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  • Hunter Biden hearing ends after judge is not ready to accept revised plea deal | CNN Politics

    Hunter Biden hearing ends after judge is not ready to accept revised plea deal | CNN Politics

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    Wilmington, Delaware
    CNN
     — 

    A plea deal between President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department is on hold after a dramatic court hearing Wednesday.

    Hunter Biden failed to pay between $1.1 million and $1.5 million in federal taxes before the legal deadlines and was poised to plead guilty to two tax charges with prosecutors agreeing to recommend a sentence of probation.

    But before the original plea could be entered, the deal began to unravel and a revised agreement reached during the hearing was not accepted by the judge.

    “I cannot accept the plea agreement today, said District Judge Maryellen Noreika.

    Noreika said she had “concerns” about the parties seemingly linking the tax plea agreement to resolving a felony gun charge. During the proceedings, prosecutors confirmed that the investigation into Biden was ongoing.

    After negotiations, the president’s son then agreed to plead guilty to the two tax charges in a deal that only includes conduct related to tax offenses, drug use and gun possession. The two sides agreed that this deal does not shield him from potential future charges. But the judge wasn’t satisfied.

    “What if it is unconstitutional?” she asked. “I’m trying to exercise due deliverance and consideration to make sure we don’t make a misstep.”

    After the discussion, Hunter Biden entered a not guilty plea.

    Noreika – a Donald Trump appointee who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate – presided over Wednesday’s hearing and has the sole authority to decide Hunter Biden’s ultimate punishment.

    While the investigation was ongoing, Hunter Biden fully paid his federal tax bill, along with interest and penalties, his lawyers have previously said.

    The Trump-era Justice Department started investigating Hunter Biden in 2018, and the probe steadily expanded to examine whether he violated money laundering and foreign lobbying laws with his multimillion-dollar overseas business dealings. Federal investigators also looked into Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes and lavish spending, which came amid a struggle with addiction.

    US attorney David Weiss has led the investigation. He was appointed by Trump, and Joe Biden kept him at his post so he could continue handling the probe. There is no public indication that Joe Biden or the White House ever tried to intervene in the probe.

    A bizarre legal clash between a top Republican lawmaker and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, which erupted on the eve of his court appearance, did not come up at Wednesday’s hearing.

    The dispute revolves around whether a member of Hunter Biden’s legal team lied to the court about her identity so they would remove a Tuesday filing from GOP Rep. Jason Smith, the House Ways and Means Committee chair, about alleged political interference in the probe.

    In a late twist, the judge threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s lawyers over the matter. They denied the claims and called the incident an “unintentional miscommunication” by court staff.

    Hanging over the plea hearing are recent claims from two IRS whistleblowers who helped lead the investigation that the Justice Department gave preferential treatment to Hunter Biden beginning when Trump was president in 2020.

    Their claims dovetail with the GOP-fueled narrative that Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal,” even though it’s fairly common for first-time offenders to avoid incarceration in a misdemeanor-only case.

    The career IRS agents told Congress that Justice Department officials undercut their attempts to further scrutinize Biden family members, slow-walked requests for subpoenas and search warrants and blocked Weiss from filing the felony tax evasion charges that they had recommended.

    The relevant parties – including Weiss, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other senior Justice Department officials – have publicly refuted the whistleblowers’ claims of politicization.

    In letters to Congress, Weiss has maintained that he has “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.” And earlier this week, he offered to testify at a public House Oversight Committee hearing, likely sometime this fall.

    House Republicans have zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s finances as part of their broader oversight probes into the Biden family. They are seeking testimony from Weiss about the criminal probe, and the House GOP’s right-wing flank is already clamoring for a possible Garland impeachment.

    Hunter Biden’s lawyers called the IRS whistleblowers “disgruntled agents” with “an axe to grind.”

    They’ve also said their client is pleading guilty because he believes “it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Asian Americans are anxious about hate crimes. TikTok ban rhetoric isn’t helping | CNN Business

    Asian Americans are anxious about hate crimes. TikTok ban rhetoric isn’t helping | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Ellen Min doesn’t go to the grocery store anymore. She avoids bars and going out to eat with her friends; festivals and community events are out, too. This year, she opted not to take her kids to the local St. Patrick’s Day parade.

    Min isn’t a shut-in. She’s just a Korean American from central Pennsylvania.

    Ever since the US government shot down a Chinese spy balloon last month, Min has withdrawn from her normal routine out of a concern she or her family may become targeted in one of the hundreds of anti-Asian hate crimes the FBI now says are occurring every year. The wave of anti-Asian hate that surged with the pandemic may only get worse, Min worries, as both political parties have amplified fears about China and the threat it poses to US economic and national security.

    “You can’t avoid paying attention to the rhetoric, because it has a direct impact on our lives,” Min said.

    That rhetoric surged again this week as a hostile House committee grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew for more than five hours on Thursday about the app’s ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. After lawmakers repeatedly accused Chew, who is Singaporean, of working for the Chinese government and tried to associate him with the Chinese Communist Party, Vanessa Pappas, a top TikTok executive, condemned the hearing as “rooted in xenophobia.”

    Chew had taken pains to distance TikTok from China, going so far as to anglicize his name for American audiences and to play up his academic credentials — he holds degrees from University College London and Harvard Business School. But it was not enough to prevent lawmakers from blasting TikTok as “a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party” and as “the spy in Americans’ pockets,” all while mangling pronunciations of Chew’s name and the names of other officials at its parent company, ByteDance. After Chew’s testimony, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said the CEO should be “deported immediately” and banned from the United States, saying his defense of TikTok was “beneath contempt.”

    There are good reasons to be mistrustful of ByteDance given that it is subject to China’s extremely broad surveillance laws. (TikTok has failed to assuage concerns the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance to improperly access the data, despite a plan by TikTok to “firewall” the information.) And the Chinese government’s authoritarian approach to numerous other issues clashes with important American values, said many Asian Americans interviewed for this article.

    But they also warned that policymakers’ choice to use inflammatory speech — in some cases, language tinged with 1950s-era, Red Scare-style McCarthyism — endangers countless innocent Americans by association. Moreover, politicians’ increasingly strident tone is creating conditions for new discriminatory policies at home and the potential for even more anti-Asian violence, civil rights leaders said.

    “We are afraid that, more and more, the actions and the language of the government is premised on the assumption that just because we are Chinese or have cultural ties to China that we could be disloyal, or be spies, or be under the influence of a foreign government,” said Zhengyu Huang, president of the Committee of 100, an organization co-founded by the late architect IM Pei, the musician Yo-Yo Ma and other prominent Chinese Americans. “We want to deliver the message: Not only are we not a national security liability — we are a national security asset.”

    But as the country wrestles with China’s influence as a competitive global power, caught in the middle are tens of millions of Americans like Min who, thanks to their appearance, may now face greater suspicion or hostility than they experienced even during the pandemic, according to Asian American lawmakers, civil society groups and ordinary citizens.

    The heated rhetoric surrounding China has undergone a shift from the pandemic’s early days, when xenophobia linked to Covid-19 was unambiguous.

    At the time, Asian Americans feared an uptick in violence inspired by derogatory phrases such as “Kung-flu” and “China virus.” That language had emerged amid then-President Donald Trump’s wider criticisms of China, which had led to a damaging trade war with the country. It was against that backdrop that Trump first threatened to ban TikTok, a move some critics said was an attempt to stoke xenophobia.

    In recent years, criticism of China has significantly expanded to encompass even more aspects of the US-China relationship. Concerns about China have gone mainstream as US national security officials and lawmakers have publicly grappled with state-backed ransomware attacks and other hacking attempts. The Biden administration has sought to confront China on how the internet should be governed, and like the Trump administration, it’s now taking aim at TikTok, again.

    As that shift has occurred, criticism of China has stylistically evolved from blatant name-calling to the more clinical vocabulary of national security, allowing an undercurrent of xenophobia to lurk beneath the respectable veneer of geopolitics, civil rights leaders said.

    People rallied during a

    In January, House lawmakers stood up a new select committee specifically focused on the “strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” At its first hearing, the panel’s chairman, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, said: “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”

    A week later, US intelligence officials warned that the Chinese Communist Party represents the “most consequential threat” to US global leadership. An unclassified intelligence community report released the same day said China views competition with the United States as an “epochal geopolitical shift.” (Even so, the report maintained that the “most lethal threat to US persons and interests” continues to be racially motivated extremism and violence, particularly by White supremacy groups.)

    While some policymakers have added that their issue is with the Chinese government, not the Chinese people or Asians in general, leaders of Asian descent say the caveat has too often been a footnote in debates about China and not emphasized nearly enough. Leaving it unsaid or merely implied creates room for listeners to draw bigoted conclusions, critics said.

    “That can’t be a footnote; it can’t be an afterthought,” said Charles Jung, a California employment attorney and the national coordinator for Always With Us, a nationwide memorial event to remember the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings that killed six Asian women. “I’m speaking specifically, directly to both GOP and Democratic politicians: Be mindful of the words that you use. Because the words you use can have real world impacts on the bodies of Asian American people on the streets.”

    The current climate has led to at least one US lawmaker directly questioning the loyalty of a fellow member of Congress.

    California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, who was born in Los Angeles and is the first Chinese American elected to Congress, last month confronted baseless claims of her disloyalty from Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden. Gooden’s remarks were swiftly condemned by his congressional colleagues. But to Chu, the incident was an example of the way politics surrounding China, technology and national security have fueled anti-Asian sentiment.

    “Rising tensions with China have clearly led to an increase in anti-Asian xenophobia that has real consequences for our communities,” Chu told CNN.

    Concerns about xenophobia are bipartisan. Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican, told CNN there is “no question” that anti-Asian hate crimes have risen since the pandemic.

    California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu, who was born in Los Angeles and is the first Chinese American elected to Congress, last month confronted baseless claims of her disloyalty from Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden.

