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  • Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

    Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In December 2020, after then-Attorney General William Barr publicly refuted President Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged, White House staffers drafted a press release that would’ve called for the firing of anyone who disagreed with Trump’s claims, according to a new transcript from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

    The draft statement ended with, “Anybody that thinks there wasn’t massive fraud in 2020 election should be fired,” according to the deposition.

    The draft statement – which was never sent out, and hadn’t been revealed before Friday – was brought up during the committee’s deposition of Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the transcript. Congressional investigators told him that they likely obtained the statement from the National Archives, which turned over documents from the Trump White House.

    The committee also said during the Cipollone interview that White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson previously testified that Mark Meadows gave her the draft statement – which was a handwritten note – after an Oval Office meeting on the same day Barr made his public comments refuting Trump. It appears that the statement didn’t explicitly name Barr.

    The committee claimed that Hutchinson testified that she was instructed by Meadows to seek Cipollone’s approval before the statement was posted on social media. The committee said Hutchinson testified that Cipollone’s response was, “God, no.” Cipollone said he had no recollection of the draft statement or the episode.

    “By the way, I wasn’t fired,” Cipollone quipped to the committee.

    The Cipollone deposition is one of nearly 50 additional transcripts released Friday night by the January 6 committee. The latest batch contained interviews with key witnesses, including Trump White House insiders and lawyers who worked for the Trump campaign.

    Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary, said she had no recollection of discussing the 25th Amendment after the insurrection, according to a transcript of her deposition with the January 6 committee released Friday.

    Asked by congressional investigators if she had concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, Chao said that she didn’t go to many White House meetings by the end of Trump’s tenure. Chao was careful not to be too critical of Trump in her interview. She said she had not met with him in some time.

    “By that time, I did not have personal contact with him,” Chao said. “I did not go to the White House, there were no meetings, so I hadn’t been in close proximity to him.”

    Chao, who resigned on January 6, said she stepped down once she realized “the full ramifications of the actions that were taken by some people and the results that occurred.” Asked about Trump’s conduct that day, she said: “I wish he had acted differently.”

    Asked about the inner workings of the Trump White House, and who he trusted among his aides and advisers, Chao said, “I’m not so sure he trusted anyone.”

    Chao said she does not remember talking to other cabinet members that day – even though Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told the committee he spoke with her.

    Ivanka Trump, who served as senior White House adviser to her father, handed over text messages to the January 6 committee, a newly released transcript of her testimony reveals.

    It wasn’t previously known that she provided text messages to the panel, though video clips from her April deposition were featured during the committee’s public hearings this summer.

    The content of the texts messages remains unclear.

    The committee’s line of questioning did not delve into the contents of her texts, but instead veered into her father’s cell phone habits, including whether he ever sent and received text messages. Ivanka Trump said she “never” exchanged texts with her father on “any device.”

    Still, this is the latest example of how the committee obtained a wealth of evidence, including materials that weren’t previously known.

    Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-peddling attorney who helped Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, said Trump and his allies believed he couldn’t have lost because of his large “rallies” and “common sense,” according to a transcript of her deposition to the January 6 committee released Friday.

    She said that was the consensus in the room at a White House meeting that she attended with Trump, just a few days after the election. She told the committee that Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani was also there along with White House aides, according to the transcript.

    “He wanted to know the truth,” Powell said, referring to Trump. “And our general consensus was that the vast majority of people had poured out in support of the President. The rallies indicated that. All the information that we had indicated that. And the numbers that we saw on election night simply didn’t jibe with common sense.”

    She also claimed “math geniuses” reached out to her to tell her that Joe Biden’s victory was statistically impossible.

    The testimony shows just how paper-thin the fraud theories emanating from Trump’s orbit actually were.

    Despite her assertions, there is no evidence that the outcome of the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud or vote-rigging. Many of the conspiracies Powell has promoted about the election have been thoroughly debunked.

    During the presidential transition, Trump nearly appointed Powell as a special counsel to use the powers of the federal government to investigate her baseless voter fraud theories. Senior White House officials and attorneys vehemently opposed that idea and it never ended up happening.

    Cipollone told the January 6 committee that it “would have been a disaster” if Trump made Powell a special counsel, according to a transcript of his deposition.

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  • Congress passes first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack | CNN Politics

    Congress passes first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Congress has passed a measure aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, a major moment that marks the first legislative response to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and then-President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.

    The legislation, which would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, was included as part of a massive $1.7 trillion government funding bill that the Senate passed on Thursday and the House passed on Friday. It will now go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

    The measure to overhaul the Electoral Count Act would clarify that the vice president’s role in overseeing the electoral result certification in Congress is strictly ceremonial. It would raise the threshold to make it harder for lawmakers to force votes attempting to overturn a state’s certified result. Additionally, it includes provisions that would prevent efforts to pass along fake electors to Congress.

    The bill is the result of intense bipartisan negotiations that won over the support of top Republicans, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. But a number of House Republicans have pushed back on efforts to overhaul the election law. So with Republicans set to soon take control of the House, lawmakers pressed to send the bill to Biden’s desk, knowing it was likely to be doomed in the next Congress.

    Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, and Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, announced on Tuesday that the bill had been included as part of the broader government funding package.

    “We are pleased that our legislation has been included in the omnibus appropriations bill and are grateful to have the support of so many of our colleagues. We look forward to seeing this bill signed into law,” the senators said in a joint statement.

    The Electoral Count Act is an 1887 law that Trump has sought to exploit and create confusion over how Congress counts Electoral College votes from each state in a presidential election. Constitutional experts say the vice president currently can’t disregard a state-certified electoral result, but Trump pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the Electoral College certification in Congress as part of his pressure campaign. Pence refused to do so and, as a result, became a target of the former president and his mob of supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

    The new legislation seeks to make clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results – and does not have the power to unilaterally accept, reject or settle disputes over electors.

    It would also make it more difficult for members of Congress to attempt to overturn an election by increasing the threshold for the number of House and Senate members required to raise an objection to election results when a joint session of Congress meets to certify them.

    The legislation “raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate,” according to a fact sheet. Under current law, just one senator can join one House member in forcing each side to vote on whether to throw out results subject to an objection.

    The bill also includes changes intended to prevent efforts to install fake electors. For example, each state’s governor would be responsible for submission of a certificate that identifies electors – and Congress would not be able to accept a slate of electors submitted by any other official. “This reform would address the potential for multiple state officials to send Congress competing slates,” the fact sheet states.

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  • ‘He knows he lost’: Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump acknowledged he lost 2020 election | CNN Politics

    ‘He knows he lost’: Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump acknowledged he lost 2020 election | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Shortly after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told his aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, that President Donald Trump knew he lost but wanted to keep fighting to overturn the results, according to a newly released transcript from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

    The transcript of Hutchinson’s September 14, 2022, interview with the committee, which took place after she testified publicly, was released Thursday by the panel. It details post-election conversations that Hutchinson described, where multiple people said Trump acknowledged he had lost but was unwilling to concede.

    Hutchinson testified that Meadows told her on November 18, 2020, that Trump “has pretty much acknowledged that he’s lost,” the transcript says.

    “A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it, and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election,” Meadows told Hutchinson that day about Trump, according to her retelling of the conversation.

    Hutchinson also testified that in late December 2020, Meadows lamented to her that Trump would get upset any time he mentioned the transition, telling the committee that Meadows said something to the effect of: “he’s just so angry at me all the time I can’t talk to him about anything post-White House without him getting mad that we didn’t win.”

    “Later in the interview, Hutchinson told the committee she spoke with Meadows immediately after a call with Georgia officials on January 2, 2021, where Trump pushed officials to help overturn the election results there.”

    “He said something to the effect of, ‘he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. But we are going to keep trying. There’s a chance he didn’t lose. I want to pull this off for him,’” Hutchinson said, recounting what Meadows told her about Trump.

    In a September 15 deposition, Hutchinson echoed her testimony that she heard about Trump fighting with his security detail on January 6, according to another deposition transcript.

    Hutchinson, who faced an onslaught of public criticism and pushback from Trump allies after she revealed the story she was told about Trump supposedly lunging at the driver of his presidential SUV on January 6, 2021, because he was angry that they wouldn’t take him to the US Capitol. During that public hearing, she said she heard the story from Tony Ornato, who was serving as deputy White House chief of staff at the time.

    But after her public hearing and the avalanche of pushback, Hutchinson said she had “no doubts” about her previous testimony.

    “I have no doubts in the conversation that I had with Mr. Ornato on January 6th. I have no doubts in how I’ve relayed that story privately and publicly” Hutchinson said, according to the transcript, which was released Thursday.

    She also shared that Ornato made “sarcastic offhand remarks” to her about the story at least two times after he initially mentioned it – on January 19 and April 16 – according to the transcript.

