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  • President Joe Biden makes surprise visit to Kyiv just days before one-year anniversary of Ukraine war

    President Joe Biden makes surprise visit to Kyiv just days before one-year anniversary of Ukraine war

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    U.S. President Joe Biden on Feb. 16, 2023.

    Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

    U.S. President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine Monday in a show of solidarity, nearly a year after Russia began its full-scale invasion of the country.

    Biden said in a White House statement that he was meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.”

    “I will announce another delivery of critical equipment, including artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments,” he added. “And I will share that later this week, we will announce additional sanctions against elites and companies that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine.”

    Zelenskyy described Biden’s visit — the first by a U.S. president in almost 15 years — as “the most important visit in the history of Ukrainian-American relations.”

    “At this time, when our country is fighting for its freedom and freedom for all Europeans, for all people of the free world, it emphasizes how much we have already achieved and what historical results we can achieve together with the whole world, with Ukraine, with the United States, with the whole of Europe,” he said on Telegram, according to a NBC translation.

    The U.S. head of state left the Ukrainian capital after a more than five-hour visit, according to the Associated Press. Biden said that he will continue on to Poland where he will meet his counterpart Andrzej Duda. The Polish president could press Biden on post-war “security guarantees” for Ukraine, which he on Sunday told the Financial Times would be “important” for Kyiv.

    Biden’s visit to Ukraine comes after a concerted show of international support from global leaders and politicians during the Munich Security Conference over recent days. Allied forces have pledged financial support and weapons for Ukraine, but have fallen short of Zelenskyy’s pleas for the supply of jet fighters.

    On Feb. 18, Biden’s second-in-command, Vice President Kamala Harris, announced that Washington had determined that Russia had committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, upgrading the U.S. administration’s March pronouncement that Moscow had committed war crimes.

    The latest round of U.S. sanctions will follow the EU’s tenth round of penalties against Russia for its war in Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last week that the sanctions will target exports worth 11 billion euros ($11.78 billion), dual use and advanced tech goods, as well as Russian propagandists. The latest EU package is subject to the approval of EU member countries.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Saturday expressed doubts to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble that financial repercussions will deter Putin, however.

    “What we have seen is that Russia is actually willing to pay a hard price for this war,” he said.

    “There are no signs that President Putin is preparing or planning for peace. He is preparing for more war, or new offensive, mobilizing more troops, setting the Russian economy on a war footing and also actually reaching out to other authoritarian regimes like North Korea and Iran to get more weapons.”

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  • House Republicans request documents on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan

    House Republicans request documents on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan

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    A day after U.S. forces completed its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, refugees board a bus taking them to a processing center upon their arrival at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, September 1, 2021.

    Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

    WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Friday called on the Biden administration to release information about the chaotic U.S. departure from Afghanistan.

    In a series of letters sent to senior leadership at the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, GOP lawmakers requested all documents, communications and information related to what they called the Biden administration’s “disastrous military and diplomatic withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

    “U.S. servicemen and women lost their lives, Americans were abandoned, taxpayer dollars are unaccounted for, the Taliban gained access to military equipment, progress for Afghan women was derailed, and the entire area is now under hostile Taliban control,” wrote Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky and other key GOP representatives.

    “The American people deserve answers and the Biden Administration’s ongoing obstruction of this investigation is unacceptable,” added Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

    The U.S. finished its withdrawal from the airport in Kabul on Aug. 31, 2021. The departure effectively ended a two-decade conflict that began shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    Biden ordered the full withdrawal of approximately 3,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan in April 2021. At the time, he asked all American servicemembers to leave the war-weary country by Sept. 11 of that year. He later moved the deadline up to the end of August.

    The U.S. launched its war in Afghanistan in October 2001, weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban at the time offered sanctuary to al-Qaeda, which planned and carried out the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

    About 2,500 U.S. service members died in the conflict. It claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Afghan troops, police personnel and civilians.

    The Taliban return to power

    Taliban fighters patrol in Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021.

    Rahmat Gul | AP

    People who want to flee the country continue to wait around Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 25, 2021.

    Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

    In the final week of the withdrawal, terrorists from the group ISIS-K killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans in an attack outside the airport. U.S. forces launched strikes to try to thwart other attacks.

    Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base to meet privately with the families of the fallen U.S. service members before they watched the dignified transfer of American flag-draped caskets from a C-17 military cargo plane to a vehicle. The process takes place for every U.S. servicemember killed in action.

    It marked Biden’s first time attending a dignified transfer since he became president.

    This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

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  • Watch live: Nikki Haley kicks off 2024 presidential campaign in South Carolina

    Watch live: Nikki Haley kicks off 2024 presidential campaign in South Carolina

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    (The live stream is slated to start at 11 a.m. ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a video above at that time.)

    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is set to kick off her campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in Charleston on Wednesday morning.

    Haley announced her White House bid a day earlier, making her the first major challenger to former President Donald Trump, who launched his campaign in November.

    Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, is now his direct rival — and his only real one, until more candidates jump into the Republican primary field.

    After Haley’s first campaign event in Charleston, she’s headed to hit the campaign trail with stops in the key primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa.

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  • U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

    U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

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    A balloon flies in the sky over Billings, Montana, U.S. February 1, 2023, in this picture obtained from social media.

    Chase Doak via Reuters

    The U.S. military on Saturday shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, according to media reports.

    Department of Defense officials have not yet confirmed the balloon being shot down.

    The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop in parts of North Carolina and South Carolina and closed additional airspace on Saturday afternoon. The departures were paused “to support the Department of Defense in a national security effort,” a representative told CNBC.

    President Joe Biden broke his silence about the balloon for the first time Saturday, telling a group of reporters, “We’re going to take care of it.”

    The high-altitude balloon was initially spotted over Billings, Montana, on Wednesday. Defense officials said the Pentagon considered shooting down the balloon earlier this week but decided against it after briefing Biden. The decision was made in consultation with senior leaders, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

    Biden concluded that the U.S. would not shoot down the balloon because debris from it could cause damage on the ground, a Pentagon official said. Moreover, any information the balloon collects would have “limited additive value” compared with China’s spy satellites.

    China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that the balloon was a civilian weather airship intended for scientific research that was blown off course. It described the incident as a result of a “force majeure” for which it was not responsible.

    This claim was summarily dismissed by U.S. officials. A senior Pentagon official told reporters Thursday night that the object was clearly a surveillance balloon that was flying over sensitive sites to collect intelligence.

    “We have noted the PRC statement of regret, but the presence of this balloon in our airspace is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and is unacceptable that this has occurred,” the official said.

    The presence of the balloon prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to indefinitely postpone what was to be an already tense trip to China on Friday.