    “This is unacceptable,” said Kim. “Asian American issues are American issues, and all Americans deserve to be treated with respect. We can treat all Americans with respect and still be wary of threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    But even in discussing the Chinese government’s real, demonstrated risks to US security, the way that some Americans describe those dangers is counterproductive, needlessly provocative and historically inaccurate, said Rep. Andy Kim, a New York Democrat and a member of the House select committee. Even the name “Chinese Communist Party” can itself prime listeners to adopt a Cold War mentality — a framework whose analytical value is dubious, Kim argued.

    “A lot of my colleagues, especially on the select committee, use rhetoric like, ‘This is a new Cold War,’” said Kim. “First of all, it’s not true: The Soviet Union was a very different competitor than China. And it’s framed in a very zero-sum way … It’s very much being talked about as if their entire way of life is incompatible with ours and cannot coexist with ours, and that heightens the tension.”

    In a November op-ed, Gallagher and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio directly linked that rhetoric to TikTok, calling for the app to be banned due to the United States being “locked in a new Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party, one that senior military advisers warn could turn hot over Taiwan at any time.”

    Just because China may view its dynamic with the United States as an epic struggle does not mean Americans must be goaded into doing the same, Kim argued. Beyond the violence it could trigger domestically, a stark confrontational framing could cause the United States to blunder into poor policy choices.

    For example, he said, the right mindset could mean the difference between legally fraught “whack-a-mole” attempts to ban Chinese-affiliated social media companies versus passing a historic national privacy law that safeguards Americans’ data from all prying eyes, no matter what tech company may be collecting it.

    Security researchers who have examined TikTok’s app say that the company’s invasive collection of user data is more of an indictment of lax government policies on privacy, rather than a reflection of any TikTok-specific wrongdoing or national security risk.

    “TikTok is only a product of the entire surveillance capitalism economy,” said Pellaeon Lin, a Taiwan-based researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “Governments should try to better protect user information, instead of focusing on one particular app without good evidence.”

    Asked how he would advise policymakers to look at TikTok, Lin said: “What I would call for is more evidence-based policy.” Instead, some policymakers appear to have run in the opposite direction.

    Anti-China sentiment has already led to policies that risk violating Asian-Americans’ constitutional rights, several civil society groups said.

    John Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, pointed to the Justice Department’s now-shuttered “China Initiative,” a Trump-era program intended to hunt down Chinese spies but that produced a string of discrimination complaints and case dismissals involving innocent Americans swept up in the dragnet. The Biden administration shut down the program last year.

    More recently, Yang said, proposed laws in Texas and Virginia aimed at keeping US land out of the hands of those with foreign ties would create impossible-to-satisfy tests for Asian-Americans, showing how anti-China fervor threatens to infringe on the rights of many US citizens.

    “National security has often been used as a pretext specifically against Asian-Americans,” Yang said, referring to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the racial profiling of Muslim-Americans following Sept. 11. “We should remember that many Chinese-Americans came to this country to escape the authoritarian regime of China.”

    16 TikTok app STOCK

    Though he fears the situation for Asian-Americans will get worse before it gets better, Yang and other advocates called for US policymakers to stress from the outset that their quarrel lies with the Chinese government and not with people of Chinese descent.

    “We know from experience in the United States that once you demonize Chinese people, all Asian people living in this country face the brunt of that rhetoric,” said Jung. “And you see it not just in spy balloons and the reactions surrounding it and TikTok and Huawei, but also in modern-day racist alien land laws.”

    Growing up in Pennsylvania, Min was no stranger to racially motivated violence: Her home was regularly vandalized with eggs, tomatoes and epithet-laden graffiti (“Go home, gooks”); her father once discovered a crude homemade explosive stuffed in his car.

    But fears of racism stoked by modern US political rhetoric has forced Min to change how her family lives in ways they never had to during her childhood.

    Last year, amid another spate of assaults targeting elderly Asian-Americans, Min said her mother sold the family dry-cleaning business and moved to Korea, following Min’s father who had moved the year before.

    “It was a sad reality to say that as much as we want our family close to us and their grandchildren, they will be safer in Korea,” Min said.

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  • Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former top national security officials have testified to a federal grand jury that they repeatedly told former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government didn’t have the authority to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, CNN has learned.

    Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security secretary, and his former deputy Ken Cuccinelli were asked about discussions inside the administration around DHS seizing voting machines when they appeared before the grand jury earlier this year, according to three people familiar with the proceedings. Cuccinelli testified that he “made clear at all times” that DHS did not have the authority to take such a step, one of the sources said.

    Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, in a closed-door interview with federal prosecutors earlier this year, also recounted conversations about seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, including during a heated Oval Office meeting that Trump participated in, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    Details about the secret grand jury testimony and O’Brien’s interview, neither of which have been previously reported, illustrate how special counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutors are looking at the various ways Trump tried to overturn his electoral loss despite some of his top officials advising him against the ideas.

    Now some of those same officials, including Wolf, Cuccinelli and O’Brien, as well as others who have so far refused to testify, may have to return to the grand jury in Washington, DC, to provide additional testimony after a series of pivotal court rulings that were revealed in recent weeks rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Cuccinelli was spotted going back into the grand jury on Tuesday, April 4.

    Without that privilege shield, former officials must answer questions about their interactions and conversations with the former president, including what he was told about the lack of evidence for election fraud and the legal remedies he could pursue.

    That line of questioning goes to the heart of Smith’s challenge in any criminal case he might bring – to prove that Trump and his allies pursued their efforts despite knowing their fraud claims were false or their gambits weren’t lawful. To bring any potential criminal charges, prosecutors would have to overcome Trump’s public claim that he believed then and now that fraud really did cost him the election.

    “There’s lots of ways you can show that. But certainly one of them is if they were told by people who knew what they were talking about, that that there was no basis to take the actions,” said Adav Noti, an election law attorney who previously served in the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, and at the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office.

    “I would not want to be a defense lawyer trying to argue, ‘Well, yes, my client was told that, but he never really believed it,’” Noti said.

    Inside the Trump White House after the 2020 election, the push to seize voting machines eventually led to executive orders being drafted in mid-December of that year, directing the military and DHS to carry out the task despite Wolf and Cuccinelli telling Trump and his allies their agency did not have the authority to do so.

    Those orders, which cited debunked claims about voting system irregularities in Michigan and Georgia, were presented to Trump by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-lawyer Sidney Powell during a now-infamous Oval Office meeting on December 18.

    Smith’s team has asked witnesses about that meeting in front of the grand jury and during closed-door interviews, multiple sources told CNN. Among them was O’Brien, who told the January 6 House select committee that he was patched into the December 18 meeting by phone after it had already devolved into a screaming match between Flynn, Powell and White House lawyers, according to a transcript of O’Brien’s deposition that was released by the panel.

    O’Brien told the committee that at some point someone asked him if there was evidence of election fraud or foreign interference in the voting machines. “And I said, ‘No, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it,” O’Brien said he responded. “I was told we didn’t have any evidence of any voter machine fraud in the 2020 election.”

    When asked about that meeting by federal prosecutors working for Smith, O’Brien reiterated that he made clear there was no evidence of foreign interference affecting voting machines, according to the source familiar with the matter.

    O’Brien met with prosecutors earlier this year after receiving a subpoena from Smith’s team and is among the Trump officials who could be called back to discuss conversations with Trump under the judge’s recent decision on executive privilege.

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who personally told allies of the former president that there was no evidence of foreign election interference or widespread fraud that would justify taking extreme steps like seizing voting machines, must also testify, the judge decided.

    A spokesperson for Ratcliffe did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Wolf declined to comment.

    Cuccinelli acknowledged to the January 6 committee last year that, after the election, he was asked several times by Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani, and on at least one occasion by Trump himself, if DHS had authority to seize voting machines. Wolf told the committee he was repeatedly asked the same question by then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    Giuliani, who was subpoenaed by the Justice Department before Smith took over the investigation, previously acknowledged to the January 6 committee that he participated in that December 18 Oval Office meeting and other conversations about having DHS and the military seize voting machines.

    Giuliani told congressional investigators that he and his team “tried many different ways to see if we could get the machines seized,” including options involving DHS, according to the transcript of his committee interview. Giuliani also acknowledged taking part in conversations – even before the Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting – where the idea of using the military to seize voting machines was raised.

    “I can remember the issue of the military coming up much earlier and constantly saying, ‘Will you forget about it, please? Just shut up. You want to go to jail? Just shut up. We’re not using the military,’” he added.

    Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, told CNN that Giuliani has not received a subpoena from Smith. Costello said that in early November, Giuliani was subpoenaed by the DC US Attorney seeking documents and testimony. Costello says he told the Justice Department Giuliani couldn’t comply with the given deadlines because they were in the middle of disciplinary proceedings at the time. That was the last time Giuliani heard from DOJ, says Costello.

    “I haven’t heard a word since November 2022,” Costello told CNN on March 30.

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  • Sexual assaults in the US military increased by 1% last year | CNN Politics

    Sexual assaults in the US military increased by 1% last year | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US military saw a 1% increase in sexual assaults last year, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report.

    There were 7,378 reports of sexual assault against service members in 2022, according to the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, released on Thursday. That is up from 7,260 reports of assault in 2021.

    All of the services aside from the Army saw an increase in reports from last year, officials said during a briefing on the report on Thursday: the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force saw a 9%, 3.6%, and 13% increase in reports, respectively. The Army, meanwhile, saw a 9% decrease.

    Overall, the number of reports of assault has consistently increased in the military since 2010.

    And while the Defense Department is working through implementing dozens of recommendations from an independent review commission on sexual assault, officials said commanders and service members on the ground still have a responsibility to do their part.

    “At the end of the day, we can only do so much at the headquarters level,” Beth Foster, director of the Office of Force Resiliency, told reporters. “But, you know, really, this is on our commanders, on our [non-commissioned officers], our frontline leaders to make sure that they are addressing this problem. And, you know, the Secretary says … we need to lead on that. And that that is for at every level of the department.”

