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  • Biden picks Air Force general to lead NSA and Cyber Command | CNN Politics

    Biden picks Air Force general to lead NSA and Cyber Command | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has nominated an Air Force general to head the nation’s powerful electronic spying agency and the US military command that conducts offensive cyber operations – a crucial position as the US continues to battle Russia, China and other foes in cyberspace.

    Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, who has served for years in senior US military cyber positions, is Biden’s choice to replace outgoing Army Gen. Paul Nakasone as head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, an Air Force official confirmed to CNN.

    Politico first reported on Haugh’s nomination.

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

    Haugh’s nomination could face a roadblock in the Senate after Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama put a hold on senior military nominations because he objects to the department’s abortion travel policy.

    Haugh is currently deputy of US Cyber Command, a command of thousands of US military personnel who conduct offensive and defensive cyber operations to protect US critical infrastructure. Officials from the command traveled to Ukraine in late 2021 to prepare Kyiv for an onslaught of Russian cyberattacks that accompanied the full-scale Russian invasion.

    The command and NSA also have taken an increasingly active role in helping defend American elections from foreign interference under Nakasone’s leadership over the last five years.

    During the 2020 election, Iranian hackers accessed a US municipal website for reporting unofficial election results and Cyber Command kicked the hackers off the network out of concern that they might post fake results on the website, a senior US military official revealed last month.

    Haugh’s nomination signals a continued emphasis on election security work at Fort Meade, the sprawling military base in Maryland where the NSA and Cyber Command are housed. As a senior US military cyber official, Haugh has been involved in election security discussions in recent midterm and general elections.

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  • SolarWinds chief vows to fight any legal action from US regulators over alleged Russian hack | CNN Business

    SolarWinds chief vows to fight any legal action from US regulators over alleged Russian hack | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The chief executive of US software firm SolarWinds told employees Friday that “we intend to vigorously defend ourselves” in the face of potential legal action from US regulators over the firm’s handling of a sweeping 2020 breach by alleged Russian hackers, according to an internal SolarWinds email obtained by CNN.

    The US Securities and Exchange Commission has informed current and former SolarWinds executives that it intends to recommend “civil enforcement action” alleging the company broke federal securities laws in its public statements and “internal controls” related to the hack, SolarWinds said in a filing with regulators on Friday.

    The hackers – who the Biden administration said worked for the Russian foreign intelligence service – allegedly used SolarWinds software to access the unclassified email networks of the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and other agencies in a cybersecurity and counterintelligence failure that US officials vowed to rectify.

    The SEC notice is an indication that US regulators are moving closer to bringing a civil lawsuit against SolarWinds that could result in fines or other penalties. A so-called Wells notice from the enforcement agency is not a formal charge or determination that a defendant broke the law.

    “Despite our extraordinary measures to cooperate with and inform the SEC, they continue to take positions we do not believe match the facts,” SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna said in the email to employees.

    SolarWinds “will continue to explore a potential resolution of this matter before the SEC makes any final decision,” Ramakrishna said, adding that the SEC investigation could be a “distraction” to employees in the coming months.

    The SEC did not respond to CNN’s request for comment Friday night. The Biden administration has increasingly embraced regulation as a means of forcing big software providers and critical infrastructure firms to improve their cybersecurity practices.

    “We are cooperating in a long investigative process that seems to be progressing to charges by the SEC against our company and officers,” a SolarWinds spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “Any potential action will make the entire industry less secure by having a chilling effect on cyber incident disclosure.”

    Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds maintains that it acted appropriately in responding to the hack, which cybersecurity experts have called notable in its sophistication and scope. For several months in 2020, hackers used software made by SolarWinds and other technology firms to burrow into US government agencies and corporate victims in an apparent spying campaign.

    Moscow has denied involvement.

    After the hack became public, US lawmakers demanded answers from federal cybersecurity officials on why the hackers were undetected for so long, as well as criticized SolarWinds for its security practices prior to the hack.

    But SolarWinds says it has instituted numerous security reforms in the years since the hack, and has pushed that message of reform in public appearance with federal officials.

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  • TSMC confirms supplier data breach following ransom demand by Russian-speaking cybercriminal group | CNN Business

    TSMC confirms supplier data breach following ransom demand by Russian-speaking cybercriminal group | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC confirmed Friday that one of its hardware suppliers was hacked and had data stolen from it, but said the incident had no impact on business operations.

    Confirmation of the breach came after Russian-speaking cybercriminals claimed TSMC as a victim on Thursday and demanded an extraordinary $70 million ransom from the semiconductor firm.

    There were no signs that TSMC or the hardware supplier, Taiwanese firm Kinmax, had any plans to pay the hackers (representatives from both companies didn’t respond to CNN’s questions about any ransom).

    TSMC — one of the world’s largest chipmakers and a key supplier to Apple

    (AAPL)     — was quick to assure investors and the public that the hack had no impact on its operations and that it did not compromise its customers’ data.

    “After the incident, TSMC has immediately terminated its data exchange with this concerned supplier in accordance with the Company’s security protocols and standard operating procedures,” TSMC said in a statement to CNN.

    The hackers accessed Kinmax’s internal “testing environment” for the technology it prepares to deliver to customers, Kinmax said in a statement distributed by TSMC.

    “The leaked content mainly consisted of system installation preparation that the Company provided to our customers as default configurations,” Kinmax said. The company apologized to customers whose names may show up in the leaked data.

    Ransomware groups are known to exaggerate the value of the data they steal and make outlandish demands that are never met.

    LockBit is the name of the group claiming responsibility for the hack of the TSMC supplier and the type of ransomware they use. LockBit ransomware was the most deployed ransomware around the world in 2022, according to US cybersecurity officials.

    Jon DiMaggio, an executive at security firm Analyst1 who has studied LockBit extensively, said the hackers will likely publish the stolen data or sell it if TSMC refuses to negotiate a ransom.

    For years, American officials and Taiwanese cybersecurity experts have looked to fortify the island’s infrastructure in the face of hacking threats.

    Taiwan’s chip industry is critical to the global hardware supply chain, making any potentially impactful cyberattacks on it a concern for government officials and business executives around the world.

    While the TSMC-related hacking incident doesn’t appear to have been impactful, a separate ransomware attack in 2020 on Taiwan’s state-run energy company temporarily disrupted some customers’ ability to pay for gas with company cards, according to local media reports at the time.

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  • 14 promises Donald Trump has made in his campaign for a second term | CNN Politics

    14 promises Donald Trump has made in his campaign for a second term | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has hit the 2024 campaign trail and is giving voters a preview of what a second Trump presidency could look like if he’s elected. He’s made many campaign promises – many of which are often vague and lacking in details or specifics – including ending the war in Ukraine, building 10 new cities and giving drug smugglers the death penalty.

    Here are some of the policies he says he would enact if elected for a second term.

    “The drug cartels are waging war on America—and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” former President Donald Trump said in a January campaign video.

    If elected, Trump said in his November 2022 campaign announcement that he would ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and human traffickers can receive the death penalty for their “heinous acts.” The former president also vowed to “take down” drug cartels by imposing naval embargos on cartels, cutting off cartels’ access to global financial systems and using special forces within the Department of Defense to damage the cartels’ leadership.

    “When I am president, we will put parents back in charge and give them the final say,” Trump said in a January campaign video, speaking about education

    The former president said he would give funding preferences and “favorable treatment” to schools that allow parents to elect principals, abolish teacher tenure for K-12 teachers, use merit pay to incentivize quality teaching and cut the number of school administrators, such as those overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

    Trump also said in the campaign video that he would cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideology. In a later speech, Trump said he would bring back the 1776 Commission, which was launched in his previous administration to “teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children.”

    Lastly, the former president said he would charge the Department of Justice and the Department of Education with investigating civil rights violations of race-based discrimination in schools while also removing “Marxists” from the Department of Education. A second Trump administration would pursue violations in schools of both the Constitution’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, which prohibit the government establishment of religion and protect a citizen’s right to practice their own religion, he said.

    “I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference in March.

    Trump added in a campaign video that he would issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to cut programs that promote gender transitions, as well as asking Congress to stop the use of federal dollars to promote and pay for gender-affirming procedures. The former president added that his administration would not allow hospitals and healthcare providers to meet the federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare if they provide chemical or physical gender-affirming care to youth.

