Taking crazy pills: Former President Donald Trump said last evening that the civil fraud verdict that will force him to pony up $355 million for inflating his net worth to banks is actually “a form of Navalny” and “a form of communism or fascism.”
When asked about the Russian state’s imprisonment and killing of dissident Alexei Navalny, Trump responded: “It’s happening here.” The indictments are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics,” in his telling.
He made these comments last night during a Fox News town hall. On Truth Social, his own alternative social media platform, Trump said, “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”
Alexei Navalny, who was reported dead on Friday, served as an opposition leader in a state that disallows opposition and legitimate voting. Navalny garnered a massive following—more than 6 million YouTube followers, for starters, with at least one video viewed 130 million times—by doing legitimately good journalism digging into the kleptocratic, repressive Putin regime. Navalny offered normal Russians legitimate, well-sourced explanations for why they are so poor: their leaders consistently abdicate responsibility, choosing to enrich themselves. Their leaders are content with everyday people living in squalor and dysfunction, as long as they stay comfortable.
Running for office, and cutting through the state’s propaganda, made him so disfavored by the regime that he went into exile. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 with full awareness that he would be locked up but a devout belief that he ought to continue his work domestically, displaying courage in the face of certain persecution. And sure enough, he was locked up, then sent to an even more remote prison camp called IK-3, in Kharp, which is in the Arctic Circle. His death there was reported last week, but the opposition movement will not die with him. “In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul,” said his widow, Yulia, “but I have another half left—and it is telling me I have no right to give up.”
Trump, on the other hand, misrepresented his net worth to banks, defrauding lenders (who…still had a responsibility to do due diligence, a fact ignored in much mainstream media reporting of the case). “Trump claimed his apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size,” writesReason‘s Jacob Sullum. “He valued Mar-a-Lago, his golf resort in Palm Beach, based on the assumption that it could be sold for residential purposes, which the deed precluded.” But “[New York Attorney General Letitia] James was not able to identify any damages to lenders or insurers,” writes Sullum, and “the striking absence of any injury commensurate with the punishment lends credibility to Trump’s reflexive complaint that he is the victim of a partisan vendetta.”
Both things can be true, that Trump attracts politically motivated ire—which attorneys general and judges are wrong to indulge—and that he also did something wrong by inflating his net worth. But he’s a far cry from Navalny—Trump enjoys self-dealing more than fact-finding and truth-telling—and the way this went down, via the court system, where Trump had the right to defend himself, is a far cry from how “justice” gets dispensed in Russia—by Putin, in penal colonies, via murders of anyone whose beliefs threaten the man in charge.
“Clinical psychologists with the Department of Veterans Affairs faced retaliation and ostracization at work after they publicly opposed a gender-inclusion policy that allows men to access women’s medical spaces within the VA,” reportsNational Review.
RFK Jr.’s “origin story makes this like Odysseus returning to the manor, stringing the bow, this is that iconic moment,” said Bret Weinstein on Joe Rogan’s podcast. If you say so, Bret.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just announced a lawsuit against El Paso’s Annunciation House, an NGO in charge of a shelter network for migrants, for “facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.” But going after charities that help migrants—whatever you think of the behavior they engaged in to get here—seems like a wrongheaded stunt.
I do not think this is true or that there’s much evidence for it:
do you want a black pill?
like… a really really black pill?
George Carlin would be pro-censorship if he were alive today b/c he didn’t actually love free speech, he just fucking hated Christians
“The enormous contrast between [Alexei] Navalny’s civic courage and the corruption of [Vladimir] Putin’s regime will remain,” writesThe Atlantic‘s Anne Applebaum. “Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history.”
Related: People were arrested for laying flowers in memory of Navalny.
But Carlson’s monologue, in which he lambasted Western media and claimed it wasn’t making an effort to hear Putin’s side of the story, has sparked backlash from American and Russian journalists.
“Many journalists have interviewed Putin, who also makes frequent, widely covered speeches,” wrote Anne Applebaum, an American journalist and historian, on X (formerly Twitter). “Carlson’s interview is different because he is not a journalist, he’s a propagandist, with a history of helping autocrats conceal corruption.”
Carlson, who was ousted by Fox last year, said the interview would be published “unedited” and “not behind a paywall” on his personal website. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday confirmed that the interview had already taken place, but did not share when it would air.
While Western media outlets have done “scores of interviews” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Carlson said, “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin.”
“Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now,” he said. “They’ve never heard his voice. That’s wrong.”
While it’s true that Carlson will be the first American to interview Putin since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, journalists from major outlets in the United States and Europe were quick to point out that this is not for lack of trying.
Javier Milei campaigned with a chainsaw, promising to cut the size of government.
Argentina’s leftists had so clogged the country’s economic arteries with regulations that what once was one of the world’s richest countries is now one of the poorest.
Inflation is more than 200 percent.
People save their whole lives—and then find their savings worth nearly nothing.
Milei understands that government can’t create wealth.
He surprised diplomats at the World Economic Forum this month by saying, “The state is the problem!”
He spoke up for capitalism: “Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state…. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution.”
Go, Milei! I wish current American politicians talked that way.
In the West, young people turn socialist. In Argentina, they live under socialist policies. They voted for Milei.
Sixty-nine percent of voters under 25 voted for him. That helped him win by a whopping 3 million votes.
He won promising to reverse “decades of decadence.” He told the Economic Forum, “If measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade, and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.”
Right.
Poor countries demonstrate that again and again.
The media say Milei will never pass his reforms, and leftists may yet stop him.
But already, “He was able to repeal rent controls, price controls,” says economist Daniel Di Martino in my new video. He points out that Milei already “eliminated all restrictions on exports and imports, all with one sign of a pen.”
“He can just do that without Congress?” I ask.
“The president of Argentina has a lot more power than the president of the United States.”
Milei also loosened rules limiting where airlines can fly.
“Now [some] air fares are cheaper than bus fares!” says Di Martino.
He scrapped laws that say, “Buy in Argentina.” I point out that America has “Buy America” rules.
“It only makes poor people poorer because it increases costs!” Di Martino replies, “Why shouldn’t Argentinians be able to buy Brazilian pencils or Chilean grapes?”
“To support Argentina,” I push back.
“Guess what?” Says Di Martino, “Not every country is able to produce everything at the lowest cost. Imagine if you had to produce bananas in America.”
Argentina’s leftist governments tried to control pretty much everything.
“The regulations were such that everything not explicitly legal was illegal,” laughs Di Martino. “Now…everything not illegal is legal.”
One government agency Milei demoted was a “Department for Women, Gender and Diversity.” DiMartino says that reminds him of Venezuela’s Vice Ministry for Supreme Social Happiness. “These agencies exist just so government officials can hire their cronies.”
Cutting government jobs and subsidies for interest groups is risky for vote-seeking politicians. There are often riots in countries when politicians cut subsidies. Sometimes politicians get voted out. Or jailed.
“What’s incredible about Milei,” notes Di Martino, “is that he was able to win on the promise of cutting subsidies.”
That is remarkable. Why would Argentinians vote for cuts?
“Argentinians are fed up with the status quo,” replies Di Martino.
Milei is an economist. He named his dogs after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Lucas, all libertarian economists.
I point out that most Americans don’t know who those men were.
“The fact that he’s naming his dogs after these famous economists,” replies Di Martino, “shows that he’s really a nerd. It’s a good thing to have an economics nerd president of a country.”
“What can Americans learn from Argentina?”
“Keep America prosperous. So we never are in the spot of Argentina in the first place. That requires free markets.”
Yes.
Actually, free markets plus rule of law. When people have those things, prosperity happens.
Ukrainian authorities uncovered a corrupt arms procurement deal worth nearly €36.4 million, the Ukrainian security service announced late Saturday.
Former and current “high-ranking officials” in Kyiv’s defense ministry were involved in the plot, dating to 2022, to steal funds meant for procuring 100,000 mortar rounds, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement.
The scheme reflects Ukraine’s ongoing struggle to combat corruption as it tries to fight off Moscow’s invasion and apply to join the EU and NATO.
According to the SBU, the defense ministry paid for the weapons order in August 2022, transferring the funds to supplier Lviv Arsenal. Instead of delivering the weapons, however, the company “took the received funds into the shadows, transferring them to the accounts of another affiliated structure in the Balkans,” according to the statement.
The SBU said it seized the stolen funds and notified five people of suspicion, including the former and current heads of the department responsible for military equipment at the defense ministry. One suspect is in custody after being detained while trying to leave Ukraine, the SBU said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has compared corruption to treason. Yet his move to hand graft-fighting authority to the SBU — a unit under his direct control — rather than existing corruption watchdogs has sparked controversy and fears that sensitive cases could be covered up.
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Thousands of people on Thursday joined growing street protests across Slovakia against a plan by populist Prime Minister Robert Fico to amend the penal code and eliminate a national prosecutors’ office.
The proposed changes have faced sharp criticism at home and abroad.
The plan approved by Fico’s coalition government includes abolishing the special prosecutors’ office, which handles serious crimes such as graft, organized crime and extremism. Those cases would be taken over by prosecutors in regional offices, which haven’t dealt with such crimes for 20 years.
The planned changes also include a reduction in punishments for corruption and some other crimes, including the possibility of suspended sentences, and a significant shortening of the statute of limitations.
Thursday’s protests took place in two dozens of cities and towns, including the capital, and spread also to Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic, Krakow in Poland and Paris.
“We’re not ready to give up,” Michal Šimečka, who heads the liberal Progressive Slovakia, the strongest opposition party, told the big crowd that filled the central SNP square in Bratislava.
“We will step up our pressure,” Šimečka said. ”We will defend justice and freedom in our country,” he said.
“Mafia, mafia” and “Fico mobster,” people chanted.
Earlier Thursday, the ruling coalition voted to use a fast-track parliamentary procedure to approve the changes. That means the draft legislation won’t be reviewed by experts and others usually involved in the common legislative procedures.
The coalition also voted to limit the discussion in the first of the three parliamentary readings. The opposition condemned the move.
“They decided to silence us in Parliament but they won’t silence you all,” Šimečka said.
The second reading, in which changes could possibly be made to the draft legislation, could take place next Wednesday while the final vote is possible by the end of next week.
President Zuzana Čaputová said the proposed changes jeopardize the rule of law and cause “unpredictable” damage to society.
Also, the European Parliament has questioned Slovakia’s ability to fight corruption if the changes are adopted. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has said Slovakia’s plans threaten the protection of the EU’s financial interests and its anti-corruption framework.