    In addition to the 7,378 reports of assault that occurred during military service in 2022, there were also 797 Defense Department civilians who reported being assaulted by service members, and 580 service members who reported being assaulted before their military service.

    The report released Thursday looks at the number of sexual assault reports, as opposed to a separate report the Pentagon releases every other year that estimates the total number of service members experiencing sexual assault. Ideally, the Defense Department has said a sign of progress would be seeing the number of reports go up, while the prevalence of sexual assault go down.

    However, the 2021 prevalence survey – released August 2022 – showed an in increase in how many service members were estimated to have experienced assault. The Pentagon estimated that 35,875 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2021.

    Also, within the report released on Thursday was data showing a decrease in how many cases of assault, which had evidence that supported the charges, were referred to court-martial by commanders. Only 37% of cases were referred to court-martial in 2022, which falls in line with a steady decrease over the last 10 years.

    Instead, there has been an increase in cases that are dealt with through administrative action and discharges of offenders. Dr. Nate Galbreath, the deputy director for the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, told reporters on Thursday that the decrease in court-martials is in part because of support being provided to victims of military sexual assault.

    “One of the things that we’ve seen year after a year since 2015, with the addition of the Special Victims Counsel program – which are attorneys that represent victims throughout the military justice process – is that victims have made it abundantly clear that they would like to help see the department hold their offenders appropriately accountable, but they’d like to do it through nonconfrontational means, and that’s essentially what we see in the percentages with administrative actions and discharges and non-judicial punishment,” Galbreath said.

    He added, however, that the decrease in taking sexual assault cases to court is also due to victims not having faith in the military justice system to handle their cases appropriately.

    The military services’ newly appointed Special Trial Counsels, who are appointed officers that report directly to the service secretaries and have exclusive authority to prosecute sexual assault cases, will be charged with restoring “that perception of fairness back into the system.”

    Ultimately, officials reiterated that while work is ongoing, the ongoing trend of sexual assault isn’t going to change “overnight.”

    “We certainly, if we could flip a switch and make this change instantly, we would,” Foster said. “But we know this is going to take some time.”

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  • How Congress lost control of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    How Congress lost control of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court holds more power than it used to and, thanks to its “shadow docket,” can make consequential decisions that affect every American without so much as a written decision.

    That’s my takeaway from a fascinating and educational new book by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who is also a CNN contributor.

    I talked to Vladeck about “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which publishes on May 16. Excerpts of our conversation, conducted by phone, are below.

    WOLF: Can you explain to people what you mean by “shadow docket”?

    VLADECK: The term is not mine. It was coined by University of Chicago law professor Will Baude in 2015.

    Will meant it really as this umbrella term. Not as a pejorative, but just as a description of the fact that the vast majority of rulings that the Supreme Court hands down that we don’t pay attention to.

    They’re not the fancy decisions on the merits docket. They’re not the cases where the court hears oral arguments and writes these lengthy rulings with concurrences and dissents.

    The typical shadow docket ruling is an unsigned, unexplained order. And most of them are banal. But not all of them.

    Will’s insight, which I have rather shamelessly appropriated, is that there’s a lot of really important stuff that happens through unsigned, unexplained orders. Just because they’re unsigned and unexplained doesn’t mean that we ought not to care about them, talk about them, study them and try to divine broader patterns from them.

    WOLF: You write about how the court, without explaining itself, either invalidated or influenced congressional maps in the last election in three states: Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. Right now, Republicans have a four-seat majority in the House. Do you feel like those decisions determined the outcome of who was going to control the House?

    VLADECK: I think it’s close. We’re talking about two decisions from the court in cases from Alabama and Louisiana, and then those decisions were directly followed in Georgia.

    There’s no question that, but for the court’s interventions, at least three House seats in the current Congress would likely have been controlled by Democrats as opposed to Republicans.

    What I think is really hard to say is what other effects might have followed. The New York Times has suggested that those decisions affected control of as many as seven to 10 House seats. That, I think, is a little more circumstantial.

    There’s no question that the decisions in the Alabama and Louisiana cases helped to give the Republicans the majority they currently have in the House. Whether they actually directly affected control, I think is a close call.

    WOLF: Justice Samuel Alito is unapologetic about use of the shadow docket. Chief Justice John Roberts and other conservatives dislike it. How have things changed in recent months? Has it been used more or less since you stopped writing this book?

    VLADECK: With regard to what I think is the problematic behavior on the shadow docket, I think we have seen less of that in the current term. And actually, I think we can see patterns of that go all the way down to October 2021, when Justice (Amy Coney) Barrett wrote this very, very cryptic concurrence in a case about the Covid vaccine mandate for Maine health care workers.

    It was delphic in what it said, but signaled a bit of a break between Barrett and (Brett) Kavanaugh, who joined that opinion, and Justices (Clarence) Thomas, Alito and (Neil) Gorsuch in how often they were going to be willing to vote to intervene on the shadow docket and what kinds of cases they were willing to intervene in.

    Last week, the stay in the Oklahoma death penalty case, Richard Glossip, there were no dissents from that intervention. Even the mifepristone ruling in April, there are only two public dissents.

    One of the really interesting stories here is the court really does seem to have moderated at least some of its behavior. Part of that, I think, is because to at least some degree, the median justices have become convinced that some of the court’s prior behavior is problematic.

    WOLF: Do you have thoughts on motivations behind the rise of the shadow docket, which you pegged to the seating of Justice Barrett and this new conservative supermajority? Do you think that there was some concerted effort by the more conservative justices to exploit this?

    VLADECK: I think the short answer is no. But I know that there are going to be folks who disagree.

    The book tries to unpack some of this chronologically, because I think the story makes a lot of sense when told in sequence.

    Starting in 2017, the court was confronted with an unprecedented flurry of emergency applications from the Trump administration. It reacted to those applications iteratively, one at a time, without actually stepping back and looking at the whole waterfront, so the court actually kept digging itself in deeper and deeper.

    Had the justices actually taken a step back and asked whether this was a practice they wanted to condone, they might not have said yes. And I think with each new intervention, with each successive case, what had previously been extraordinary became ordinary.

    Without there necessarily having been any deliberateness or malice, the conservative majority just routinized the types of interventions that had until 2017 been completely unroutine.

    It’s only when we get to the Covid cases in 2020 and 2021 that now it starts to look like some of this is willful, because it’s only in those cases where we see the court deciding legal questions on the shadow docket through emergency applications that were in front of the justices already on the merits docket.

    There was nothing stopping the court from using merits cases to reach these questions about religious liberty, and the court did it through the shadow docket anyway.

    I really think it started as just an unstructured off-the-cuff reaction to unusually aggressive behavior by the Trump administration and then just sort of morphed into something else as time went on.

    WOLF: You point to the Obergefell decision (legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide) to argue that the court had already spoken on same-sex marriage through years of inaction. There was a patchwork of marriage laws the court had tolerated for a number of years. Reading that made me think we’re returning to that with abortion rights. And certainly with guns. The patchwork nature of rights in this country is growing not shrinking, despite the gay marriage decision.

    VLADECK: I think it’s grown in some respects and is shrinking and others. The more that the Supreme Court constitutionalizes things, the less of a patchwork we have.

    If you look at the Second Amendment context, I think it’s actually less of a patchwork, because more and more variances in how localities regulate guns are being struck down by the courts for violating the federal Constitution. Versus contests where the court is stepping away from constitutional enforcement, like abortion. It’s more contextual than sort of categorical.

    WOLF: I’ve done a lot of writing about the filibuster, which is this custom that has evolved to be a major part of the US government and slowed or stalled legislation in Congress. Your descriptions of how the court has evolved reminded me of that. You argue the justices have essentially grabbed power from Congress over the last 100 years or so to gain more control over their docket.

    VLADECK: When we look at the court today, we see a court that controls virtually all of its docket, a court that decides not just which cases it’s going to hear, but which issues it’s going to decide within the cases it chooses to hear.

    For most of us, we’ve never known anything different. And so we just assume that that’s how the court is supposed to operate.

    The reality is totally different. Until 1891, and really in practice until 1925, virtually all of the court’s docket was mandatory – the court had to decide any case over which it had jurisdiction.

    That made it a lot harder for the justices to have an agenda. It made it a lot harder for the justices to target particular disputes and look around for cases. The rise of certiorari, of docket discretion, is actually a thoroughly untold but undeniable part of the story of why today’s Supreme Court is so powerful, despite the founders’ views that this would be the least dangerous branch.

    The court today actually has a ton of power. Some of that story is about a power grab.

    But a fair amount of the story is about acquiescence and abdication by Congress, which gave the court the certiorari power in the first instance; which never reined it in, even as the court has seemed to used it to claim more and more power; and which in 1988 took all the brakes off of certiorari and said, yep, just about all the court’s docket is going to be discretionary – and which has done absolutely nothing since then to exercise any modicum of control over the court’s docket.

    That’s why the story that the book tries to tell is not just a story about the court. It is a story about the separation of powers and how the shadow docket is in some respects just a symptom of the broader disease of separation of powers dysfunction that we’re seeing right now.

    WOLF: You come back to that 1988 law repeatedly in the book. I wonder what you think Congress should do now to change the court. There are proposals to change the number of justices, to change the terms of justices. What would be your prescription?

    VLADECK: My prescription is sort of even sillier, which is I would just start by doing something. To me, the problem is that Congress has gotten completely out of the business of exercising any leverage over the courts, so much so that when Chief Justice Roberts was invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he responds and says that would raise the separation of powers concern.

    No it wouldn’t! Justices testify all the time. Or at least they did historically, and no one ever thought that was unconstitutional.

    There are specific things Congress can do, but the real thing Congress needs to do is just more than nothing. Exercise more control over the court’s docket. Use the budget, if necessary, as a cudgel.