    The visit was intended to reinforce communication and cooperation between the two countries as tensions have deepened over China’s increasing military aggression toward Taiwan and closer alliances with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Instead, Blinken told China’s director of Central Foreign Affairs Office, Wang Yi, in a phone call Friday that the balloon was an “irresponsible act and a clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose of the trip,” according to a readout of the discussion.

    This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

    —CNBC’s Christina Wilkie and Amanda Macias contributed to this report

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  • China’s suspected spy balloon prompts Blinken to postpone Beijing trip as Congress seeks answers

    China’s suspected spy balloon prompts Blinken to postpone Beijing trip as Congress seeks answers

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    WASHINGTON –U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone his trip to China next week following a suspected Beijing-operated spy balloon looming over parts of Montana.

    “After consultations with our interagency partners, as well as with Congress, we have concluded that the conditions are not right at this moment for Secretary Blinken to travel to China,” a senior State Department official said Friday on a background briefing with reporters.

    Blinken, who was slated to depart for Beijing on Friday evening, was scheduled to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang, and potentially Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well.

    The official declined to say when Blinken would reschedule his travel to China, saying only that the department would “determine when the conditions are right.”

    Chinese authorities said Friday that the balloon operating over U.S. airspace was a civilian weather balloon intended for scientific research. But the State Department said that was immaterial.

    “We have noted the PRC statement of regret, but the presence of this balloon in our airspace is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and is unacceptable that this has occurred,” the official said.

    While Blinken has postponed his travel, the U.S. and China have not suspended communication over the incident.

    “From the moment this incident occurred, we have been in regular and frequent contact with our Chinese counterparts and I do anticipate that will continue,” said the State Department official, who asked not to be identified to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter.

    China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that westerly winds had caused the airship to stray into U.S. territory, describing the incident as a result of “force majeure” — or greater force — for which it was not responsible. “The airship comes from China and is of a civilian nature, used for scientific research such as meteorology,” according to a Google translation of a statement on the foreign ministry’s website.

    On Thursday, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters that the U.S. was aware of the balloon and was confident that it was China’s.

    The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as ground rules established by the Pentagon, added that President Joe Biden was briefed on the matter. Following consultations with senior leaders, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Biden decided the U.S. would not shoot down the balloon, the official said.

    “We had been looking at whether there was an option yesterday over some sparsely populated areas in Montana,” said the official, who noted it was decided the possible debris field from the balloon could cause damage on the ground and that its intelligence collection potential has “limited additive value” compared with Chinese spy satellites.

    “We wanted to take care that somebody didn’t get hurt or property wasn’t destroyed,” said the official, who noted that the balloon does not pose a threat to civil aviation because of its high altitude.

    On Capitol Hill, members of Congress sounded alarms and sought more information from the Biden administration.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Ca., said he had requested a briefing for the so-called “Gang of Eight,” the Republican and Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate, and the leaders from both parties of the Senate and House intelligence committees. 

    Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who represents the state where the balloon was first identified, said he is in contact with Defense Department and intelligence officials over the matter, but expressed frustration at the lack of detail.

    “We are still waiting for real answers on how this happened and what steps the Administration took to protect our country, and I will hold everyone accountable until I get them,” Tester said in a statement Friday.

    The Senate was not in a full session Friday, but Tester’s office said he will receive a classified briefing in a secure facility as soon as he returns to Washington.

    Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the military should have shot down the balloon.

    “It was a mistake to not shoot down that Chinese spy balloon when it was over a sparsely populated area,” Rubio tweeted on Friday.

    “This is not some hot air balloon, it has a large payload of sensors roughly the size of two city buses & the ability to maneuver independently,” Rubio added.

    This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

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  • FBI found no classified documents in search of Biden home in Rehoboth, lawyer says

    FBI found no classified documents in search of Biden home in Rehoboth, lawyer says

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    U.S. Secret Service agents are seen in front of Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., home on Jan. 12, 2021. The FBI is conducting a planned search of President Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents. That’s according to a statement from Biden’s personal lawyer.

    Shannon McNaught | Delaware News Journal | AP

    FBI agents on Wednesday morning searched the Rehoboth, Delaware, beach home of President Joe Biden for more than three hours, but found no documents marked classified, his personal lawyer said.

    Agents “took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President,” Biden’s lawyer Bob Bauer said.

    The planned, consensual search is the first publicly known time the FBI searched the Rehoboth residence. Agents did not obtain a warrant for the search, which began at 8:30 a.m. ET and ended at noon. They had not gotten warrants for two prior FBI searches of other locations linked to Biden.

    The Department of Justice is investigating the discovery of classified documents at a private office in a Washington, D.C., think tank that Biden had used while a private citizen, and at his residence in Wilmington, Delaware.

    Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, previously said that the president’s lawyers searched the Rehoboth home and the Wilmington residence on Jan. 11.

    Those attorneys found classified records in Wilmington, but not in Rehoboth, according to Bauer.

    The FBI searched the think tank office in mid-November after Biden’s personal lawyers first found classified records there on Nov. 2. The FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home on Jan. 20.

    In an earlier statement Wednesday, Bauer said, “Today, with the President’s full support and cooperation, the DOJ is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware.”

    US President Joe Biden rides a bike through Gordon’s Pond State Park in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on July 10, 2022.

    Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

    “Under DOJ’s standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate,” the lawyer said.

    “The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate,” Bauer said.

    Bauer in a later statement confirmed the search had ended.

    “No documents with classified markings were found,” Bauer said.

    White House spokesman Ian Sams referred CNBC to Bauer’s statement when asked for comment on the search.

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    Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel, Robert Hur, to oversee the investigation into the Biden documents.

    Garland last year appointed another special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified records and other government documents at the residence of former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

    FBI agents on Aug. 9 found those documents during a raid at Mar-a-Lago. In that search, agents had obtained a warrant.

    Lawyers for Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, two weeks ago notified the National Archives and Records Administration that they had found a “small number” of classified documents at his home in Carmel, Indiana, on Jan. 16.

    — Additional reporting by CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger.

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  • TikTok CEO to testify before House panel about app’s security and ties to China

    TikTok CEO to testify before House panel about app’s security and ties to China

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    Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok Inc., speaks during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. The New Economy Forum is being organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News. Photographer: Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before a House panel on March 23 about the app’s security and privacy practices and its ties to China through parent company ByteDance.

    The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced the hearing on Monday, saying it would be Chew’s first appearance before a congressional panel.

    “ByteDance-owned TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data,” E&C Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said in a statement. “Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.” 

    The hearing announcement comes as the company’s negotiations with U.S. government over how to secure its app in the country have continued to drag. TikTok has been engaging with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which can determine if certain risk mitigation measures are adequate to dampen national security concerns.

    Still, those negotiations have reportedly been delayed at least as of last month, as officials continue to worry about the implications of the app’s ownership by Chinese parent company ByteDance. That’s because Chinese-based companies can be compelled to hand over data to the government there on request. In the past, TikTok has assured U.S. officials and lawmakers that it does not store U.S. user data in China to mitigate that risk, but that’s done little to assuage fears.