    “I have no doubts about the two instances on January 19th and April 16th about the conversation,” Hutchinson added.

    In the April 16 call, Hutchinson described a phone conversation to committee investigators where Ornato made a comment like “it could be worse. The president could have tried to kill – he didn’t say kill – the president could have tried to strangle you on January 6.”

    Hutchinson acknowledged that Ornato did not specify he was referring to the incident on January 6 but she said, “I assumed from the context of our phone call and from the conversations that we had had while still at the White House that he was referencing that incident. I have no reason to believe that he was referencing any other incident.”

    In June, Hutchinson publicly testified that Ornato told her about an altercation between the former president and the head of his Secret Service detail when he was told he could not go to the Capitol on January 6.

    The committee wrote in its report summary, which was released Monday, that they were unable to get Ornato to corroborate Hutchinson’s testimony about the alleged altercation in the presidential SUV.

    The committee summary said both Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the committee about the Ornato conversation. But “Ornato professed that he did not recall either communication, and that he had no knowledge at all about the president’s anger.”

    The committee also released six more interview transcripts Thursday night, shedding new light on their closed-door sessions with key witnesses.

    In one transcript, Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, told the committee that Trump tried to get then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to hold briefings about supposed fraud tied to Dominion voting machines – but McEnany refused.

    “She felt uncomfortable promoting the Dominion conspiracy theory, and that the president had asked her to talk about that during interviews” Matthews told committee investigators. “He did request her to do briefings on it as well, but we did not.”

    Matthews added that Trump encouraged McEnany to also put forward these conspiracy theories on cable news hits, which she said made McEnany uncomfortable and led to her attempting to avoid Trump after the election.

    Matthews testified publicly over the summer about how Trump’s conduct on January 6 led her to resign by the end of that day.

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  • Read: The full January 6 investigation report from the House select committee | CNN Politics

    Read: The full January 6 investigation report from the House select committee | CNN Politics

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    READ: See the full 845-page report here

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  • House January 6 committee handing over investigative materials to DOJ | CNN Politics

    House January 6 committee handing over investigative materials to DOJ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has started handing over evidence and transcripts from its probe to the Department of Justice, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee parts of the DOJ’s investigation into the insurrection, sent a letter to the committee earlier this month requesting all of the information from the panel’s investigation, one of the sources told CNN.

    Smith’s investigators will ultimately have all of the evidence the House committee has obtained, the source said.

    The handover comes during a key week for the committee. The panel on Monday held its final public meeting, during which committee members voted to refer former President Donald Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges. The panel is slated to release its full final report on Wednesday.

    A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment. A spokesperson for the special counsel did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    The committee has been sending documents and transcripts over the course of the last week, the second source added, with the production focusing specifically on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s former election lawyer John Eastman.

    The panel has also started to share transcripts of witness interviews pertaining to the false slates of electors and the pressure campaign by Trump and his allies on certain states to overturn the 2020 election results.

    The department has also received Meadows’ text messages from the committee.

    Punchbowl News was first to report some of these details.

    California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the committee, said on CNN on Monday, “We’ve actually given some transcripts to the Department of Justice during the last month,” adding that the committee would begin making transcripts public on Wednesday.

    The DOJ investigation being led by Smith is examining Trump in its extensive probe into January 6, and it appears that federal investigators are already looking at much of the conduct that the select committee has highlighted.

    During its Monday meeting, the committee laid out the case for both the public and the Justice Department that there’s evidence to pursue criminal charges against Trump on multiple criminal statutes, including obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the United States, making false statements and assisting or aiding an insurrection.

    But whether the department brings charges will depend on whether the facts and the evidence support a prosecution, Garland, who will make the ultimate call on charging decisions, has said.

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  • Iran and Russia were too distracted to meddle in midterm elections, US general says | CNN Politics

    Iran and Russia were too distracted to meddle in midterm elections, US general says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Domestic unrest in Iran and Russia’s war in Ukraine may have distracted Tehran and Moscow from making more of an effort to influence or interfere in the 2022 US midterm election, a top US military cyberofficial said Monday.

    “We collectively saw much less focus from foreign adversaries, particularly the Russians” in targeting the 2022 election compared to previous elections, Maj. Gen. William J. Hartman, who leads the Cyber National Mission Force of US Cyber Command, the military’s offensive and defensive hacking unit, said at a press briefing at Fort Meade, home to Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

    Hartman said he was “surprised” by the relative lack of activity from the Russians and Iranians during the midterm election. The US military’s cyber forces have taken a more active role in defending US elections from foreign interference since 2018 by targeting computer networks used by Russia and others to try to sow discord.

    Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command, confirmed to reporters this month that the command conducted offensive and defensive cyber operations in an effort to protect the midterms from foreign interference and influence.

    Nakasone declined to go into details on the operations, but said the command focused on taking down the computer infrastructure used by foreign operatives “at key times.”

    “There was a campaign plan that we followed and it wasn’t just November 8. it covered before, during and until the elections were certified,” said Nakasone, who also leads the National Security Agency.

    Foreign governments tend to use established agencies to meddle in elections rather than create new organizations to do that on the fly, Hartman said. And the security services in Russia and Iran were preoccupied in the weeks and months before Americans went to the polls in November.

    Iranian security forces carried out a bloody crackdown on protesters this fall after a woman died in the custody of the so-called morality police. Russia’s military, meanwhile, pummeled Ukrainian cities with drone and missile strikes to try to turn the tide of the war.

    As they have since they were caught flat-footed by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, US officials prepared for a range of foreign actors to try to influence voters or interfere with the vote in 2022.

    Asked in July whether the war in Ukraine would distract Russia from interfering in the US midterm election, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “quite confident the Russians can walk and chew gum” and that US officials were preparing accordingly.

    But foreign operatives from Iran and Russia generally reused old tactics and tools in their influence operations during the US midterms rather than try anything brand new, Nakasone told reporters this month.

    While there weren’t any reports of high-impact foreign interference activity during the midterm elections, there were attempts by Russian, Iranian and Chinese operatives to influence voters, according to researchers.

    Suspected Russian operatives used far-right media platforms to denigrate Democratic candidates in battleground states just days before the elections, according to Graphika, a social media analysis firm. For their part, alleged Chinese operatives showed signs of engaging in more “Russian-style influence activities” that stoke American divisions ahead of the midterm vote, according to the FBI.

    On Election Day, pro-Russia hackers took responsible for a cyberattack that knocked the website of the Mississippi secretary of state’s website offline. The incident didn’t affect the tallying of votes.

    “It is likely that a primary objective of the identified pro-Russia actors was to build the perception of influencing the elections—potentially in hopes of supporting future narratives that would undermine the credibility of the election results,” Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm owned by Google, said in an analysis published Monday.

    Mandiant said it had “moderate confidence” that whoever ran that Russian hacktivist group’s channel on the Telegram messaging app was coordinating their operations with actors sponsored by Russia’s military intelligence agency.

    “This year some [foreign groups] seemed most interested in reinforcing the notion that they still posed a threat, even if they didn’t push too hard to actually affect outcomes” of the election, John Hultquist, Mandiant’s vice president of intelligence analysis, told CNN.

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  • Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

    Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate leaders unveiled a $1.7 trillion year-long federal government funding bill early Tuesday morning.

    The legislation includes $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding, according to a bill summary from Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

    The sweeping package includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies, boosts in spending for disaster aid, college access, child care, mental health and food assistance, more support for the military and veterans and additional funds for the US Capitol Police, according to Leahy’s summary and one from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    However, the bill, which runs more than 4,000 pages, left out several measures that some lawmakers had fought to include. An expansion of the child tax credit, as well as multiple other corporate and individual tax breaks, did not make it into the final bill. Neither did legislation to allow cannabis companies to bank their cash reserves – known as the Safe Banking Act. Also, there was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located.

    The spending bill is the product of lengthy negotiations between top congressional Democrats and Republicans. Lawmakers reached a “bipartisan, bicameral framework” last week following a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense domestic priorities. They worked through the weekend to craft the legislation.

    The Senate is expected to vote first to approve the deal this week and then send it to the House for approval before government funding runs out on December 23. The bill would keep the government operating through September, the end of the fiscal year.

    Congress originally passed a continuing resolution on September 30 to temporarily fund the government in fiscal year 2023, which began October 1.

    More aid for Ukraine: The spending bill would provide roughly $45 billion to help support Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia’s attack.

    About $9 billion of the funding would go to Ukraine’s military to pay for a variety of things including training, weapons, logistics support and salaries. Nearly $12 billion would be used to replenish US stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority.

    Also, it would provide $13 billion for economic support to the Ukrainian government.

    Other funds would address humanitarian and infrastructure needs, as well as support European Command operations.

    Emergency disaster assistance: The bill would appropriate more than $38 billion in emergency funding to help Americans in the west and southeast affected by recent natural disasters, including tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and wildfires. It would aid farmers, provide economic development assistance for communities, repair and reconstruct federal facilities and direct money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, among other initiatives.