    If nationwide injunctions are a problem that’s responsible for why the court is behaving in this way, make it easier for parties to appeal nationwide injunctions directly to the court without having to go through the emergency application process.

    There are so many things Congress could do. The problem is that we’re stuck in this post-1988 mindset that it is not Congress’ job. When we look at the court today, we look at the ethics issues, the docket issues, the legitimacy debates – a lot of what’s going on here is a court that’s just not remotely checked and not worrying about being checked.

    And this is why I’m a bit more circumspect about adding seats to the court or term limits. I don’t think changing the composition of the court changes the basic problem, which is the power dynamic, the Madisonian idea in Federalist 51, that ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

    That doesn’t change just because you have different bodies in those seats. The way that changes is Congress reasserts its clear constitutional prerogatives over the court. And that’s part of the story the book tries to tell.

    WOLF: You also talked quite a bit about this idea that the court gets most of its power from the legitimacy it has in the public. What should it do to restore its legitimacy?

    VLADECK: “Restore” is a little strong. I have not given up on the court. But I think there’s a lot that the justices can do to at least give a sense that they actually care about public perception, and that they should care about public perception.

    First, I think it would be nice if the justices would stop attacking critics as seeking to delegitimize the court. If you think the criticisms are unfair, then respond on the substance as opposed to attacking the people who are criticizing.

    When it comes to the shadow docket specifically, I think the justices can commit internally to norms about writings providing some rationale whenever the court’s going to grant emergency relief and actually upset the status quo.

    I think the court can commit to taking pains to make sure in each case that it’s explaining how the relevant criteria for emergency relief are met, that it’s explaining why it disagrees with lower courts, who in many cases are writing lengthy opinions that are getting quashed in a sentence.

    More generally, the justices could emulate better behavior when it comes to emergency applications and what the court’s role is in responding to them.

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  • Tim Scott once described own police reform bill as a ‘defund’ bill — then attacked Democrats for same approach | CNN Politics

    Tim Scott once described own police reform bill as a ‘defund’ bill — then attacked Democrats for same approach | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott once said his 2020 police reform bill would “defund” local police departments from federal grants for non-compliance, but he later attacked Democrats for proposing the same policies.

    Introduced in the summer of 2020, Scott’s JUSTICE Act was aimed at reforming the practices of local police departments in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

    The bill, according to its text and summaries from the Congressional Research Services, in part used incentives from the federal government to force local police departments to enact change, withholding funding through two key programs from local police departments that did not comply with law.

    “Our bill says that we will defund departments if they don’t ban chokeholds,” Scott said in one Facebook live in June 2020, describing one of the defunding provisions.

    “You lose money from the federal government,” he added, if departments didn’t use body cameras. “It’s all tied to money. That’s the one penalty we can actually enact on the federal level.”

    Senate Democrats blocked Scott’s bill shortly after it was introduced in June 2020, saying the bill inadequately addressed reforming law enforcement and police misconduct.

    As Republicans took strong issue with the so-called “Defund the Police” movement – a slogan that gained popularity during the summer of 2020 in which supporters sought to redirect funds from police to other public services such as social work and mental health services or remove police funding entirely – Scott began to use the approach he had previously advocated for to attack Democrats.

    “Is it OK to limit funding to grants if local police don’t meet a certain standard or don’t qualify based on some parameters? I say, no. They say yes,” Scott said in April 2022.

    A Scott campaign spokesman said in a statement that Scott’s “focus has always been to provide more resources to departments while incentivizing reform.”

    “As Democrats called for defunding the police, the senator worked with law enforcement for more net funding. To suggest otherwise is patently false,” said the spokesman, Nathan Brand.

    The JUSTICE Act stipulated that state and local governments would not be eligible to continue to receive grant funding through two federal grant programs – the COPS program and the Bryne Program – unless police departments put in place certain reform practices.

    The bill required the banning of chokeholds and no-knock warrants in drug cases to continue to receive funding under the programs. It also put in place certain DOJ training requirements for new officers and compelled police departments to provide use of force data to FBI databases to maintain funding.

    Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” in June 2020, Scott responded to a story from The Root, a left-leaning Black publication, which said that the bill’s mechanism of preventing departments from receiving funding if they failed to comply with the law was a version of defunding the police.

    “God bless ‘The Root.’ It’s nice to have them on my side every blue moon. I’m not sure I would go with their conclusions. But, yes, it is important for us to use the resources that we provide to law enforcement, and a way to get them, to compel them towards the direction that we think is in the best interest of the nation, the communities that, they, they serve and frankly of the officers themselves,” said Scott.

    “And I guess their point is if the, if the – police departments don’t do what you are asking, they will lose access to federal funds,” followed up Jon Karl, the show’s host. “So, so there would be an element of withholding funding here?

    “Yes,” said Scott. “Very, very important aspect of our bill.”

    Speaking with PBS, Scott made similar comments in summer 2020.

    “In your proposal, you are saying these things should be tied to federal funding, that, if departments go ahead with them, they risk losing funding,” Scott was asked.

    “Yes,” he responded.

    A year later, however, Scott was directly attacking Democrats for the same approach.

    “We have about a billion dollars in grant money that goes to police,” Scott said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in September 2021. “When you start saying in order to receive those dollars, you must do A, B, and C, and if you don’t do A, B, and C, you literally lose eligibility for the two major pots of money – the Byrne grants and the COP grants, when you tell local law enforcement agencies that you are ineligible for money, that’s defunding the police. There’s no way to spin that.”

    After Scott made his comments, the two major policing organizations – the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police – disputed his categorization that the Democratic bill defunded police departments.

    “Despite some media reports, at no point did any legislative draft propose ‘defunding the police,’” the groups said in joint statement in September 2021. “In fact, the legislation specifically provided additional funding to assist law enforcement agencies in training, agency accreditation, and data collection initiatives.”

    “What I did not agree to was the cuts that come from noncompliance,” Scott added on CBS. “When you say once again that in order for you to receive the money for the Byrne grants or the COP grants, you must do the following, and if you don’t do the following you lose money – that’s more defunding the police. We saw that tried throughout the country.”

    The Democrats’ bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, like Scott’s bill, had requirements, albeit harsher ones, to continue to receive funds through the two programs. The bill required reporting use of force data, submitting misconduct records to a national database, the elimination of and training on racial profiling and independent audit programs, and passing laws banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants in drug cases, among other provisions.

    “I’m not gonna be a part of defunding the police by making them ineligible for the two major grants that come from the federal government to local police,” Scott added on Fox News in September 2021.

    Scott made similar comments in April 2022.

    “Is it OK to limit funding to grants if local police don’t meet a certain standard or don’t qualify based on some parameters? I say no. They say yes,” Scott said in April 2022. “You know, the whole defund the police conversation that’s been going on. And what we’ve seen is that unfortunately, a lot of the cities have literally tried defunding the police to see if it works. The answer is, it doesn’t work very well.”

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  • Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison | CNN Business

    Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison on Tuesday, capping off a stunning downfall for the disgraced founder of failed blood testing startup Theranos.

    Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last November, after she was convicted months earlier on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the now-defunct startup.

    Her request to remain free on bail while she fights to overturn her conviction was denied by an appellate court earlier this month. Judge Edward Davila, who presided over her trial, ordered Holmes to turn herself in to the Bureau of Prisons by May 30 to begin serving her sentence.

    Holmes arrived Tuesday at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in southern Texas, a minimum security federal prison camp that is approximately 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up before moving to California to attend Stanford.

    “We can confirm Elizabeth Holmes has arrived at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan in Bryan, Texas, and is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement provided to CNN.

    Her ex-boyfriend and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was also convicted of fraud, and reported to prison in California last month to begin serving out his sentence.

    Holmes was once an icon in the tech world, serving as a posterchild for the limitless ambitions and potential of Silicon Valley. Now, she and Balwani are the rare tech executives tried for, and convicted on, fraud charges.

    Holmes dropped out of Stanford at the age of 19 to focus full-time on Theranos, a startup that claimed to have invented technology that could accurately test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood. Theranos raised $945 million from an impressive list of investors and was valued at some $9 billion at its peak – making Holmes a paper billionaire. She graced magazine covers and engaged in public speaking events wearing a black turtleneck that invited comparisons to the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

    Her company began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy. It also came to light that Theranos was relying on third-party manufactured devices from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology.

    Theranos ultimately dissolved in September 2018.

    Dawn breaks at the Federal Prison Camp where Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder and CEO of Theranos, is expected to arrive to begin her 11 year sentence for fraud relating to the defunct company Tuesday, May 30, 2023, in Bryan, Texas.

    Holmes and Balwani were first indicted together nearly five years ago on the same 12 criminal charges. Their trials were severed after Holmes indicated she intended to accuse Balwani of sexually, emotionally and psychologically abusing her throughout their decade-long relationship, which coincided with her time running the company. (Balwani’s attorneys have denied her claims.)

    This month, Davila ordered Holmes and Balwani to pay restitution of roughly $452 million to victims of their crimes.

    Before her sentencing was announced in November, a tearful Holmes spoke to the court in San Jose, California.

    “I loved Theranos. It was my life’s work,” she said. “The people I tried to get involved with Theranos were the people I loved and respected the most. I am devastated by my failings.”

    She went on to apologize to the employees, investors and patients of Theranos.

    “I’m so, so sorry. I gave everything I had to build our company and to save our company,” she said. “I regret my failings with every cell in my body.”

    – CNN’s Brad Parks contributed to this report.

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  • Oversight chairman halts plan to advance Wray contempt proceedings following deal over FBI document | CNN Politics

    Oversight chairman halts plan to advance Wray contempt proceedings following deal over FBI document | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer is scrapping his plans to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress after the two sides reached an agreement over an FBI document that includes an unverified allegation that Joe Biden, while vice president, was involved in a bribery scheme involving a foreign national.