    Fears over TikTok’s national security and privacy implications for consumers have spanned both sides of Congress, and stretched across the Trump administration into the Biden administration.

    Lawmakers passed a ban on TikTok on government devices in a year-end legislative package, citing security fears. A TikTok spokesperson called the passage of the bill “a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests,” in a statement at the time, adding that the agreement CFIUS was reviewing would “meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level.”

    TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the House hearing.

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    WATCH: Lawmakers grill TikTok, YouTube, Snap executives

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  • House Speaker McCarthy spoke with Musk about making Twitter ‘fair on all sides’

    House Speaker McCarthy spoke with Musk about making Twitter ‘fair on all sides’

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    U.S. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks to reporters as he arrives on the first day of the new Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 3, 2023.

    Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

    Twitter CEO Elon Musk discussed how to make the social media site “fair on all sides” in a meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the lawmaker told reporters on Friday.

    “He wants to have a level playing field” and for everybody to have a voice, McCarthy said of the meeting in remarks reported by NBC News. “He’s really defending the First Amendment. And we had a really good discussion.”

    Musk shared on Twitter Thursday evening that he had met with McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., “to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both.” On Thursday, McCarthy only shared that Musk came to wish him a happy birthday.

    On Friday, McCarthy also confirmed that Jeffries was in the Thursday meeting and that he had not previously met Musk.

    An aide to Jeffries told The Washington Post his encounter with Musk was only coincidental and happened as Musk was leaving his meeting with McCarthy. Jeffries’ office confirmed the Washington Post anecdote to CNBC.

    McCarthy also confirmed to reporters on Friday that he had convened a meeting in his office that day with Musk and several top Republicans: Majority Leader Steve Scalise R-La., Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.

    McCarthy said he wanted to “continue to have that discussion” of fairness on tech platforms with the other lawmakers as they seek to move legislation and make sure “American has an even voice,” NBC News reported.

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    WATCH: Elon Musk polls Twitter users over whether he should remain as CEO

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  • FBI finds more classified documents in search of Biden home in Delaware

    FBI finds more classified documents in search of Biden home in Delaware

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    The FBI found more classified documents at the Wilmington, Delaware, home of President Joe Biden during a consensual search Friday that lasted nearly 13 hours, his personal lawyer and a prosecutor said Saturday evening

    The discovery was the fourth time since November that classified records or material has been found at a private address of Biden’s.

    His personal lawyer Bob Bauer, in a statement, said the Department of Justice seized “six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding material.”

    Joseph D. Fitzpatrick, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told NBC News: “I can confirm that the FBI on Friday executed a planned, consensual search of the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware.”

    Some of the items dated from Biden’s tenure in the Senate, where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009, Bauer said. And some of the items were from his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, from 2009 through 2017.

    In addition to those records, FBI agents, who did not have a warrant for the search, also seized some notes that Biden wrote by hand as vice president, according to the lawyer and the White House.

    Neither Biden nor first lady Jill Biden was present during the search, according to Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president.

    The items join other an undisclosed number of classified government records previously discovered by lawyers for the president.

    A small number of classified records first were found by Biden’s lawyers on Nov. 2 at a private office that he kept at a Washington, D.C., think tank after ending his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration in 2017.

    The White House only disclosed that discovery on Jan. 9.

    On Dec. 20, a small number of classified records were found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home.

    A single page of classified material was then found at the Wilmington residence on Jan 11. Then, the next day, five more pages of classified records were found in a room adjacent to Biden’s garage, when DOJ officials traveled there to take possession of the single page found the prior day.

    The White House has said that when the president’s lawyers found the previous documents, they immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration and the DOJ.

    Friday’s search was the first time revealed publicly that federal law enforcement authorities have conducted a search for government documents at Biden’s private addresses.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month appointed a special counsel to investigate Biden’s retention of government records after he was vice president.

    Former President Donald Trump is under criminal investigation by another special counsel for taking hundreds of classified records and other government documents from the White House when he left office. Trump is also being eyed for possible obstruction of justice by stonewalling efforts by government officials to recover those documents.

    The FBI in early August raided Trump’s home at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where they found thousands of pages of government records. The FBI had a search warrant in that case.

    By law, presidents and vice presidents must return government documents to the National Archives when they leave office.

    Biden and the White House have been criticized for the two-month lag in disclosing the discovery of the first batch of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.

    That first discovery came six days before the midterm elections when the balance of political party control of both chambers of Congress was a stake.

    And critics have asked why searches of other private locations maintained by the president were not conducted until after the White House disclosed the first discovery.

    Bauer, in his statement Saturday said that the president’s legal team offered to provide “prompt access” to Biden’s private residence “to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material.”

    He said that the offer was made “in the interest of moving the process forward as expeditiously as possible.”

    “DOJ requested that the search not be made public in advance, in accordance with its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate,” Bauer said.

    He said that on Friday, the “DOJ completed a thorough search of all the materials in the President’s Wilmington home.”

    “It began at approximately 9:45 AM and concluded at around 10:30 PM and covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home,” Bauer said. “By agreement with DOJ, representatives of both the personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office were present.”

    Authorities had “full access to the President’s home,” which included “personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades.”

    “DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President,” Bauer said.

    “DOJ also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years.”

    The lawyer said, “As noted in the Statement we released on January 14, we have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”

    “We will continue to do so throughout the course of our cooperation with DOJ,” Bauer said.

    Sauber, Biden’s White House lawyer, in his own statement, said, “The President and his team are working swiftly to ensure DOJ and the Special Counsel have what they need to conduct a thorough review.”

    “Since the beginning, the President has been committed to handling this responsibly because he takes this seriously,” Sauber said.

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  • $100 million New Jersey deli fugitive Peter Coker Jr. agrees to extradition to U.S. from Thailand

    $100 million New Jersey deli fugitive Peter Coker Jr. agrees to extradition to U.S. from Thailand

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    Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J.

    Google Earth

    A former fugitive wanted on criminal stock manipulation charges related to a money-losing New Jersey deli once valued at $100 million has agreed to be extradited from Thailand to the United States, Thai authorities said.

    Peter Coker Jr., 54, was arrested last week by Thai police in the resort area of Phuket, less than four months after he, his father, Peter Coker Sr., and an associate, James Patten, were indicted in New Jersey federal court.

    The charges relate to two publicly traded companies, Hometown International, which owned only a modest, now-closed deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, and E-Waste, a shell company that had no assets.

    Coker Jr., who most recently was known to be living and working as a businessman in Hong Kong, is being held in a Bangkok jail for the next several weeks before his expected extradition, the Associated Press reported Friday.