Čaputová said she is willing to bring a constitutional challenge of the legislation. It’s unclear how the Constitutional Court might rule.
Fico returned to power for the fourth time after his scandal-tainted leftist party won Sept. 30 parliamentary elections on a pro-Russia and anti-American platform.
A number of people linked to the party face prosecution in corruption scandals.
Fico’s critics worry his return could lead Slovakia to abandon its pro-Western course and instead follow the direction of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
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Follow AP’s Europe coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/europe
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, March 13, 2023.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A former high-ranking lawyer at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to conspiring to sexually exploit multiple children and now faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 15 years.
The lawyer, Mark Black, also previously served as president of the board of the Arlington Aquatic Club, a renowned Virginia swim club that includes U.S. Olympic swimmers among its alumni. Black resides in Arlington.
Black, 50, most recently was special counsel in the general counsel’s office of the FDIC, which insures the deposits of U.S. commercial and savings banks, according to his LinkedIn page. He has worked in the legal division since April 2013, his LinkedIn page says.
The Department of Justice said Black, who is married and has teenage sons, was a member of “two online groups dedicated to exploiting children.”
“The goal of the two groups was to locate prepubescent girls online and convince them to livestream themselves engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” the DOJ said in a press release.
“Black and his co-conspirators would covertly record this conduct and share the videos with each other,” the DOJ said.
Black pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, to one count of conspiracy to produce child pornography and one count of coercion and enticement.
He is due to be sentenced on April 30. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life behind bars.
The FDIC told CNBC it was “deeply shocked and disturbed about the allegations” against Black, who was suspended by the agency when it learned about the investigation of him last year.
The FDIC said Black’s criminal activity “had nothing whatsoever to do with the FDIC,” and did not involve the use of agency computers or other devices. The agency also said it had cooperated with the FBI and DOJ in the criminal probe.
CNBC has requested comment from Black’s defense attorneys and from the Arlington Aquatic Club.
On Jan. 5, Black was deemed indefinitely ineligible by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit group that has the authority to resolve abuse and misconduct reports in sports associated with U.S. Olympic programs.
Read more CNBC politics coverage
Court documents show that Black, who previously was an attorney at the firm Steptoe & Johnson, was arrested in mid-September after being indicted on six criminal counts related to the production, advertisement, receipt, distribution and possession of child pornography.
The indictment says Black engaged in that criminal conduct from January 2018 through October 2021.
He has been held without bond since his arrest due to the ages of the victims in the case, the weight of the evidence, and his risk of lengthy incarceration, according to court documents.
Black’s lawyers, in a court filing in September seeking his release, offered as a third-party custodian for him Genevieve Holm, who was described as “a retired, career 40-year trial attorney with the Department of Justice, who also has served as” a state court magistrate.
The filing said authorities executed a search warrant at Black’s home on June 6 last year in connection with the child-porn probe.
After material was seized from the home, Black “voluntarily self-referred to counseling” with a certified sex offender treatment provider, the filing said.
The provider, in a statement cited by defense lawyers, said Black “is an excellent candidate for continued outpatient treatment.”
“Mark Black is 50 years old, and the remaining months may be his last opportunity to see his teenage sons and make final arrangements to secure the stability of his family before he is incarcerated for a lengthy period of time,” defense lawyers wrote.
“This time in the community is important in order to make sure all necessary appropriate legal and financial steps for his family for many years to come, may be his last opportunity in his life to spend some meaningful time with his family, and will with appropriate conditions not be a danger to the community.”
A judge denied that request shortly after it was made.
GUATEMALA CITY — Despite having the support of millions of Guatemalans, newly installed President Bernardo Arévalo has a clear obstacle — the attorney general’s office and its leader, Consuelo Porras.
Arévalo has made a bold promise to clean up corruption in a Central American nation that for years has kept swaths of the countryside marginalized and impoverished. But he already has faced waves of court challenges that sought to stop him from taking office Sunday, and is widely expected to be hit with further legal attacks. Experts and critics say Porras has led the charge.
The president has said he will propose a meeting this week with Porras and will ask for her resignation. She likely will refuse, and Guatemalan law blocks the president from removing the top prosecutor.
Here are some key points as Porras tries to hinder Arévalo in carrying out his progressive agenda, which has widespread public support, particularly among Indigenous communities.
Consuelo Porras, 70, runs the Public Prosecutor’s Office and wields all the investigative and prosecutorial power in the country.
Porras is widely viewed as a protector of Guatemala’s political and business elite, having shut down a once robust effort to investigate and prosecute corruption.
She has been sanctioned twice by the United States government, which accuses her of undermining democracy and torpedoing the anti-corruption fight, and she has been openly criticized by the international community.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office is still bent on bringing cases from the past to affect the transition,” the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, said in early December.
She first became attorney general in 2018 with the support of then-President Jimmy Morales, replacing Thelma Aldana. The reputation of the prosecutor’s office soon began to decline as corruption cases weren’t followed through on and personnel changes were made.
With a doctorate in law, Porras’ reputation was hit by a plagiarism scandal during her first term as attorney general. And she accumulated a list of accusations against her, including blocking investigations into corruption, protecting the interests of Guatemala’s elite, and criminalizing judges and prosecutors.
But two years ago, then President Alejandro Giammattei ratified her appointment to another term, which run untils 2026.
Years ago, the Public Prosecutor’s Office was an example to follow in Latin America for its anti-corruption efforts. It even managed to get a president to resign.
With the arrival of Porras, that fight withered. Under her leadership, the government pushed to expel a United Nations-supported anti-corruption commission investigating possible state crimes. The commission, which brought several hundred people to court, eventually left the country after its mandate wasn’t renewed.
During Giammattei’s time as president, Porras left many accusations against him uninvestigated, including a corruption scandal involving COVID-19 vaccines.
Many of Arévalo’s supporters hold Porras responsible for Guatemala’s current political crisis.
Problems for Arévalo began as soon as the progressive politician won a spot on the presidential runoff ballot. On the same day results from the first round of voting were made official, a judge — who also has been sanctioned by the U.S. — announced an investigation int’so Arévalo Seed Party and suspended its legal status as requested by Porras’ office.
Despite Arévalo’s candidacy being approved by electoral authorities and the election results being certified, prosecutors ordered waves of arrest warrants, raids of the party offices and seizures of electoral records and ballots.
Porras went so far as to try three times to have Arévalo’s immunity from prosecution be withdrawn and she proposed annulling the election.
The judicial onslaught is only expected to continue. Her office is pursuing multiple investigations of Arévalo, including for allegedly encouraging a monthslong takeover of a public university by students. It is also contends his party committed wrongdoing when it gathered petition signatures required to form years earlier.
For former prosecutor Claudia Paz y Paz, Arévalo’s anti-corruption agenda is one Porras sought to block Arévalo from taking office.
“People are demanding that she carry out her duty to investigate cases,” Paz y Paz said. Now that demand is backed “also by the executive branch.”
In 2016, Guatemala’s congress changed the law to make it more difficult to remove the attorney general. Previously, a president could appoint and remove the top prosecutor for any reason. Now, the attorney general can be removed only for a conviction for a malicious offense.
The only way out for Arévalo is asking for her resignation or authorities initiating criminal proceedings. Congress could also change the law again, but Arévalo’s party likely lacks a congressional majority to make it happen.
The former prosecutor, Paz y Paz, argues there are enough cases with enough evidence to initiate criminal proceedings against Porras. That process could justify demands for the removal of her immunity meant to block the unjustified removal of prosecutors and the criminalization and persecution of judicial officials.
Juan Francisco Sandoval, former head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity now in exile after being dismissed by Porras for his investigations, echoed Paz y Paz.
“She obstructed our investigations, took away what we needed to do our work, delayed (judicial) processes and initiated administrative and criminal proceedings against us for doing our jobs with fictitious evidence, made arbitrary arrests … Which collectively led to people being exiled,” said Sandoval.
A CORPSE IN THE DANUBE AND A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE might sound more like elements from a film noir than an explanation of what’s happening in Europe today. But to understand the tortured state of the Continent’s politics, there’s no better place to start.
In October, the body of Christian Pilnacek, once the most powerful man in the Austrian justice ministry, was found floating in the river not far from the town of Krems, dead of an apparent suicide a few hours after he’d been arrested on a DUI after driving in the wrong direction on the highway.
“His life was taken from him,” the civil servant’s widow, a top prosecutor, told a memorial service in November, in a bitter swipe at the country’s political elites.
Pilnacek, a dapper civil servant who counted as one of his country’s best legal minds, had spent the preceding years battling a series of allegations that he had leaked privileged information to his political cronies and the press and had tried to quash a sweeping corruption investigation surrounding Vienna’s purchase of fighter jets.
In the wake of his death, however, it seemed that it wasn’t a guilty conscience that pushed him over the brink, but a refusal to bend his principles to the will of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), a bulwark of the country’s political system that has been part of the federal government without interruption since 1987.
A month after his body was found, a surreptitious recording of Pilnacek emerged, in which he could be heard describing how senior politicians in the ÖVP, the party of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, had pressured him to kill investigations into political corruption.
“ÖVP ministers came to me even after there had been a search of the party headquarters and asked why I won’t shut it down,” Pilnacek, a gregarious man who enjoyed a good gossip, can be heard saying on the recording. “I always told them: I can’t do it, I won’t do it, I don’t want to do it.”
Facing his own legal troubles and feeling unjustly accused, he had turned to those same politicians for help — only to have been refused because the distraught civil servant hadn’t been effective in halting the other investigations.
“When I asked if they would do something to support me, the response was: ‘You were never really with us,’” Pilnacek says on the tape, which was recorded without his knowledge at a Vienna restaurant a few months before his death.
Even for a society steeled by decades of political scandal and corruption, the episode was jaw-dropping, prompting loud calls for a reckoning.
It’ll have to wait. For many Austrian voters, the biggest shocker surrounding the affair was the ÖVP’s reaction to the revelations. Instead of dissolving the government and triggering a new election, leaders of the center-right party went on the attack, accusing their political enemies of intrigue and using “KGB methods” to undermine the party.
“It’s not acceptable for our country to turn into a state of snitches,” ÖVP General Secretary Christian Stocker warned.
Christian Pilnacek during the trial of Johann Fuchs, the head of the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2022. Fuchs was alleged to have breached official secrecy and given false testimony before the Ibiza-U Committee | Johann Groder/EXPA via Belga
It was, in effect, a concession to his opponents, especially on the far right. In attempting to lead Austrians down a conspiracy rabbit hole instead of coming clean, Stocker was resorting to the very populist tactics his party had for years insisted were beneath it.