    Comer, a Kentucky Republican, accepted the FBI’s offer to allow all members on the House Oversight panel to view the internal law enforcement document he initially subpoenaed, known as an FD-1023, in exchange for halting contempt proceedings. The FBI will also make two additional documents available to Comer and the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin, according to Comer’s statement announcing the agreement. As a result of the deal, Comer removed Thursday’s scheduled committee meeting to refer Wray for contempt from the schedule.

    “Allowing all Oversight Committee members to review this record is an important step toward conducting oversight of the FBI and holding it accountable to the American people,” Comer said in a statement.

    In response to the deal, Raskin said in a statement, “Chairman Comer’s acceptance of these further accommodations comes after he has spent weeks attacking the FBI despite its extraordinary efforts to provide Committee Republicans the information they claim to seek.”

    CNN first reported the FBI’s offer earlier Wednesday.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had said earlier in the day that Comer and Wray were planning to speak Wednesday night to negotiate, and signaled that he would accept the FBI’s offer and cease contempt efforts if all committee members could view the document in question.

    “He needs to show it to every Republican and every Democrat on the committee. If he is willing to do that, then there’s not a need to have contempt. But if he doesn’t follow through with that, then there would be a need for contempt,” McCarthy said of Wray.

    Earlier this week, senior FBI officials briefed Comer and Raskin. Previously, Comer had said he wanted the FBI to actually turn the document over to him.

    While the FBI had previously declined to hand over a hard copy of the document, noting it contains unverified information from a confidential human source, the bureau said it was willing to hold a briefing with members of the panel and allow them to view the document as early as Wednesday, sources told CNN, in an effort to stave off contempt of Congress proceedings.

    The alleged bribery claims documented in the 1023 form surfaced years ago under the Trump administration and eventually became part of Delaware US Attorney David Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden, which remains ongoing, people briefed on the matter said. The 1023 includes allegations related to Hunter Biden, as well as Joe Biden, according to people familiar with matter.

    The FBI interviewed the informant, who was known to the bureau and had considered him a trusted source based on interactions in a previous investigation. Investigators were unable to corroborate the claims, but Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady, who then-Attorney General William Barr had appointed to review allegations brought to the Justice Department by Rudy Giuliani, decided to send the informant’s allegations to Weiss, who was already leading the Hunter Biden probe.

    It’s unclear what additional steps the FBI took to investigate the claims, but Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden has since narrowed in scope to focus on alleged tax violations and a possible false statement.

    The White House has denied the allegation and dismissed the GOP probe as a political stunt.

    The decision to halt contempt proceedings comes as a number of House Republicans have been pushing to hold Wray in contempt.

    GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a member of the Oversight Committee, told CNN she plans to vote in favor of contempt.

    “I voted to hold people in contempt up here before. If you don’t follow through with the subpoena, there are consequences to it,” she said. “They’ve stonewalled, they’ve obfuscated, they’ve bullshitted, you know what I mean? It’s like, just follow the law.”

    GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, also a member of the Oversight panel, told CNN, “It’s an unclassified form. Just showing it to our chairman and to the ranking member, Congressman Raskin, that’s not enough. We subpoenaed the form. And so, the form needs to be handed over. This is his job – Chris Wray’s job.”

    “If the director of the FBI is flouting subpoenas from Congress, I’m fully supportive of every effort to enforce the subpoena,” GOP Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee told CNN.

    This story and headline have been updated to reflect additional developments.

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  • Elizabeth Holmes objects to government requesting she pay $250 a month to victims after prison | CNN Business

    Elizabeth Holmes objects to government requesting she pay $250 a month to victims after prison | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former Theranos CEO, has “limited financial means” and should not be forced to pay $250 a month to victims of her crimes after she is released from prison, her lawyers argued in a court filing on Monday.

    The move from Holmes’ attorneys comes after federal prosecutors said in a separate filing last week that “clerical errors” had resulted in no payment schedule being set for Holmes’ restitution after she is released from prison. Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were previously ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to victims of their crimes.

    Holmes reported to prison late last month in Texas to serve out her more than 11-year sentence. She was convicted early last year on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the failed blood-testing startup Theranos.

    Federal prosecutors asked that once Holmes is on supervised released, criminal monetary penalties should be paid monthly in the amount of $250, or at least 10% of her wages, whichever is greater.

    In the latest filing, Holmes’ attorneys argued “there is no basis in the record for the payment structure in the government’s request,” but did not object to her being asked to start paying $25 per quarter as part of her restitution while she is in prison.

    Holmes, once a paper billionaire, could hold a job at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, with hourly wages ranging from $0.12 to $1.15, according to the prison’s handbook.

    Theranos once claimed to have invented technology that could test for a range of conditions using a few drops of blood. It was valued at some $9 billion at its peak and raised money from a long list of prominent investors. Then it all began to unravel after a damning Wall Street Journal report cast doubt on the company’s claims.

    As part of the original restitution order, some $125 million is owed to media mogul Rupert Murdoch, as well as millions in payments to other Theranos investors.

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  • Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics

    Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s onetime Defense secretary said Sunday that the former president should not be trusted with the nation’s secrets again should the allegations made in his federal indictment over his handling of classified documents prove true.

    “Based on his actions – again, if proven true – under the indictment by the special counsel, no,” Mark Esper told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    “It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation security risk. You cannot have these documents floating around. They need to be secured,” he said.

    Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges, including 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information.” The former president denies any wrongdoing.

    Esper’s critical remarks about his onetime boss follow damning language by another high-profile Trump administration official – former Attorney General Bill Barr – who said last week that Trump was “toast” if even half of the details in his indictment were true.

    “The revelations are very troubling, disturbing,” Esper said Sunday when asked by Tapper if Trump’s actions put America’s national security at risk. “Yes, I do. If the allegations are true that it contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other items, it could be quite harmful to the nation. And, look, no one is above the law. And so I think this process needs to play out and people held to account, the president held to account.”

    Trump fired Esper as his Defense secretary in November 2020, shortly after Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the presidential election.

    Meanwhile, in a separate interview on “State of the Union,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said he was “not going to defend the behavior” listed in the indictment against Trump but the government would need to prove its case as the legal process moves forward.

    The Ohio Republican also said he had “grave concern” about the way documents were stored not just as it pertained to Trump but to Biden as well. A separate special counsel is leading an investigation into Obama-era classified documents found at Biden’s home and former private office.

    ‘Grave concern’: GOP House Intel Chair on classified Trump docs – full interview

    “The chair and ranking (member) of both the House Intel and Senate Intel (committees) have seen some of the documents, both from the Biden cache and the Trump documents itself. And I can tell you that, from having looked at both of those documents, I have grave concern about both of those type of documents being out in an unsecured place,” Turner said. “Both of them included details of national security issues that should not have been outside of a controlled environment.”

    Turner also previewed a closed-door meeting Tuesday his committee will be holding with John Durham, the special counsel who concluded in a report released last month that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

    “We’re pulling him in to our committee to say, ‘OK, now that we have seen that there were abuses, that this was wrong, and that there are problems with (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) itself, what are the recommendations that you think we should pursue?’” Turner said.

    Durham is expected to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

    His 300-plus page report states that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” to launch its Trump-Russia investigation but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

    Durham, however, did not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

    This report has been updated with additional details.

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  • McCarthy floats potential impeachment inquiry into Garland over IRS whistleblower claims | CNN Politics

    McCarthy floats potential impeachment inquiry into Garland over IRS whistleblower claims | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy is floating the possibility that the House could open an impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Merrick Garland over Internal Revenue Service whistleblower allegations that Justice Department leadership improperly interfered in the Hunter Biden probe, which Garland has denied.

    “If it comes true what the IRS whistleblower is saying, we’re going to start impeachment inquiries on the attorney general,” McCarthy said Monday on Fox News.

    In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department.

    McCarthy said on Fox News that the IRS agents who came forward “watched the abuse of power in how Hunter Biden was treated.”

    The allegation that the DOJ has been politicized against conservatives has been central to how House Republicans approach their congressional investigations, though there is scant evidence backing up most of their claims.

    Garland rejected those claim during a Friday news conference.

    “Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department … by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike,” Garland said. “This constitutes an attack on an instutiton that is essential to American democracy … nothing could be further from the truth.”

    Regarding the Hunter Biden probe, the whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son and that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states.

    Garland said Friday 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.

    Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge, the Justice Department said Tuesday in court filings.

    As part of the plea agreement, the Justice Department has agreed to recommend a sentence of probation for the two counts of failing to pay taxes in a timely matter for the years 2017 and 2018, according to sources. Hunter Biden owed at least $100,000 in federal taxes for 2017, and at least $100,000 in 2018, but did not pay what was due to the IRS by the deadlines.

    A judge will have the final say on any sentence.

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

    McCarthy said on Fox News Monday, “We have requested by July 6, Weiss to come in and answer these questions because the IRS whistleblowers took copious notes.”

    The federal prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation sent a letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan in early June saying that he had “ultimate authority” over the probe.

    Weiss, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, makes clear in a letter obtained by CNN that he was granted this authority, cutting against Republican claims that Garland and the DOJ are “weaponized” against conservatives and politicizing the Hunter Biden case.

    “I want to make clear that, as the attorney general has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations” Weiss wrote to Jordan on June 7.

    In response, Jordan has asked Weiss to explain and provide further information about the letter stating he had “ultimate authority” over the probe.

    Jordan asked in a letter to Weiss why he was the one to respond to Congress on June 7, when the initial letter from Jordan about alleged retaliation against the IRS whistleblowers was addressed to Garland. “Who instructed you to sign and send your June 7 letter to the committee?,” Jordan asked.

    Hunter Biden’s lawyer pushed back in a statement on Friday against the whistleblowers’ claims, saying it was “preposterous and deeply irresponsible” to suggest that federal investigators “cut my client any slack” during their “extensive” five-year probe.