    Thai police, in a statement, said Coker Jr., who is an American most recently known to be living in Hong Kong, had entered the country with a passport issued by the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis. That nation sells citizenship in exchange for investments there, the AP noted.

    “Mr. Coker Jr. voluntarily consented to be extradited to the U.S., which has simplified the court’s legal process,” Teerat Limpayaraya, a prosecutor in Thailand’s Attorney General’s office, told the AP.

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    “We have to complete a 30-day waiting period as required by Thai law before sending him back,” said Teerat.

    The prosecutor said also told the AP that Coker Jr. “was visibly frail when he was taken in and told us that he needs medical treatment for his liver disease. We believe that he entered Thailand with a possible plan to settle here.”

    U.S. prosecutors accuse the Cokers and Patten of a scheme to bid up the value of shares of Hometown International and E-Waste, both of which had high market capitalizations despite holding little if any assets of value, to make them more attractive to private firms as merger candidates. Both companies later found merger partners.

    Coker Jr. had served as chairman of Hometown International.

    While Pattan and Coker Sr., have made court appearances since their arrest, Coker Jr. was believed to be at large until his arrest last week.

    A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, which is prosecuting the case, confirmed Coker Jr.’s apprehension in Thailand, but declined to comment further.

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  • FTC asks judge to hold ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli in contempt of court for forming new drug firm

    FTC asks judge to hold ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli in contempt of court for forming new drug firm

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    Martin Shkreli, former chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, center, pauses while speak to members of the media with his attorney Benjamin Brafman, right, outside federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Friday, Aug. 4, 2017.

    Peter Foley | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    The Federal Trade Commission on Friday asked that notorious “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli be held in contempt of court for forming a new drug company in violation of a judge’s ban on the convicted fraudster from working in the pharmaceuticals industry.

    Shkreli, who was released from prison last year, in February was banned “for life from directly or indirectly
    participating in any manner in the pharmaceutical industry” as a result of the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against him and a prior drug company that he founded.

    That order stemmed from Manhattan federal court Judge Denise Cote’s ruling that Shkreli oversaw an illegal scheme to maintain a monopoly on the life-saving drug Daraprim, which continued even as he sat in prison for his conviction in an unrelated securities fraud case.

    In its court filing Friday, the FTC noted that Shkreli in July announced the formation of a new company, Druglike, “that appears to be involved in the drug industry.”

    The agency said that action, as well as Shkreli’s failure to pay his nearly $25 million share of a $64.6 million judgment he owes in the lawsuit, suggest that he is violating the court’s orders in the case.

    The FTC and a group of states that sued Shkreli said in the filing he has failed to comply with their requests to give them documents and submit to an interview as part of their probe into whether his involvement with Druglink violates the February 2022 court order banning him from the industry.

    “Martin Shkreli’s failure to comply with the court’s order demonstrates a clear disregard for the law,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, in a statement.

    “The FTC will not hesitate to deploy the full scope of its authorities to enable a comprehensive investigation into any potential misconduct,” Vedova said.

    Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Shkreli, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

    This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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  • Trump and lawyer sanctioned almost $1 million for ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton

    Trump and lawyer sanctioned almost $1 million for ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton

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    A federal judge on Thursday imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on former President Donald Trump and his lawyer for filing a since-dismissed ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and many others, which had claimed they tried to rig the 2016 presidential election in her favor by smearing Trump.

    “We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” wrote Judge John Middlebrooks in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in his order sanctioning Trump.

    The judge in his order noted that “Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”

    “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks wrote.

    “He knew full well the impact of his actions … As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. [Alina] Habba.”

    Under the order, the Republican Trump and Habba, are jointly and severally liable for the total amount of sanctions the judge imposed: $937,989.39.

    “The amount of fees awarded in this case, while reasonable, is substantial,” Middlebrooks noted.

    He called the legal pleadings filed in the case by Habba “abusive litigation tactics,” and said the original lawsuit and a later, 186-page amended complaint “were drafted to advance political narrative; not to address legal harm caused by any Defendant.”

    “The Amended Complaint is a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion,” Middlebrooks wrote.

    “This is a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts.”

    Habba did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the order.

    Trump, who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, filed his suit in March against Clinton, who was the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

    The other 30 defendants included the Democratic National Commission, former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, the law firm Perkins Coie, the research firm Fusion GPS, the former FBI officials James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as Christopher Steele, the ex-British intelligence agent who authored the notorious “Trump-Russia dossier” opposition research report before the election.

    The suit, which sought $70 million in damages, accused the defendants of conspiring to “weave a false narrative” during the 2016 election that Trump and his campaign were colluding with Russia in their efforts to win the race.

    The suit claimed that Clinton and other defendants falsified evidence, deceived law-enforcement agencies and engaged in other skulduggery that made “even the events of Watergate pale in comparison.”

    Middlebrooks earlier dismissed the lawsuit against Clinton and all other defendants “with prejudice,” which bars Trump from refiling the complaint.

    MIddlebrooks’ order is the latest in a series of embarrassing legal setbacks for Trump, which have included the criminal conviction last month in New York state court of his Manhattan-based real estate company, The Trump Organization, for a years-long tax avoidance scheme.

    Trump and his company also face a major civil lawsuit by New York’s attorney general for an alleged scheme to misstate the valuation of real estate assets for financial gain, and Trump also is being sued by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accuses him of raping her in the mid-1990s in New York.

    A state grand jury in Georgia recently completed gathering evidence and hearing testimony as part of an ongoing criminal probe into whether Trump illegally tried to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, which he lost.

    And federal prosecutors are investigating Trump for his bid to reverse his loss in the national election to President Joe Biden, and his taking government documents to his Florida residence when he left office.

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  • Trump mistook rape accuser E. Jean Carroll for ex-wife Marla Maples in deposition about photo

    Trump mistook rape accuser E. Jean Carroll for ex-wife Marla Maples in deposition about photo

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    Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, John Johnson and Ivana Trump at an NBC party, late 1980s.

    U.S. District Court in Manhattan

    Former President Donald Trump recently mistook his rape accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples when being questioned about a decades-old photo of him and Carroll by her attorney for a defamation lawsuit, a newly public court filing shows.

    Trump’s belief that the writer Carroll was actually his second wife Maples sharply undercuts the New York real estate mogul’s repeated claims that he would not have even had sex with Carroll because she is “not my type.”

    Carroll, 79, first alleged in a 2019 magazine article that Trump, who was president at the time, had raped her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996 after a chance encounter in the store.

    Trump, 76, denied her claims, accusing Carroll of lying. He also said Carroll was motivated by a desire to generate sales of a book and political animus in making the allegations.

    “She’s not my type,” Trump told The Hill news site in 2019.