    Overhaul of the electoral vote counting law: A provision in the legislation aims at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, in a direct response to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

    The changes would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which then-President Donald Trump tried to use to overturn the 2020 election.

    The legislation would clarify the vice president’s role while overseeing the certification of the electoral result to be completely ceremonial. It also would create a set of stipulations designed to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the accurate slate of electors from each state.

    Higher maximum Pell grant awards: The bill would increase the maximum Pell grant award by $500 to $7,395 for the coming school year. This would be the largest boost since the 2009-2010 school year. About 7 million students, many from lower-income families, receive Pell grants every year to help them afford college.

    Increased support for the military and veterans: The package would fund a 4.6% pay raise for troops and a 22.4% increase in support for Veteran Administration medical care, which provides health services for 7.3 million veterans.

    It would include nearly $53 billion to address higher inflation and $2.7 billion – a 25% increase – to support critical services and housing assistance for veterans and their families.

    The bill also would allocate $5 billion for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund, which provides additional funding to implement the landmark PACT Act that expands eligibility for health care services and benefits to veterans with conditions related to toxic exposure during their service.

    Beefing up nutrition assistance: The legislation would establish a permanent nationwide Summer EBT program, starting in the summer of 2024, according to Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger advocacy group. It would provide families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meal with a $40 grocery benefit per child per month, indexed to inflation.

    It would also change the rules governing summer meals programs in rural areas. Children would be able to take home or receive delivery of up to 10 days worth of meals, rather than have to consume the food at a specific site and time.

    The bill would also help families who have had their food stamp benefits stolen since October 1 through what’s known as “SNAP skimming.” It would provide them with retroactive federal reimbursement of the funds, which criminals steal by attaching devices to point-of-sale machines or PIN pads to get card numbers and other information from electronic benefits transfer cards.

    More money for child care: The legislation would provide $8 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a 30% increase in funding. The grant gives financial assistance to low-income families to afford child care.

    Also, Head Start would receive nearly $12 billion, an 8.6% boost. The program helps young children from low-income families prepare for school.

    Help to pay utility bills: The bill would provide $5 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Combined with the $1 billion contained in the earlier continuing resolution, this would be the largest regular appropriation for the program, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Home heating and cooling costs – and the applications for federal aid in paying the bills – have soared this year.

    Enhance retirement savings: The bill contains new retirement rules that could make it easier for Americans to accumulate retirement savings – and less costly to withdraw them. Among other things, the provisions would allow penalty-free withdrawals for some emergency expenses, let employers offer matching retirement contributions for a worker’s student loan payments and increase how much older workers may save in employer retirement plans.

    More support for the environment: The package would provide an additional $576 million for the Environmental Protection Agency, bringing its funding up to $10.1 billion. It would increase support for enforcement and compliance, as well as clean air, water and toxic chemical programs, after years of flat funding.

    It also would boost funding for the National Park Service by 6.4%, restoring 500 of the 3,000 staff positions lost over the past decade. This would be intended to help the agency handle substantial increases in visitation.

    Plus, the legislation would provide an additional 14% in funding for wildland firefighting.

    Additional funding for the US Capitol Police: The bill would provide an additional $132 million for the Capitol Police for a total of nearly $735 million. It would allow the department to hire up to 137 sworn officers and 123 support and civilian personnel, bringing the force to a projected level of 2,126 sworn officers and 567 civilians.

    It would also give $2 million to provide off-campus security for lawmakers in response to evolving and growing threats.

    Investments in homelessness prevention and affordable housing: The legislation would provide $3.6 billion for homeless assistance grants, a 13% increase. It would serve more than 1 million people experiencing homelessness.

    The package also would funnel nearly $6.4 billion to the Community Development Block Grant formula program and related local economic and community development projects that benefit low- and moderate income areas and people, an increase of almost $1.6 billion.

    Plus, it would provide $1.5 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which would lead to the construction of nearly 10,000 new rental and homebuyer units and maintain the record investment from the last fiscal year.

    Increased health care funding: The package would provide more money for National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. The funds are intended to speed the development of new therapies, diagnostics and preventive measures, beef up public health activities and strengthen the nation’s biosecurity by accelerating development of medical countermeasures for pandemic threats and fortifying stockpiles and supply chains for drugs, masks and other supplies.

    More resources for children’s mental health and for substance abuse: The bill would provide more funds to increase access to mental health services for children and schools. It also would invest more money to address the opioid epidemic and substance use disorder.

    Tiktok ban from federal devices: The legislation would ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-form video app, from federal government devices.

    Some lawmakers have raised bipartisan concerns that China’s national security laws could force TikTok – or its parent, ByteDance – to hand over the personal data of its US users. Recently, a wave of states led by Republican governors have introduced state-level restrictions on the use of TikTok on government-owned devices.

    Enhanced child tax credit: A coalition of Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates pushed hard to extend at least one provision of the enhanced child tax credit, which was in effect last year thanks to the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Their priority was to make the credit more refundable so more of the lowest-income families can qualify. Nearly 19 million kids won’t receive the full $2,000 benefit this year because their parents earn too little, according to a Tax Policy Center estimate.

    New cannabis banking rules: Lawmakers considered including a provision in the spending bill that would make it easier for licensed cannabis businesses to accept credit cards – but it was left out of the legislation. Known as the Safe Banking Act, which previously passed the House, the provision would prohibit federal regulators from taking punitive measures against banks for providing services to legitimate cannabis businesses.

    Even though 47 states have legalized some form of marijuana, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level. That means financial institutions providing banking services to cannabis businesses are subject to criminal prosecution – leaving many legal growers and sellers locked out of the banking system.

    FBI headquarters: There was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located, a major point of contention as lawmakers from Maryland – namely House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer – pushed to bring the law enforcement agency into their state. In a deal worked through by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the General Services Administration would be required to conduct “separate and detailed consultations” with Maryland and Virginia representatives about potential sites in each of the states, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

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  • Lawmakers to push through first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack by week’s end | CNN Politics

    Lawmakers to push through first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack by week’s end | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers reached an agreement to include in must-pass legislation a measure aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, marking the first legislative response to the US Capitol insurrection and then-President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.

    Several congressional sources told CNN that the legislation – to overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act – will be added to a bill to fund the federal government before Friday’s deadline to avoid a shutdown. If it becomes law, as is expected, the vice president’s role would be clarified to be completely ceremonial while overseeing the certification of the electoral result. It also would raise the threshold in Congress to make it harder for lawmakers to force votes attempting to overturn a state’s certified result and prevent efforts to pass along fake electors to Congress. The House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, called for the bill’s passage in a summary of its report released Monday.

    The bill is a result of intense bipartisan negotiations over several months that won over the support of top Republicans, including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, but has drawn pushback from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. With Republicans set to take control of the House within days, lawmakers pressed to send the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk knowing its fate is likely doomed in the next Congress.

    One part of the legislation is focused on modernizing and overhauling the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that Trump had sought to exploit and create confusion over how Congress counts Electoral College votes from each state. As part of that proposal, senators are attempting to clarify that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results.

    The bill includes a number of changes aimed at making sure that Congress can clearly “identify a single, conclusive slate of electors from each state,” the fact sheet says.

    This comes as revelations surfaced about an effort by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College process and install fake GOP electors in seven key states.

    The legislation creates a set of stipulations designed to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the accurate electors. For example, it states that each state’s governor would be responsible for submission of a certificate that identifies electors. Congress would not be able to accept a slate of electors submitted by any other official. “This reform would address the potential for multiple state officials to send Congress competing slates,” the fact sheet states.

    While constitutional experts say the vice president currently can’t disregard a state-certified electoral result, Trump pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the Electoral College certification in Congress as part of his pressure campaign. But Pence refused to do so and, as a result, became a target of the former President and his mob of supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

    The proposal “raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.” Currently, only one member of each body is required to make an objection.

    Final legislative text of the sweeping government funding bill has not yet been formally unveiled but is expected to be released imminently as lawmakers race the clock to avert a shutdown at the end of the week.

    The expectation on Capitol Hill is that Congress will be able to avoid a shutdown, but pressure is on for lawmakers as congressional leaders have little room for error given the tight timeline they are facing. Government funding is currently set to expire on Friday at midnight.