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  • Trump once said a president under felony indictment would grind the government to a halt and create a constitutional crisis | CNN Politics

    Trump once said a president under felony indictment would grind the government to a halt and create a constitutional crisis | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump said in 2016 that a president under indictment would “cripple the operations of our government” and create an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” – years before he himself was indicted on federal charges while running for a second term as president.

    Trump made the comments nearly seven years ago about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

    “We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial,” Trump said during a November 5, 2016, campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, reviewed by CNN’s KFile. “It would grind government to a halt.”

    Just days earlier, on October 28, then-FBI director James Comey publicly announced they had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

    Now, Trump finds himself under the exact situation he repeatedly described after he was charged in early June with 37 federal counts related to retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

    A tentative trial date had been set for mid-August by the case’s judge, but it is likely to be pushed back. The special counsel’s office asked for a December trial. The flexibility of when the trial will begin leaves uncertainty if the case will conclude before the 2024 election.

    But Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, will not be disqualified from the presidency even if convicted, and he told Politico in June that he won’t leave the presidential race if he is convicted of the charges.

    At another rally on November 3, 2016, in Concord, North Carolina, Trump made similar comments.

    “If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government,” he said. “She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up – in my opinion – in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.”

    “She has no right to be running, you know that,” Trump said. “No right.”

    Trump added at a November 5, 2016, rally in Denver that as “the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation,” Clinton’s controversies would make it “virtually impossible for her to govern.”

    The comments aren’t the only ones from Trump’s past campaigns that could have aged poorly with his legal troubles. In another comment, made when running for reelection, Trump acknowledged only the sitting president could reveal classified information.

    CNN previously reported in an exclusively obtained audio recording that Trump said as president he could have declassified a document about plans to attack Iran that he was showing aides after leaving office, but recognized he could not do so now that he is no longer president.

    “And you know the newspapers and the press and the fake news they went and said he just gave away classified information,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania in September 2020 when discussing his conversations with author Bob Woodward on nuclear weapons. “First of all, I’m allowed to do it, I’m the President so I’m allowed to. I’m the one – I’m the only one that’s allowed.”

    In September, CNN’s KFile reported that Trump previously called for lengthy jail sentences for those who mishandled classified information.

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  • Microsoft under European antitrust investigation over Teams | CNN Business

    Microsoft under European antitrust investigation over Teams | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    European officials are investigating whether Microsoft’s practice of bundling its Teams software with Office 365 is anticompetitive, the European Commission said Thursday.

    The EU probe follows a formal complaint by Microsoft’s rival, the Salesforce-owned Slack, in 2020, alleging that Microsoft has illegally circumvented competition.

    By packaging Teams together with its “well-entrenched” productivity suite, including apps such as Word and Outlook, Microsoft could be effectively blocking customers from seeking out rival collaboration tools, the Commission said. Antitrust officials are also concerned about interoperability issues between Microsoft’s software and third-party products, it added.

    “These practices may constitute anti-competitive tying or bundling and prevent suppliers of other communication and collaboration tools from competing,” the Commission said in a statement.

    Microsoft said in a statement it is cooperating with the probe.

    “We respect the European Commission’s work on this case and take our own responsibilities very seriously,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.”

    In a press briefing Thursday, EU spokesperson Arianna Podesta told reporters that “at this stage, possible commitments [by Microsoft to resolve the concerns] are too early to be discussed. We first need to identify indeed if there is a breach of antitrust considerations.”

    The in-depth investigation reflects rising EU antitrust scrutiny for Microsoft, which was last fined on a competition violation in 2013 for not honoring a commitment to give European consumers a choice in web browsers.

    Slack’s initial EU complaint alleged that Microsoft forces Teams onto millions of customers, “blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.”

    A Slack executive at the time argued that Microsoft sells a closed ecosystem of its own products, while Slack provides customers with more freedom to mix and match services.

    “This is a proxy for two very different philosophies for the future of digital ecosystems, gateways versus gatekeepers,” said Slack’s VP of communications and policy, Jonathan Prince.

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  • What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance | CNN Politics

    What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump, the first former president in history to face criminal charges, is heading to New York Monday for an expected arraignment on Tuesday after being indicted last week by a Manhattan grand jury.

    The expected voluntary surrender of a former president and 2024 White House candidate will be a unique affair in more ways than one – both for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York courthouse where he’ll be arraigned and for a nation watching to see how it’ll shake up the GOP presidential primary.

    The former president has remained “surprisingly calm,” spending the weekend in Florida playing golf and mulling how to use it to boost his campaign, CNN reported Sunday night, after an indictment that caught him and his advisers “off guard.”

    Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud, CNN has reported, but the indictment remains under seal.

    The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election. Trump and his allies have already attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – and an advertised Tuesday night speech back at Mar-a-Lago will likely given Trump more opportunity to claim he’s being political persecuted.

    Here is what we know about the expected arraignment.

    Trump left Florida shortly after noon ET on Monday, and is scheduled to land at New York’s LaGuardia airport around 3 p.m. ET, according to a source familiar with his plans. The former president will stay at Trump Tower Monday night and is expected to depart New York immediately after Tuesday’s arraignment to head back to Florida, the source said.

    But even before Trump’s appearance, his presence will be felt in the Manhattan courthouse Tuesday, as all trials and most other court activity is being halted before he is slated to arrive.

    The Secret Service, the New York Police Department and the court officers are coordinating security for Trump’s expected appearance. The Secret Service is scheduled to accompany Trump in the early afternoon to the district attorney’s office, which is in the same building as the courthouse.

    Trump will be booked by the investigators, which includes taking his fingerprints. Ordinarily, a mug shot would be taken. But sources familiar with the preparations were uncertain as to whether there would be a mugshot – because Trump’s appearance is widely known and authorities were concerned about the improper leaking of the photo, which would be a violation of state law.

    Typically, after defendants are arrested, they are booked and held in cells near the courtroom before they are arraigned. But that won’t happen with Trump. Once the former president is finished being processed, he’ll be taken through a back set of hallways and elevators to the floor where the courtroom is located. He’ll then come out to a public hallway to walk into the courtroom.

    Trump is not expected to be handcuffed, as he will be surrounded by armed federal agents for his protection.

    “Obviously, this is different. This has never happened before. I have never had Secret Service involved in an arraignment before at 100 Centre Street,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “All the Tuesday stuff is still very much up in the air, other than the fact that we will very loudly and proudly say not guilty.”

    By the afternoon, Trump is expected to be brought to the courtroom, where the indictment will be unsealed and he will formally face the charges. After he is arraigned, Trump will almost certainly be released on his own recognizance. It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that conditions could be set on his travel.

    Ordinarily, a defendant who is released would walk out the front doors, but Secret Service will want to limit the time and space where Trump is in public. So instead, once the court hearing is over, Trump is expected to walk again through the public hallway and into the back corridors to the district attorney’s office, back to where his motorcade will be waiting.

    Then he’ll head to the airport so he can get back to Mar-a-Lago, where he’s scheduled an event that evening to speak publicly.

    Several media outlets, including CNN, have asked a New York judge to unseal the indictment and for permission to broadcast Trump’s expected appearance in the courtroom on Tuesday.

    The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are among the outlets making the request.

    The news organizations are asking for a “limited number of photographers, videographers, and radio journalists to be present at the arraignment,” and said in the letter that they are making “this limited request for audio-visual coverage in order to ensure that the operations of the Court will not be disrupted in any way.”

    If the judge does not grant the media outlets’ unsealing request, it is expected that the indictment will be made public when Trump appears in court.

    Judge Juan Merchan is no stranger to Trump’s orbit.

    Merchan, an acting New York Supreme Court justice, has sentenced Trump’s close confidant Allen Weisselberg to prison, presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial and overseen former adviser Steve Bannon’s criminal fraud case.

    Merchan does not stand for disruptions or delays, attorneys who have appeared before him told CNN, and he’s known to maintain control of his courtroom even when his cases draw considerable attention.

    Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore said during an interview Friday on CNN that Merchan was “not easy” on him when he tried a case before him but that he will likely be fair.

    “I’ve tried a case in front of him before. He could be tough. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be something that’s going to change his ability to evaluate the facts and the law in this case,” Parlatore said.

    Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday that the former president will plead not guilty. His team “will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge,” Tacopina said.

    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 the statute of limitations may have passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.

    Trump’s legal team isn’t currently considering asking to move the case to a different New York City borough, Tacopina said. “There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview Sunday. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”

    Trump’s political advisers over the weekend were actively discussing how to best campaign off the indictment they have portrayed as a political hoax and witch hunt, according to sources close to Trump.

    His team has spent the last several days presenting the former president with polls showing him with a growing lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently considered Trump’s biggest 2024 rival, in a head-to-head match up. And his team says it has raised more than $5 million dollars since he was indicted Thursday.

    Despite the initial shock of the indictment, Trump has remained surprisingly calm and focused in the days ahead of his court appearance, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported.

    The former president has seemingly saved his rage for his social media site, escalating his attacks on Bragg and leveling threats.

    Many of Trump’s allies, critics and likely opponents in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race have similarly attacked Bragg before and after the indictment.

    But former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who announced his presidential campaign on Sunday, doubled down on his call for Trump to drop out of the race now that he is facing criminal charges.

    “The office is more important than any individual person. So for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction,” Hutchinson said in an interview on ABC News. “He needs to be able to concentrate on his due process.”

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  • FBI warrantless searches of Americans’ data plummet in 2022, intel report says | CNN Politics

    FBI warrantless searches of Americans’ data plummet in 2022, intel report says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The number of warrantless FBI searches of Americans’ electronic data under a controversial intelligence program that aims to identify foreign threats dropped sharply from millions of searches in 2021 to over 100,000 last year, US intelligence agencies said in a report Friday.