Far right rising
AS EUROPE FACES ITS MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION YEAR in living memory, the Continent is in for another round of soul-searching about the reasons behind the rise of the far right and other anti-establishment forces.
There are, of course, a variety of factors. Depending on the party and the country, they range from a sharp rise in migration to resentment over how establishment parties managed the pandemic to the European Union’s support for Ukraine and concerns over the war in Gaza.
But there’s another potent driver that’s far less often discussed: a wave of corruption scandals that has washed over Europe’s political establishment in recent years, providing ample grist for far-right parties that cast “the system” as hopelessly crooked and engineered to harm “normal” people.
While most far-right parties have their own issues with corruption and graft, voters tend to be more forgiving of their crimes, often because they consider the entire political class to be untrustworthy and are attracted to the parties’ often radical (if unrealistic) prescriptions for solving political problems.
Austria — home to the Freedom Party (FPÖ), a group founded in the 1950s by a former SS general — is poised to see the most dramatic rightward shift. The Pilnacek affair marks just the latest in a string of scandals that have exposed systemic corruption in the governing ÖVP, buoying the FPÖ, which has enjoyed a comfortable lead in the polls for more than a year.
With the European Parliament election in June and a national poll expected in the fall, the far-right party’s rise could have a substantial impact on the Continent’s politics. Austria, by virtue of its history and position at the crossroads of Europe, has often served as a proving ground for political movements. It was here, for example, that both the political antisemitism that inspired Adolf Hitler and Theodor Herzl’s Zionist movement were born.
More recently, it has served as a laboratory for the anti-immigrant far right, which under the FPÖ is poised to record one of its greatest victories yet.
Party leader Herbert Kickl — a hard-right ideologue who has vowed to halt both Ukraine’s EU accession and the sanctions the bloc has imposed on Russia — may soon be sitting in the Council alongside the EU’s bête noire, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whom Kickl has described as a role model.
At a packed rally near the southern Austrian city of Graz last weekend, Kickl called for an “EU of the fatherlands,” pledging to “defend Austria’s interests” alongside allies like the Hungarian leader.
“The technical term at the European level is ‘veto,’” Kickl told the enthusiastic crowd, which sat at long beer hall tables sipping mugs of lager. Kickl took the stage amid a flurry of fireworks as the theme music from the film “Hercules” played in the background. Throughout his hourlong address, audience members, many wearing lederhosen and other traditional Alpine garb, interrupted his remarks with loud chants of “Herbert, Herbert!”
“They can’t stop us,” Kickl said at one point during the show, dismissing Karl Nehammer, the current ÖVP chancellor, as a “dead man walking.”
Chairman of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) Herbert Kickl | Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images
Nehammer’s ÖVP is currently polling in third place behind the FPÖ and the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and his personal ratings are the lowest ever recorded for a chancellor, with more than 60 percent of respondents in a recent poll saying they had no confidence in him.
To be fair, he’s the second man to inherit the job after Kurz’s 2021 resignation and had only limited political experience. Recent campaigns by his image makers to boost his standing, such as one on the virtues of eating schnitzel, have fallen flat. His reputation was further undermined in September following the release of a video of a small party gathering in Salzburg, where he suggested poor people go to McDonald’s if they want a hot meal for their children.
Kickl’s momentum has created a bigger worry for Europe: A big win by the FPÖ could fuel support for its German sister party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is already in second place, polling at more than 20 percent.
Corruptus delicti
CORRUPTION AND POLITICS HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED hand-in-glove, but the topic has gained new-found relevance as scandals have rocked many of Europe’s once-dominant centrist parties from France to Italy to Greece, pushing some to the brink of extinction.
After years of corruption investigations and prosecutions involving former President Nicolas Sarkozy and other leading figures, for example, France’s once-dominant center right finished with less than 5 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2022.
In Spain, the center-right Popular Party (PP) is still suffering from a sweeping corruption case that led to the conviction of 29 people, including senior party officials, in 2018.
The problem is even worse in Central Europe, where a culture of corruption amongst the political mainstream in countries such as the Czech Republic has fueled the rise of populists such as Andrej Babiš, who won power on a promise to clean up the system in 2017 only to face an investigation into fraud allegations himself.
And in Brussels, the Qatargate cash-for-influence case has rocked the European Parliament with the biggest corruption scandal to hit the European institutions for decades.
In contrast to far-right parties, which often bounce back from scandal under new leadership on the power of their radical rhetoric, mainstream parties have a more difficult time — in large part because it’s often not clear what they stand for. After World War II, Europe’s center-right and center-left blocs served distinct clienteles: the professional and working classes, usually with strong ties to other interest groups such as farmers and churches.
These days, however, the differences between the blocs are often difficult to discern. With voter preference often influenced more by personality than substance, allegiance to the parties has frayed.
When it comes to corruption, Austria — a country of nearly 9 million people situated in the center of the Continent — stands apart: Its scandals are literally the stuff of Netflix series.
The country’s center-right and center-left parties (ÖVP and SPÖ) have dominated the country’s politics since WWII. That success created a system of clientelism and patronage, however, that is in the process of disintegrating following a series of investigations and court trials.
Investigators explored allegations that Eurofighter lobbyists paid about €100 million to Austrian politicians in exchange for the country’s €2 billion order of fighter jets in 2003 | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
In the 1970s, the Lucona affair involved a scheme hatched by a politically connected coffee-house owner named Udo Proksch. His plan involved blowing up a tanker he’d purchased to collect the insurance. Six people were killed in the explosion near the Maldives in 1977 sinking the tanker. Subsequent investigations into Proksch’s political links led to the resignation of 16 officials, including the president of the Austrian parliament, which under the constitution counts as the second-highest office, and the interior minister. The episode was later made into a movie.
The so-called Noricum Affair in the 1980s involved the illegal sale of hundreds of howitzers by an Austrian arms maker to both Iran and Iraq, which were engaged in a war against one another at the time. It, too, exposed close links between the politicians and illicit business interests. Cleaning up was more straightforward because the same politicians at the center of the affair had already been implicated in the Lucona scandal.
More recently, investigators explored allegations that Eurofighter lobbyists paid about €100 million to Austrian politicians in exchange for the country’s €2 billion order of fighter jets in 2003. In 2019, Pilnacek told colleagues in a meeting that he would “turn a blind eye” if they quietly shut down the investigation, arguing that it wasn’t winnable. That sparked a probe against him for alleged abuse of his office, which was later shelved.
After a more than decade-long investigation, prosecutors filed charges in June against two executives involved in the Eurofighter deal, alleging money laundering. The chances for convictions are murky, however. Despite ample evidence that the lobbyists paid out bribes, the only convictions in the case so far have been across the border in Germany.
Turnaround
IT’S IRONIC, GIVEN KICKL’S FOCUS ON STATE CORRUPTION, that the Austrian scandal to beat all scandals (which inspired both a miniseries and a separate documentary) involved not one of the centrist establishment parties but the FPÖ itself.
Named after the Spanish island of Ibiza, it was the result of a 2017 sting by a private investigator and his female companion, who was posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch.
Together, they lured Heinz-Christian Strache, then the FPÖ leader, and an associate of his to a villa on the island. They had outfitted the house with hidden cameras. Over the course of a long evening fueled by an endless supply of cigarettes and vodka mixed with Red Bull, Strache — who at the time was not in government — offered to trade influence for financial support.
By the time the video of the encounter was leaked in mid-2019, Strache was vice chancellor in a government led by the ÖVP’s Kurz.
The affair triggered an unprecedented political crisis, prompting a government collapse and new elections that left the FPÖ weakened and in opposition.
In retrospect, it was a lucky turn of events for the party. While Kurz’s ÖVP did well in the election as the FPÖ sank, the flurry of investigations surrounding Ibiza ended up ensnaring the center right as well.
A cache of revealing text messages discovered on a Kurz aide’s phone exposed the chancellor’s sonny-boy persona to be fiction; instead of the modernizer the chancellor claimed to be, Kurz was revealed as an old-school machine politician willing to do whatever it took to ensure his hold on power.
Facing criminal investigations for allegedly making false statements to parliament and using state funds to pay for manipulated polls, Kurz was forced to resign in October 2021 and is currently standing trial.
Austria’s former chancellor Sebastian Kurz was embroiled in a flurry of investigations surrounding the Ibiza scandal | Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images
Kickl, meanwhile, took over the FPÖ and has used its time in opposition to reposition the party both as a scourge of the corruption it once embodied and as a paragon of far-right ideology: anti-immigrant, anti-establishment, anti-EU and anti-support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The turnaround of his party indicates that voters may be willing to look past previous corruption if a party has a compelling message and a leader who embodies it. Though Kickl’s approval ratings aren’t high, people take him seriously. In contrast to Strache, a trained dental technician who cultivated a playboy image, Kickl is an austere presence with a passion for triathlons and other extreme sports who eats unsweetened oatmeal with sour milk for breakfast.
After studying philosophy and political science (and completing degrees in neither), Kickl became active in the Freedom Party in the 1990s as an aide to Jörg Haider, the party’s then-leader who pioneered many of the far-right strategies, including the focus on migration, that have made the parties a force to be reckoned with across Europe. A charismatic icon to many in Austria, Haider, who died in a car crash in 2008, led the Freedom Party into government in 2000 as the junior partner to the ÖVP, sparking outrage across Europe and a diplomatic boycott by Austria’s EU partners.
For most of his political career, Kickl worked behind the scenes as an adviser and speechwriter. He is credited with coining many of the party’s most memorable — and controversial — slogans, such as “Pummerin, not muezin.” Pummerin is the nickname of the massive bell atop St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. It was originally cast from Turkish cannons captured during an Ottoman siege of the city in the 17th century. Some of Kickl’s other lines have been not just offensive, but outright racist. In a 2001 speech he wrote for Haider, he penned the line: “I don’t know how someone named Ariel can be so dirty,” an antisemitic reference to Ariel Muzikant, the then leader of Austria’s Jewish community. “Ariel” is also a brand of detergent.
Despite widespread condemnation of Kickl’s rhetoric (during a short stint as interior minister in 2018, he called for “concentrating asylum seekers in one place” and changed the name of an asylum registration facility to “deportation center“) his standing within the party only improved. In an effort to appeal to a wider audience, he has also softened some of his racist overtones — a bit. He recently began campaigning under the banner “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor. While it may sound innocuous, it was also a moniker used by Hitler.
