Republicans in Mississippi's intensifying U.S. Senate race are slamming Democrat Mike Espy's lobbying work for an African leader who was later deposed and charged with crimes against humanity.
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and a GOP campaign group have launched ads questioning whether Espy lied about his work for Ivory Coast ex-President Laurent Gbagbo, who is on trial at the International Criminal Court. Fox News reported on Espy's lobbying work Thursday.
Federal registration papers show Espy was hired by the Cocoa and Coffee Board of the Ivory Coast from Jan. 1 to March 15 in 2011, collecting $750,000 before terminating the contract two weeks before its scheduled end.
"He lied because he said he cancelled the contract and there's evidence to the contrary that he did not," Hyde-Smith campaign spokeswoman Melissa Scallan said Friday. "Also, that he was willing to have a contract with someone who is now on trial in international court is, I think, telling."
For days the Espy campaign and Democratic groups have hammered Hyde-Smith over her video-recorded statement praising a supporter at a Nov. 2 campaign stop by saying: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."
Criticism of Espy's lobbying work comes as his supporters are hitting Hyde-Smith over additional video-recorded statements from Nov. 3 in which she joked about "liberal folks" and making it "just a little more difficult" for them to vote.
Espy spokesman Danny Blanton told Fox on Thursday that Espy ended the contract after realizing his Ivory Coast client "didn't pass the smell test." On Friday, Blanton pointed back at Hyde-Smith's earlier remarks.
"Since that hasn't worked, she's trying to change the subject with a smear campaign against Mike," Blanton said in a statement.
A racially diverse group of more than 50 people gathered Friday in downtown Jackson and chanted, "No hate in our state" and "Cindy gotta go."
"She'll be glad to sit in a front-row seat of a public hanging, yet she'll brag about being endorsed by the Right to Life," said George H. Williams, a 65-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Ridgeland. "Isn't that ironic?"
Hyde-Smith and Espy will compete in a Nov. 27 runoff for the final two years of a six-year term begun by Republican Thad Cochran, who retired in April. Mississippi's governor appointed Hyde-Smith as a temporary successor.
Espy was Mississippi's first African-American congressman in the 20th century and U.S. secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton. He's running in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1982.
Espy's involvement with Gbagbo was the subject of news stories in 2010 and 2011. Documents filed with the U.S. Justice Department also show the Cocoa and Coffee Board paid Espy an initial $40,000 to travel to the West African nation and consult in December 2010, weeks after a disputed presidential election. The international community agreed that challenger Alassane Ouattara was victorious, but Gbagbo claimed he had won another term.
Espy appeared on Ivory Coast television in that country during the December 2010 visit and told The Telegraph newspaper in London that civil war threatened to resume there.
"President Gbagbo is very clear that he's not backing down," The Telegraph quoted Espy.
Espy, through a company he owned, agreed to begin working Jan. 1, 2011, to prevent the U.S. from "blacklisting" purchases of Ivorian coffee and cocoa, to advocate on "issues relating to child labor laws" and to urge the U.S. government "to investigate irregularities" in the elections, according to forms he filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
With reports of abuses against civilians by Gbagbo's security forces mounting, Washington publication The Hill questioned Espy about his work there. Espy said in a March 12, 2011, article that he had ended work in February and had only been paid $400,000.
"I have voluntarily suspended it," Espy told The Hill. "Events are spiraling rapidly. It is very difficult to work in that context."
But documents Espy filed months later showed a $350,000 payment on March 1, 2011, bringing the total to $750,000. The contract didn't end until March 15. That was 15 days before it was originally supposed to conclude.
Gbagbo surrendered in April 2011 after Ouattara's forces closed in and United Nations and French forces began fighting against him. Later that year, he was transferred to the custody of the International Criminal Court, where he stands accused of inciting murder, rape and other inhumane acts. Gbagbo denies guilt and says the court lacks evidence.
Espy resigned his Cabinet post in 1994 amid a special counsel investigation that accused him of improperly accepting gifts. He was tried and acquitted on 30 corruption charges, but the Mississippi Republican Party has called him "too corrupt for the Clintons."
Espy said he refused offers of plea deals.
"Of all their 70 witnesses, no one even touched me," he said Thursday.
For AP's complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics . Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy and Emily Wagster Pettus at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus .
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.
The strong support the Palestinians received reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the global support for Palestinians facing a humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties."
The United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people,” deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
His voice breaking at times, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council after the vote: “The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will and it will not defeat our determination.”
“We will not stop in our effort,” he said. “The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near.”
This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.
They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.
Algerian U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council who introduced the resolution, called Palestine’s admission “a critical step toward rectifying a longstanding injustice" and said that “peace will come from Palestine’s inclusion, not from its exclusion.”
In explaining the U.S. veto, Wood said there are “unresolved questions” on whether Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state. He pointed to Hamas still exerting power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the state envisioned by the Palestinians.
Wood stressed that the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace, is the only path for security for both sides and for Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.
“The United States is committed to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region, not only to address the current crisis in Gaza, but to advance a political settlement that will create a path to Palestinian statehood and membership in the United Nations,” he said.
Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, reiterated the commitment to a two-state solution but asserted that Israel believes Palestine "is a permanent strategic threat."
"Israel will do its best to block the sovereignty of a Palestinian state and to make sure that the Palestinian people are exiled away from their homeland or remain under its occupation forever,” he said.
He demanded of the council and diplomats crowded in the chamber: “What will the international community do? What will you do?”
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled for years, and Israel’s right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the resolution “disconnected to the reality on the ground” and warned that it “will cause only destruction for years to come and harm any chance for future dialogue.”
Six months after the Oct. 7 attack by the Hamas militant group, which controlled Gaza, and the killing of 1,200 people in “the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” he accused the Security Council of seeking “to reward the perpetrators of these atrocities with statehood.”
Israel’s military offensive in response has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and destroyed much of the territory, which speaker after speaker denounced Thursday.
After the vote, Erdan thanked the United States and particularly President Joe Biden “for standing up for truth and morality in the face of hypocrisy and politics.”
He called the Palestinian Authority — which controls the West Bank and the U.S. wants to see take over Gaza where Hamas still has sway — “a terror supporting entity.”
The Israeli U.N. ambassador referred to the requirements for U.N. membership – accepting the obligations in the U.N. Charter and being a “peace-loving” state.
“How can you say seriously that the Palestinians are peace loving? How?” Erdan asked. “The Palestinians are paying terrorists, paying them to slaughter us. None of their leaders condemns terrorism, nor the Oct. 7 massacre. They call Hamas their brothers.”
Despite the Palestinian failure to meet the criteria for U.N. membership, Erdan said most council members supported it.
“It’s very sad because your vote will only embolden Palestinian rejectionism every more and make peace almost impossible,” he said.
Algeria's Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Amar Bendjama speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour holds tears while speaking during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour, left, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speak before a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Representatives of member countries take votes during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood votes against resolution during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