    It is welcome news for US intelligence and security agencies that are lobbying Congress to renew the program, known as Section 702, which is set to expire later this year. Some Republicans in Congress, including allies of former President Donald Trump, have balked at renewing the program while using their criticism of it in broader political attacks on the FBI.

    The drop in FBI searches last year was due in part to stronger safeguards that the agency has put on analysts’ ability to search a database of foreign intelligence collected by US spy agencies, according to the report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

    The FBI conducted about 3 million warrantless searches of Americans’ data in 2021, more than half of which related to a Russian hacking campaign against critical US infrastructure, according to ODNI. (The tallies in the ODNI report are the number of times FBI personnel searched for certain data, not the number of Americans who had their data searched.)

    The program is a 2008 revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows US spy agencies to collect the phone calls, emails and text messages of foreign targets overseas from US telecommunications providers without a warrant – even if it means sweeping up the communications of Americans in touch with those foreign targets. Analysts at multiple intelligence agencies can then search databases for leads related to foreign intelligence missions.

    US national security officials say the program is essential for thwarting terror plots and investigating malicious cyber activity. A significant portion of the intelligence that ends up in President Joe Biden’s daily intelligence brief comes from Section 702 authorities, according to US officials.

    But civil liberties groups have complained that the program infringes on Americans’ privacy. And even advocates of Section 702 in Congress have expressed concern at how it’s been implemented.

    In March, Republican Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois accused the FBI of searching Section 702 data for his name multiple times in what he called an “egregious” violation of his privacy. Still, LaHood has said he wants Section 702 to be reauthorized with “reforms and safeguards.”

    Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Friday that the new ODNI report “provides strong evidence that the reforms already put in place, particularly at FBI, are having the intended effects.”

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  • Top Republicans demand FBI document they claim describes ‘alleged criminal scheme’ related to Biden | CNN Politics

    Top Republicans demand FBI document they claim describes ‘alleged criminal scheme’ related to Biden | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Two top congressional Republicans are demanding internal FBI documents that an unnamed whistleblower claims will show then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in a criminal scheme with a foreign national, according to a letter from the Republicans.

    The unverified allegation is the most explosive claim House Oversight Chairman James Comer and Senate Budget Committee ranking Republican member Chuck Grassley have lobbed at the now-president after both men have devoted significant time to investigating the Biden family’s business dealings.

    White House spokesman for investigations Ian Sams tweeted a link to a Fox News clip discussing the Comer and Grassley announcement, saying that Republicans “prefer trafficking in innuendo.”

    “For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against @POTUS without offering evidence for their claims. Or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests,” Sams tweeted. “They prefer trafficking in innuendo.”

    Comer and Grassley alleged that a whistleblower claimed the Justice Department and FBI have an unclassified document “that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” according to a letter to both FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    “I guess basically we’ve got to wait to see what the document exactly says,” Grassley said in a Fox News interview. “The FBI needs to explain whether it’s accurate or not.”

    Comer fired off a corresponding subpoena to the FBI calling for “all FD-1023 forms, including within any open, closed, or restricted access case files, created or modified in June 2020, containing the term ‘Biden,’ including all accompanying attachments and documents to those FD-1023 forms.”

    The form in question, an FD-1023, is a document the FBI uses to memorialize meetings or information gathered from confidential sources. The document typically would include allegations from the source, including information not verified by the FBI.

    “We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States. What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a news release, adding that the situation calls for congressional oversight.

    The Department of Justice declined to comment. The FBI said it received the letter and subpoena and declined further comment.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment | CNN Politics

    How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican response to Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment offers a clear test of the famous saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result.

    The choice by Republican leaders, and even almost all of his 2024 rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, to unreservedly defend Trump after he was indicted earlier this year by the Manhattan district attorney helped the former president to widen his lead in primary polls. The roar of outrage from Republican leaders to that indictment restored Trump’s grip on the party after frustration over his role in the GOP’s disappointing 2022 midterm elections had loosened it.

    But since last week’s disclosure that Trump faces another criminal indictment – this one federal, over his handling of highly classified documents – the party leadership and 2024 field has almost entirely replicated that deferential approach.

    Repeating the pattern from other moments of maximum threat to Trump, the GOP response has been marked by a pronounced communications imbalance. From House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump’s supporters have loudly supported his claims that he is being persecuted by the left.

    Simultaneously, with only a few conspicuous exceptions like second-tier presidential contenders Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the most Trump’s critics in the party have been willing to do is remain silent and not validate his vitriolic charges. Apart from those two former governors, just a short list of prominent Republicans – including former Trump administration senior officials William Barr and John Bolton, and Senate Minority Whip John Thune – have pushed back at all against Trump’s claim that he is being hunted by “lunatic,” “deranged” and “Marxist” prosecutors, or publicly expressed misgivings about the underlying behavior detailed in the federal indictment against him.

    Christie reveals the exact moment he broke with Trump

    By refusing to confront Trump or his enraged defenders more directly, the Republicans who want the party to move beyond him in 2024 may be stitching their own straitjacket. The nearly indivisible GOP defense of Trump has once again created a situation in which a controversy that is weakening Trump with the broader electorate is strengthening his position inside the GOP coalition.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, multiple public polls show that most voters outside the Republican base are worried Trump jeopardized national security and dubious that anyone convicted of a serious crime should serve again as president. In a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this spring, roughly three-fourths of independents, people of color, and voters under 45, as well as four-fifths of college-educated Whites, said they did not want Trump to be president again if he’s convicted of any crime. (The poll was conducted after Trump’s indictment in Manhattan but before the recent federal charges.)

    In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted partially after last week’s indictment, a solid 57% majority of Americans – including around three-fifths of college-educated Whites and voters under 30 and nearly that many independents – said he should not serve as president if he’s convicted specifically in the classified documents case. More than two-thirds of Americans overall said his handling of classified documents had created a national security risk.

    Yet those same surveys also show that the vast majority of Republican voters say they do not believe Trump’s behavior is disqualifying – even if he’s convicted – and accept his claim that he’s the victim of unfair treatment. (In the Marist survey, more than three-fifths of Republicans said they would welcome a second Trump term even if he is found guilty of a crime.) That, too, may be unsurprising given the paucity of conservative elected officials or media figures that those voters trust telling them otherwise.

    Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties” under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

    The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges, she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes, marked an important milestone in that transition.)

    “If you stay in the party it’s either you have to be supporting Trump or face the consequences,” says Ben-Ghiat, who teaches at New York University. “You could be even running against him, but you have to adhere to the party line: the weaponization by the deep state. That’s the sad and dangerous part among many dangers we face. Even those people are stuck within this narrative world and this party line and their targets are the same as Trump’s.”

    Trump’s latest round of legal jeopardy leaves the Republicans who are hesitant about him – either because they consider him unfit to serve as president or simply because they believe he is too damaged to win a general election – in the same position as his critics since 2015: hoping that his supporters will somehow move away from him, but unwilling to do almost anything overt to encourage them.

    “They keep indulging the fantasy. … They don’t ever have to do anything and a deus ex machina is going to do this by itself,” says long-time conservative strategist Bill Kristol, who has emerged as one of Trump’s most dogged GOP critics.

    Some Republicans say it’s possible this time will be different and the sheer weight of legal proceedings mounting against Trump – which could include further charges over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election from special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis – could cause what some call “indictment fatigue” among GOP voters.

    “I think there’s a schizophrenia that exists in this,” says Dave Wilson, a prominent social conservative and Republican activist in South Carolina. “You have people who say that no government should be used to weaponize against any one of us, much less a [former] president. At the same they are beleaguered about the same headlines again and again and again about indictments.”

    Likewise, Craig Robinson, former political director for the Iowa Republican Party, agrees that given the prospect of cascading court appearances through the election year, “Donald Trump is asking a lot of the Republican voter to endure.”

    But many other Trump critics inside the GOP fear that the chorus of support for him from party leaders and his 2024 rivals has set in motion a dynamic where denying him the nomination now could appear to some GOP voters as “rewarding” the Democrats, or the “deep state,” or President Joe Biden, or whoever they believe is persecuting him. “He will win the nomination with the message that they have weaponized the justice system against Republicans, against conservatives,” predicts former New Hampshire GOP chairperson Jennifer Horn, now a staunch Trump critic.

    Trump has quickly made clear that he will stress that argument against any and all criminal claims converging against him. When he appeared for the first time after this latest indictment, at the Georgia GOP convention on Saturday, he argued that the “deep state” was targeting him because it recognized that he was the only 2024 candidate strong enough to stand up to it on behalf of Republican voters. “Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we, we, are the only ones who are going to be able to stop them,” he declared. At another point Trump insisted, “These criminals cannot be rewarded” – presumably by frightening Republican voters away from nominating him.

    Such arguments from Trump show how his 2024 rivals, by mostly endorsing his claims, have voluntarily reduced themselves to the chorus in his drama. So long as the dominant story in red America is the claim that Democrats are unfairly targeting Trump, it may be difficult for the other candidates even to sustain attention in the Republican race.

    “They’ve made themselves just sub-characters in the plot,” says Horn. “Every time they do this they make him the hero. So they are out there asking people to vote for them for president, even though they are saying Donald Trump is the real hero in this scenario. It doesn’t make any sense.”

    Robinson largely agrees. Trump’s multiple indictments, he says, “might be a good opportunity for” for the former president’s 2024 rivals because some voters, even if they consider the allegations unfair, will “also think ‘I don’t want the next 12-18 months to be’” dominated by those controversies. Yet, Robinson believes, by echoing Trump’s claims of unfair treatment, the other candidates are encouraging Republican voters to accept his framing of the race. “If you believe the whole thing is corrupt and needs to be torn down and rebuilt, isn’t he the best one to do that?” says Robinson, adding that among many GOP voters, “There’s this sense that he’s the only one who can fight that fight.”