“He’s on the road to success,” said Anton Pelinka, the doyen of Austrian political science. “The content of what he says is as extreme as ever but the way in which he presents it is more moderate.”
That gentler approach has helped the FPÖ nearly double its support since the last election in 2019. The party has also scored strong gains in a string of regional elections, joining state government alongside the ÖVP as the junior partner, a process that has helped further normalize its extreme political agenda.
In contrast, the ÖVP is on the defensive. The party’s support has fallen to about 20 percent, from a post-Ibiza high of more than 37 percent and its loss of regional support has forced it into coalition with the FPÖ.
Pilnacek affair
THE DRAMA SURROUNDING KURZ HASN’T HELPED. Now a business consultant, the ex-chancellor recently suffered another blow after his association with René Benko, a high-flying Austrian real estate tycoon, was exposed.
Benko, whose empire was forced into bankruptcy in recent weeks in the largest insolvency in Austrian history, employed Kurz to lure investors from the Middle East, agreeing to pay the former politician millions in return.
And there’s Kurz’s role in the Pilnacek affair. On the morning the body of the former official was discovered, Kurz interrupted his testimony in court to express his shock, saying he had spoken to him the night before about his case. “I saw how he was treated in recent years, and I saw what it did to him,” he told journalists later that day.
Kurz wasn’t referring to his own party’s treatment of Pilnacek, however, but the corruption prosecutor’s pursuit of him. Unwittingly, the chancellor triggered the release of the damning audio of Pilnacek in the restaurant.
The recording was made by Christian Mattura, a former politician, who was having dinner with Pilnacek and decided to secretly tape the conversation when the subject turned to the ÖVP. He claimed later he had no intention of releasing the audio until he heard Kurz’s comments, which he viewed as hypocrisy and as a crass attempt to use Pilnacek’s tragic end to attack prosecutors.
Kurz declined to comment for this article.
Austrian National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka | Alex Halada/APA/AFP via Getty Images
More damaging to the ÖVP, however, is the role of its parliamentary president, Wolfgang Sobotka. In the recording, Pilnacek fingered Sobotka, a former interior minister and longtime ÖVP powerbroker, for pressuring him to end a number of investigations into the party.
“In every conversation, Sobotka would say, ‘you failed, you didn’t shut down’” the investigations, Pilnacek said on the secret recording. “But it wasn’t possible, and I wouldn’t do it. We live in a country of laws.”
Sobotka denied the allegations, saying that he never discussed ongoing investigations with Pilnacek, a fact he said the official had himself confirmed in testimony to parliament. Sobotka said he would continue to carry out his office “in accordance with the law.”
Kickl has wasted few opportunities to capitalize on the scandal, calling for Sobotka’s immediate resignation, telling him directly in parliament: “You are not our president.”
“I’m tempted to say that in comparison to you, Strache was a man of honor,” Kickl said during a debate, referring to his predecessor’s quick resignation after the Ibiza video became public. “At least he knew what to do when he was confronted with the accusations.”
Sobotka appears intent on waiting for things to blow over, a tactic that has worked before. In 2020, it emerged that Novomatic, an Austrian casino group at the center of the Ibiza investigations, had donated €8,000 to a chamber orchestra in Sobotka’s hometown, Waidhofen an der Ybbs. The orchestra’s director? Wolfgang Sobotka. He disputes any connection to the donation.
The politician’s affinity for classical music also inspired him to rent a gold-plated Bösendorfer grand piano for the parliament to the tune of €3,000 a month. His office defended the move, arguing that “art and culture are a top priority in Austria.” The public wasn’t buying it though, and Sobotka eventually bowed to pressure to exchange the piano for a standard black model.
Fixing the reputational damage has been more challenging. About 80 percent of voters have no confidence in him, according to a recent poll, ranking Sobotka last among all Austrian politicians. Sobotka did not respond to comment for this article.
So far, Sobotka has refused to resign, handing a gift that keeps on giving to Kickl, for whom Sobotka serves as Exhibit A in his recitation of all that’s wrong with the other political parties. Kickl understands that — given his lead in the polls — he only needs to wait. “The madness will end soon,” he promised his party faithful in Graz. “Salvation is at hand.”
GUATEMALA CITY — GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Bernardo Arévalo was sworn in early Monday as Guatemala’s new president.
Many doubted they would ever see the day as powerful interests aligned against his anti-corruption campaign and authorities threw various legal challenges at him and his party.
Arévalo is now president, but those disputes will continue and with little support in Congress he will be hard-pressed to deliver the deep changes in Guatemalan government and society that fueled his support and a surprise electoral victory.
He’s considered a political moderate with a background in conflict resolution, skills that should serve him well in Guatemala’s current polarization.
Arévalo is the 65-year-old son of former Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo.
The elder Arévalo was credited with implementing fundamental protections for workers and spaces for the country’s Indigenous population. Bernardo Arévalo was born in Uruguay, where his father was in exile following the ouster in a 1954 CIA-backed coup of his successor, President Jacobo Árbenz, whom the U.S. saw as a threat during the Cold War.
He came to Guatemala as a teenager before leaving again to continue his studies overseas. Arévalo studied sociology and anthropology abroad in Israel and the Netherlands, served as Guatemala’s ambassador to Spain, and for years worked in Geneva for the nongovernmental organization Interpeace.
He held a variety of roles there, but among his contributions was pioneering the organization’s peacebuilding work in Central America.
Arévalo returned to Guatemala and eventually was part of the founding of the Seed Movement party. Those who know him — and it appears in his extensive academic writings — say Arévalo is a political moderate, though in Guatemala’s distorted political spectrum he was painted by opponents as a radical leftist. He was elected to Congress in 2019 for the Seed Movement party that eventually carried him to the presidency.
Following his second-place finish in the first round of voting last June, Arévalo seemed as surprised as everyone else.
He hadn’t been polling among the top half-dozen candidates before the election, but his message of change, battling corruption and an optimism about Guatemala’s potential resonated among a portion of the disaffected population.
In an interview, after that vote, Arévalo said that if he eventually won the presidency in a runoff, the executive branch would cease to be the source of “that fundamental lubricant of the corrupt system.” Instead, his administration would focus on battling corruption and recovering co-opted institutions.
Early Monday, Arévalo said in a speech that “the political crisis from which we are emerging offers us a singular opportunity to build an institution, a democratic, realist and healthy democratic unity on the rubble of this wall of corruption that we are beginning to take down brick by brick.”
Arévalo also talked about the “historic debt” that Guatemala owes to its Indigenous peoples. He said he would expand Guatemalan’s access to health care and education, and work toward the country’s continued development.
“The most critical and urgent challenge without doubt is climate change,” he said Monday.
Most immediately, the continued legal persecution by Attorney General Consuelo Porras will continue to draw Arévalo’s attention and energies.
Her office is pursuing multiple investigations of him — for allegedly encouraging the monthslong takeover of a public university by students — and his party — for how it gathered the signatures required to form years earlier.
Porras’ term extends to 2026. Arévalo has said he would ask her to resign, but he can’t remove her from her position under Guatemala’s separation of powers.
Also unclear is what those who really hold the economic power in Guatemala and the increasingly powerful drug traffickers who control dozens of local and federal politicians will do when Arévalo tries to dismantle their corrupt networks.
Arévalo has said he wants to bring back the prosecutors and judges who had led the fight against corruption until Porras turned the justice system against them, forcing them into exile.
In the medium term, Guatemala has deep structural problems. Intense poverty and a lack of employment opportunities continue to drive high numbers of Guatemalans to emigrate to the United States. The poorest are also the most vulnerable to the intensifying drought and flood cycles made worse by climate change.
Pawan Passi, former equities executive at Morgan Stanley, arrives at court in New York, US, on Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.
Alex Kent | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay a total of $249 million to settle a criminal investigation and a related Securities and Exchange Commission probe of the unauthorized disclosure of block trades to investors by the bank‘s supervisor for such trades and another employee, authorities said Friday.
As part of the settlement, Morgan Stanley entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for making false statements related to certain block trades executed from 2018 through August 2021, the office said.
Morgan Stanley, which admitted responsibility for its employees’ actions, is obligated under the deal to cooperate with and provide information to U.S. authorities for at least three years.
The SEC charged Morgan Stanley with “failing to enforce its policies concerning the misuse of material non-public information related to block trades,” that agency said.
Block trades typically involve large numbers of shares of a company’s stock in privately arranged transactions executed outside public markets.
The SEC said the bank generated more than $100 million in illicit profits as a result of misconduct by Pawan Passi, the former head of the bank’s U.S equity syndicate desk.
Passi, 40, has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, subject to approval by a judge. If Passi complies with the terms of that deal and demonstrates good behavior, he will not be prosecuted, prosecutors said.
Passi was ordered to pay a $250,000 civil penalty by the SEC.
Passi admitted that “from 2018 through August 2021, he promised sellers of certain equity blocks that Morgan Stanley would keep information concerning their potential sales confidential, knowing that he would disclose that information to buy-side investors and that those investors would use the information to trade in advance of the block sales,” according to prosecutors.
Passi appeared at a hearing Friday in Manhattan federal court. His deal does not include a monetary penalty in the criminal case because he had already forfeited about $7.4 million in compensation from Morgan Stanley.
Read more CNBC politics coverage
The SEC’s order in the probe says that a former senior member of the syndicate desk participated with Passi in disclosing to certain buy-side investors “non-public, potentially market-moving information” about block trades that Morgan Stanley had been invited to bid on or was negotiating with sellers.
“Those buy-side investors used such information to ‘pre-position’ — or take a short position in — the stock that was the subject of the upcoming block trade,” the SEC order says.
The order said the bank “failed to enforce written policies and procedures” designed to prevent material nonpublic information from being misused, and also failed to enforce information barriers to prevent such information involving block trades from being discussed by the syndicate desk with the institutional equity division. The syndicate desk is on the bank’s private side, while the equity division conducts trading in public markets.
“Sellers entrusted Morgan Stanley and Passi with material non-public information concerning upcoming block trades with the full expectation and understanding that they would keep it confidential,” said SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
“Instead, Morgan Stanley and Passi abused that trust by leaking that same information and using it to position themselves ahead of those trades. While their conduct may have earned them tens of millions of dollars on low-risk trades, it violated the federal securities laws,” Gensler said.
Prosecutors said that the non-prosecution deal with Morgan Stanley “recognizes serious misconduct to which Morgan Stanley has admitted and was uncovered by the Government and was no voluntarily self-disclosed.”