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  • 5 things to know for December 19: Jan. 6, Twitter, World Cup, Immigration, Turbulence | CNN

    5 things to know for December 19: Jan. 6, Twitter, World Cup, Immigration, Turbulence | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When you make a purchase at a coffee shop or casual eatery, an employee usually spins around a touch screen to show you suggested tip amounts – typically between 10% and 25%. Then, there’s an awkward moment as the worker (directly across from you) waits to see how much you tip while customers behind you peer over your shoulder. You then choose the highest option, reluctantly. It’s a familiar scenario that many people grapple with nowadays, and more shoppers are saying they feel stressed that a generous tip has become an etiquette norm instead of a low-pressure decision. Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    The January 6 committee investigating the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol is set to make announcements today about criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The panel has weighed criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and several members of his inner circle. A referral is a recommendation that the Justice Department investigate whether to charge the people in question, but the move is largely symbolic because it doesn’t obligate federal prosecutors to bring such a case. Whether the Justice Department brings charges will depend on whether the facts and the evidence support a prosecution, Attorney General Merrick Garland has said. Garland will make the ultimate call on any charging decisions.

    Elon Musk says he will step down as Twitter’s CEO if he’s voted out by a poll he tweeted Sunday. According to the poll, the option “yes” won by a margin of 57% to 43% – and Musk has said he would abide by the results. In several follow-up tweets, Musk suggested he was serious about leaving and made a vague threat about Twitter’s future if he is voted out. “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” Musk tweeted. Since buying Twitter for $44 billion and taking over as CEO in late October, Musk has been embroiled in numerous controversies for causing abrupt changes to platform and its workforce. The most recent change came over the weekend when Twitter banned links to certain other social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. The controversial policy was removed less than 24 hours after its initial introduction.

    Hear how Musk responded to journalists before he hung up mid-question

    Argentina won the 2022 World Cup on Sunday, beating France via a penalty shootout in one of the most thrilling finals in tournament history. Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi dazzled in his last World Cup match, scoring twice, making tournament history and finally hoisting the trophy. The streets of Buenos Aires were awash with blue and white as people poured out to celebrate. While the match in Qatar ended in glory for Messi as a fitting culmination of his extraordinary career, it was a sad outcome for France’s superstar Kylian Mbappé. France made a stunning comeback to force the final to extra time, but was unable to secure the win, falling short of becoming the first team to win back-to-back World Cup titles in 60 years. Now the countdown begins to the next men’s World Cup in 2026. It will be held in the US, Mexico and Canada.

    stefano pozzebon argentina world cup

    Fans in Argentina douse reporter while celebrating World Cup win

    As border authorities try to prepare for the scheduled lifting of Title 42 on Wednesday, officials in the Rio Grande Valley say they have encountered between 900 and 1,200 migrants daily during the past two weeks. These numbers are reminiscent of the 2019 surge, when agents at the border encountered at least 1,000 migrants a day, according to a federal law enforcement source. The termination of the Title 42 policy is expected to lead to an increase in border crossings since authorities will no longer be able to quickly expel migrants as has been done since March 2020. Meanwhile, two buses carrying migrants arrived in New York City on Sunday and up to 15 more are expected in the next few days. The city’s shelter system is already at capacity and should expect more than 1,000 additional asylum-seekers to arrive every week, Mayor Eric Adams said. Denver, Colorado, is also struggling to provide shelter for a growing number of migrants.

    At least 36 people on a Hawaiian Airlines flight were injured after their plane encountered “severe turbulence” on a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu on Sunday, authorities said. The turbulence occurred 15 to 30 minutes before the plane landed in Honolulu, carrying 278 passengers and 10 crew. Twenty passengers were taken to emergency rooms, and 11 patients were in serious condition, Honolulu Emergency Medical Services said in a statement Sunday. Among those transported to the hospital was a 14-month-old child. The patients’ injuries included a serious head injury, lacerations, bruising and loss of consciousness, Honolulu EMS said. One passenger, a college student on her way home for winter break, told CNN the turbulence escalated suddenly and “felt like free-falling.”

    Thai warship sinks in severe weather, leaving 31 crew missing

    A Royal Thai Navy warship sank in severe weather early today, leaving 31 of its crew of 106 sailors missing in stormy seas in the Gulf of Thailand, Thai authorities said. Search and rescue operations are underway for the missing crew. The 252-foot long vessel was built in the US and commissioned into the Thai Royal Navy in 1987. A retired US Navy captain said the Thai crew faced a difficult situation on such an old ship.

    ‘Avatar: Way of Water’ has earned $435 million at the global box office

    The highly anticipated “Avatar” sequel is packing theaters – but needs to make another $2 billion to break even with its expensive production cost.

    Rihanna shares first images of baby boy

    The wait is over. The musician and entrepreneur posted this cute video of her son “hacking” her phone.

    Why we can’t get enough of the ‘Wednesday’ dance

    Hello, my dear storm clouds. Glad to know I’m not the only one still dying over Wednesday Addams and this iconic scene from the Netflix series.

    Cecily Strong bids farewell to ‘Saturday Night Live’

    The actress’ departure is another gut-punch to the show’s lineup. Watch some of the emotional moments from her farewell here.

    Pope Francis orders Vatican to return Parthenon sculptures to Greece

    These 2,500-year-old sculptures have been held in the Vatican for more than a century. The pope is now giving them to the Greek Orthodox Church.

    1,500

    That’s how many exotic fish spilled into a Berlin hotel lobby after a giant aquarium burst into shards, injuring at least two people. None of the fish survived, officials said, adding that the cause of the incident is being investigated. The aquarium was 46 feet high and on display in the foyer of a Radisson Collection Hotel. 

    “Together, we must stand up against the disturbing rise in antisemitism. And together, we must stand up against bigotry in any of its forms. Our democracy depends on it.”

    – US Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking out against antisemitism at the National Menorah lighting Sunday night in New York City. The world’s largest menorah was lit to mark the start of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Jewish families around the world will light a candle in a menorah every night for eight nights to commemorate the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians and the re-dedication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem around 165 BC.

    rain and snow

    Severe storm and tornado threat continues for South as North sees more snow


    03:07

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    Check your local forecast here>>>

    The reason why your doughnut box is pink

    What do you prefer in the morning: bagels or doughnuts? Even if you’re firmly “Team Bagel,” you may make a switch after learning about the sweet history of pink doughnut boxes. (Click here to view) 

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  • January 6 committee considering how to handle uncooperative GOP lawmakers, Schiff says | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee considering how to handle uncooperative GOP lawmakers, Schiff says | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, said Sunday the panel is considering how to hold accountable the GOP lawmakers who defied their subpoenas.

    “We will also be considering what’s the appropriate remedy for members of Congress who ignore a congressional subpoena, as well as the evidence that was so pertinent to our investigation and why we wanted to bring them in,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    “That will be something we will be considering tomorrow,” Schiff added, noting that the panel has weighed whether it is better to criminally refer members of Congress to other parts of the federal government or if Congress should “police its own.” Such congressional mechanisms could include censure and referrals to the House Ethics Committee.

    Five House Republicans have been subpoenaed by the January 6 panel: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

    The select committee is set to hold its final public hearing on Monday and release its full report on Wednesday.

    The panel is expected to announce it will refer at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    The impact House referrals could have remains unclear because the Department of Justice special counsel investigation is already examining Trump in its extensive probe into January 6.

    But in addition to criminal referrals, January 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters that the panel could issue five to six other categories of referrals, such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals.

    “Censure was something that we have considered. Ethics referrals is something we have considered,” Schiff said Sunday, noting that the committee will disclose its decision Monday.

    CNN previously reported that the panel has also weighed criminal referrals for a number of Trump’s closest allies, including former Trump attorney John Eastman, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to multiple sources.

    Schiff reiterated Sunday that he believes there is evidence that Trump committed criminal offenses related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    “Viewing it as a former prosecutor, I think there’s sufficient evidence to charge the president,” he said. “The evidence seems pretty plain to me.”

    “This is someone who, in multiple ways, tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what is,” he added.

    Schiff declined to comment on the specific charges the committee is planning to refer to the Justice Department as it relates to the former president, but he made clear he thinks Trump violated multiple criminal statutes, including one for insurrection.

    “If you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match,” Schiff told Tapper when asked specifically about a charge of insurrection.

    “I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws. And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted,” he said.

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  • Israel deports French-Palestinian lawyer, accusing him of ‘terrorist activity’ in case Israeli group calls ‘gross violation of basic rights’ | CNN

    Israel deports French-Palestinian lawyer, accusing him of ‘terrorist activity’ in case Israeli group calls ‘gross violation of basic rights’ | CNN

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    Jerusalem
    CNN
     — 

    Israel deported a French-Palestinian lawyer it accused of organizing, inciting and planning “terrorist attacks” to France early Sunday morning, Israeli authorities said, in a case that an Israeli human rights organization called a “gross violation of basic rights.”

    Salah Hamouri’s Israeli residency was revoked two weeks ago based on accusations by Israel he was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to Israel’s interior ministry. The PFLP is designated by the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organization.

    “During his life he organized, incited and planned to carry out terrorist attacks himself and for the organization against citizens and prominent figures in Israel,” a statement from the interior ministry said.