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    Read more of CNBC’s politics coverage:

    Carroll is suing Trump, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in two cases in federal court in Manhattan for allegedly defaming her by his characterization of her claims and her purported motivation. One case was filed in 2019, after Trump first denied her allegations, and the second was filed this fall, after he repeated his claims about her motivation.

    In the most recent case, she is also suing him for battery, for the alleged rape itself, under a new New York state law that opens a one-year window for adults to lodge claims of sexual abuse that otherwise would be too old to pursue because of the statute of limitations.

    During an Oct. 19 deposition at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, which was made public Wednesday, Trump was shown a photo from an NBC event around 1987.

    The image shows him from behind, facing Carroll and her then-husband, television journalist John Johnson, with Trump’s then-wife, the late Ivana Trump standing to his right.

    “It’s Marla,” said Trump about the photo.

    Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said, “You’re saying Marla is in this photo?”

    Trump replied: “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”

    Real estate mogul, reality television star and former potential presidential candidate Donald Trump was first married to Czech former athlete Ivana Trump. After 15 years of marriage, the pair had a very public and very messy divorce in 1992, which cost him . This might have discouraged a lesser man from ever dating again, but “The Donald” is no shrinking violet. One year later he had a new bride on his arm in the person of actress and socialite Marla Maples, 17 years his junior.In 1997, the coup

    Ron Galella | WireImage | Getty Images

    His lawyer Alina Habba then interjected, “No, that’s Carroll.”

    Trump said, “Oh, I see.”

    Kaplan then said, “The person you just pointed to was E. Jean Carroll.”

    When Habba repeated to Trump, “That’s Carroll,” he replied, “That’s Carroll?”

    Elsewhere in the deposition, Trump said of Carroll, “She’s not my type.”

    “She is not a woman I would ever be attracted to,” he added later.

    The deposition was attached to a court filing last week by Carroll’s lawyers, but became public Wednesday after Trump’s lawyers dropped their opposition to it being made public.

    Last week, Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered other portions of the deposition unsealed, ruling that Trump did not have a legitimate reason to keep them out of the public record in the case.

    Trump married Maples in 1993, several months after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany. The couple, who began their romantic relationship while Trump was still married to Ivana, divorced six years later.

    Trump married his current wife, Melania Trump, in 2005.

    Kaplan has set trial in Carroll’s lawsuits to begin in April.

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  • More classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home, White House counsel says

    More classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home, White House counsel says

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    U.S. President Joe Biden listens during a meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 13, 2023. 

    Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

    Additional classified government documents were found at President Joe Biden‘s Delaware home this week, the White House confirmed Saturday.

    In a statement, Richard Sauber, White House special counsel, said that a total of six pages of documents with classification markings were discovered at Biden’s Wilmington residence. The White House previously said that only one page was found there.

    The first document was identified on Wednesday by Biden’s personal lawyer and turned over, and the additional five documents were discovered later that week, Sauber said.

    “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them,” he said in the statement.

    Sauber said the president’s lawyers have acted “immediately and voluntarily” to provide the documents to the Department of Justice.

    The disclosure of the latest discovery comes days after Sauber confirmed media reports that attorneys for the president found an initial batch of classified documents from the Biden administration on Nov. 2 in an office that Biden had used as a private citizen at a Washington think tank.

    That was nearly three months after FBI agents raided the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump and seized more than 100 classified government documents and hundreds of more records that federal prosecutors say belong to the U.S. government.

    Trump is the focus of a criminal probe by the DOJ for his removal of the records from the White House in January 2021.

    Sauber disclosed Thursday that a second batch of documents had been found in Biden’s Delaware home. He issued a statement detailing how and where the second batch of documents was found and said a “small number” of records with classified markings were found in the garage. 

    According to a statement Saturday from Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer, the second batch of documents was discovered in the garage of Biden’s Delaware residence on Dec. 20. The president’s attorneys conducted another search of the home to look for other classified materials beginning Wednesday, which is when they found the additional records in a room adjacent to the garage.

    Bauer said that Biden’s personal attorneys are working to balance public transparency and the limitations necessary to “protect the investigation’s integrity.”

    Bauer said the attorneys do not have security clearances, which means they are not aware of the exact number of documents or their content. He said that when an attorney discovered a document with classified markings, they stopped, notified the government, and did not review it.

    “Adhering to this process means that any disclosure regarding documents cannot be conclusive until the government has conducted its inquiry, including taking possession of any documents and reviewing any surrounding material for further review and context,” Bauer said.

    By law, government records must be given to the National Archives when a president or officials in their administration leave office. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed former federal prosecutor Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the discovery of these classified records.

    Hur is authorized “to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter,” Garland said in a public statement he made on the appointment at the Department of Justice.

    Soon after the second discovery, Biden discussed the documents with reporters.

    “As I said earlier this week, and by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden said, referring to the documents.

    “People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously,” Biden said. “I also said we’re cooperating, fully cooperated with the Justice Department’s review.”

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  • Judge unseals section of Trump deposition in rape-defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll

    Judge unseals section of Trump deposition in rape-defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll

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    Editor’s note: This story includes a description of sexual assault.

    A federal judge in New York on Friday rejected an effort by lawyers for former President Donald Trump to keep sealed a portion of the transcript of his deposition in a lawsuit by a writer who accuses him of raping her in the mid-1990s.

    Trump’s arguments for keeping the nearly three dozen pages of his deposition sealed “are entirely baseless,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

    That deposition showed Trump making insulting comments about the writer who is suing him, E. Jean Carroll, her lawyer, and President Joe Biden, as well as grousing about what he called a series of “hoaxes” involving allegedly false claims made about him.

    The deposition which was conducted on Oct. 19 by lawyers for Carroll at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

    Earlier Friday, Kaplan denied Trump’s bid to toss out one of the two lawsuits filed against him by Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan more than two decades ago.

    In his unsealing order, Kaplan said that Trump had no right to confidentiality for his testimony when he gave it. The judge noted that there is a presumptive right held by the public to court documents.

    The judge added that contrary to Trump’s argument, the portion of his transcript that was redacted in the public filing by Carroll’s lawyers “was directly relevant” to a disagreement between those attorneys and his over whether additional discovery should be conducted for her second lawsuit.

    Kaplan first ordered the transcript unsealed on Monday. But he then reversed his order after Trump’s lawyers asked him for three days to file arguments opposing the unsealing.

    Trump, while serving as president, publicly accused Carroll of making up the rape allegation, saying she was motivated by politics and a desire to sell a book containing her claims.

    Carroll then sued him for defamation.

    She sued him again in November when he made what she says were other defamatory statements about her in a social media post that Trump wrote in October. Her second lawsuit also alleges battery, a claim that was allowed under a new New York state law that allows adults a one-year grace period to file lawsuits alleging sexual abuse that occurred outside of the time frame allowed by the statute of limitations.

    Trial in the cases has been set for April.

    “It’s a false accusation,” Trump said in his deposition, according to the newly disclosed transcript. “Never happened, never would happen.”