    Trump said in two February campaign videos that, if “Marxist” prosecutors refuse to charge crimes and surrender “our cities to violent criminals,” he “will not hesitate to send in federal law enforcement to restore peace and public safety.”

    Trump added that he would instruct the Department of Justice to open civil rights investigations into “radical left” prosecutors’ offices that engaged in racial enforcement of the law, encourage Congress to use their legal authority over Washington, DC, to restore “law and order” and overhaul federal standards of disciplining minors to address rising crimes like carjackings.

    Addressing policies made in what Trump calls the “Democrats’ war on police,” the former president vowed in a campaign video that he would pass a “record investment” to hire and retrain police, strengthen protections like qualified immunity, increase penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers and deploy the National Guard when local law enforcement “refuses to act.” The former president added that he would require law enforcement agencies that receive money from his funding investment or the Department of Justice to use “proven common sense” measures such as stop-and-frisk.

    “Shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign event, adding in another speech that it would take him “no longer than one day” to settle the war if elected. Trump offered no details on how he would end the war in Ukraine.

    Trump further addressed his strategy of stopping the “never-ending wars” by vowing to remove warmongers, frauds and “failures in the senior ranks of our government,” and replace them with national security officials who would defend America’s interests. The former president added in a campaign video that he would stop lobbyists and government contractors from pushing senior military officials towards war.

    Trump said he would restore his “wonderful” travel ban on individuals from several majority-Muslim countries to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country” after President Joe Biden overturned the ban in 2021.

    Trump said in multiple campaign videos that he would spearhead an effort to build Freedom Cities to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”

    In his plan, the federal government would charter 10 new cities on federal land, awarding them to areas with the best development proposals. The former president said in a campaign video that the Freedom Cities would bring the return of US manufacturing, economic opportunity, new industries and affordable living.

    In the March video, Trump added that the US under a second Trump administration would lead in efforts to “develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals,” not letting China lead “this revolution in air mobility.” The former president said these airborne vehicles would change commerce and bring wealth into rural communities.

    “When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left,” Trump said in a January video.

    To address the “disturbing” relationship between technology platforms and the government, the former president said he would enact a seven-year cooling off period before employees at agencies such as the FBI or CIA can work for platforms that oversee mass user data.

    Trump added in multiple campaign releases that he would task the Department of Justice with investigating and prosecuting the online censorship “regime,” ban federal agencies from “colluding” to censor citizens, fire bureaucrats who are believed to engage in federal censorship and suspend federal money to universities participating in “censorship-supporting activities.”

    On false information, the president would ban the use of taxpayer dollars to label any domestic speech as mis- or disinformation, as well as stopping federal funding of nonprofits and academic programs that study mis- or disinformation.

    Under the proposed Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, the former president said if other countries impose tariffs in the US, “we charge THEM – an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount.”

    Trump vowed in a campaign video to impose the same tariffs that other countries may impose on the US on those countries. The goal, the former president said, is to get other countries to drop their tariffs.

    As part of a larger strategy to bring jobs back into the US, Trump said he would also implement his America First trade agenda if elected. Setting universal baseline tariffs on a majority of foreign goods, the former president said Americans would see taxes decrease as tariffs increase. His proposal also includes a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, as well as stopping China from buying up America and stopping the investment of US companies in China.

    “With victory, we will again build the greatest economy ever,” Trump said in his November campaign announcement. “It will take place quickly. We will build the greatest economy ever,” though he didn’t provide specific policy proposals or explain how he would improve the economy.

    Trump said he would repeal Biden’s tax hikes, “immediately tackle” inflation and end what he called Biden’s “war” on American energy production.

    At CPAC, Trump promised to, “fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before…” Trump also said in a campaign video that he would reinstate a 2020 executive order to remove “rogue” bureaucrats and propose a constitutional amendment for term limits on members of Congress.

    Trump also pledged to “appoint US Attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros District Attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States.” The former president added on to this message, vowing to end the “reign” of such investigations and district attorneys and overhaul the Department of Justice and the FBI.

    “I will take Biden’s executive order directing the federal government to target the firearms industry, and I will rip it up and throw it out on day one,” Trump said at the 2023 National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum in April.

    The former president also promised in the speech that the government would not infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights and that he would push Congress to pass a concealed carry reciprocity.

    “I will create a special team to rapidly review every action taken by federal agencies under Biden’s ‘equity’ agenda that will need to be reversed. We will reverse almost all of them,” Trump said in a campaign video.

    Trump added in multiple campaign videos that he would revoke Biden’s equity executive order that required federal agencies to deliver equitable outcomes in policy and conduct equity training. If elected, Trump said he would also fire staffers hired to implement Biden’s policy, and then reinstate his 2020 executive order banning racial and sexual stereotyping in the federal government.

    “When I’m president, I will ensure that America’s future remains firmly in American hands just as I did when I was president before,” Trump said in a campaign video.

    Trump vowed to restrict Chinese ownership of US infrastructure such as energy, technology, telecommunications and natural resources. The former president also said he would force the Chinese to sell current holdings that may put national security at risk. “Economic security is national security,” he said.

    Trump vowed in a June campaign video to reinstate his previous executive order that the US government would pay the same price for pharmaceuticals as other developed countries to “end this global freeloading on American consumers for once and for all.”

    Some of the former presidents’ pharmaceutical policies were overturned by Biden. Trump said in the video his administration would pay the best prices offered to other countries, who he said often pay lower pharmaceutical prices than Americans. This policy, Trump believes, would cause the pharmaceutical industry to raise prices for other countries while lowering costs for Americans.

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  • FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks | CNN Business

    FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The Food and Drug Administration will now require medical devices meet specific cybersecurity guidelines after years of concerns that a growing number of internet-connected products used by hospitals and healthcare providers could be hit by hacks and ransomware attacks.

    Under FDA guidance issued this week, all new medical device applicants must now submit a plan on how to “monitor, identify, and address” cybersecurity issues, as well as create a process that provides “reasonable assurance” that the device in question is protected. Applicants will also need to make security updates and patches available on a regular schedule and in critical situations, and provide the FDA with “a software bill of materials,” including any open-source or other software their devices use.

    The new security requirements came into effect as part of the sweeping $1.7 trillion federal omnibus spending bill signed by President Joe Biden in December. As part of the new law, the FDA must also update its medical device cybersecurity guidance at least every two years.

    A 2022 report released by the FBI cited research finding 53% of digital medical devices and other internet-connected products in hospitals had known critical vulnerabilities. The report listed a number of medical devices that are susceptible to cyber attacks, including insulin pumps, intracardiac defibrillators, mobile cardiac telemetry and pacemakers.

    “Malign actors who compromise these devices can direct them to give inaccurate readings, administer drug overdoses, or otherwise endanger patient health,” according to the FBI report.

    In 2021, a group of researchers investigating software used in medical devices and machinery used in other industries found over a dozen vulnerabilities that, if exploited by a hacker, could cause critical equipment such as patient monitors to crash.

    The FDA has faced criticisms over the years for not doing enough.

    A 2018 report from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General said the FDA was not adequately protecting devices from getting hacked.

    “FDA had plans and processes for addressing certain medical device problems in the postmarket phase, but its plans and processes were deficient for addressing medical device cybersecurity compromises,” the report said.

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  • Trump legal team will look to challenge ‘every potential issue’ once indictment is unsealed | CNN Politics

    Trump legal team will look to challenge ‘every potential issue’ once indictment is unsealed | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s legal team will look to challenge “every potential issue” in his indictment once the charges are unsealed, an attorney for the former president said Sunday.

    “We’re not doing anything at the arraignment because that would be showmanship and nothing more because we haven’t even seen the indictment yet. We will take the indictment, we will dissect it, the team will look at every – every – potential issue that we will be able to challenge and we will challenge it,” Joe Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Tacopina and other Trump lawyers have done several TV interviews in anticipation of the former President’s first appearance in court Tuesday, when he will learn the charges that the Manhattan grand jury has approved against him.