    In a voice message posted on the Instagram account of the official Palestinian civil society campaign for Hamouri on Sunday, Hamouri said he was being “forcibly deported and uprooted from my homeland.”

    “I leave you today from prison to exile. But rest assured that I will always remain the person you know. Always loyal to you and to your freedom,” Hamouri said in the message.

    Hamouri, who had been in an Israeli prison since March on administrative detention without formal charges, has denied involvement in terrorist organizations, and human rights groups have condemned Israel’s actions.

    “Deporting a Palestinian from their homeland for breach of allegiance to the state of Israel is a dangerous precedent and a gross violation of basic rights,” human rights organization HaMoked said in a statement on Sunday.

    The Israel-based organization called Hamouri’s deportation a “gross violation of basic rights.”

    France’s Foreign Ministry said the deportation was “against the law.”

    The ministry said France has been working “to ensure that Mr. Salah Hamouri’s rights are respected, that he benefits from all means of recourse and that he can lead a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born, resides and wishes to live.”

    The statement from the foreign ministry expressed France’s “opposition to the expulsion of a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, an occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Israel disputes that east Jerusalem, which it captured in 1967, is occupied territory.

    Hamouri had been held previously by Israeli authorities. He has always maintained his innocence of Israeli accusations against him.

    In 2005 he was tried and convicted of working on a plan to assassinate Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, founder of the Shas ultra-orthodox political party.

    He was released in 2011 as part of an exchange of 1,027 Palestinian and other Arab prisoners held by Israel as part of a deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas in 2006.

    He had been living and working as a lawyer in Jerusalem since then, including doing work as a human-rights lawyer for Adameer, an organization that helps Palestinian prisoners. Adameer was outlawed by Israel earlier this year in a move condemned by UN officials.

    Hamouri was born in east Jerusalem, although he also holds French citizenship.

    Leah Tsemel, Hamouri’s lawyer, told CNN on Sunday that Hamouri’s case is a “test bullet” for the interior ministry to deny residency of east Jerusalem residents.

    “We will have to address the issue in principle in a petition to the Supreme Court soon regarding the unconstitutionality of denying residency to a person that was born in Jerusalem under occupation and does not have a duty of loyalty, the violation of which is the reason for denying his residency,” Zemel told CNN.

    HaMoked previously appealed the decision to revoke Hamouri’s residency and requested an injunction to prevent his deportation until its case challenging the legality of the law is heard, but the Supreme Court rejected both pleas.

    HaMoked said it will be able to file a new petition to the High Court once the new Israeli government takes power in the coming weeks.

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  • Trump calls on his supporters to stand down on McCarthy opposition | CNN Politics

    Trump calls on his supporters to stand down on McCarthy opposition | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump has weighed in on the contentious battle confronting GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in his bid to be the chamber’s next speaker, with the former president calling on his supporters in Congress to halt their opposition tactics against McCarthy and stop “playing a very dangerous game.”

    “Look, I think this: Kevin has worked very hard. I think he deserves the shot,” Trump said Friday in an interview with Breitbart News. “Hopefully he’s going to be very strong and going to be very good and he’s going to do what everybody wants.”

    The former president cited the scenario from 2015, when then-House Speaker John Boehner resigned after clashes with conservative GOP hard-liners and was then replaced by Paul Ryan.

    “It’s a very dangerous game. Some bad things could happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a strange person but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse,” Trump told Breitbart. “Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. I think he goes down as the worst speaker in history.”

    McCarthy is in a fight for the speakership with five hardline Republicans opposing him. With House Republicans holding 222 seats in the next Congress, such opposition would deny him the 218 votes he’d need to be elected speaker.

    McCarthy has negotiated behind closed doors over chamber rules that his detractors want to weaken the speakership, including allowing an individual member to call for a vote to oust the speaker. That’s something the California Republican has resisted so far.

    McCarthy and Trump had a brief falling out following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, with McCarthy even suggesting on a private phone call that was recorded that Trump should resign. But the two quickly made amends with McCarthy traveling to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida just a few weeks later.

    In his interview with Breitbart, Trump didn’t name those lawmakers who oppose McCarthy’s speakership bid but said he is “friendly” with many of them and they are supporters of his.

    “I’m friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them. But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Trump said. “You could end up with some very bad situations. I use the Boehner to Paul Ryan example. You understand what I’m saying? It could be a doomsday scenario.”

    McCarthy said Friday that the five conservative holdouts – Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have not budged in their opposition to him and offered dire warnings that House Republicans’ hard-fought narrow majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.

    “We’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, taking to the airwaves to argue that the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril and that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy.”

    McCarthy’s comments represent a sharp escalation in his public pressure campaign against critics, including Biggs, who last week announced his own bid for the speaker’s gavel.

    And Trump isn’t the only one signaling to House Republicans to get in order. The conservative-leaning editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday that those looking to take down McCarthy “don’t seem to have any constructive reason to oppose Mr. McCarthy beyond a desire to grab the media spotlight or blow everything up.”

    Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”

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  • Georgia grand jury investigating Trump election interference is winding down and has begun writing final report | CNN Politics

    Georgia grand jury investigating Trump election interference is winding down and has begun writing final report | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A special grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is winding down its work, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    The Atlanta-area special grand jury has largely finished hearing witness testimony and has already begun writing its final report, the sources said, an indication that prosecutors will soon be deciding whether to seek criminal charges and against whom.

    In Georgia, special grand juries are not authorized to issue indictments. The final report serves as a mechanism for the panel to recommend whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue indictments in her election interference investigation. Willis could then go to a regularly empaneled grand jury to seek indictments.

    “It’s a significant step, it’s the culmination of work by prosecutors and the special grand jury. But it shouldn’t be taken as any kind of guarantee of a conviction down the road,” said Michael J. Moore, former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. “It’s just the beginning.”

    Prosecutors had hoped to move ahead with indictments as early as December, sources previously told CNN. But court fights for testimony from high-profile witnesses, such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – all of whom were ordered to testify before the special grand jury – have likely shifted indictments to 2023, according to a person familiar with the situation.

    Willis has already informed Rudy Giuliani and 16 Republicans who served as pro-Trump fake electors in the state that they are targets of her investigation. She has also been scrutinizing Trump and other top lieutenants, including Meadows.

    The next phase in the Georgia investigation comes at a politically and legally perilous time for Trump. His nascent 2024 presidential campaign is off to a sputtering start, and he is under Justice Department scrutiny both for his handling of classified government documents after leaving the White House and for his activities surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and efforts to upend the 2020 election results. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing several Trump associates who were involved in the unsuccessful effort to overturn the presidential election.

    Some outside legal experts have cautioned, though, that any case against Trump would be far from a slam dunk.

    When there’s a public case, “the games begin. It will be fought in the court of law and the court of public opinion,” Moore said.

    If prosecutors hope to bring a successful case against Trump or his allies, they will have to prove that their activities extended well beyond the usual efforts to win an election and veered into criminal territory.

    “I just think when you’re taking on a political figure like this, it’s a tougher case,” Moore said. “Every candidate wants to win, every candidate does everything they can to win, and they explore every option.”

    Willis has already spent more than a year digging into Trump and his associates, kicking off her investigation in early 2021, soon after a January call became public in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the Peach State in the presidential election.

    Trump lost to Joe Biden in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes in 2020. The former president has insisted that there was nothing problematic about his activities contesting the 2020 election in Georgia and has referred to his call with Raffensperger as a “perfect” phone call.

    Willis’ investigation has long since expanded beyond the call to encompass false election fraud claims made to state lawmakers; the fake elector scheme; efforts by unauthorized individuals to access voting machines in one Georgia county; and threats and harassment against election workers.

    The special grand jury – made up of 23 jurors and three alternates – was seated in May 2022, with the power to subpoena witnesses and documents and otherwise investigate the effort to subvert Georgia’s presidential election results. The panel is authorized to continue its work until May 2023, but Willis has signaled for months that she hoped to conclude the grand jury’s investigative work well before then.

    A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

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  • The real revelation from the ‘Twitter Files’: Content moderation is messy | CNN Business

    The real revelation from the ‘Twitter Files’: Content moderation is messy | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Before then-President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter after the Capitol riot last January, there was a debate among some employees about what to do with the company’s most prominent and controversial user.

    Some employees questioned whether Trump’s final tweets on the platform actually violated the company’s policies, according to internal documents. Others asked if the tweets could be considered veiled (or “coded”) efforts to dodge Twitter’s rules and requested research to better understand how users might interpret them.

    The high-stakes debate among several employees, including several top execs, was revealed earlier this week in the latest edition of the “Twitter Files,” a tranche of internal company documents provided to and tweeted out by several journalists unaffiliated with major news organizations. The releases so far have focused on some of the social media company’s most high-profile, and controversial, content moderation decisions.