    “I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing,” Trump told Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.

    “And I’ll sue you too.”

    Trump during the deposition was asked about the Oct. 12 post he made on his social media site, which refers to the “Ms. Bergdorf Goodman case,” calling it “a complete con job.”

    The post referenced a June 2019 interview Carroll gave CNN’s Anderson Cooper that described her account of the alleged sexual assault. She said it occurred after a chance meeting with Trump while she was shopping, and he allegedly asked her for help buying a present “for a girl.”

    “She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and within minutes ‘swooned’ her,” Trump had written, Kaplan noted in her questioning.

    Trump in his deposition confirmed Kaplan had read that, and the rest of the post accurately, saying, “Great statement, yeah. True. True.”

    “I wrote it all myself,” he added.

    Asked if he had talked to anyone about what to say in his post, Trump replied, “No, I didn’t need to. I’m not Joe Biden.”

    Trump called Carroll a “wack job” during his deposition.

    “I think she’s sick, mentally sick,” he said.

    Kaplan then asked him about his use of the word “swooned,” which she called “a strange word.”

    “What does ‘swooned her’ mean?” the attorney asked.

    Trump replied, “That would be a word, maybe accurate or not, having to do with talking to her and talking her — to do an act that she said happened, which didn’t happen.”

    “And it’s a nicer word than the word that starts with an F, and this would be a word that I used because I thought it would be inappropriate to use the other word,” Trump said. “And it didn’t happen.”

    When Kaplan said that the dictionary defined “swooned” as “to faint with extreme emotion,” Trump replied, “Well, sort of that’s what she said I did to her.”

    “She fainted with great emotion,” Trump said. “She actually indicated that she loved it. OK?,” he said, referring to Carroll’s CNN interview.

    “She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”

    Kaplan then asked if Trump was testifying that Carroll “said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you.”

    Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place. And we can define that. You’ll have to show that. I’m sure you’re going to show that. But she was interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and I think she said that rape was sexy — which it’s not, by the way.”

    He added, “But I think she said that rape was sexy.”

    In fact, Carroll had said in that interview that she believed “most people” thought of rape as “sexy.” She did not say she believed that herself.

    In that interview, Carroll said she was “panicked” when Trump shut the door of the dressing room and pushed her against a wall and began kissing her before pulling down her tights.

    “And it was against my will. And it hurt. And it was a fight,” Carroll said in the interview.

    She later said in the same interview, “I was not thrown on the ground and ravished. Which the word ‘rape’ carries so many sexual connotations.”

    “This was not — this was not sexual. It just hurt,” Carroll said.

    Cooper responded, “I think most people think of rape as … a violent assault.”

    Carroll then said, “I think most people think of rape as being sexy.”

    When her lawyer Kaplan asked Trump if it was not true that Carroll had said it was a view of many other people about rape being sexy, he said, “Oh, I don’t know … All I know is, I believe she said rape is sexy or something to that effect, but you’ll have to watch the interview. It’s been a while.”

    Trump later in the deposition noted that in his social media post he made what he called the “not politically correct statement” about Carroll.

    “She’s not my type,” Trump told Kaplan. “She is not a woman I would ever be attracted to,” he added later.

    “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman I have no idea who she is,” Trump said. “The worst thing you can do, the worst charge.”

    “And you know it’s not true too,” he told Kaplan. “You’re a political operative too. You’re a disgrace.”

    He later suggested that Kaplan had some kind of influence with the judge in the case to get him to grant her permission to depose him for the lawsuit. It is standard in lawsuits for attorneys to depose the parties in a case.

    “I knew that we’d be wasting a day doing this, a whole day doing this,” Trump said. “You’ve got to be connected to get this kind of time. But a whole day of doing this stuff on something that never happened.”

    Kaplan noted that Trump had said in his social media post that Carroll’s allegation was “a hoax and a lie, just like all the other hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”

    When the lawyer asked if he meant Carroll had fabricated her claim, Trump said, “Totally, 100 percent.” He admitted that he used the term “hoax” a lot.

    “I’ve had a lot of hoaxes played on me. This is one of them,” Trump said.

    Asked what some of those were, Trump said, “The Russia Russia Russia hoax … Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax.”

    He pointed to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

    Trump also said the use of mail ballots during the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, was a hoax.

    “I think they’re very dishonest. Mail-in ballots, very dishonest,” Trump said.

    Asked by Kaplan if he had himself voted by mail, Trump answered over the objections of his own lawyer, Alina Habba.

    “I do. I do,” Trump said. “Sometimes I do. But I don’t know what happens to it once you give it. I have no idea.”

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  • U.S. will hit its debt limit Thursday, start taking steps to avoid default, Yellen warns Congress

    U.S. will hit its debt limit Thursday, start taking steps to avoid default, Yellen warns Congress

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    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday notified Congress that the U.S. will reach its statutory debt limit next Thursday.

    After that, the Treasury Department this month will begin “taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” Yellen wrote in a letter to new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

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    The Treasury “is not currently able” to estimate how long those emergency actions will allow the U.S. to pay for government obligations, she wrote.

    But, “It is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June,” Yellen added.

    She warned McCarthy that it is “critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit.”

    “Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” Yellen wrote.

    “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

    A spokeswoman for McCarthy had no immediate comment on Yellen’s letter.

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters later Friday, “Congress is going to need to raise the debt limit without condition”

    “It is one of the basic items that Congress has to deal with and that should be done without conditions. So there is going to be no negotiation over it,” Jean-Pierre said. “This is something that must get done.”

    Yellen’s letter effectively starts a clock counting down how long the federal government can continue to make interest payments on its debt.

    Congress in December 2021 increased the federal debt limit to about $31.4 trillion.

    The limit is the total amount of money the U.S. government is allowed legally to borrow to pay for its existing obligations. Those obligations include “Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments,” Yellen noted

    The so-call called extraordinary measures available to the Treasury secretary free up the government’s borrowing capacity.

    This can extend the clock for weeks or months while Congress hashes out a bill to raise the borrowing limit.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, in a joint statement, said, “Congress must act on legislation to prevent a disastrous default, meet our obligations and protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

    “A default forced by extreme MAGA Republicans could plunge the country into a deep recession and lead to even higher costs for America’s working families on everything from mortgages and car loans to credit card interest rates,” the leaders said in their statement.

    Yellen wrote that the two extraordinary measures that Treasury expects to implement are redeeming existing and suspending new investments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund; and suspending reinvestment of the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan. 

    She noted Congress previously authorized the Treasury to use such measures, which the department has employed in the past.

    “After the debt limit impasse has ended,” those funds “will be made whole,” Yellen wrote.

    A senior White House official told CNBC the Biden administration plans to pursue negotiations in earnest with Congress after the mid-April tax deadline.