    At times, the lawyers have vowed to ask for the charges to be dismissed. But the full slate of charges still aren’t known. And crucially, a judge will ultimately determine if the law is sound enough for the case to move forward to trial.

    Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in an interview with NBC News on Sunday, “We can speculate on what evidence we think they may or may not have, but even with the indictment published, we really will not know what the district attorney’s evidence is and what they would present at trial.”

    Vance’s team investigated the case but did not charge it, leaving it under the purview of his successor, Alvin Bragg.

    Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier.

    Trump has denied the affair.

    The Trump team’s court strategy could center around challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors tie to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, beyond the statute of limitations for a criminal case.

    Tacopina suggested in TV interviews Sunday that the statute of limitations may be passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.

    “They’re not false entries. But assuming they were, they’re misdemeanors way beyond the statute of limitations, so they had to cobble them together to try and get a felony,” he said.

    Tacopina on Sunday also said a request to move the case to a different New York City borough isn’t on the table yet for Trump’s legal team.

    “There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”

    CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Cy Vance’s comments to NBC.

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  • Who is Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA leading the historic criminal case against Trump? | CNN Politics

    Who is Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA leading the historic criminal case against Trump? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Alvin Bragg, a former New York state and federal prosecutor, drew national attention when he made history as the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s first Black district attorney. Now, he is back in the spotlight after a grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump following a yearslong investigation into the former president’s alleged role in a hush money scheme.

    The indictment was unsealed Tuesday as Trump was arraigned in a Manhattan criminal court, unveiling the 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records made against the former president.

    In Bragg’s first comments following the arraignment, he called the charges the “bread and butter” of his office’s work.

    “At its core, this case today is one with allegations like so many of our white collar cases,” he said.

    Bragg inherited the probe from his predecessor, Cy Vance, who began the investigation when Trump was still in the White House.

    Trump, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, cast Bragg’s case as political and called for his resignation in a speech Tuesday evening.

    “I never thought anything like this could happen in America, never thought it could happen,” Trump said. “The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”

    In March, Trump announced on social media, ahead of any details from Bragg’s office, that he anticipated he would be arrested within days in connection with the investigation. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined at the time to comment on the former president’s remarks.

    The high-profile case relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump a decade prior. Trump has continuously denied having an affair with Daniels.

    The indictment is historic, marking the first time a former US president and major presidential candidate has ever been criminally charged.

    In the lead-up to Bragg’s decision, sources told CNN that city, state and federal law enforcement agencies in New York City had been discussing how to prepare for a possible Trump indictment, with the former president having called on his supporters to protest if he were to be arrested.

    Discussions between the New York Police Department and the FBI also have focused on the possibility of increased threats against Bragg and his staff from Trump’s supporters in wake of an indictment, sources told CNN. Bragg said in an email to staff earlier in March that his office will “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”

    Bragg has aggressively pursued Trump and other progressive priorities so far in his tenure, including not prosecuting some low-level crimes and finding alternatives to incarceration.

    Before Bragg’s swearing-in last year, he had already worked on cases related to Trump and other notable names in his role as a New York state chief deputy attorney general.

    He said he had helped sue the Trump administration more than 100 times, as well as led a team that sued the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which resulted in the former president paying $2 million to a number of charities and the foundation’s dissolution.

    Bragg also led the suit against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein and his company, which alleged a hostile work environment.

    The Harvard-educated attorney previously served as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, worked as a civil rights lawyer and as a professor and co-director of the New York Law School Racial Justice Project, where he represented family members of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after being placed in an unauthorized chokehold by a then-police officer, in a lawsuit against the City of New York seeking information.

    Bragg emerged the winner in a crowded Democratic primary in the summer of 2021 to lead the coveted Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, for which Vance had announced earlier that year he would not seek reelection. While campaigning, he often spoke about his experience growing up in Harlem, saying he was once a 15-year-old stopped “numerous times at gunpoint by police.”

    “In addition to being the first Black district attorney, I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” he said during a victory speech, following his historic election to the office. “I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstop. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a semi-automatic weapon pointed at him. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a loved one reenter from incarceration and stay with him. And I’m going to govern from that perspective.”

    Bragg ran as a reformer, releasing a memo just days after taking office detailing new charging, bail, plea and sentencing policies – a plan that drew criticism from police union leaders. He said his office would not prosecute marijuana misdemeanors, fare evading and prostitution, among other crimes.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

    Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Justice Department’s use of a key criminal charge against hundreds of January 6 rioters, saying they can be charged with obstructing Congress.

    The appeals court said obstruction can include a “wide range of conduct” when a defendant has a corrupt intent and is targeting an official proceeding, such as the congressional certification of the presidential election on January 6, 2021.

    The major ruling affects more than 300 criminal cases brought in the wake of the Capitol riot. The Justice Department has used the charge – obstructing on official proceeding – as the cornerstone of many of the more serious Capitol riot cases, where defendants were outspoken about their desire to stop Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win or were instrumental in the physical breach of the Capitol building.

    In the cases that prompted the appeal, the defendants had allegedly assaulted law enforcement at the Capitol, which overwhelmed the protection around members of Congress in the building and caused the Electoral College certification to stop for hours.

    The statute makes it a felony to alter, destroy or mutilate a record, document or other object with the intent of making it unavailable in an official proceeding, or to “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.

    The ruling has been hotly anticipated in the January 6 investigation, and a loss for the Justice Department would have imperiled hundreds of cases against individual rioters.

    But the three judges on the panel weren’t united in their interpretation of the law, with each writing separately about how the obstruction statute should be interpreted.

    “The broad interpretation of the statute – encompassing all forms of obstructive acts – is unambiguous and natural,” Judge Florence Pan of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote Friday in the 2-1 majority opinion.

    The holding from Pan also lays out how prosecutors may use the obstruction charge, which carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence, when weighing defendants’ actions on January 6.

    The circuit court’s opinion – which is now binding precedent in DC federal courts, unless additional appeals change the ruling – could potentially be used against future defendants in January 6-related cases, including ones being looked at by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies.

    Yet their opinions on Friday left unsettled a key question on how the Justice Department could use the charge against others with potentially less clear corrupt actions.

    Pan’s majority opinion didn’t decide how the courts should define corrupt action taken by rioters – potentially putting limits around how the Justice Department could use the charge in the future.

    Pan and Walker split on whether the definition of “corruptly” would mean that prosecutors would have to prove a defendants’ actions were to benefit themselves or others people, if they charge obstruction related to January 6.

    That question could arise again in future appeals, and the judges weren’t clear which interpretation may be the controlling law now in DC.

    “Because the task of defining ‘corruptly’ is not before us and I am satisfied that the government has alleged conduct by appellees sufficient to meet that element, I leave the exact contours of ‘corrupt’ intent for another day,” Pan wrote. She noted that the rioter cases that prompted the appeal left no room for disputing corrupt intent, seeing as the defendants were alleged to have assaulted police.

    In his concurring opinion, Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker took a narrower approach to the obstruction law, finding that it requires a defendant to act “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”

    Even so, Walker found that the obstruction law that the DOJ has charged rioters with applies in this case.

    “True, the Defendants were allegedly trying to secure the presidency for Donald Trump, not for themselves or their close associates,” Walker wrote. “But the beneficiary of an unlawful benefit need not be the defendant or his friends. Few would doubt that a defendant could be convicted of corruptly bribing a presidential elector if he paid the elector to cast a vote in favor of a preferred candidate – even if the defendant had never met the candidate and was not associated with him.”

    DC Circuit Judge Greg Katsas disagreed with his colleagues in the 2-1 decision. Katsas sided with a lower-court judge, who had thrown out obstruction charges against some January 6 rioters because the actions during the insurrection didn’t deal specifically with the mutilation of documents or evidence in an official proceeding.

    Katsas argued that his colleagues’ interpretation of the obstruction law was too broad and would allow for aggressive criminal prosecutions any time a protester knew they may be breaking the law. He contended that the law requires that a defendant was trying to “seek an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage” while the January 6 cases in question involve “the much more diffuse, intangible benefit of having a preferred candidate remain President.”

    Walker, however, wrote in his opinion that that law applied even under Katsas’ reading.