But prosecutors also said the agreement recognizes that the bank “provided extraordinary cooperation” with the investigation and that the probe did not find evidence of “corporate management’s complicity in or knowledge of the wrongdoing.”
“Morgan Stanley’s controls, while ultimately unsuccessful in uncovering the misconduct, were designed in part to detect misconduct in the block trades business and were applied in good faith,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
In a statement, Morgan Stanley said, “We are pleased to resolve these investigations and are confident in the enhancements we have made to our controls around block trading, including strengthening our policies, procedures, training and surveillance.”
“The core of this matter is the misconduct of two employees who violated the Firm’s policies, procedures and our core values, as outlined in the settlement documents,” the bank said.
Passi’s lawyer George Canellos said, “We are pleased that the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed not to pursue a criminal conviction of Mr. Passi in this complex matter. Mr. Passi served clients with skill and delivered great execution quality and prices.”
“The settlements allow Mr. Passi and his family to move past two very difficult years of intense government scrutiny of the block trading practices on Wall Street,” Canellos said.
Last year Scientology made front-page headlines as one of its celebrity followers was found guilty of raping women in the early 2000s. That 70s Show star and devout Scientologist Danny Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women.
Allegations swarmed that more women were victimized by Mr. Masterson and, worse yet, that the Church of Scientology knew and facilitated his ability to get away with these heinous crimes. Now, the defendants in the case have filed an amended lawsuit tapping into verbiage generally reserved for the mob.
Scientology faces a new battle, proving that they do not and have not benefited financially from illegal activities done by their organization and the rich and famous that fill their ranks. Let’s look at the latest accusations against the notoriously secretive religion.
Finally, a civil RICO case against #scientology as a criminal enterprise that covers crimes such as rapes and goes after the victims who speak up. This lawsuit throws Scientology against the wall, and could help it lose its undeserved tax exempt status. @TonyOrtega94https://t.co/2O6YkC3Cad
The lawyers representing the women who testified against Danny Masterson in his rape trial are claiming that Scientology, and specifically their current leader David Miscavige, should be brought up on mafia-inspired RICO charges. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations and was crafted in the 1970s to go after the mob.
RICO charges are levied on organizations that participate in illegal activity such as bribery, wire fraud, arson, kidnapping, extortion, and witness tampering, to name a few.
According to the amended lawsuit, Scientology:
“…routinely and systematically engaged in fraud, human trafficking, identity theft and money laundering to fill its coffers and enrich its leadership.”
The lawsuit goes on to illustrate how these activities relate specifically to the rapes committed by Danny Masterson:
“Corporate Defendants and Defendant Miscavige closely monitor and protect celebrity members.”
In addition to monitoring, the lawsuit alleges that Mr. Miscavige and the organization as a whole:
“…worked with Defendant Masterson to keep his sexual assault victims from reporting their abuse and mobilized an aggressive harassment campaign against the victims once the sexual assaults were disclosed.”
The original plaintiffs in the case against Danny Masterson claim that the church surveilled them, harassed them, and even murdered some of their pets in an attempt to intimidate and tamper with them as witnesses against one of their celebrity followers.
Taking it to the mattresses
The lawyers filing the RICO charges against Scientology allege that:
“Many of Scientology’s criminal enterprise’s money-making schemes are criminal in nature.”
While evidence of the above is yet to be disclosed, the lawsuit goes on to highlight the appearance of witness tampering:
“While presenting itself outwardly as a respectable organization, Scientology’s criminal enterprise has implemented a policy of terrorizing victims (and witnesses) of its crimes – whether or not those victims (or witnesses) are Scientologists – into keeping Scientology’s crimes secret.”
There are even claims that Scientology has a policy for this very activity called the Suppressive Persons and Fair Game rule. Of what is alleged, this rule states that if a member of the church or an outsider attacks Scientology or attempts to ruin its reputation in some way, then the protections the member had prior are no more, and retaliation is authorized.
Back in 1960, L. Ron Hubbard described a race of beings called The Marcabians to his ever attentive Scientology recruits.
These Marcabians were apparantly grey skinned humanoids, hairless and around 4 1/2 feet tall and hailed from the star Alkaid in the Big Dipper. pic.twitter.com/IsJb5kddxY
Actress and former Scientologist Leah Remini claims to have been affected by this policy, given her documentary on Scientology and efforts to disclose the truth behind the organization.
“Scientology’s policies regarding Suppressive Persons and Fair Game are not religious doctrine, they are old-school, mob-style tactics modernized, amplified, and weaponized by Scientology’s far-reaching network.”
Proving the allegations to be true may be difficult given the shroud of secrecy and devotion church followers seem to have. Still, the curtain is lifting a bit on Scientology.
There is no doubt that the church has a penchant for recruiting celebrities, which comes with a level of influence. Celebrity followers of the Church of Scientology include Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elisabeth Moss, Kirstie Alley, Giovanni Risbi, and Jenna Elfman.
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USAF Retired, Bronze Star recipient, outspoken veteran advocate. Hot mess mom to two monsters and wife to equal parts Saint and Artist husband. Writer, lifelong conservative, lover of all things American History, and not-so-secret Ancient Aliens fanatic. Homeschool maven, Masters in Political Management, constitutionalist, and chock full of opinions.
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In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.
“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy said. “FBI agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that we were told was true but wasn’t.”
His zeroing in on the Michigan case highlighted an uncharacteristic development in contemporary politics, where progressives vigorously defend law enforcement power while conservatives view it with deep suspicion. Further, Ramaswamy’s linking of Jan. 6 and the Whitmer plot resonated with many on the right who want similarities between the two episodes exposed to the general public, especially the FBI’s reliance on informants and other paid operatives.
On Oct. 8, 2020, Whitmer announced the shocking arrests of several men accused of planning to kidnap and possibly assassinate her. The case produced alarming headlines just weeks before Election Day; Democrats, including Whitmer, used news of the plot to blame Trump for inciting violence.
Joe Biden commended the FBI for thwarting the abduction plan and, in a written statement issued the same day, claimed that “there is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Biden continued that line of attack during campaign speeches in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2016, and one Biden needed to capture to win the presidency.
In the years since the election, the national press has given little attention to the case since the initial arrests, even though court documents have recast the episode as something more sinister. Instead of a heroic effort by the FBI to safeguard the country from domestic terrorists, it now appears to have been a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap American citizens who held unpopular political views.
The FBI’s tactics were first exposed by BuzzFeed in July 2021, when reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison disclosed startling details based on court filings as the matter headed to trial. They found that the number of FBI confidential human sources involved in the scheme was equal to the number of defendants.
“An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” they wrote. “Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”
Six men ranging in age from 22 to 44 – Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Brandon Caserta, Daniel Harris, Ty Garbin, and Kaleb Franks – faced federal charges of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction. Eight others faced state charges. BuzzFeed recreated much of the defendants’ movements between March and October 2020, including attendance at “field training” exercises and the surveillance of Whitmer’s properties.
While BuzzFeed offered the first account of the entrapment operation, further reporting by RealClearInvestigations, along with details revealed in court filings and trial proceedings, make the operation sound like something out of a Hollywood script. It features secretive cash payouts; drug- and booze-fueled parties; a convicted wife-beating FBI investigator; a career felon revealed as a longtime FBI asset and later accused of acting as a “double agent”; and a dramatic takedown scene at the end.
Public defenders representing the accused have identified at least 12 FBI informants and three undercover FBI agents managed by FBI officials in numerous field offices responsible for framing the men.
“In this Case, the undisputed evidence … establishes that government agents and informants concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan,” defense lawyers wrote in a Dec. 25, 2021 motion. “When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”
At the center of the action was the FBI’s ringleader, Dan Chappel, 34 years old at the time, an Iraq war veteran and contract truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. Chappel, the official story goes, joined a group called the “Wolverine Watchmen” in early 2020 to burnish his firearms skills. Members generally interacted on social media. The government claimed Chappel became alarmed at alleged online chatter about killing police and took his concerns to a friend in law enforcement in March 2020.
A week later, the FBI hired Chappel as an informant.
Over the course of the next seven months, Chappel “ingratiated” himself with the men, as one defense attorney described his method, with his eye particularly on Fox, 37, the reported mastermind of the plot. While the media portrayed Fox as a military leader prepping an army of “white supremacists” to overthrow state governments across the country, he was, in reality, a homeless man living in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop without running water or a toilet in a Grand Rapids strip mall. One co-defendant referred to him as “Captain Autism.”
Fox’s lawyer, Christopher Gibbons, said Chappel took on a “father figure” role to his fatherless and destitute client. Fox and Chappel exchanged thousands of texts. Chappel drove Fox, who did not own a car, to various meetups and staged events while recording every moment to preserve as evidence against him. On at least three occasions, according to testimony offered at trial, Chappel offered Fox a prepaid credit card authorized by the FBI with a $5,000 limit to help him buy guns and ammunition; Fox, despite being broke, declined each time.
Chappel, known as “Big Dan” to the group, created encrypted chats and gave real-time access to his FBI handlers working out of the Detroit FBI field office as the farfetched plan unfolded.
Informants and targets mulled over how to blow up a bridge outside Whitmer’s summer cottage; kill her security detail; take her to a nearby boat launch; and either abandon her in the middle of Lake Michigan or bring her across the lake to Wisconsin to stand a “citizen’s trial” over her COVID-19 lockdown policies. One discussion involved the implausible use of a military helicopter.
From appearances, a demonstration at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing on April 30, 2020 might well have been a law enforcement dress rehearsal for Jan. 6. Chappel traveled to the event with three members of the Watchmen later held on state charges. Some protesters were clad in military gear and carried firearms but could not enter the building. When Chappel told his FBI handler what was happening, the FBI ordered the Michigan State Police to stand down and allow protesters inside. News photographers captured the moment when protesters “stormed” the Michigan Capitol and called out for Whitmer, resulting in the same sort of optics produced on Jan. 6.
The incident took on greater significance when it was revealed that Steven D’Antuono, head of the Detroit FBI field office during the Whitmer caper, was promoted to head up the Washington, D.C., FBI field office three months before the events of Jan. 6.
In exchange for his work, the FBI paid Chappel at least $54,000 in cash. Part of that haul included an envelope, handed over by his primary FBI handler in December 2020, filled with $23,000 in cash as payment for a mission accomplished. (Department of Justice policy requires informants to be paid in cash.). The bureau also supplied Chappel with other personal items, such as a laptop computer and tires for his car. Chappel also used a rented SUV, again funded by the FBI, to drive his targets to various locations as part of the trap.