    At that point, the official said, the federal government will have a better idea of how much revenue is coming in, how far it will go in paying the country’s bills and how urgently it needs to reach a deal.  

    The trajectory of the American economy between now and then will also determine how brazen Republicans become in their demands to cut spending in response.

    Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Senate Republican, has a long record of rejecting an increase to the debt ceiling unless fiscally conservative policies are included.

    It remains unclear whether the new GOP majority in the House under McCarthy will unite over its own set of demands. 

    McCarthy has made little secret of the fact that Republicans intend to demand massive spending cuts to the federal budget in exchange for approving an increase in the debt ceiling.

    But he told reporters on Thursday that GOP lawmakers “don’t want to put any fiscal problems through our economy, and we won’t.”

    The new House majority leader, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., earlier this week compared the U.S. borrowing limit to a household credit card, saying the nation needed to curb its spending the same way a person with maxed out credit cards would.

    “At the same time you’re dealing with the debt limit, you’re also putting mechanisms in place so that you don’t keep maxing it out,” Scalise said to reporters on Capitol Hill, “because if the limit gets raised, you don’t go to the store the next day and just max it out again.”

    “You start figuring out how to control the spending problem. And this has been going on for way too long. And we’re going to confront this,” he said.

    What Republicans have failed to say, however, is that, unlike a household that defaults on its debt, a U.S. government default would have massive repercussions around the world.

    A default on Treasury bonds could throw the U.S. economy into a tailspin as bad as the Great Recession, the research firm Moody’s Analytics warned in a September 2021 report.

    At the time, Moody’s also projected a 4% decline in gross domestic product and the loss of nearly 6 million jobs if the U.S. defaulted.

    In her letter to McCarthy on Friday, Yellen wrote, “Indeed, in the past, even threats that the U.S. government might fail to meet its obligations have caused real harms, including the only credit rating downgrade in the history of our nation in 2011.”

    Yellen added: “Increasing or suspending the debt limit does not authorize new spending commitments or cost taxpayers money. It simply allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and Presidents of both parties have made in the past.”

    CNBC’s Emma Kinery contributed to this article.

    Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the month in which Congress increased the statutory debt limit.

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  • Crypto firms Genesis and Gemini charged by SEC with selling unregistered securities

    Crypto firms Genesis and Gemini charged by SEC with selling unregistered securities

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    The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged crypto firms Genesis and Gemini with allegedly selling unregistered securities in connection with a high-yield product offered to depositors.

    Gemini, a crypto exchange, and Genesis, a crypto lender, partnered in February 2021 on a Gemini product called Earn, which touted yields of up to 8% for customers.

    According to the SEC, Genesis loaned Gemini users’ crypto and sent a portion of the profits back to Gemini, which then deducted an agent fee, sometimes over 4%, and returned the remaining profit to its users. Genesis should have registered that product as a securities offering, SEC officials said.

    “Today’s charges build on previous actions to make clear to the marketplace and the investing public that crypto lending platforms and other intermediaries need to comply with our time-tested securities laws,” SEC chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.

    Gemini’s Earn program, supported by Genesis’ lending activities, met the SEC’s definition by including both an investment contract and a note, SEC officials said. Those two features are part of how the SEC assesses whether an offering is a security.

    Regulators are seeking permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement, and civil penalties against both Genesis and Gemini.

    The two firms have been engaged in a high-profile battle over $900 million in customer assets that Gemini entrusted to Genesis as part of the Earn program, which was shuttered this week.

    Gemini, which was founded in 2015 by bitcoin advocates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has an extensive exchange business that, while beleaguered, could possibly weather an enforcement action.

    But Genesis’ future is more uncertain, because the business is heavily focused on lending out customer crypto and has already engaged restructuring advisers. The crypto lender is a unit of Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group.

    SEC officials said the possibility of a DCG or Genesis bankruptcy had no bearing on deciding whether to pursue a charge.

    It’s the latest in a series of recent crypto enforcement actions led by Gensler after the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX in November. Gensler was roundly criticized on social media and by lawmakers for the SEC’s failure to impose safeguards on the nascent crypto industry.

    Gensler’s SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, chaired by Rostin Benham, are the two regulators that oversee crypto activity in the U.S. Both agencies filed complaints against Bankman-Fried, but the SEC has, of late, ramped up the pace and the scope of enforcement actions.

    The SEC brought a similar action against now bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi and settled last year. Earlier this month, Coinbase settled with New York state regulators over historically inadequate know-your-customer protocols.

    Since Bankman-Fried was indicted on federal fraud charges in December, the SEC has filed five crypto-related enforcement actions.

    This is breaking news. Check back for updates.

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  • Federal prosecutor reviewing classified documents found at former Biden office

    Federal prosecutor reviewing classified documents found at former Biden office

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    A “small number” of government documents marked as classified were found this fall by lawyers for President Joe Biden in a locked closet in a Washington, D.C., think tank office used by Biden when he was a private citizen, his lawyer said Monday.

    The Department of Justice and the National Archives and Records Administration are reviewing the circumstances surrounding the documents, according to a statement by Richard Sauber, special counsel to Biden.

    Sauber said the documents appear to be from the Obama administration, during which Biden served as vice president.

    The documents, Sauber said, were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Engagement on Nov. 2.

    That was nearly three months after FBI agents raided the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump and seized more than 100 classified government documents and hundreds of more records that federal prosecutors say belong to the U.S. government.

    Trump is the focus of a criminal probe by the DOJ for his removal of the records from the White House in January 2021.

    By law, government records must be given to the National Archives when a president or officials in their administration leave office.

    Sauber’s statement was issued after CBS News first reported the discovery of the records at the Penn Biden Center.

    A source familiar with the situation told NBC News that Attorney General Merrick Garland asked the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, John Lausch, to review how classified material ended up at the Penn Biden Center.

    That task was intentionally assigned to Lausch, who was appointed to the prosecutor’s office by Trump appointee, to avoid any conflict of interest, the source told NBC.

    On Monday night, Trump wrote, in a post on his social media site, “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”

    “These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump wrote.

    He has claimed without evidence that he declassified records found at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

    Even if Trump had declassified the records that had classified markings, he still could face criminal prosecution if the DOJ finds he likely broke the law by removing all of the records from the White House, and by obstructing efforts to recover them.

    Biden, during an appearance on the CBS news show “60 Minutes” in September, had expressed dismay at an FBI photo that showed some of the government records found at Mar-a-Lago.

    “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible?” Biden asked. “Totally irresponsible.” 

    Sauber’s statement about the Biden documents on Monday, which was provided by the White House, said, “The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the” center.”

    “The President periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign,” Sauber said.

    He added that the documents “were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the [National] Archives.”

    That was a pointed reference to the fact that the National Archives had repeatedly asked Trump and his lawyers about documents the agency suspected had not been returned before the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago.