    “The dissenting opinion says a defendant can act ‘corruptly’ only if the benefit he intends to procure is a ‘financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage.’ I am not so sure,” Walker wrote. “Besides, this case may involve a professional benefit. The Defendants’ conduct may have been an attempt to help Donald Trump unlawfully secure a professional advantage – the presidency.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

    Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Nima Momeni, the suspect in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, appeared in a San Francisco court Friday morning for an arraignment, one day after police announced his arrest.

    When Momeni entered the courtroom, members of his family sitting in the front row held up heart signs with their hands. Momeni, who was not cuffed, acknowledged them and smiled back.

    Momeni’s arraignment is set to continue on April 25. He will be held without bail in the meantime.

    Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.

    The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”

    In announcing his arrest Thursday, law enforcement described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California and said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but didn’t provide further details about their connection.

    California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.

    Lee’s family issued a statement Thursday thanking the San Francisco Police Department “for bringing his killer to Justice” after Momeni’s arrest.

    “Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the statement said.

    In the statement, the family described Lee’s upbringing, his career, and the impact of the technology he helped create.

    “Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.

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  • UK citizen extradited to US pleads guilty to 2020 Twitter hack | CNN Business

    UK citizen extradited to US pleads guilty to 2020 Twitter hack | CNN Business

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    Reuters
     — 

    A citizen of the United Kingdom who was extradited to New York from Spain last month has pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and computer hacking schemes, including the 2020 hack of the social media site Twitter, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

    Joseph James O’Connor, 23, was charged in both North Dakota and New York. The North Dakota case was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

    O’Connor pleaded guilty to charges including conspiring to commit computer intrusions, to commit wire fraud and to commit money laundering.

    O’Connor, who was extradited to the U.S. on April 26, will also forfeit more than $794,000 and pay restitution to victims, prosecutors said. He faces a maximum of 77 years in prison at sentencing on June 23.

    “O’Connor’s criminal activities were flagrant and malicious, and his conduct impacted multiple people’s lives. He harassed, threatened, and extorted his victims, causing substantial emotional harm,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite said in a statement.

    Prosecutors said the schemes included gaining unauthorized access to social media accounts on Twitter in July 2020 as well as a TikTok account in August 2020. Along with his co-conspirators, O’Connor stole at least $794,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

    The July 2020 Twitter attack hijacked a variety of verified accounts, including those of then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who now owns Twitter.

    The accounts of former President Barack Obama, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Kanye West were also hit.

    The alleged hacker used the accounts to solicit digital currency, prompting Twitter to prevent some verified accounts from publishing messages for several hours until security could be restored.

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  • Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

    Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The PGA Tour once advertised its brightest stars with the catch phrase “These guys are good.” A better slogan might now be “These guys are even richer.”

    In a bombshell announcement so staggering that many golf fans thought it was fake at first, the venerable PGA Tour unveiled a partnership Tuesday with Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund, the financier of its sworn rival LIV Golf – a breakaway circuit that split the sport and seeded feuds among its top players.

    The deal means that the PGA Tour – built on the image of quintessentially American Arnold Palmer, who epitomized post World War II US values – will now rest atop a pile of money put up by the regime that the US blamed for the murdering and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, that was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, attack, and that has frequently been condemned by Washington for infringing women’s rights.

    It is beyond doubt that the new reality of pro-golf will mean a better spectacle for fans since it will end the split between the two rival tours and will also fold in the DP World Tour (formerly known as the European tour) and mean the brightest stars will play one another more often.

    For many sports fans in the US and elsewhere, that’s just fine. They like to plop down on the couch and watch their favorite golfer on the back nine on Sunday or their Gulf-owned Premier League team on TV. Who can begrudge them one oasis free from bitter, tribal modern politics?

    And the deal is also undeniably a great piece of business, assuming PGA Tour players accept it. Global golfers stand to win a lot more money, various tours will be invigorated and Saudi Arabia’s government and its ruthless leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), get to be associated with one of the planet’s most prestigious year-round sporting properties. And all pending litigation between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour was also mutually ended under the new agreement.

    But for others, Tuesday’s peace deal on the links raises painful moral issues. It also exposes top PGA leaders – who had blasted golfers who defected to LIV – to accusations of hypocrisy and reflects the way modern professional sports are hostage to the highest bidders. This can only pose uncomfortable questions to fans whose values and history clash with those of distant and sometimes politically dicey entities who effectively own their teams and top stars.

    PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, for instance, had some explaining to do – not least to the tour’s players gathered at the Canadian Open this week after many tweeted that they had no advance notice of the deal. Monahan had played the 9/11 card last year at the same event, saying that two families that were close to him had lost loved ones in the worst terror attack on American soil, adding, “I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

    Now Monahan stands to be the effective supremo of global golf, save for the four majors – the sport’s most prestigious tournaments – aided by a gusher of Saudi cash.

    9/11 Families United effectively accused Monahan of using the tragedy as leverage in a business deal to reunite golf. He “co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the group said in a statement. “But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”

    Monahan was asked about his reversal after what he said was a “heated” meeting with PGA Tour players on Tuesday.

    “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he said. “Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that’s trying to compete for the PGA TOUR and our players.”

    Major champions who jumped to the rival circuit last year like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed and Cam Smith might also now wonder whether their PGA tour brethren will face the same grilling over human rights that they had to endure at the time.

    One very famous golfer was delighted by the deal and seemed keen to claim some reflected credit – former President Donald Trump. The current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination associated himself with LIV after the PGA Tour and other golf governing bodies distanced themselves from him over his radioactive political reputation. Trump has hosted several tournaments at his courses for LIV – a circuit that sits well with his record of refusing to sever links with the Saudis over the murder of Khashoggi in 2018, reasoning that the Saudis were great customers of the US.

    “A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. Congrats to all!!!” Trump wrote in block capital letters on his Truth Social platform.

    Some defenders of LIV golfers have pointed out that the players were only making a choice to prioritize personal interests over moral ones in partnering with the Saudis – a calculus that mirrored decades of US foreign policy. Indeed, President Joe Biden had called on the 2020 campaign trail for the kingdom to be treated as a “pariah” because of Khashoggi’s murder only to travel to the kingdom as president to fist-bump MBS when he needed a spike in oil price production to bring down American gas prices.

    On Tuesday, after the LIV/PGA partnership was announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down for talks with the Crown Prince in Riyadh.

    The idea that politics and sport shouldn’t mix has always been quaint. The Olympics and the World Cup are two of the planet’s most political spectacles after all. And modern sport has long run on money as monster TV rights contracts translate into huge salaries for top soccer players, Formula One Drivers, NBA stars and the top names in other sports.

    But Tuesday’s LIV/PGA Tour agreement lays bare questions of morality so starkly precisely because of the way golf has sold itself. In a sport where players call penalties on themselves, and commentators idolize top players in whispered tones as paragons of gentlemanly conduct, patriotism and family values, the origin of the sport’s new financial lifeline is glaring.

    The PGA Tour and Saudi partnership may be the most prominent example yet of the phenomenon known as sports washing, whereby an authoritarian nation seeking to buff up its image – despite serious criticism over its political system and human rights performance – woos the world’s top sporting stars. China was accused of such an agenda with its 2008 and 2022 Summer and Winter Olympics, where attempts at political activism largely fizzled under its repressive rule. The Qatar World Cup last year was another example of a nation that used its financial muscle to present a new image to the world. Various controversies during the tournament over LGBTQ rights and the plight of workers who built the stadiums undercut global governing body FIFA’s pretensions to inclusion.

    The Saudis, Qataris and others are using their oil wealth to buy themselves a foothold among the world’s most powerful nations and to create tourism, entertainment and sporting legacies to sustain them when their reserves of carbon energy are depleted.

    This mirrors a global shift in power and especially financial muscle – from the capitals of Western Europe to new epicenters in the emerging economies of the Middle East, India and China. Soccer, like golf, is taking its share of the cash. Traditional working class football clubs knitted into their communities for decades in the UK, for example, now suddenly find themselves owned by foreign energy magnates. Premier League giant Manchester City was bought by a United Arab Emirates-led group. And Newcastle United is owned by a Saudi Arabia-led consortium, forcing fans to consider (or not) the ethical dimensions of their support for their hometown clubs. And global cricket has been transformed by the Indian Premier League, which pays lavish salaries in a shortened form of the game.