Other informants were involved, too. A longtime FBI source named Steve Robeson, from Wisconsin, organized a “militia” meeting in Ohio in June 2020 and pressured the government’s targets, including Fox and Croft, to attend as he wore a wire to record what was said during the event.
Robeson arranged other events throughout the summer including at his remote property in Cambria, Wisconsin. He constructed a so-called “kill house” for the men to practice shooting. At one point, Robeson suggested the exercises could be used to “storm” a state Capitol building or governor’s residence. Robeson is a convicted felon several times over, including on charges of sex with a minor, with a rap sheet spanning at least nine states. He was paid roughly $20,000 for his involvement in the Whitmer caper. Prosecutors later accused him of acting as a “double agent” for allegedly tipping off one of the defendants that his arrest was imminent.
At least two other informants were tasked with managing Croft, who had been under FBI surveillance since 2019 for his “extremist” views, according to documents.
It was later revealed that the informants, including Chappel, violated FBI protocol by getting drunk and high on drugs with their targets numerous times, sleeping in the same hotel, and suggesting ways to advance the kidnapping plan. At one point, Chappel took an oath to join a separate group called the “Three Percent Patriot Militia” group – one fabricated by the FBI – then convinced Fox to become the head of the Michigan chapter, all in an effort have the men believe Chappel was part of a nonexistent “militia” movement.
Defense lawyer Gibbons described the ruse during the April 2022 trial as “free money, free bombs, daily contact for months, fake militia, build up vulnerable adult with a fake militia and a title of commanding officer, send him a federal agent to join his militia.”
More behind-the-scenes machinations were disclosed when the defense uncovered hundreds of communications between the agents and informants that showed how they guided the plot every step of the way. One text suggests that the FBI and Chappel attempted to lure a disabled Vietnam War veteran named “Frank” into initiating a similar plan against Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. “Mission is to kill the governor specifically,” Chappel’s FBI handler texted him in August 2020.
Despite the FBI’s best efforts, the group of so-called kidnappers started to disband by August 2020. Chappel asked his handlers how to “put more pressure” on the individuals so no one would break off. To rally the increasingly uninterested group that month, Chappel proposed firing live rounds into Whitmer’s cottage and the residences of other governors, then sending the shell casings to news reporters. “Look at you bringing people together,” one of Chappel’s FBI handlers texted to him after he successfully kept the group intact.
Even that wasn’t enough to solidify a kidnapping scheme so, according to numerous exchanges between the FBI assets and trial testimony from one cooperating witness, the FBI ran another undercover agent into the plot in September 2020 to tempt the men into trying to purchase bomb-making material. During a get-together in mid-September, an FBI undercover agent known as “Red” showed the group a video of a Chevy Tahoe being blown up as a way to demonstrate his credentials.
The video had been produced by the FBI.
At the same get-together, several FBI informants and “Red” took their targets on a reconnaissance mission to stake out Whitmer’s vacation cottage, the scene of the alleged prospective crime. It was the second time Chappel drove Fox to the property. (The governor and her staff were in communication with authorities for months as the entrapment scheme was under way; the FBI installed pole cameras and 3D devices around her property to record any activity to be used as evidence.)
Chappel also drove the men to the location of the FBI arrest point in Ypsilanti, Mich., on Oct. 7, 2020, under a ruse to meet “Red,” who promised to sell them military-style garb, not explosive materials. Members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, whose missions include “high-risk arrests,” were there waiting.
But things went downhill for the government after that. Richard Trask, one of the main FBI investigators on the case, who signed the complaint against the federal defendants, was criminally charged in July 2021 for brutally assaulting his wife after a swingers’ party in Kalamazoo. Police body cam video showed a partly clothed, bloody, and apparently intoxicated Trask talking with police during his arrest. Reporters also found profane anti-Trump posts on Trask’s social media account.
Trask was removed from the case and fired by the FBI in September 2021.
Prosecutors removed Chappel’s two primary FBI handlers, Henrik Impola and Jayson Chambers, from the government’s witness list after defense attorneys accused Impola of committing perjury in a previous case and discovered that Chambers was moonlighting as head of a security firm on the side and posting inside information about the pending arrests on social media as a way to attract business.
Robeson and his wife, Kimberly, were charged with fraud in December 2021 for convincing a couple to purchase a used SUV and donate it to the Robesons’ nonexistent charity, a crime committed while Robeson was working the Whitmer plot.
Robeson also was charged separately with illegally purchasing a firearm as a felon; he threatened to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, so he also was not called as a witness.
By the time the federal case went to trial in western Michigan in March 2022, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks had accepted plea offers and planned to testify against their remaining four co-defendants: Fox, Croft, Harris, and Caserta.
Judge Robert Jonker allowed the defense to raise the entrapment issue but only after the government presented its case. That plan, however, did not last beyond the first day as defense attorneys struggled during opening remarks to explain their clients’ behavior without mentioning the key role of FBI informants and agents. Jonker suspended his own order – at which point the FBI essentially went on trial.
The trial lasted four weeks. Prosecutors insisted the defendants were solely responsible for conceiving the plan but the defense argued the group’s activities amounted to little more than “crazy, stoned talk.” Chappel took the stand for the prosecution but his testimony appeared to backfire as his central role in the plot came into view. He also admitted he became an informant to pad his resume in hopes of pursuing a job in law enforcement.
During closing arguments, the four defense attorneys emphasized the FBI’s misconduct while asking the jury for not-guilty verdicts.
“[This] is unacceptable in America,” Gibbons said during closing arguments on April 1. “That’s not how it works. They don’t make terrorists so we can arrest them.”
On April 8, 2022, after nearly four days of deliberation, the jury found Caserta and Harris not guilty on all charges; after 18 months behind bars, both men went free.
The jury, however, could not reach a unanimous verdict for Fox and Croft, resulting in a mistrial.
It was a shocking blow to the government. In what the Justice Department considered its biggest domestic terror case over the past few decades (until Jan. 6), prosecutors did not yet have a single conviction – an outcome practically unheard of for a department with a more than 90% conviction rate. “It felt so good, I was so happy. We did it, we beat them. We got justice,” Caserta told me in a post-trial interview in 2022.
Prosecutors immediately announced they would retry Fox and Croft. A different version of Judge Jonker appeared on the bench in August 2022; the trial was marked by open hostilities between the judge and defense attorneys.
At one point, Jonker took the rare step of setting a time limit for cross-examination of a key government witness. He also refused to allow defense attorneys to interview a juror suspected of bias against the defendants based on comments he had made to co-workers during jury selection and his affiliation with Black Lives Matter. Jonker repeatedly admonished both lawyers in front of the jury, accusing counsel of causing jurors to “tune out” and rushing them through important lines of questioning. Over objections by the defense, Jonker kept the man on the jury. He became the foreman.
Croft and Fox were convicted on August 23, 2022 of conspiring to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction, and are serving out multi-year sentences in supermax prisons reserved for the country’s worst criminals.
They are now appealing their convictions. In an August 2023 brief, Croft’s new appellate attorney, Timothy Sweeney, wrote: “It is staggering the extent to which the FBI and its agents/informants used excessive pressure, exploited the anger from COVID lockdowns and destructive summer riots, and manipulated emotional issues among vulnerable and excitable citizens. This included: nearly constant real-time monitoring of FBI’s communications with Fox, plus thousands of government-initiated texts/chats; the deployment of multiple paid agents/informants who sought to elicit and encourage extremist and violent behavior; and the FBI’s instigating, planning, promoting, and conducting of nearly all key events.”
In response, the government wrote in a December 2023 motion that “there was no evidence that government agents or informants suggested the plot or offered more than opportunity and facilities.”
Sweeney and Fox’s new appellate attorney, Steven Nolder, further accused Jonker of severely hamstringing the defense by refusing to admit into evidence the hundreds of messages that showed extensive communication between FBI agents and informants as they advanced the plot. Jonker, in both trials, denied defense motions to allow the jury to see the communications.
“These communications – constituted relevant evidence of the shocking degree to which Chambers, Chappel, and the other FBI agents/informants orchestrated this scam and generally engaged in incessant and oppressive inducement,” Sweeney wrote.
A recent verdict for the last three defendants charged in the Michigan state case may add weight to the appeal. An Antrim County jury in September 2023 found Willam Null, his brother Michael Null, and their co-defendant Eric Molitor not guilty of providing material support to an act of terror and illegally possessing firearms.
The acquittals represented another blow to the overall case and a poor showing for the government; of the 10 defendants who went to trial, five were found not guilty and two were convicted after a second trial. Four others pleaded guilty—outcomes that represent a poor showing for both the DOJ and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel was so infuriated by the acquittals for the Null brothers and Molitor that she publicly criticized jurors as coming from “a very, very right-leaning county (were) seemingly not so concerned about the kidnapping and assassination of the governor.”
Fox and Croft and the DOJ have asked for oral arguments. An appellate court in western Michigan could render a decision by mid-2024. “When I look at what happened in this case,” Croft’s public defender, Joshua Blanchard, said during closing arguments in the April 2022 trial, “I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States. This investigation was an embarrassment, and we have to tell them this isn’t how our country operates. This isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work.”
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U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez introduced a member of the Qatari royal family and principal in a company with ties to the government of Qatar to a New Jersey businessman before the company invested millions of dollars in the businessman’s real estate project, a rewritten indictment alleged Tuesday.
The latest version of the indictment against the Democrat in Manhattan federal court did not identify the member of the Qatari royal family, but it said the individual was a principal of the Qatari Investment Co.
The indictment said the Qatari investor then considered and negotiated a multimillion-dollar investment in the real estate project planned by Fred Daibes, one of three businessmen charged in the indictment along with the senator and his wife. All of them have pleaded not guilty.
Messages left with lawyers and a spokesperson for Menendez were not immediately returned.
Tim Donohue, a lawyer for Daibes, said he had no immediate comment.
No new charges were added to the latest version of an indictment that already charged Menendez in a bribery conspiracy that allegedly enriched the senator and his wife with cash, gold bars and a luxury car. The allegations involving Qatar occurred from 2021 through 2023, the indictment said.
After his September arrest, the senator gave up his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has resisted calls for him to resign from his Senate seat.
According to the indictment, Menendez accepted cash and gold bars in exchange for seeking to induce the Qatari Investment Co. to invest with Daibes, including by taking actions favorable to the government of Qatar.
