Thursday Scoop: Reporting Confidence

FBI Has Completed Supplemental Report on Kavanaugh

Chuck Grassley reading the report off tiny notecards. (Image: Flickr)

Early this morning, Sen. Chuck Grassley announced on Twitter that the Senate Judiciary Committee has received the requested background report on SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh from the FBI. Grassley and his colleagues on the committee are expected to read the report today, in preparation for a confirmation vote for Kavanaugh tomorrow morning.

The White House has also received the FBI background report. According to The Associated Press, White House spokesman Raj Shah has stated that given the FBI’s findings, they are “confident that Senate will vote to confirm” Kavanaugh.

The report will remain confidential until after the Senate vote.


Several Law Enforcement Officers Shot in Standoff

One law enforcement officer has been killed and six others wounded during a standoff in Florence, South Carolina Wednesday.

CNN reports, “Florence County Sheriff’s deputies were executing a search warrant when a man opened fired, said Maj. Mike Nunn, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. The man then barricaded himself in the home with children during the two-hour standoff, Nunn said.”

The officers were responding to a random search warrant, unaware of how much fire power the suspect had. The other officers were shot when they went to assist their fellow officers. The shooter is now in custody.


Four Alt-Right ‘Fight Club’ Members Arrested for Riots They Incited in Charlottesville

Four men who identified as members of an alt-right “fight club” were arrested on Tuesday for inciting a riot during the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA last year.

The charges were filed on August 27 and released on Tuesday. The Huffington Post reports that the affidavit revealed the fight club members were “among the most violent individuals present in Charlottesville.”

Cole Evan White, Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Miselis, and Thomas Walter Gillen traveled to Virginia from Southern California to incite riots on the behalf of their alt-right fight club called RAM, or, the “Rise Above Movement.”

ProPublica reports that RAM “claims more than 50 members” and operates with the purpose of “physically attacking its ideological foes,” with skills they develop as a group through in “boxing and other martial arts.”

Kelly Rosenblatt tells all in her report here. 


Today in a Tweet: National Everything Day

There are three very important national holidays that fall out today, and it’s making us wonder what we can do to combine all of them into one lit night. 


Last But Not Least: Amazon Will Raise Wages for Its Workforce in the U.S. and the U.K. After Criticism

On Tuesday, October 2, Amazon announced that will raise its wages for all of its seasonal, temporary, part-time, and full-time workers in both the United States and the United Kingdom after public criticism over controversial working conditions and low pay. The pay raise will start on November 1, 2018, during the beginning of the fall and winter holiday season, especially during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, and Hannukah.

So how much will they be paid? Find out in Duane Murphy’s story here.


This pre-Friday Morning Scoop was made possible by Kelly RosenblattDuane Murphy, Natalia Kolenko, and the CMN Staff. Think you can come up with wittier banter for this bottom section? Take our digital journalism course first…and you, too, can be in charge of making people roll their eyes first thing in the morning. 

We dropped two mixtapes in six months. And we take the news very seriously.