    One of the top names in soccer, Cristiano Ronaldo, is playing out the twilight of a glorious career spent at Europe’s top clubs in the up-and-coming Saudi league for a massive salary. And on Tuesday, Saudi team Al-Ittihad announced the signing of Real Madrid and French forward Karim Benzema, completing a sporting double whammy for the kingdom.

    There are as many sporting questions about the PGA Tour/LIV Golf partnership that remain unanswered. The partnership combines the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity. A spokesman for the PGA tour told CNN that the deal is not a merger.

    “After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” Monahan said, describing a “transformational partnership” that would “benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”

    Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, told CNBC he expected the partnership to be finalized within weeks and revealed, in a stunning move, that he had told LIV figurehead and Hall of Famer Greg Norman about the deal only moments before going on air.

    LIV lured some of the PGA Tour’s top stars with massive signing bonuses and huge purses at substantially fewer events than the PGA tour, prompting the premier US circuit to unveil its own select “designated events” with upped prize money. The two sides were locked in bitter legal battles that have now been resolved.

    It remains unclear, however, what steps LIV stars will have to take to potentially be able to return to events like The Players Championship, currently hosted on the PGA tour from which they were banned.

    Then there is the question of how current PGA Tour members will respond.

    Former British Open Champion Collin Morikawa tweeted, “I love finding out morning news on Twitter.”

    The sudden announcement also did not specify what would happen to LIV tour events, which have struggled to draw a strong TV audience, beyond this season. Monahan’s announcement did hint that the new entity was committed to the new format of team events that has been introduced by LIV, to compliment golf’s traditional reliance on individual tournaments.

    The golfer with the widest smile on Tuesday was probably Mickelson. The three-time Masters champion took the most heat for deserting the PGA tour for a reported massive payday, and was one of the most outspoken supporters of LIV – a breakaway he argued was a way to revolutionize the structure of professional golf and to secure more rewards for players.

    Mickelson was also open about the reality of partnering with the Saudis, calling them “scary m*therf**kers to get involved with,” in an interview with golf journalist Alan Shipnuck that he later claimed was off the record. Shipnuck has written that he offered Mickelson no such agreement.

    On Tuesday, Mickelson simply tweeted: “Awesome day today,” with a smiley sunshine emoji.

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  • Takeaways from the indictment of Donald Trump in the classified documents case | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from the indictment of Donald Trump in the classified documents case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Special counsel Jack Smith returned an historic indictment against former President Donald Trump that was unsealed Friday, the first time that a former president has been charged with crimes in federal court.

    Trump faces a total of 37 counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information. His aide, Walt Nauta, faces six counts, including several obstruction and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.

    “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone applying those laws, collecting facts, that’s what determines the outcome of an investigation,” Smith said in a short appearance in Washington, DC, on Friday. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

    The 49-page indictment included new details about how Trump allegedly took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021 and resisted the government’s attempts to retrieve the classified materials. In his statement, Smith encouraged the public to read it “in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”

    Here are the key takeaways from the indictment:

    Trump and Nauta face nearly a half-dozen charges relating to obstruction and concealment of documents in the Justice Department’s probe, which will help prosecutors make the argument that Trump’s alleged conduct went well beyond the classified document snafus involving President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

    The indictment lays out how Nauta allegedly moved the boxes out of the storage room where a Trump attorney was set to search for classified materials in a response to a May 2022 subpoena, and how the aide only moved some of those boxes back before the attorney’s search. Prosecutors, pointing to phone calls and other evidence, allege that Nauta moved these boxes at Trump’s direction.

    To bolster the narrative that Trump knew he was concealing materials that were being sought in a grand jury subpoena, the indictment points to a conversation Trump had with his attorneys about how to respond to the subpoena, in which Trump allegedly suggested that his team could not turn over the classified documents the subpoena demanded.

    “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump is alleged to have said.

    After his attorney collected 38 records that would be turned over to the DOJ, the attorney discussed with Trump storing them in his hotel room. Trump, during the back and forth, made a “plucking motion,” the indictment said, which the attorney memorialized as meaning: “why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out.”

    Trump is accused of showing classified documents on two occasions to others.

    The episodes described in the indictment suggest Trump knew the information was classified and highly sensitive and may help prosecutors explain to a jury why Trump’s alleged willful retention of national defense information is such a serious crime.

    One of those occasions that Trump allegedly showed others classified records he took from the White House was a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, when Trump “showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that Trump said was prepared by the Defense Department,” a meeting CNN first reported was captured on an audio recording.

    “Trump also said ‘as president I could have declassified it,’ and ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,’” according to the indictment.

    According to prosecutors, in August or September 2021 Trump also showed a document at Bedminster to a representative of his political action committee: a classified map related to a military operation and “told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.’”

    The indictment says Trump retained documents related to national defense that were classified at the highest levels and some so sensitive they required special handling.

    That includes one Top Secret document, dated June 2020, “concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign county” found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to the indictment.

    This document was not only classified as “Top Secret” but included additional restrictions of “ORCON” and “NOFORN.”

    Documents designated as ORCON cannot be disseminated outside of the department issuing it without approval. Those labeled NOFORN cannot be shared with foreign nationals.

    For the prosecution, the Justice Department has singled out 31 documents in particular for each of the 31 willful retention counts. Several of the records concern the military capabilities of various countries, with one of the records – marked as NOFORN – also including handwritten annotation in a black marker.

    The materials include White House intelligence briefings “related to various foreign countries.” One record relates to the “timeline and details of attack in a foreign country,” while another December 2019 document concerns “foreign country support of terrorist acts against the United States interests.”

    Nationally security law experts previously told CNN that when prosecutors are investigating a classified materials case, they look for so-called “Goldilocks documents” that are sensitive enough to drive home the seriousness of the crime but not so sensitive that they cannot be used in a trial.

    In addition to the timeline in the charging papers – sometimes broken down by the minute explaining how boxes with classified information moved around Trump’s Florida resort after Trump allegedly brought them there from the White House – the indictment includes six pictures that allowed prosecutors to vividly make their case that classified documents had been moved all over Mar-a-Lago.

    The photos show boxes in a ballroom, a basement storage room – even in a bathroom and shower inside the Mar-a-Lago club’s Lake Room, according to the indictment.

    In one photo, there are boxes of spilled documents on the floor. The indictment states that Nauta found the contents of several boxes spilled on the floor of the storage room in December 2021, including a “Five Eyes” classified document, which means intelligence only shared among five countries: the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

    Nauta allegedly texted two photos of the spill to another Trump employee, prosecutors allege. The indictment includes that photo – illustrating how the classified documents Trump kept were interspersed with newspapers and photographs.

    With the 31 documents the indictment describes as underlying the 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, the indictment also lists when those documents were recovered by the government. Twenty-one were retrieved on August 8, 2022 – the date of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago – and 10 were retrieved on June 3, 2022, when Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran turned over classified documents in response to the Justice Department’s May 2022 subpoena.

    The indictment does not, however, list in the charges that any of the classified documents were turned over in January 2022, when Trump handed over 15 boxes to the National Archives. The Archives found nearly 200 classified documents in those boxes, according to the indictment, including 30 marked “top secret.”

    It’s notable that the indictment does not include any documents retrieved in January 2022, given that Trump and his allies in Congress have attacked the Justice Department for not charging Biden or others who had unauthorized classified documents in their possession.

    The difference of course, is that Biden – as well as former Pence – immediately contacted the National Archives and offered to return the documents, while prosecutors allege that Trump obstructed efforts to retrieve the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    A separate special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of documents remains ongoing, while the Justice Department told Pence’s attorney no charges would be brought over the discovery of classified documents in his Indiana home.

    Trump has been summoned to appear in court in southern Florida at 3 p.m. ET Tuesday, where he will appear before a magistrate judge to hear the charges against him and is expected to enter a not guilty plea.

    On Friday, Smith pledged that his office would “seek a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.”

    Just how quickly the case goes to trial is still an open question, as the discovery process for this case could be lengthy. It will be further complicated by the fact that this prosecution involves classified materials.