The indictment said that while the Qatari Investment Co. was considering its investment in the real estate development owned by Daibes, Menendez made multiple public statements supporting the government of Qatar and then provided them to Daibes so he could share them with the Qatari investor and a Qatari government official.
In an earlier version of the indictment, Menendez, his wife and one of the businessmen were charged with conspiring to illegally use the senator as an agent of the Egyptian government.
Judge Sidney H. Stein, who is presiding over the case, refused last week to extend a May 5 trial date after defense lawyers requested more time to prepare for a trial that they said already includes over 6.7 million documents.
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Chinese media are repeating concerns about the use of cryptocurrencies to facilitate corruption.
Local media published a report entitled “Virtual Currency Electronic Gift Cards Open New Channels for Corruption Crimes and Benefit Transfer.” It states that cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin (BTC), are opening up new channels for corruption and benefit transfer in China.
In particular, incidents of bribery through means such as red packet transfers and electronic gift cards are becoming increasingly common, and these transactions are difficult to trace due to their secretive nature in the digital sphere.
“Gaps and loopholes in relevant systems and mechanisms provide opportunities for some people to seek personal gain and rent-seeking with power. Under such circumstances, if officials do not have a strong sense of integrity and self-discipline and are not determined enough to fight corruption, they can easily slip into the abyss of corruption.”
Peng Xinlin, professor at Beijing Normal University
According to Chinese media, what is needed now is to understand and effectively counter the evolving threats posed by cryptocurrency corruption through strategic legislative and technological solutions.
In September 2021, Chinese authorities declared all transactions with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies illegal and imposed a complete ban on them. At the same time, the Chinese authorities are actively developing the digital yuan.
China has been testing the digital yuan for three years. The tests occurred in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi’an, Qingdao, Dalian and the Winter Olympics area. These cities will continue to use the tool.
U.S. President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, July 9, 2020.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Steering clear of a political firestorm for now, the Supreme Court said Friday it would not immediately decide the key issue of whether former President Donald Trump has broad immunity for actions he took challenging the 2020 presidential election results.
The court denied without comment special counsel Jack Smith’s request asking the justices to circumvent the normal appeals court process and quickly decide the legal question, which looms large in Trump’s criminal prosecution in Washington over allegations of election interference.
If Trump were to win on this threshold issue, the charges would be dismissed. If he loses, the legal proceedings in the trial court would continue, with Trump having other issues he could mount appeals over.
As a result of the court’s refusal to intervene, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will take first crack at the issue; it is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Jan. 9.
Once that court rules, the Supreme Court could act quickly on whether to take up the case.
In asking the court to step in on an expedited basis, Smith said the case “presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office.”
Trump’s lawyers argued in court papers that Smith had given “no compelling reason” why the Supreme Court should immediately step in ahead of the appeals court.
On Dec. 7, Washington-based U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trump’s motion to dismiss his indictment on presidential immunity and constitutional grounds. The case is on hold while Trump appeals the decision.
Trump’s lawyers argue that his role in questioning the result of the election was within the “outer perimeter” of his official responsibilities as president, citing a 1982 Supreme Court ruling about presidential immunity. Therefore, under Supreme Court precedent, Trump is immune from prosecution, his lawyers say.
They also say the Senate’s acquittal of Trump following impeachment proceedings over his role in events that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol means he cannot be separately prosecuted for the same actions.
Smith argues that Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the election was not related to his official responsibilities as president and that the Constitution’s language on impeachment allows for separate criminal proceedings even if the president is acquitted.
In August, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted Trump on four charges: conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction, and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted. Trump pleaded not guilty.
The election interference case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces heading into the 2024 presidential election season, in which he is a front-runner for the Republican nomination.
AMSTERDAM — A Dutch man, who was convicted in British Columbia of charges including extortion and harassment related to a Canadian teenager who took her own life after he blackmailed her online, had his sentence cut Thursday by an Amsterdam court from 13 years to six.
Aydin Coban wasn’t present in Amsterdam District Court for a brief hearing to announce the sentence. His lawyer, Robert Malewicz, said he would appeal the decision to the Dutch Supreme Court.
Coban was extradited from the Netherlands to Canada in 2020 to stand trial on charges linked to Amanda Todd, who took her own life in 2012 at the age of 15 after posting a video that described being tormented by an online harasser. Coban was born in 1978, according to court documents, making him 44 or 45.
He was sent to Canada on condition that his sentence would be served in a Dutch prison. That also meant that prison time imposed by the British Columbia Supreme Court last year had to be converted into a sentence in the Netherlands.
In July, Dutch prosecutors said the Canadian sentence should be cut to four-and-a-half years, in line with sentencing guidelines in the Netherlands and time he had spent in tough conditions in a Canadian jail.
The court ruling didn’t take into account his time behind bars in Canada and sentenced him to the maximum possible six years.
Coban is serving an 11-year sentence in the Netherlands after being convicted on similar charges involving the online extortion of 33 young girls and gay men. The sentence imposed Thursday will be served after he completes his current prison time next year.
Malewicz had called the Canadian sentence “exorbitantly high, even by Canadian standards” and said Coban shouldn’t get any extra prison time, but if the court decided to give him prison time, it should be no more than one year with six months suspended.
“We will go to the Supreme Court,” he told reporters after Thursday’s brief hearing.
Todd’s suicide brought the problem of cyberbullying to mainstream attention in Canada after the Port Coquitlam teen posted a video on YouTube in which she used handwritten signs to describe how she was lured by a stranger to expose her breasts on a webcam.
The picture ended up on a Facebook page, to which her friends were added.
She was repeatedly bullied, despite changing schools, before finally taking her own life weeks after posting the video.
Last year, a jury in British Columbia last year convicted Coban of all charges he faced, including communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence and possession and distribution of child pornography.
Sentencing Coban last year, Canadian Justice Martha Devlin said that the “serious impact of the offences on Amanda was obvious to Mr. Coban and would have been obvious to anyone at the time.”
She added that “ruining Amanda’s life was Mr. Coban’s expressly stated goal. Sadly, one that he achieved.”
LONDON — In May last year, my phone buzzed with a message from a contact in the British parliament whom I know well.
We meet every so often for coffee in a cafe far away enough from Westminster to be discreet, where he tells me what’s unfolding in the depths of parliament’s dingy corridors.
That day, his message read: “Has an MP been arrested today? Who can say?”
His first question was a news tip for me to follow up on. I began ringing and texting everyone I knew who might be able to tell me about the possible detention of a member of parliament.
Sure enough, the police soon confirmed that a 56-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of rape and other offenses.
My contact’s second question — “Who can say?” — was more complicated.
In the hours after the arrest, pretty much every British political media organization prominently reported the man’s arrest, together with his age, his position as an MP, and his alleged crimes.
But while every reporter in Westminster knew exactly who he was, it took more than a year before anybody dared publish his name.
As with many other matters of the public interest, Britain’s restrictive libel and privacy laws put any publication that reported his identity at risk of a lengthy legal battle and crippling financial penalties.
In July, London’s Sunday Times took the decision to name him, reporting that he had been absent from parliament since his arrest. With the exception of a single mention in the Mirror newspaper, no other mainstream publication followed suit.
POLITICO can now join in reporting that the man arrested is Andrew Rosindell, a member of the Conservative party who has served as MP for the constituency of Romford in Essex, east of London, since 2001.
Rosindell has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing. He, like every British citizen, is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He has been released by police while they look into his case.
While every reporter in Westminster knew exactly who he was, it took more than a year before anybody dared publish his name | Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images
But POLITICO believes there is a clear public interest in naming him, given the obvious impact upon his ability to represent his constituents — and because of further information we publish today about his activities since May 2021.
During the time he has been absent from parliament, he has continued to claim expenses for his work there and accepted foreign trips worth £8,548 (nearly $11,000) to Bahrain, India, Italy and Poland. He has also continued to receive donations from his supporters.
Rosindell declined to comment for this article.
These might seem like obvious and easy facts to report. But doing so has required extensive discussions with my editors and with a lawyer, even after the courage shown by the Sunday Times.
The Rosindell case is a clear-cut example — one among many — of how Britain’s media laws sometimes place individual privacy over the public interest, putting obstacles in the way of accountability journalism.
Given the work involved in reporting something like the allegations against Rosindell, it’s easy to see how many editors and reporters — battling for readers while grinding out the news — might look at the facts involved and conclude writing about it is simply not worth the risk.
For journalists trying to keep public figures honest, this can be a serious problem — and it’s one the United Kingdom is exporting around the world.
Burden of proof
The heart of the challenge lies in England’s incredibly tough defamation laws — which penalize statements that could damage someone’s public image among “right-thinking members of society” or cause “serious harm” to their reputation.
In the United States, journalists are not only shielded by the First Amendment, but for a defamation claim to succeed, the claimant must prove the allegations are false and were disseminated with malicious intent.
In English courts, the burden of proof lies on the publisher of the potentially libelous statement. Truth can be a defense, but you need to have the actual goods; simply pointing to another press report or even relying on allegations in a police arrest warrant, for example, is not enough.
In recent years, these defamation laws have combined with court rulings on the privacy of individuals under arrest or investigation to hinder reporting on potential abuses of power and other matters of the public interest.
This has contributed to the prevalence of “open secrets” in British public life: individuals known within their circles for alleged wrongdoing who cannot be named due to the onerously high burden of legal proof.
When the Sunday Times published an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against Russell Brand, many in the television industry responded that this had been known for as long as he had been famous | Jeff Spicer/Getty Images
A recent example of this is the allegations against the comedian Russell Brand. When the Sunday Times published an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against him, many in the television industry responded that this had been known for as long as he had been famous.
The trouble was, as the Daily Mail detailed, that for years Brand had deployed lawyers to use legal threats to shoot down stories or rumblings of stories that might crop up about his behavior.
SLAPP in the face
Scratch a high-profile scandal, and you’re likely to find a host of lawyers looking to block reporting about it, or seeking damages for what’s already been published.
The actor and producer Noel Clarke is suing the Guardian over a series of articles reporting allegations of sexual assault and harassment, which, even if unsuccessful, is likely to cost the newspaper hundreds of thousands of pounds.
A well-known British business is suing a broadcaster over an investigation into their working practices that has not yet been aired.
Complainants don’t even have to win for their lawsuits to have a chilling effect. Successfully fending off a claim can eat up months or years of a journalist’s time, if they have the resources at all to fight it.
Even the threat of a lawsuit can be enough to give many journalists pause.