    Kristol points out that other Republicans with a plausible chance of winning the nomination could distance themselves from Trump without fully endorsing the charges against him. “They can’t sound like me, they can’t sound like Asa Hutchison,” Kristol acknowledges. But he adds, other Republican candidates could respond to this indictment (and any potential subsequent ones) by expressing faith in the legal system to find the truth and saying something like: “‘I think Donald Trump did a good job, but this is bad, and when you can combine this with the ’22 results, we need a different nominee.” It’s an ominous measure of the party’s transformation into Trump’s personal vehicle, Kristol says, that they feel they “can’t even do that and instead want to attack Biden.”

    It remains possible that Trump’s rivals or other GOP leaders could make a more explicit case against him as the race proceeds, or more possible indictments land. Comments on Monday from Thune and presidential contender Nikki Haley – who criticized Trump’s handling of the documents after initially attacking the indictment – suggest a window may be cracking open for greater GOP dissent. But the hesitation inside the party about fully confronting Trump remains palpable. At his campaign announcement last week, for instance, former Vice President Mike Pence said more explicitly than ever before that Trump’s behavior on January 6, 2021, rendered him unfit to serve as president again. But Pence immediately undercut that message by declaring in a CNN town hall later that day that he would “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” which very well could be Trump, even though Pence said he doubted it would be. What started as a challenge to him instead became another measure of Trump’s dominance – a shift underscored when Pence joined the chorus condemning the federal indictment.

    Because Ben-Ghiat sees the GOP taking on more of the characteristics of other “authoritarian parties” in thrall to strongman leaders, she’s skeptical the legal challenges converging around Trump will undermine his hold on the party. But, she says, the experience of other countries shows that imposing legal consequences for the misdeeds of authoritarian-minded leaders is nonetheless critical to fortifying democracy.

    There may be no proof of wrongdoing that can move large numbers of voters in Trump’s coalition, she says, but for everyone else in society, “it is very important to show that the rule of law can hold, that our institutions can do things, that democracy can work.”

    Ben-Ghiat likens the multiple legal proceedings around Trump to the “truth commissions” established in countries such as South Africa and Chile that cataloged and documented the misdeeds of autocratic governments. “In the short run,” she says, the threat to US democracy “may get worse before it gets better” as Trump, echoed by most of the GOP leadership and conservative media, portrays any accountability for him as a conspiracy against his followers.

    “But in the long run,” she says, establishing the evidence of any misconduct or criminal behavior through indictments, testimony and trials “that everyone can read is very, very important.” For anyone concerned about upholding the rule of law, Ben-Ghiat says, the choice by so many Republican leaders to preemptively dismiss any allegation against Trump “is just more proof of how important these procedures are.”

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  • Hackers threaten to leak stolen Reddit data if company doesn’t pay $4.5 million and change controversial pricing policy | CNN Business

    Hackers threaten to leak stolen Reddit data if company doesn’t pay $4.5 million and change controversial pricing policy | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Reddit’s month may be going from bad to worse.

    Hackers from the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, are threatening to leak 80 gigabytes of confidential data from Reddit that they claim to have stolen during a February breach, according to a post from the group on the dark web, which was reviewed by CNN and an independent cybersecurity expert.

    In their post, the hackers claim they first demanded a $4.5 million payout “for the deletion of the data and our silence” in April. After receiving no response, the group said it followed up on Friday with an additional demand: Reddit should withdraw a controversial new pricing policy that has sparked a protest from some of the platform’s most influential users.

    Reddit CTO Chris Slowe previously posted about a security incident that took place in early February. In the post, Slowe said the company’s “systems were hacked as a result of a sophisticated and highly-targeted phishing attack,” with hackers accessing “some internal documents, code, and some internal business systems.” Only employee data was accessed, according to the post.

    A Reddit spokesperson confirmed to CNN on Monday that BlackCat’s post relates to the February incident. The spokesperson reiterated that no user data was accessed, but declined to comment beyond that.

    More than 6,000 Reddit forums went dark last Monday in what was supposed to be a two-day protest over the company’s plan to begin charging steep fees for some third party apps to access its platform. A week later, more than 3,500 Reddit forums remain dark.

    While the ransom note appears to support the protestors’ cause, some experts are skeptical of BlackCat’s actual motives.

    “I suspect that ALPHV doesn’t actually care about the API pricing. They simply want future victims to see how much ongoing harm they can cause to increase the likelihood of them deciding that payment is the least painful option,” said Brett Callow, threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, who reviewed the post on the dark web.

    BlackCat, for its part, said it does not expect Reddit to meet its demands.

    “We are very confident that Reddit will not pay for its data,” the group wrote in the post on the dark web. “We expect to leak the data.”

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  • Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

    Oklahoma governor calls on officials to resign over recording of racist and threatening remarks | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The governor of Oklahoma is calling on four McCurtain County officials to resign after they allegedly participated in a secretly recorded conversation that included racist remarks about lynching Black people and talking about killing journalists.

    The McCurtain Gazette-News over the weekend published the audio it said was recorded following a Board of Commissioners meeting on March 6.

    The paper said the audio of the meeting was legally obtained, but the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that it was illegally recorded and is investigating. The sheriff’s office also said it believes the recording had been altered.

    “I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement Sunday. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office. I will not stand idly by while this takes place,” the statement said.

    The governor called for the immediate resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix. He also said he would ask the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the case.

    McCurtain County is in southeastern Oklahoma, about 200 miles from Oklahoma City.

    The recording was made hours after Gazette-News reporter Chris Willingham filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners, alleging they had defamed him and violated his civil rights, the newspaper reported.

    In the recording, Manning spoke of needing to go near the newspaper’s office and expressed concern about what would happen if she ran into Willingham, the Oklahoman reported, citing additional reporting from the Gazette-News.

    According to the Oklahoman report, Jennings said, “Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself?” and Manning replied: “Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his a**, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”

    Jennings replied that his father was once upset by something the newspaper published and “started to go down there and just kill him,” according to the Gazette-News.

    “I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said. Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.

    “I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion. “Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.

    In other parts of the recording, officials expressed disappointment that Black people could no longer be lynched, according to the paper.

    CNN has not been able to verify the authenticity of the recording or confirm who said what. CNN has reached out to all four county officials for comment.

    The Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association voted Tuesday to suspend the membership of Clardy, Manning and Hendrix, the group’s executive director told CNN.

    Willingham and his father, Bruce Willingham, the paper’s publisher, have been advised to temporarily leave town, CNN affiliate KJRH reported.

    “For nearly a year, they have suffered intimidation, ridicule and harassment based solely on their efforts to report the news for McCurtain County,” Kilpatrick Townsend, the law firm representing the Willingham family, told CNN in a statement.

    The McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple significant violations” of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act, which makes it “illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties.” It also said the recording has yet to be “duly authenticated or validated.”

    “Our preliminary information indicates that the media released audio recording has, in fact, been altered. The motivation for doing so remains unclear at this point. That matter is actively being investigated,” the statement said.

    The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has received an audio recording and is investigating, Communications Director Phil Bacharach said.

    The FBI wouldn’t confirm or deny whether it was involved in the investigation, with spokesperson Kayla McCleery saying it is agency policy not to comment.

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  • Donald Trump has been indicted following an investigation into a hush money payment scheme. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump has been indicted following an investigation into a hush money payment scheme. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s indictment by a New York grand jury has thrust the nation into uncharted political, legal and historical waters, and raised a slew of questions about how the criminal case will unfold.

    The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election.

    Though the indictment – which has been filed under seal – has yet to be unveiled, Trump and his allies have already torn into Bragg and the grand jury’s decision, blasting it as “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

    Here’s what we know about Trump’s indictment so far.

    Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment, CNN has reported. It remains under seal.

    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 Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair.

    A target in the probe has been the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization’s reimbursement to Cohen.

    According to court filings when Cohen faced federal criminal charges, Trump Org. executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original $130,000 payment and tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus. The company noted the reimbursements as a legal expense in its internal books. Trump has denied knowledge of the payment.

    Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Ahead of the indictment, prosecutors were weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how it reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Cohen, who said he advanced the money to Daniels. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York.

    Prosecutors were also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony and carries a sentence of a minimum of one year and as much as four years. To prove the case, prosecutors would need to show Trump intended to commit a crime.

    Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. While the former president was bracing for an indictment last week, he began to believe news reports that a potential indictment was weeks – or more – away.

    The former president has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the matter and continued his attacks on Bragg and other Democrats following news of the indictment.

    “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” the former president said in a statement Thursday. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    The former president had first been asked to surrender Friday in New York, his lawyer said, but his defense said more time was needed and he’s expected in court on Tuesday.

    As for the former president’s initial court appearance, it’ll look, in some ways, like that of any other defendant, and in others, look very different.

    First appearances are usually public proceedings. If an arrest of a defendant is not needed, arrangements are made with them or their lawyers for a voluntary surrender to law enforcement. With their first appearance in court, defendants are usually booked and finger-printed. And if a first appearance is also an arraignment, a plea is expected to be entered.

    Trump will have to go through certain processes that any other defendant must go through when a charge has been brought against him. But Trump’s status as a former president who is currently running for the White House again will undoubtedly inject additional security and practical concerns around the next steps in his case.

    Yes. This is the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

    That alone makes it historic. But Trump is currently a few months into his third White House bid, and his criminal case jolts the 2024 presidential campaign into a new phase, as the former president has vowed to keep running in the face of criminal charges.

    That’s one of many big questions here. So far, a number of congressional Republicans have rallied to Trump’s defense, attacking Bragg on Twitter and accusing the district attorney of a political witch hunt.

    “Outrageous,” tweeted House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican committee chairmen who has demanded Bragg testify before Congress about the Trump investigation.

    Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called the indictment “completely unprecedented” and said it is “a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”

    And as part of the response to the indictment, Trump and his team will be rolling out surrogates beginning to hit Democrats, the investigation and Bragg across various forms of media as they work to shape the public narrative, according to sources close to Trump.

    Yes.

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