    The Justice Department believes it will take prosecutors 21 business days – about a month – in court to present their case to a jury at trial, according to a document prosecutors filed with the court alongside the indictment. The estimate does not include how long the defense might take to present its case, which includes the possibility that Trump could chose to testify in his own defense.

    The case has been assigned to federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge who raised eyebrows last year when she oversaw court proceedings related to the Trump’s efforts to appoint a so-called special master to review the documents seized in the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago. Her move to order the third-party review of the search was overturned by a conservative federal appeals court.

    Trump already has a trial scheduled for March 2024 in his New York criminal case, and additional investigations into the former president – including from the Fulton County district attorney and the special counsel’s separate January 6 probe – are still looming.

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  • Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

    Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday rejected claims the Justice Department interfered in the Hunter Biden probe as the White House insisted President Joe Biden wasn’t involved in his son’s business dealings.

    In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department. The whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son, that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states and that Garland denied a request from Weiss to be named as a special counsel.

    Hunter Biden has since agreed to plead guilty next month to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge. His attorney, Chris Clark, on Friday said “any suggestion the investigation was not thorough, or cut corners, or cut my client any slack, is preposterous and deeply irresponsible.”

    When pushed on the allegations during a news conference Friday, Garland said that Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

    “I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said.

    Garland rejected any claim that he would not appoint Weiss as a special counsel, stating that “Mr. Weiss never made that request to me.”

    “Mr. Weiss had, in fact, more authority than a special counsel would have,” Garland added. “He had and has complete authority, as I said, to bring a case anywhere he wants in his discretion.”

    Additionally, Garland said he would “support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying” about the allegations raised by the whistleblowers “when he deems it appropriate.”

    Later Friday, the White House wouldn’t say whether Biden was present in July 2017 when Hunter Biden is alleged to have texted a Chinese business partner, claiming he was sitting with his father, and using that claim as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

    The questions referred to a portion of the testimony in which a IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

    “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document the whistleblower gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.

    The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

    The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pressed repeatedly on the issue, referred questions to the White House Counsel’s Office, insisting the matter had been addressed.

    Ian Sams, a spokesman for the counsel’s office, said in an email that Joe Biden hadn’t been in business with his son. He did not specifically provide information about Joe Biden’s whereabouts when Hunter texted the Chinese businessman on July 30, 2017.

    “As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son,” he wrote. “As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved.”

    Asked whether Joe Biden had been involved in coercive business dealings by his son, Jean-Pierre said: “I appreciate the question. I believe my colleague at the White House counsel has answered this question already, has dealt with this, has made it very clear. I just don’t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared.”

    In a statement Friday, Hunter Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark suggested the messages were written at a time when the president’s son was suffering from addiction.

    “The DOJ investigation covered a period which was a time of turmoil and addiction for my client. Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family,” the statement read.

    President Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business arrangements.

    “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

    This story and its headline have been updated with additional developments on Friday.

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  • Trump lawyer says there’s ‘no need’ to appear before grand jury in special counsel’s 2020 election probe | CNN Politics

    Trump lawyer says there’s ‘no need’ to appear before grand jury in special counsel’s 2020 election probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    John Lauro, the recent addition to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, told Fox News on Friday there is no reason for the former president to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the 2020 election aftermath, adding that Trump “did absolutely nothing wrong.”

    Earlier this week, Trump said he received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith informing him that he’s a target of the investigation and inviting him to appear before the grand jury. CNN previously reported that Trump’s team believed they had until Thursday to respond.

    The grand jury did not convene on Friday after meeting on Thursday.

    “There’s no need to appear in front of any grand jury right now,” Lauro said. “President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. He’s done nothing criminal.”

    “The bottom line is that the special prosecutor, which is really the Biden Justice Department, is after President Trump and that’s the focus,” Lauro told Fox News.

    Lauro also echoed claims made by Trump and his GOP allies that the Justice Department is being politicized to target a political opponent and said that Trump merely asked for an audit in the wake of the 2020 election.

    “The only thing that President Trump asked is a pause in the counting so those seven contested states could either re-audit or recertify,” Lauro said of Trump’s actions following his election loss. “I’ve never heard of anyone get indicted for asking for an audit.”

    The target letter cites three statutes that Trump could be charged with: pertaining to deprivation of rights; conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States; and tampering with a witness, according to multiple news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, that cited a person familiar with the matter.

    The Justice Department has been investigating possible violations of the law around conspiracy and obstruction of the congressional proceeding on January 6, 2021, which is part of the witness tampering law, CNN previously reported following a Justice Department search of a Trump administration adviser’s home.

    Trump has already been indicted twice this year. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records in March, and Smith charged Trump on 37 counts in the classified documents investigation last month. Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases.

    Justice Department regulations allow for prosecutors to notify subjects of an investigation that they have become a target. Often a notification that a person is a target is a strong sign an indictment could follow, but it is possible the recipient is not ultimately charged.

    Trump addressed the target letter on Tuesday at a Fox News town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, saying that Smith’s probe amounts to “election interference” and calling it a “disgrace.” His campaign is already fundraising off of the target letter.

    Lauro told Fox News that if he appears in court on Trump’s behalf, he’ll be representing “the sovereign citizens of this country who deserve to hear the truth.” The attorney also said he would request that cameras be allowed in the courtroom in Washington, DC, following any indictment of the president there.

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  • Trump lawyers rail against DOJ in letter, reveal foreign leader briefings may be among classified documents taken from White House | CNN Politics

    Trump lawyers rail against DOJ in letter, reveal foreign leader briefings may be among classified documents taken from White House | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Two of Donald Trump’s defense lawyers now believe that classified briefings of phone calls with foreign leaders were among “all manner of documents” in 15 boxes that Trump returned to the National Archives a year after he left the presidency, according to a new letter his lawyers sent to Congress.

    This organization of the materials “indicates that the White House staff simply swept all documents from the President’s desk and other areas into boxes, where they have resided ever since,” the two lawyers, Timothy Parlatore and Jim Trusty, wrote to the GOP chair of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

    Their characterization not only reveals new details about the documents but also comes as part of a broadside against the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump over the classified documents that lays out talking points for Republicans as they try to portray the ongoing probe as politically motivated.

    The lawyers urge Congress to tell the Justice Department to “stand down,” even as special counsel Jack Smith’s probe has shown signs of nearing its end and even though Congress doesn’t have the power to control DOJ criminal investigations.

    Parlatore and Trusty say they reviewed the 15 boxes earlier this year that are now part of the Justice Department’s investigation. They saw placeholder pages where classified documents were removed by the National Archives, according to the letter.

    “The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls,” the lawyers wrote.

    The 15 boxes were turned over to the Archives in January 2022. The FBI seized more boxes in August 2022 during a court-authorized search that found more than 100 classified documents, including 18 at the highest “top secret” classification level. Trump’s own legal team later found more classified materials in a search other locations.

    The Justice Department has never said exactly what was in the classified material found in Trump’s possession after the presidency. Trump’s lawyers say in their letter that the Justice Department has refused to tell them whether any of the documents remain classified.

    It’s not clear why at this point in the special counsel’s investigation that the Trump legal team was given access to the boxes turned over to the National Archives to look through them.

    Wednesday’s letter was sent to House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner, and it represents Trump’s legal team seeking a political lifeline by asking Congress tell the Justice Department to step aside because they believe the intelligence community should conduct the investigation into what happened with the classified documents.

    “DOJ should be ordered to stand down, and the intelligence community should instead conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this Committee, as well as your counterparts in the Senate,” the lawyers wrote to Turner.

    “This is indicative of the staff’s packing processes and not any criminal intent by President Trump,” the lawyers argued.

    The lawyers also pointed to classified documents since discovered at the residences and offices of President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

    “As demonstrated by the discovery of documents with classification markings in the homes of President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Pence, deficient document handling and storage procedures are not limited to any individual, administration, or political party,” the lawyers wrote.

    The intelligence community said in August following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that it was conducting its own damage assessment of the classified documents that had been retrieved.

    Earlier this month, intelligence leaders in Congress were provided access to some of the classified documents that had been taken from the residences and offices of Trump, Biden and Pence so that Congress could do its own review.