    The Twitter Files reports appear aimed at calling into question the integrity of Twitter’s former leadership and riling up the right-leaning user base that new owner Elon Musk has increasingly courted. The latest release, for example, appeared to imply that Twitter executives had sidestepped the platform’s rules when deciding to ban Trump and instead sought a justification to support a partisan decision they’d already made. That interpretation, while not fully supported by the documents, was echoed by Musk, who has cheered and seemingly sanctioned the release of the documents. But outside of Musk’s core base, reaction to the Twitter Files, which provide little new insight into the company’s policy and decision-making, has been largely muted.

    Strip away the spectacle and partisan discord and what the Twitter Files show is something that is arguably both far less explosive but nonetheless should give all users pause, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum. In the absence of meaningful coordination or government oversight, a select few powerful tech platforms are left to make incredibly impactful and difficult decisions around content moderation — and, even when well intentioned, the people at these companies often struggle with how messy that process can be.

    In moments of crisis, platforms are generally on their own to determine how to weigh sometimes competing priorities — protecting speech versus protecting users — and often under immense public scrutiny and with pressure to act quickly. These companies have created extensive platform guidelines, set up content moderation councils, partnered with fact-checkers and invested heavily in artificial intelligence, but at the end of the day, it can still just be a group of employees trying to sort through unprecedented decisions such as whether or not to ban a sitting US president.

    “There’s no decision that’s cost free,” said Matt Perault, tech policy consultant and professor at University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. “The challenge is that any decision [social media companies] make, including the decision not to act, will have consequences and they need to figure out which consequences they’re comfortable with … I do think it is much harder than most people seem to think it would be.”

    The process doesn’t necessarily always yield the right result. Former Twitter head of trust and safety Yoel Roth has acknowledged the company may not have made the right call in how to handle the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. And Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey reiterated in an online post Tuesday that he believes the company acted wrongly in removing Trump’s account.

    “We did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society,” Dorsey wrote, although he added, “I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time. Of course mistakes were made.”

    Monday’s Twitter Files released from journalist Bari Weiss appeared to present screenshots showing Twitter employees debating how to handle Trump’s tweets in the wake of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack as proof that the company’s leadership wanted to sidestep its rules to ban Trump. But the screenshots could also be interpreted as showing a group of employees challenging each other to find the best possible way to apply the company’s rules during a critical moment that no one could have perfectly prepared for.

    The process of involving multiple staffers and teams and relying on research for high-profile decisions does not appear out of line with how Twitter and other social platforms make content moderation decisions, especially in crisis situations.

    “This is how the whole process went … this is not really out of the ordinary,” one former Twitter executive told CNN, noting that the various teams involved in content decisions would push each other to consider context and information they might not have thought of as they worked through how to handle difficult issues. “I think these conversations look like people were trying to be really thoughtful and careful,” the former executive said.

    It’s not just Twitter that wrestles with tough decisions, including around Trump. Meta also had a monthslong back-and-forth with its internal team and its external oversight board about its own decision to suspend Trump on Facebook and Instagram.

    The Files also point to several instances in which Twitter leaders changed, or considered changing, the company’s policies as evidence that they had ulterior motives. For example, there was a screenshot of a Slack message from an unnamed employee the day after Trump’s ban discussing a desire to address medical misinformation and “getting to a place of improved maturity in how our policies are actualized.” But examining emergent concerns and considering whether they might require new or updated policies seems to be precisely the job of social media trust and safety teams.

    The “Twitter Files” threads appear to have been written “with a very clear agenda,” the former executive said. “What they seem to have missed … is just how much power and influence was sitting on the shoulders of a very small number of people.”

    Even Dorsey in his Tuesday night post called for a radical overhaul of how social media works that would involve taking away the power of big social media platforms, including the one he co-founded. “I generally think companies have become far too powerful,” Dorsey said. He added that he is pushing for the growth of decentralized social media that is not controlled by any one corporation or individual, and where users can choose their own forms of content moderation.

    Still, the Twitter Files reports show just how many of the company’s employees and teams were involved in the deliberations over difficult content decisions. According to the former Twitter executive, that was by design. “Twitter’s process was designed to make sure that the decision doesn’t come down to just one person,” they said. “The alternative is that you wait until Jack Dorsey decides he doesn’t like somebody and you take it down.”

    And despite the often-charged rhetoric about the people making content decisions at social media companies, “the people who do this work are thoughtful, are skilled,” Perault said. “They’re deeply connected to the technology, to the products, to the social implications of their products.”

    The process under Musk now appears to be much different — the new Twitter owner has fired many of the employees that had been responsible for safety on the platform, he’s used easily-manipulated Twitter polls to justify major content rulings, he’s done away with Twitter’s council of outside trust and safety experts and he’s based at least one decision on who to allow on the platform on his personal feelings.

    It’s hard to argue that process isn’t messy, too.

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  • January 6 defendant arrested for allegedly planning to kill FBI agents who had investigated him | CNN Politics

    January 6 defendant arrested for allegedly planning to kill FBI agents who had investigated him | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Tennessee man already facing charges in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was arrested for allegedly planning to kill FBI agents, including those who had been investigating him, the Justice Department announced Friday.

    Edward Kelley, who was previously charged with assaulting an officer during the Capitol riot, and Austin Carter, also from Tennessee, have been charged with conspiracy, retaliating against a federal official, interstate threats and solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

    According to an affidavit, Kelley and Carter had a list of names of 37 law enforcement members to assassinate.

    The list noted which officers were involved in Kelley’s arrest in May in Knoxville, Tennessee, on the January 6-related charges or present during the search of his home, and it included some of their phone numbers, according to the affidavit.

    An “acquaintance” of Kelley and Carter gave the list to police and began cooperating with investigators, according to the affidavit.

    CNN has reached out to Kelley’s attorney. Carter’s attorney, Joshua Hedrick, told CNN in a statement, “Our investigation is only just beginning, but we are looking forward to providing a zealous defense of Mr. Carter, who has asserted his innocence.”

    In a news release Friday, the Justice Department said Kelley not only discussed attacking law enforcement agents with Carter and their unnamed acquaintance, but also planned to attack the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee Field Office.

    “If I’m extradited to DC or you don’t hear about my status within 24 or 48 hours..if they are coming to arrest me again, start it,” Kelley told the acquaintance during a recorded call Wednesday, according to the affidavit. “You guys are taking them out at their office. What you and [Carter] need to do is recruit as many as you can…and you’re going to attack their office.”

    When the acquaintance asked if Carter was in support of part of Kelley’s plans, Carter told the individual that “this is the time, add up or put up” and “to definitely make sure you got everything racked, locked up and loaded.”

    Kelley and Carter will remain detained pending further hearings.

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  • As House January 6 committee winds down, it is abandoning efforts to subpoena phone records | CNN Politics

    As House January 6 committee winds down, it is abandoning efforts to subpoena phone records | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is dropping several of its pursuits for January 6-related phone records, according to court filings this week, as the panel winds down before it expires at the end of this year.

    The committee sent out dozens of subpoenas seeking call logs, including to major phone companies, as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. But several Trump allies sued, contesting the committee’s authority, and Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile agreed not to turn over any data to the House while those lawsuits were litigated in court. Few of the cases have been resolved.

    That means the House select committee will not be able to incorporate in its final report without some of the information it long sought about the communications of top witnesses around Donald Trump and the White House in late 2020 and January 2021. The panel plans to release the report next week.

    This week, the committee withdrew its phone-records subpoenas related to Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, White House aide Stephen Miller, elections attorney Cleta Mitchell, conservative political activist Roger Stone, some January 6 Capitol riot defendants and Amy Harris, a photojournalist who spent time with top members of the Proud Boys around January 6, 2021, according to filings in seven House subpoena challenges that were pending in the DC District Court.

    “On December 12, 2022, Plaintiffs were informed by counsel for the Select Committee that the Select Committee will be withdrawing the subject subpoena issued by the Committee,” one court filing, from lawyers representing members of the Oath Keepers extremist group, wrote in one recent request to drop a lawsuit.

    Some of the subpoenas were issued a year ago.

    The committee declined to comment.

    While these witnesses and some others successfully blocked the committee from obtaining their phone records, the panel was able to access unprecedented amounts of information in their investigation, including through other phone records subpoenas, other document requests and witness interviews. Some of that information was on display in a series of public hearings over the summer.

    Even after the public hearings, the committee tried to collect more data as it wrapped up its work this year. For example, the committee won access to Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward’s phone data after she lost a challenge in court and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

    But they never got all of the phone records they sought from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who over the past year became one of the committee’s top pursuits.

    After turning over some 2,000 text messages to the committee, Meadows lost a court case challenging committee subpoenas for his phone records and for his testimony. Yet Meadows is still trying to challenge those subpoenas in court, leaving the House with little ability to force him to testify before the end of the Congress.

