Fred and Cindy Warmbier Speak Out:

Minnesota House Republican upset about painting in which Trump gropes a woman's crotch

Minnesota Rep. Josh Heintzeman doesn’t often criticize art on his Facebook page. But last week, the Republican from Nisswa went off on a painting currently on display in the Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

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The piece in question is called Standing Rock 2016. It’s about 8 feet tall and 10 feet wide, according to a report by MPR, and its size and bright color palette give it a lambent, twilit glow from a distance. A metal pipeline disappears under a glowing river and emerges from the mouth of a beast. Attack dogs with two heads rush at a small crowd of protesters, as fat cats in suits smoke cigars and look on. Brightly colored frogs emerge from the river as if to come to its defense, lashing out with their tongues.

And, in the bottom right hand corner, a clearly depicted President Donald Trump gropes the breast of a blindfolded Lady Justice, all the while grabbing at her crotch. This was the part of the painting Heintzeman disliked the most.

“There's a number of very controversial depictions but President Trump's is especially offencive [sic],” he wrote on Facebook last week. He pointed out that the painting (and others in a series) was funded by the Minnesota State Arts Board with a $10,000 grant.

“If ‘artists’ create this kind of thing on their own time fine,” he wrote, “but not on my dime.”

Prosecutors submit redacted Cohen raid documents under seal, teeing up public release

Prosecutors submit redacted Cohen raid documents under seal, teeing up public release
BY MORGAN CHALFANT

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have submitted redacted copies of search warrants connected to the federal raid on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s properties under seal, after a judge ordered the documents be partially released.

“The government respectfully submits, under seal, copies of the search warrant materials that were the subject of the Order,” U.S. attorney Robert Khuzami wrote in a letter to the federal judge overseeing Cohen’s case on Thursday.

The letter means that the release of the documents — including copies of search warrants, warrant applications and supporting affidavits and riders connected to the April 2018 FBI raid on Cohen’s home, office and hotel room — could be imminent.

In early February, U.S. District Judge William Pauley III ordered the partial release of the materials, after a group of media outlets had petitioned for their release.

“The public interest in the underlying subject matter of the Materials—which implicates the integrity of the 2016 presidential election — is substantial,” Pauley wrote in the 30-page opinion released Feb. 7.