    Trump’s legal team sent Wednesday’s letter to Turner and copied other intelligence leaders in Congress, including the Democratic-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump’s allies have for years assailed the various probes into the former president, yet even his former attorney general, William Barr, has said the classified documents investigation puts the former president in serious legal jeopardy.

    In a February interview with CNN, Parlatore signaled Trump’s legal strategy, saying that DOJ should be “benched” on matters related to classified material and it should be left up to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to conduct an administrative review of the White House’s procedure for handling such documents at the end of each presidency.

    In Wednesday’s letter, Trump’s lawyers criticized the Justice Department’s handling of the case before the search of Mar-a-Lago, arguing that federal investigators put Trump on the defensive by issuing a grand jury subpoena instead of working cooperatively with Trump.

    The letter also tried to defend a certification made by one of Trump’s attorneys last year following the subpoena. In June 2022, the lawyer, Christina Bobb, signed a certification that Trump had complied with the subpoena by turning over the classified documents in his possession.

    “Ultimately, President Trump’s legal team complied with DOJ’s demands, performing as diligent a search as they could by Mr. (Jay) Bratt’s arbitrary deadline, and submitted a certification that affirmed the same,” the lawyers wrote in Wednesday’s letter.

    “To be clear, the certification stated that a diligent search was conducted, and all responsive documents found were provided — not that the search turned up all possible materials, as many media outlets have falsely characterized the certification as saying,” they added.

    The certification that Bobb signed, however, states that “any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.” Trump did not, however, turn over all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    Bobb has since testified to the grand jury, and another attorney who worked on the draft response to the subpoena, Evan Corcoran, was recently forced to testify to the federal grand jury about the response and other discussions with Trump, after prosecutors believed Trump used his attorney to advance a crime.

    Wednesday’s letter also did not note that the FBI’s August 2022 search warrant came after federal investigators were told that Trump directed the movement of boxes from a basement storage room to his residence at Mar-a-Lago following receipt of the subpoena.

    This story has been updated to reflect additional lawmakers copied on the letter from Trump’s lawyers.

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  • Manhattan district attorney urges court to reject Trump bid to move criminal case | CNN Politics

    Manhattan district attorney urges court to reject Trump bid to move criminal case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is arguing that former President Donald Trump’s criminal case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels should not be moved to federal court because it had nothing to do with Trump’s official duties as president.

    In a court filing late Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, used Trump’s own statements against him, citing Trump’s 2018 tweets about the hush money payments to Daniels as a “private contract” and “private agreement.” The filing also pointed to Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani saying in 2018 that the payment “was made to resolve a personal and false allegation.”

    Trump was charged in April with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over the repayments to then-lawyer Michael Cohen for hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

    Earlier this month, Trump’s attorneys sought to move the criminal case against Trump from New York into federal court, arguing the Manhattan district attorney’s charges against Trump were tied to his duties as president.

    But the district attorney’s filing urges a federal judge to reject that bid, saying that the payments at question related to his personal business and were made to “conceal criminal conduct that largely occurred before his inauguration.”

    “The objective of the alleged conduct had nothing to do with defendant’s duties and responsibilities as President,” the Manhattan district attorney’s office wrote. “Instead, the falsified business records at issue here were generated as part of a scheme to reimburse defendant’s personal lawyer for an entirely unofficial expenditure that was made before defendant became president.”

    The motion from Trump’s attorneys to move the criminal case out of New York has not paused the case there. Last week, Trump appeared virtually at a hearing in which Judge Juan Merchan read Trump an order about what he can and cannot say publicly about the case and evidence that his legal team will receive from prosecutors to prepare for trial.

    At that hearing, Merchan set a trial date of March 25, 2024, potentially setting the trial to occur during the middle of the Republican presidential primary season early next year.

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  • Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data | CNN Business

    Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A group of Russian-speaking cyber criminals has claimed credit for a sweeping hack that has compromised employee data at the BBC and British Airways and left US and UK cybersecurity officials scrambling to respond.

    The hackers, known as the CLOP ransomware gang, say they have “information on hundreds of companies.” They’ve given victims until June 14 to discuss a ransom before they start publishing data from companies they claim to have hacked, according to a dark web posting seen by CNN.

    The extortion threat adds urgency to an already high-stakes security incident that has forced responses from tech firms, corporations and government agencies from the US to Canada and the UK.

    The compromise of employee data at the BBC and British Airways came via a breach of a human resources firm, Zellis, that both organizations use.

    “We are aware of a data breach at our third-party supplier, Zellis, and are working closely with them as they urgently investigate the extent of the breach,” a BBC spokesperson told CNN Wednesday. The spokesperson declined to comment on the hackers’ extortion threat.

    A British Airways spokesperson said the company had “notified those colleagues whose personal information has been compromised to provide support and advice.”

    The hackers — a well-known group whose favored malware emerged in 2019 — last week began exploiting a new flaw in a widely used file-transfer software known as MOVEit, appearing to target as many exposed organizations as they could. The opportunistic nature of the hack left a broad swath of organizations vulnerable to extortion.

    Numerous US state government agencies use the MOVEit software, but it’s unclear how many agencies, if any, have been compromised.

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has ordered all federal civilian agencies to update the MOVEit software in light of the hack. No federal agencies have been confirmed as victims, a CISA spokesperson told CNN.

    Together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CISA also released advice on dealing with the CLOP hack. Progress, the US firm that owns the MoveIT software, has also urged victims to update their software packages and has issued security advice.

    CISA Executive Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein said in a statement: “CISA remains in close contact with Progress Software and our partners at the FBI to understand prevalence within federal agencies and critical infrastructure.”

    But the effort to respond to the cyber attack is very much ongoing.

    The CLOP hackers are “overwhelmed with the number of victims,” according to Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting, a Google-owned firm that has investigated the hack. “Instead of directly reaching out to victims over email or telephone calls like in prior campaigns, they are asking victims to reach out to them via email,” he said on LinkedIn Tuesday night.

    Allan Liska, a ransomware expert at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, also told CNN: “Unfortunately, the sensitive nature of the data often stored on MOVEit servers means there will likely be real consequences stemming from the [data theft] but it will be months before we understand the full fallout from this attack.”

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  • Republican 2024 hopefuls converge on DC under the shadow of Trump | CNN Politics

    Republican 2024 hopefuls converge on DC under the shadow of Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates took turns Friday pitching themselves to a ballroom full of religious conservatives in Washington as the most viable alternative to front-runner Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination.

    The specter of the former president loomed large over the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference, a summit that marks the first time the biggest names in the GOP race are appearing on the same stage as the summer campaign season kicks into gear. Trump is slated to speak Saturday, which will mark his first in-person appearance at a large GOP gathering of presidential hopefuls since announcing his White House bid.

    The topic of abortion was a through-line at the conference Friday, which coincided with the eve of the first anniversary of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Abortion has been a politically fraught issue for Republicans, and some GOP 2024 candidates are struggling to balance appealing to the hard-line GOP base without alienating more moderate voters needed to win a general election.

    Though several GOP candidates typically skate around the issue, including what kind of federal legislation they would support, one candidate has staked out a clear position on abortion and kicked off the conference with a call to action for his GOP 2024 rivals to do the same.

    “Every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortions before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard,” former Vice President Mike Pence told the audience, largely made up of conservative evangelical voters.

    Pence appeared to take a shot at Trump, who, like other GOP hopefuls, has wrestled with how to navigate the politics of abortion.

    The former vice president told the audience that some speakers would say “that the Supreme Court returned to the issue of abortion only to the states and nothing should be done at the federal level.”

    “Others will say that continuing the fight to life could produce state legislation is too harsh. Some have even gone on to blame the overturning of Roe v. Wade for election losses,” Pence added.

    Trump’s campaign softened its stance that abortion should be decided at the state level after receiving backlash from the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. And after the GOP had a worse-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump said the “abortion issue” had been poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those who insisted on no exceptions in the case or rape, incest or life of the mother, which, he said, “lost large numbers of voters.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, notably, did not make abortion a main focus of his remarks and only made a quick reference to his state’s six-week abortion ban he signed into law earlier this year. (The law has yet to go into effect.)