    Another subpoena target, Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, said in a statement the committee had informed his lawyer it is withdrawing a subpoena for his phone records. He has been challenging the subpoena to Verizon for his phone logs since last December. Alexander noted that he did testify for hours before the committee and later before a federal grand jury investigating January 6 and efforts to overturn the election.

    “I did nothing wrong except to exercise my First Amendment rights to protest the fraud that occurred in the 2020 election,” Alexander said in the statement.

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  • Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

    Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    It is the most productive time of year on Capitol Hill – after the election and before Republicans take over the House of Representatives – when the current Congress tries to cram some of its most vital work into a few short weeks.

    The US government is up against some hard deadlines, a narrow timeline and a whole lot of unfinished business.

    Lawmakers need to avert a government shutdown, authorize Pentagon policy, decide what to do with former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and wrap up the work of the House January 6, 2021, committee.

    If they can find the time, lawmakers could also raise the debt ceiling and safeguard future elections.

    Here’s what to watch for in the twilight of 2022:

    First, the government runs out of authority to spend money on Friday, December 16. The House and Senate will have to act before then to avert a government shutdown.

    Second, the newly elected Congress will be sworn in on January 3. Republicans will then be in charge of the House, and Democrats will have a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Everything resets in the new Congress, and lawmakers will have to start from scratch on anything they don’t finish up this month.

    Rather than pass a dozen funding bills in turn, lawmakers are poised to roll all the spending bills for the massive federal government into one bill that could approach or exceed $1.5 trillion.

    The problem is that they’re still negotiating, and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have not reached an agreement on how much the government can spend, much less the specifics. They’re still $26 billion apart, according to Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. The most likely current scenario is the House and Senate each pass short-term, one-week funding bills to keep the lights on while they continue to hash out the larger funding bill.

    While officials have emphasized a government shutdown is unlikely, federal agencies have been warned to prepare for one per standard procedure.

    One major looming question is whether Senate Republicans and Democrats can agree on a bill to fund the government for a full year or whether they have to punt to the next Congress. Democrats will want to avoid that fate since the GOP-controlled House will likely insist on spending cuts as soon as it can. Read more in CNN’s full report that includes reporting from Capitol Hill and the White House.

    It’s not yet clear who will lead Republicans in the House next year, much less how they would react to an immediate funding fight if only a short-term spending bill can get through by January.

    The current GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, does not yet have the votes of many of the most conservative Freedom Caucus Republicans, and he’s being encouraged to take more concrete stands against spending. Finding a funding agreement that can pass through the House and the Senate and get President Joe Biden’s signature gets much more difficult starting January 3.

    In addition to writing checks, Congress authorizes government activity through policy bills, including the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $858 billion in annual defense spending.

    It’s a sprawling endeavor, and this year’s version passed by the House gives members of the military a 4.6% pay raise, gives new support to Ukraine and NATO, and retools US air power and land defense efforts. It also rescinds a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for service members, a move that Biden has opposed.

    Senators are expected to take up the bill this week. It should get bipartisan support, but will also eat up valuable time on the Senate floor, where Democrats also want to push through judicial nominees. Read more about the defense bill.

    One thing Democrats would like to do – but probably, at this point, cannot – is raise the debt ceiling.

    Republicans, particularly in the House, plan to use the nation’s borrowing limit as a bargaining chip to force spending cuts next year. The current debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion will likely be reached in the coming weeks, which means raising it will be a major fight early in 2023.

    How much more does the government spend than it takes in? This is from a CNN Business report Monday: “For fiscal year 2023, which started in October, the government is running a deficit of $336 billion, which is $20 billion narrower than the comparable year-ago period.”

    Republicans will shut down the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection when they take control in January. GOP lawmakers plan to flip the script and investigate the committee’s activity.

    But first, the committee, which features Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, will issue its much-anticipated report on December 21. Also look for the committee to recommend the Department of Justice prosecute Trump or members of his inner circle.

    Meanwhile, Jack Smith, the newly appointed special counsel, has been busy ramping up a pair of criminal probes involving the former president, all of which could explode into public view if charges are ultimately brought. Read the latest on Smith’s work.

    Now that the House Ways and Means Committee has six years of Trump’s tax returns, it must figure out what to do with them in just a few weeks.

    There’s probably no time for a thorough review, and Republicans will have little appetite for a Trump tax investigation when they take control of the House.

    Democrats could move to make some of Trump’s tax information public – on top of what was already published by The New York Times in 2020. But there could be a political cost to simply releasing the returns since Democrats obtained them in order to scrutinize IRS audit policy. Read more about Trump’s taxes.

    It’s a bipartisan idea to make some major clarifications to election law and cut down on the possibility of another January 6, 2021. Read here about what’s in the bill, which is specifically designed to guard against Insurrection 2.0.

    But there may be no time to pass the proposal – there are similar but competing versions in the House and Senate. The Senate version, in particular, has bipartisan support. Republicans in the House may not be interested in the legislation once they take control in January.

    If the Electoral Count Act can pass, it could be slipped into that massive spending bill. It hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, but this could be a good example of lawmakers working together.

    But that’s a very open question, since that massive spending bill has not yet been put together.

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  • The mass unbanning of suspended Twitter users is underway | CNN Business

    The mass unbanning of suspended Twitter users is underway | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Thousands of previously banned Twitter users, including members of the far-right and users sharing blatant misinformation, have begun to have their accounts restored to the platform, according to an independent analysis.

    The mass restoration of accounts comes after new owner Elon Musk said late last month that he would offer “general amnesty” to many who had been removed from the platform. In following through on that commitment, however, Musk risks further alienating other users and advertisers, and exacerbating concerns among watchdog groups about the rise of hate speech on the platform under his ownership (a fact Musk has attempted to refute).

    Among those recently unbanned are a range of large and small accounts, including users promoting NFTs and cryptocurrencies, users tweeting about sports, many users tweeting in languages other than English, as well as both users that appear to be left-leaning and pro-Trump, according to observations by CNN.

    But the restored accounts also include far-right figures such as Andrew Anglin, a self-professed white supremacist who founded the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, and Patrick Casey, who is associated with the far-right group “America First” and was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee for his involvement in the Capitol riot.

    A number of accounts restored in recent days, including many with thousands of followers, used their first tweets in years to thank Musk for allowing them back on the platform, according to a review of their posts by CNN. Some also quickly began sharing conspiracy theories about issues such as Covid-19 and the 2020 US Presidential election.

    A data set of many of the unbanned accounts compiled by researcher and software developer Travis Brown, who worked for Twitter for a year in 2014 and last year began a project tracking hate speech on the platform, shows dozens of users who have had their bans reversed are using QAnon-related phrases or hashtags in their account bios. The dataset was built using Twitter’s API and a tool Brown had originally built to observe and track high-profile Twitter suspensions.

    The accounts that have been restored includes “a really strange mix of accounts” that includes apparent far-right extremists and QAnon adherents, but also, for example, a Miley Cyrus fan account that has been repeatedly suspended and appears aimed mostly at growing a large following, Brown said.

    But Brown added that other accounts he has observed as part of his hate speech tracking project have yet to be reinstated, raising questions about the criteria Twitter is using to restore previously banned accounts, although it’s possible Musk’s reinstatement process will take time. Many users on Twitter have also raised questions about Musk’s move last week to again suspend Kanye West, who has made numerous antisemitic comments, while restoring the accounts of other white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. In another instance, Musk tweeted that he would not restore Alex Jones’s account because of a personal preference.

    “I’ve found it really hard … to generalize about how and why certain accounts are allowed back,” Brown said.

    Twitter, which has made substantial cuts to its public relations team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment and questions on the number of previously banned accounts restored or its process for doing so.

    Musk said last month that he would begin restoring most previously banned accounts to the platform, after having polled his Twitter followers about whether to offer “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The poll, which garnered more than three million votes, finished with more than 72% voting in favor of the proposition. It is not clear how Musk and Twitter’s remaining staff are sorting out which accounts were banned for spam or illegal activity.

    The new Twitter owner had already begun to restore the accounts of some prominent, controversial users that had previously been banned or suspended from the platform, most notably former President Donald Trump, as well as conservative Canadian podcaster and all-beef diet promoter Jordan Peterson and the right-leaning satire website Babylon Bee.

    Some of the accounts restored in the latest wave have already raised concerns from civil rights groups. The Anti-Defamation League on Monday described as “deeply disturbing” Twitter’s decision to allow Anglin back on the platform.

    “The return of extremists to the platform has the potential to supercharge the spread of extremist content and disinformation, and this in turn could lead to the increased harassment of users,” Yael Eisenstat, vice president of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society said in a statement to CNN. “Musk’s actions to date show that he is not committed to a transparent process that incorporates the best practices we have learned from civil society groups.”

