up in such a proceeding.
“The president of the United States faces numerous allegations of corruption and obstruction,’’ Nadler said in a statement announcing the decision. “His conduct and crude statements threaten the basic legal, ethical, and constitutional norms that maintain our democratic institutions. Congress has a constitutional duty to be a check and balance against abuses of power when necessary.’’
Eisen, 58, served as the top White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama and later as his ambassador to the Czech Republic. A former white collar litigator and investigator, he has emerged since Trump’s election as one of the president’s most recognizable legal critics, using his perch as chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to write voluminously about what he has argued are ethical lapses and instances of outright corruption in his administration.
Eisen also serves as a cocounsel in a lawsuit accusing Trump of violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution by refusing to divorce himself from his businesses.
Berke, a partner at the New York firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, has written extensively with Eisen about obstruction of justice and the president’s other legal vulnerabilities. He has long experience with complicated financial and tax crimes cases.
New York Times
Cameraman attacked at president’s rally
A belligerent man at President Trump’s campaign rally on the Texas border apparently attacked news crews, shoving and swearing at a photojournalist from the BBC, according to reports and a spokeswoman for the network.
The BBC said cameraman Ron Skeans was ‘‘violently pushed and shoved by a member of the crowd’’ while covering the rally Monday night in El Paso, about a mile from the US-Mexico border. BBC spokeswoman Charlotte Morgan said in a statement Tuesday to The Washington Post: ‘‘The man was removed by security, and Ron is fine. The president could see the incident and checked with us that all was OK.’’
‘‘It is clearly unacceptable for any of our staff to be attacked for doing their job,’’ she added.
It is unclear whether the man, who has not been publicly identified, will be charged.
When asked about the incident during Monday night’s rally, Michael Glassner, who leads the Trump campaign, said in a statement to the Post that ‘‘An individual involved in a physical altercation with a news cameraman was removed from last night’s rally.’’
‘‘We appreciate the swift action from venue security and law enforcement officers,’’ he added.
Skeans, the cameraman, told BBC News that he did not see the man in the crowd coming at him, but he felt a ‘‘very hard shove’’ that almost knocked him down.
‘‘I didn’t know what was going on,’’ he said.
Video that appeared to be from Skeans’s camera showed it falling toward the ground. Seconds later, when the picture was restored, a man in a red Make America Great Again hat could be seen being restrained as he shouted, ‘‘[Expletive] the media!’’
Trump has repeatedly attacked the US news media, labeling journalists the ‘‘enemy of the American people’’ and calling much of their coverage of him ‘‘fake news.’’
Describing the Monday altercation, a reporter for the Washington Examiner wrote on Twitter that leading up to the encounter, Trump had ‘‘railed against all the media.’’
After the incident, however, Trump pointed toward the crowd and asked: ‘‘You all right? Everything OK?’’
Then he flashed a thumbs up.
Washington Post