When Ben De Pear was editor of Channel 4 News, the broadcaster worked with the Guardian and New York Times to expose the collection of Facebook users’ personal data by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for use in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign.
After the journalists reached out for comment from Facebook, they were met with a barrage of different tactics, he said. “They didn’t answer till the last possible minute. Their response was published and sent to news organizations before it was sent to us. They prevaricated. Their lawyers sometimes sent 30 or 40 pages of legalese.”
“Normally, the longer the response, the less there is in it,” he added. “Good lawyers, journalists and editors will be able to cut through that, but it still sucks up time and causes an inordinate amount of stress.”
So common have efforts by rich individuals and companies to squash stories become that the practice has been endowed with an acronym: SLAPPs, or strategic lawsuits against public participation.
The English model
The problem isn’t constrained to local shores; England’s libel laws are increasingly being deployed against reporting in foreign countries about foreign individuals — a practice detractors describe as “libel tourism.”
Journalists Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton were both sued over books they wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and corruption in the former Soviet Union | Pool photo by Mikhail Metzel via AFP/Getty Images
Claimants have to establish jurisdiction to bring their action in the U.K., but the threshold is “not a very onerous one,” said Padraig Hughes, legal director at the Media Legal Defense Initiative, a London nonprofit offering advice and financial support to journalists facing defamation claims.
Journalists Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton were both sued over books they wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and corruption in the former Soviet Union.
Burgis and Belton both won, but their experiences don’t tell the whole story, said Clare Rewcastle Brown, a British journalist who helped expose one of the largest ever corruption scandals: the looting of billions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
“For every showcase where publishers can boast that they stuck with the author — and well done them — the fact of the matter is, they’ll have killed numerous other books,” she said.
My call with Rewcastle Brown was arranged around her schedule of getting up at 3 a.m. to appear via Zoom as a defendant in a defamation action brought against her by a member of the Malaysian royal family — one of dozens of similar actions she has faced.
She tells me she has survived through sheer bloody-mindedness, and by “frankly, having nothing to lose.”
She acknowledged that for many media outlets, especially smaller ones, these types of attacks could cause them to re-evaluate whether the efforts are worth it.
“As the money starts to ebb, the courage likewise ebbs away,” she said.
Devastating effect
England’s media laws do have their defenders, and there are examples where the system has made a positive difference. It “serves to make journalism in this country very rigorous, so it does have a good effect,” is how De Pear, of Channel 4 News, put it.
Gavin Phillipson, a professor of law at Bristol University, pointed out that the U.S. is not a model but an exception, with English law “completely in line with the vast majority of liberal democracies in both Europe and the Commonwealth.”
He has written about the “devastating effect” of stories such as the Mail Online’s decision to name a young Muslim man arrested in connection with the 2017 Manchester arena bombing. He was innocent and released without charge, but his name had already spread across the world in connection with the atrocity.
Phillipson notes that while the courts have established that everyone should have a reasonable expectation of privacy, “it doesn’t cover the underlying conduct itself.”
“If the press do their own investigative journalism and find out what actually has happened, then the law of privacy doesn’t stop them publishing that,” he said.
This factored into POLITICO’s decision to publish sexual harassment allegations against Julian Knight, a senior member of parliament, early this year.
Our story relied on our reporting, not just the fact that he’s being investigated by police. (Knight strongly denies all the allegations against him.)
Testing limits
Some in the U.K. have recognized the problem and made efforts to stamp down on libel tourism.
The Defamation Act 2013 raised the bar so that claimants would have to show they had suffered “serious” harm to their reputation, and introduced tighter rules for litigants not domiciled in the U.K.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act attempted to give extra protection to defendants in litigation related to economic crimes. And this year the government announced legislation to scrap a rule forcing media companies to pay the legal bills of people who sue them.
But the pendulum has also swung the other way.
There was until recently a rule that the police had to notify the House of Commons Speaker of the arrest of any member of parliament and their name would be published.
If this measure had still been in place, it would have made the debate about publishing Rosindell’s name moot. But MPs opted to scrap it with very little fanfare in 2016.
Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall editor for the Sunday Times, wrote the newspaper’s story naming Rosindell. He also reported on an accusation of rape against the former MP Charlie Elphicke, over which Elphicke sued the paper. (Elphicke was later convicted of sexual assault and dropped his claim.)
Pogrund argues that his job has gotten harder as a string of recent legal defeats for publications has diminished the appetite for testing where the line is.
The result, when it comes to public figures and organizations suspected of serious wrongdoing, he said, has been “an informal conspiracy of silence.”
Here is a look at the life of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Birth date: December 25, 1949
Birth place: Lahore, Pakistan
Birth name: Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif
Father: Muhammad Sharif
Mother: Shamim Akhtar
Marriage: Kulsoom Sharif (until September 11, 2018, her death)
Children: two sons and two daughters
Education: Government College Lahore; Punjab University Law College, Law degree, Lahore, Pakistan
Although elected prime minister on three separate occasions, and is Pakistan’s longest-serving prime minister, he never completed a full term.
1977 – Opens Ittefaq Industries, a family business involved in the steel, sugar and textile industries.
1981 – Is appointed Pakistan’s finance minister.
1985 – Becomes chief minister of Punjab province.
October 1990 – Is elected as Pakistan’s prime minister.
November 6, 1990 – Is sworn in as prime minister.
April 18, 1993 – Sharif’s government is dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan after charges of corruption and mismanagement are raised. Sharif’s family-owned business grew tremendously during his tenure in office, causing suspicion of corruption.
May 26, 1993 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court orders the reinstatement of Sharif, calling his dismissal unconstitutional and the charges false. Sharif and Khan both later resign.
February 3, 1997 – Is reelected as prime minister.
February 17, 1997 – Is sworn in as prime minister.
January 2000 – Sharif goes on trial for charges of hijacking/terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.
April 6, 2000 – Is convicted of plane hijacking/terrorism and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is charged with hijacking because he attempted to prevent a plane Musharraf was flying in from landing at any airport in Pakistan, when the plane was low on fuel. Sharif knew of Musharraf’s coup intentions.
July 22, 2000 – Is convicted of corruption and sentenced to an additional 14 years in prison while already serving a life sentence. His failure to declare assets and pay taxes led to the conviction.
December 2000 – Is released from prison by a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family.
December 2000-August 2007- In exile in Saudi Arabia.
October 29, 2004 – His father dies and Sharif seeks a brief return to Pakistan to attend the funeral, after serving only four of his 10-year exile in Saudi Arabia. The request is denied.
August 23, 2007 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court lifts the exile imposed on Sharif. He served only seven of his 10-year exile.
September 10, 2007 – Attempts to return to Pakistan but is deported just hours after his arrival.
November 25, 2007 – Sharif returns to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia, flying into the city of Lahore.
February 18, 2008 – In parliamentary elections, Sharif’s party Pakistan Muslim League-N wins 67 seats, placing second to the party of the late Benazir Bhutto, the PPP.
February 20, 2008 – The PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-N announce that they will form a coalition government.
August 25, 2008 – At a press conference, Sharif announces his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, is splitting from the coalition government it formed with the PPP, following disagreements over the reinstatement of judges Musharraf dismissed.
May 26, 2009 – The Supreme Court of Pakistan rules that Sharif is eligible to run in elections and hold public office. In February 2009, the court had ruled that Sharif was ineligible for office because he had a criminal conviction. He is still ineligible to run for prime minister due to term limits.
April 19, 2010 –Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari voluntarily signs the 18th Amendment to the constitution, significantly diminishing his powers. Among the sweeping changes is a measure removing the two-term limit for prime ministers, allowing Sharif to vie for a third term.
June 5, 2013 –Is elected prime minister of Pakistan.
August 30, 2014 – Sharif announces in a statement that he will not resign. He has vowed to remain on the job despite violent demonstrations. The protesters have accused him of rigging last year’s elections that allowed his party to take power.
November 1, 2016 – The Supreme Court announces that a commission will investigate Sharif’s finances after leaked documents showed that his children owned shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. The documents were released as part of the Panama Papers, a trove of secret financial forms associated with a Panamanian law firm.
July 13, 2018 – Sharif and his daughter Maryam are arrested and held in Islamabad after they fly back from the United Kingdom to face prison sentences. Before the landing, Sharif tells supporters his return is a “sacrifice for the future generations of the country and for its political stability.”
December 12, 2023 – A Pakistan court overturns Sharif’s 2018 conviction for graft. As a result he may be able to run in national elections in February 2024.
MIAMI — The Biden administration announced on Monday that it has imposed visa restrictions on nearly 300 Guatemalan lawmakers, private sector leaders and their families it accuses of “undermining democracy and the rule of law.”
Guatemala faces mounting criticism by world leaders and watchdogs accusing it of attempts to block progressive President-elect Bernardo Arévalo from taking office in January.
The victory of Arévalo and his Seed Movement party is seen as a threat to those who have long wielded power in Guatemala. The anti-corruption crusader has been a target for months, with arrests of party members, raids and repeated requests to lift his immunity so prosecutors can investigate him directly.
The State Department in a statement condemned “ongoing anti-democratic actions” by prosecutors and other actors and noted “intent to delegitimize Guatemala’s free and fair elections and prevent the peaceful transition of power.”
The State Department did not provide The Associated Press with the names of those subject to visa restrictions.
In its statement, it said those individuals were “responsible for, or complicit in” political targeting of opposition, intimidation of peaceful protestors, raids, opening of ballot boxes and lifting of immunity of electoral magistrates who certified the election.
Last week, prosecutors alleged that minutes seized during a raid of electoral offices showed that results from the presidential runoff vote Arévalo won in August had irregularities and were therefore void.
Arévalo accused the prosecution of seeking to undermine his ability to govern, and was quickly backed by a growing number of international entities such as the Organization of American States and the European Union, which had sent observers to monitor the election and confirmed that voting adhered to democratic standards.
The visa restrictions imposed by the United States were likely prompted by a series of controversial congressional votes in November. One targeted four electoral magistrates, who later left the country. Another passed a budget that critics say would simultaneously handicap Arévalo in delivering on campaign promises while boosting funding for offices that have supported alleged democratic attacks.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Friday that the bloc was also contemplating sanctions on those attempting to reverse the vote.
“These latest actions and statements of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala represent an attempt at a coup d’etat, spearheaded by politically motivated prosecutors,” Borrell said in a statement. “They show contempt for the clear will of Guatemala’s citizens.”
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Associated Press reporter Sonia D. Perez contributed to this report from Guatemala City.