    Before taking over Twitter, Musk said he disagreed with the platform’s policy of permanent bans, which were typically doled out only after a user had received a number of “strikes” for repeatedly violating Twitter’s policies, including those against Covid-19 or civic integrity misinformation.

    Shortly after acquiring the company, Musk said he would create a “content moderation council” prior to making major changes, but there is no evidence such a group was ever formed or involved in the decisions to bring back violative accounts. Instead, Musk has appeared to make the decisions himself.

    Musk and Twitter have repeatedly stressed that the platform’s rules have not changed, despite restoring accounts that had repeatedly violated its rules and ceasing enforcement of the company’s policy prohibiting Covid-19 misinformation. In a blog post last month, Twitter said that its trust and safety team “remains strong and well-resourced, and automated detection plays an increasingly important role in eliminating abuse.” Content that violates Twitter’s rules, it added, will be demoted on the platform.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety who left the company following Musk’s takeover, criticized the billionaire Twitter owner’s top-down approach to content decisions in an interview with journalist Kara Swisher last month, suggesting that the platform had started to be run by “dictatorial edict rather than by a policy.” He also raised concerns about layoffs that hit Twitter’s safety teams.

    Restoring additional, previously banned accounts could exacerbate several big issues Twitter is currently facing. It could further alienate Twitter’s advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform in the wake of the chaos since Musk took over and out of fear that their ads could end up running alongside objectionable content. Musk has said the departure of key Twitter advertisers in recent weeks has led to a “massive drop in revenue” for the company.

    Ads for major brands, including Kia, Amazon, Snap and Uber, have already begun to appear alongside tweets from reinstated accounts such as Anglin’s, according to reporting from the Washington Post and observations by CNN. (Kia told CNN it “continues to monitor the evolving Twitter environment and work closely with their teams on advertisement placement and usage.” The other brands did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.)

    It could also draw more attention from Apple, which Musk previously tweeted had threatened to remove Twitter from its app store. Musk later said that the concern had been resolved following a meeting with Tim Cook, but Apple has previously shown a willingness to remove social media platforms from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate hate speech and other potentially harmful content. Getting booted from Apple’s app store would be detrimental to Twitter’s business by making it harder for the iPhone maker’s more than one billion global customers to access the app, and difficult if not impossible for iPhone users to receive app updates.

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  • January 6 committee ends meeting on criminal referrals | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee ends meeting on criminal referrals | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection concluded its meeting on Sunday where members discussed criminal referrals, multiple sources told CNN.

    The subcommittee tasked with investigating criminal referrals presented its recommendations to the full panel at a 1 p.m. ET virtual meeting, but it is unclear if those recommendations were officially adopted. A source described the meeting as “successful” but did not elaborate.

    “We are as a subcommittee, several of us that were charged with making the recommendations about referrals, going to be making that recommendation to the full committee today,” panel member Rep. Adam Schiff said prior to the meeting on CBS “Face the Nation.” Members on the committee would then need to approve the recommendations.

    The panel is weighing criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and a number of other individuals, sources say, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, right wing lawyer John Eastman, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as CNN previously reported.

    While the referrals would largely be symbolic in nature – as the Justice Department has already undertaken a sprawling investigation into the US Capitol attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election – committee members have stressed that the move serves as a way to document their views for the record.

    The decision has loomed large over the committee. Members of the panel have been in wide agreement that Trump and some of his closest allies have committed a crime when he pushed a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, as they’ve laid out in their hearings. But they have long been split over what exactly to do about it.

    “We are in common agreement about what our approach should be. I’m not ready or authorized at this point to tell you what that is,” Schiff, a California Democrat, said. “I think we are all certainly in agreement that there is evidence of criminality here. And we want to make sure that the Justice Department is aware of that.

    Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told reporters Friday he expected to reach a decision on criminal referrals at Sunday’s virtual meeting. But Schiff reiterated on Sunday that the committee will wait to announce its decision until December 21, when it plans to present the rest of its report.

    Schiff stressed his view on Sunday that criminal referrals from the committee make “an important statement, not a political one, but a statement about the evidence of an attack on the institutions for our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power that Congress – examining an attack on itself – is willing to report criminality.”

    “So I think it’s an important decision in its own right if we go forward with it,” he said. “And one that the Department ought to give due consideration to.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • As more in North Carolina regain power, investigators probe domestic terrorism and threats against power infrastructure across the US | CNN

    As more in North Carolina regain power, investigators probe domestic terrorism and threats against power infrastructure across the US | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A growing number of reported threats to power infrastructure are under investigation following attacks on substations in the South and on the West Coast as electricity becomes a more critical need in winter.

    Even before the gun assaults Saturday in Moore County, North Carolina, wiped out power for days to thousands, at least five electricity substations in Oregon and Washington had been attacked in November, according to energy companies.

    And now, the FBI is involved after reports of shots fired Wednesday near a power station in Ridgeway, South Carolina, a Duke Energy spokesperson told CNN. No outages or known property damage was reported at the Wateree Hydro Station, spokesperson Jeff Brooks said.

    While no motive or suspect behind the North Carolina attacks has been identified, investigators are zeroing in on two possible threads centered on extremist behavior: writings by extremists on online forums encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure and a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ+ events across the nation by domestic extremists, law enforcement sources told CNN.

    Though investigators have no evidence connecting the Moore County outage to a drag event that began there around when the lights went out, the timing and context of armed confrontations around similar LBGTQ+ events across the country are being considered, the sources told CNN. The outage ended the Moore County drag show after audience members lit the stage with phone flashlights, Sandhills PRIDE has said.

    The FBI had warned of reports of threats to electricity infrastructure by people espousing racially or ethnically motivated extremist ideology “to create civil disorder and inspire further violence,” the agency said in a November 22 bulletin sent to private industry.

    Beyond this month’s incidents in South Carolina and North Carolina, where lights flickered back on Wednesday:

    • In Oregon, a substation in Clackamas was damaged in a “deliberate physical attack” over the Thanksgiving holiday, a Bonneville Power Administration spokesperson told CNN. “BPA operators discovered a cut perimeter fence and damaged equipment inside,” the spokesperson said, adding the company is working with the FBI on the incident.

    • In Washington state, “two incidents occur(ed) in late November at two different substations,” Puget Sound Energy spokesperson told CNN. “Both incidents are currently under investigation by the FBI,” it said, adding, “We are aware of recent threats on power systems across the country and take these very seriously.”

    And two Cowlitz County Public Utility District substations were vandalized in mid-November in the Woodland area, agency spokesperson Alice Dietz told The Seattle Times. “At this time, we do not have any further comment … Our facilities have since been repaired,” Dietz told the Times. CNN has reached out to the FBI’s office in Seattle for comment.

    Anti-government groups in the past two years began using online forums to urge followers to attack critical infrastructure, including the power grid. They have posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles.

    One 14-page guide obtained by CNN cited as an example the 2013 sniper attack on a high voltage substation at the edge of Silicon Valley that destroyed 17 transformers and cost Pacific Gas and Electric $15 million in repairs.

    The caliber of the bullets in that California incident is different from those used in North Carolina, a law enforcement source told CNN.

    But whoever attacked the North Carolina substations “knew exactly what they were doing,” Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields has said.

    Investigators recovered around the damaged substations nearly two dozen shell casings from a high-powered rifle, law enforcement sources told CNN. While no rifle has been recovered, the ballistics may still offer critical evidence. And bullets pulled from a transformer station and brass shell casings found a short distance away are being examined, the sources said.

    Duke Energy workers repair an electrical substation Tuesday in Mineral Springs near Pinehurst, North Carolina.

    The casings can be entered into a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives database and matched to any other shell casings fired by the same gun at another crime scene, or to the gun itself if it’s found. The locations of the casings may also offer clues.

    The sheriff on Wednesday asked the public to provide any surveillance footage from the areas that were hit and announced $75,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible.

    Someone who lives near the West End substation heard around 20 gunshots in quick succession the night of the attack on the station, he told CNN affiliate WRAL. The power did not go out for about 30 minutes after that, he said.

    “Me and my wife were just sitting on the couch just watching a movie and all of the sudden, about 8:45, about 20 shots fired off right across the street,” Spencer Matthews told WRAL.

    The outages crippled the local economy and paralyzed daily life for more than 45,000 homes and businesses. And just because the electricity is back on doesn’t mean the pain is over.

    Businesses “have lost a tremendous amount over the last few days,” Moore County Manager Wayne Vest said. The outages affected more than 600 food establishments, Moore County Health Director Matt Garner said

    “We know our residents are going to end the day and go through the night in power and light and in safety. But there’s another element of our population is still suffering … and that’s our local merchants,” Pinehurst Mayor John Strickland said.

    “If you’re dining out, if you’re only going to go out once, go out twice,” Vest said. “If you were going to shop and buy one package, buy two packages.”

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