    Biden’s personal lawyers, since the discovery of the records, “have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said

    A source familiar with the situation told NBC News that Biden only became aware of the classified documents being stored in his former office when he was told by his lawyers they had discovered them.

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  • Seventh vote about to begin as GOP’s McCarthy seeks deal

    Seventh vote about to begin as GOP’s McCarthy seeks deal

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    WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives was poised Thursday to hold its seventh vote this week to elect a new speaker, as Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., sought to revive his embattled bid for the speaker’s gavel by agreeing to demands from key conservative holdouts.

    “I think everyone in the conversation wants to find a solution,” McCarthy said on his way into the House chamber. “What we’re doing is we’re having really good progress in conversation. I think everybody in the conversation wants to find a solution.”

    Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., gave up the gavel at noon on Tuesday, after Republicans took control of the chamber in November’s elections. The absence of a speaker has left the House in disarray, largely due to the fact that rank-and-file members can’t be sworn into office until a speaker is elected and cannot set up their local or Washington offices. This leaves all 434 members of the House technically still members-elect, not official voting representatives. 

    Ahead of Thursday’s votes, Democratic Party leaders berated Republicans for the party’s dysfunction, and emphasized the harm that going days without a House speaker was inflicting on the legislative branch and the nation.

    “We cannot organize our district offices, get our new members doing that political work of our constituent services, helping serve the people who sent us here on their behalf,” incoming Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., told reporters in the Capitol Thursday morning. “Kevin McCarthy’s ego in his pursuit of the speakership at all costs is drowning out the voices and the needs of the American people.”

    Democrats also emphasized that the absence of a speaker was threatening U.S. national security by keeping members of Congress from accessing classified intelligence that is only available to lawmakers after they have taken the oath of office, which none of them can take without a speaker.

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    “At the end of the day, all we are asking Republicans to do is to figure out a way for themselves to organize so the Congress can get together and do the business of the American people,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said at a press conference with Clark.

    She accused McCarthy of being “held hostage to his own ambitions.”

    “This is about your responsibility to organize government. It is fundamental to who we are as members of Congress,” Clark said.

    McCarthy, meanwhile, negotiated late into the night Wednesday with both allies and his opponents to try to strike a deal that would get him the gavel, following six failed votes over Tuesday and Wednesday.

    “I think we’re making progress,” McCarthy said on his way into the Capitol Thursday morning, according to NBC News. “I think people are talking and that’s a good sign. I think that’s very good. Look, we’re all working together, to find a solution.”

    McCarthy’s latest concessions paved the way for a new round of votes that are expected to begin Thursday at 12 p.m. ET.

    U.S. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reacts on the floor of the House Chamber with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as Democrats force the House to vote on whether to continue a late evening session against McCarthy’s wishes, while the competition for Speaker of the House continues, on the second day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 4, 2023 

    Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

    It was unclear, however, whether the promises made would translate into any shifts in the vote count on Thursday.

    The first major concession McCarthy agreed to Wednesday was a change to the rules to allow any member of the party to call for a vote on whether to replace the House speaker at any time, a far lower threshold than the current bar, according to NBC News.

    “Any one, any where, any time,” is how Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of McCarthy’s staunchest opponents, described the new rule to NBC late Wednesday night.

    Gaetz also said McCarthy had agreed to name members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus to positions on key committees, including the powerful House Rules Committee, which controls which bills make it to the floor for a vote, and which bills languish indefinitely in committees.

    This change satisfied another demand from the far right, that its bloc of members be given more power to push their preferred bills to the House floor.

    Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) passionately addresses other conservative Republican members of the House in the middle of the House Chamber after a fourth round of voting still failed to elect U.S. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as new Speaker of the House on the second day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 4, 2023. 

    Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

    McCarthy’s allies did not deny that he had agreed to new concessions, NBC reported, but they refused to confirm specifics.

    “The question is movement and positive movement,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, told NBC News and other reporters camped outside the meeting rooms late Wednesday night. “We’ve had an afternoon turned evening of very positive discussions and there seems to be goodwill around Republicans and McCarthy that is shaping up in a very nice way.”

    The limited progress came after McCarthy had failed in six votes over two days to reach the minimum number needed to become speaker, in this case 218 votes, if all 434 incoming House members cast ballots.

    Not only had McCarthy failed to hit 218, but over the course of 48 hours, McCarthy’s support had actually shrunk from 203 to 201, after two members of his caucus, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz, changed their votes.

    Democrats, meanwhile, remained in lockstep throughout the votes, casting all 212 of their ballots unanimously every time for Jeffries.

    Incoming Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), incoming Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) and incoming Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) hold a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 13, 2022. 

    Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

    This is a developing story and will be updated throughout the day.

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  • House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appears to lack support be speaker hours ahead of key vote

    House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy appears to lack support be speaker hours ahead of key vote

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    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., listens as other members speak during his news conference on FY23 government funding on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.

    Bill Clark | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

    WASHINGTON — As the House prepares to usher in the 118th Congress and new Republican majority on Tuesday, GOP Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy is struggling to secure enough support for his bid to be House speaker to avoid a protracted and historic fight on the House floor.

    The California Republican has lobbied his fellow Republicans for months and made several concessions to a small but outspoken bloc of conservatives. But the efforts have not yet produced the breakthrough that McCarthy needs to be elected House speaker in the first round of voice voting, which is expected to take place shortly after noon ET.

    In order to be elected speaker, McCarthy needs support from a majority of the members who vote Tuesday, or 218 of the 434 House members expected to vote. But with only 222 Republicans total, and no Democrats expected to vote for him, McCarthy can only afford to lose four members of his caucus.

    As of Tuesday morning, six current Republican members and three members-elect, all conservatives, still publicly opposed McCarthy. McCarthy also faced months of organized opposition from influential conservative outside groups, which have amplified his critics on social media.

    McCarthy’s failure to win public support from his entire caucus has already cast a shadow over the new Republican majority, exposing divisions within the party that have existed for decades. The differences were deepened by former President Donald Trump, who emboldened a small band of ultra conservatives.

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    Trump eventually backed McCarthy’s bid for Speaker, as did other influential conservatives like Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    House Republicans began Tuesday morning with a caucus meeting that was viewed as McCarthy’s final opportunity to make his pitch to members who might be on the fence.

    Heading into the meeting, McCarthy struck a confident tone.

    “We’re going to unite the team,” he told Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman.

    Yet judging from early statements by key Republican holdouts, the conservatives had a long list of demands they believed McCarthy has failed to meet.

    House Democrats, meanwhile, openly relished the internal chaos roiling the opposing party.

    “We certainly are seeing chaos today in Congress, and this is an extension of the extremism that we have seen from the GOP,” said incoming House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

    She accused McCarthy of having “thrown away his moral compass.”

    This is a developing story, please check back for updates.

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