    He spent more time during his roughly 35-minute speech leaning into cultural fights and digging in on his ongoing fight with Disney, decrying transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, touting his opposition to the teaching of gender ideology in public schools and propping up Florida as what he described as a “citadel of freedom,” particularly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    With the GOP field somewhat solidified, Trump remains firmly the favorite for the nomination – a fact that is apparent not only in recent polls but in the conference’s programming itself. The former president will serve as the keynote speaker for the event’s closing gala on Saturday.

    Trump allies, too, are among the conference’s speakers. Last year’s losing Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and conservative commentators Nick Adams and Judge Jeanine Pirro are scheduled to speak Saturday. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke Friday. The Trump-heavy lineup underscores the challenges for other candidates to break out in a party still dominated by the former president.

    “Donald Trump is arguably the strongest front-runner and in the strongest position overall of anyone in my career,” said Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

    But Reed added that Trump’s competition has a strong case to make, too, and there are paths for many of them to secure the nomination. Reed singled out DeSantis as an especially well-funded candidate who appears to pose a serious threat to the former president.

    A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS in the wake of his indictment and arrest on federal charges showed Trump remained the front-runner – 47% of Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters say Trump is their first choice for the party’s nomination. That’s down from 53% in May. His support appears to be softening amid his legal troubles, with a greater share of Republicans now saying they will not support him under any circumstances. DeSantis’ support has held steady at 26% and no other candidate in the growing field tops double digits.

    “For the candidates that are not as high in the polls, this is an opportunity and an important moment for them to make their case,” Reed said. “If you’re not Donald Trump, it’s a very short calendar where you have to win somewhere and you have to do it quickly. If someone can win one of those first three states, and especially Iowa or New Hampshire, this race will change overnight. I think that’s part of why they’re all here.”

    In addition to Pence and DeSantis, Friday’s speakers included entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Radio show host Larry Elder and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will address the conference on Saturday.

    Christie drew boos from the crowd when he criticized Trump on Friday.

    “I’m running because he’s let us down,” the former New Jersey governor said. “He has let us down because he’s unwilling, he’s unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made. Any of the faults that he has and any of the things that he’s done and that is not leadership everybody. That is a failure of leadership.”

    When several people in the crowd started loudly booing, Christie said, “You can boo all you want.”

    Christie told CNN’s Dana Bash after his speech that he would continue speaking out against Trump on the campaign trail, saying the former president was “not a man of character, and they know it.”

    “There were a lot of people in that audience who were standing and cheering when I left. And there were some that were booing. But no one left wondering what I think,” Christie said.

    Christie has been sharply critical of the former president, whom he endorsed in the 2016 primary after dropping out of the presidential race and continued to advise ahead of the 2020 election. As other GOP hopefuls shy away from attacking Trump directly, hoping to avoid potentially alienating his supporters, Christie has taken direct aim at the former president and kicked off his 2024 candidacy lambasting Trump.

    Instead of drawing direct contrasts with Trump, Scott spent much of his speech attacking the Biden administration, accusing it of “weaponizing” the Justice Department against the president’s political opponents. 

    “In this radical-left Biden administration, they weaponize the Department of Justice against their political enemies. That is wrong. We deserve better in the United States of America,” Scott said.

    Scott didn’t directly reference the federal charges against Trump, but the senator’s remarks came less than two weeks after Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom to federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. Trump continues to claim the DOJ has been “weaponized” against him. 

    Republican voters are increasingly getting opportunities to size up the GOP field and evaluate them in the same setting. Next weekend, Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Hutchinson will address a summit in Philadelphia hosted by Moms For Liberty, a relatively new but increasingly influential group of conservative women focused largely on K-12 education issues.

    The Road to Majority conference is taking place just two months before the first scheduled Republican presidential debate on August 23 in Milwaukee. Trump on Tuesday repeated his suggestion that he may not participate.

    “Why would I let these people take shots at me?” he told Fox News.

    However, Trump’s appearance on Saturday in DC marks a change in approach from similar Republican gatherings. To date, when Trump has participated, it has been via video message, just as he did at Faith and Freedom’s Iowa event earlier this year. Trump also skipped Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s annual “Roast and Ride” earlier this month, which drew the rest of the field that had entered at the time.

    Reed encouraged Trump to spend more time talking to voters and less time harping on his legal troubles and past elections.

    “He has a tremendous story to tell, and it’s the reason he’s doing so well among these voters now,” Reed said. “But I think it’s important for him to talk about what a second term agenda looks like.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reverse ruling striking down bump stock ban | CNN Politics

    Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reverse ruling striking down bump stock ban | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up an appeals court ruling that struck down a Trump-era federal ban on so-called bump stocks.

    The request comes as the high court has repeatedly declined to disturb those rulings that favor the restriction on the device, including not considering a challenge to the federal ban in October. Bump stocks are attachments that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles continuously with one pull of the trigger.

    “Like other machineguns, rifles modified with bump stocks are exceedingly dangerous; Congress prohibited the possession of such weapons for good reason.” US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the new filing with the Supreme Court. “The decision below contradicts the best interpretation of the statute, creates an acknowledged circuit conflict, and threatens significant harm to public safety.”

    The January appellate court ruling concluded that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF, did not have the authority to classify the devices as machine guns, a classification that had effectively banned them. But in the new filing, the Justice Department argued that prior to the ruling, three other appeals courts had upheld the bump stock regulation.

    In 2018, the ATF classified the devices as machine guns under the National Firearms Act after then-President Donald Trump ordered a review of bump stocks – which were used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting a few months prior.

    But the appellate majority in January argued that bump stocks were not covered by the law.

    “A plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of ‘machinegun’ set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in the majority’s opinion.

    In 2010, the ATF had determined that bump stocks were merely accessories, or firearms parts – and therefore not regulated as a firearm.

    But following the Las Vegas shooting that killed over 50 people and injured hundreds, the Justice Department said that the “devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger,” similar to automatic rifles.

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  • Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics

    Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s attorney on Wednesday said the former president “wishes” to appear at next week’s civil trial where a jury will hear columnist E. Jean Carroll’s assault and defamation claims against him – but his attendance should not be necessary because it would be a “burden” on the city and court.

    The letter to the judge, from attorney Joseph Tacopina, appears to argue that Trump shouldn’t attend his civil trial without saying he won’t.

    “Defendant Trump wishes to appear at trial,” the letter states, but adds “concern” that New York City and the court would face “logistical and financial burdens” to have a former president travel with the Secret Service and other security protections to the proceedings.

    “In order for Defendant Trump to appear, his movement would need to be coordinated preliminarily by a Secret Service advance team hours beforehand each day that he is present, so that a tactical plan may be developed,” such as locking down parts of the courthouse, Tacopina said. Tacopina raised the disruption Trump’s recent criminal arraignment caused in the state court as an example.

    “Your consideration is greatly appreciated,” Tacopina added.

    Jury selection begins next Tuesday in Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a New York dressing room in the mid-1990s and then defamed her years later when he denied it took place, said she wasn’t his “type,” and suggested she made up the story to promote a new book. Trump has denied all allegations against him.

    If he were to be called to testify, Trump would show up in person, Tacopina said. If he does not appear, his legal team asks the judge to instruct jurors that he isn’t required to attend and he wouldn’t be there because of the logistical burdens.

    Carroll plans to attend the trial, her attorney has said.

    In a response to the court on Wednesday afternoon, Carroll’s attorney criticized Trump’s reasoning, but indicated that a live appearance from the former president was not needed for the trial.

    “Either way, Ms. Carroll has a right to play Donald Trump’s deposition at trial,” the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote, “so she has no need for him to testify live.”

    “Mr. Trump has yet to answer the Court’s question, and he now asks the Court to deliver an excuse to the jury in the event he decides not to attend trial,” Kaplan wrote. “Given the gravity of the allegations at issue in this case, one might expect Mr. Trump to appear in person. But he is obviously free to choose otherwise … This Court and the City it calls home are fully equipped to handle any logistical burdens that may result from Mr. Trump’s appearance at a weeklong trial.”

    They also noted Trump has traveled for other recent events, including an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and has a campaign appearance scheduled two days into the trial.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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