Tag: domestic terrorism

What we know about the attack on Paul Pelosi | CNN Politics

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The man who is alleged to have attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, could have federal charges filed against him by the US attorney in San Francisco as soon as Monday, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The federal charges against David DePape, 42, are expected to include threatening or injuring the family member of a federal official and a charge pertaining to attempted kidnapping, according to a law enforcement official.

Paul Pelosi was interviewed this weekend at the hospital by investigators and was able to provide details of the attack, two law enforcement sources and a source familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Among those conducting the interview were FBI and local law enforcement investigators.

DePape’s alleged motive is not yet known, though police believe DePape was intentional about going into the house, and CNN has reported that he posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The assault has renewed discussions about violent rhetoric directed toward lawmakers, with Democrats calling on Republicans to forcefully condemn extremist language in their camp, as well as concerns about lawmaker safety.

This is what we presently know about the attack.

CNN reported on Sunday that DePape had with him a bag that contained multiple zip ties, among other things, according to two sources who have been briefed on the incident.

In addition to the zip ties, the suspect also had duct tape on him, according to a law enforcement source. The hammer that was used to allegedly assault Pelosi was brought by DePape, according to a law enforcement source and a senior congressional aide briefed on the assault.

Neither source knew of any other weapons found when DePape was detained. CNN has previously reported that DePape allegedly tried to tie up Pelosi.

Police have said that DePape entered the home through a backdoor and it wasn’t clear if he circumvented any security measures.

CNN previously reported that DePape confronted Pelosi and asked where his wife was, shouting, “Where is Nancy?” The speaker was not home at the time of the attack.

Paul Pelosi was able to call 911 at the start of the attack, a law enforcement source and another source familiar with the matter previously said.

San Francisco police entered the home around 2:27 a.m. local time Friday (5:27 a.m. ET) to find Pelosi struggling over a hammer with DePape, according to the city’s police chief. Officers saw DePape “violently assault” Pelosi with the hammer before they tackled him to the ground and arrested him.

The attack, coming in the home stretch of a midterm campaign season in which Nancy Pelosi often has served as the focus of Republican criticism, has renewed concerns about violence directed toward lawmakers, especially in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.

“What makes us think that one party can talk about ‘stolen elections,’ ‘Covid being a hoax,’ ‘this is all a bunch of lies,’ and it not affect people who may not be so well balanced?” President Joe Biden said on Friday.

“What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?”

GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who is set to become House Oversight Committee chairman if the GOP gains control of the House next year, condemned the attack in comments to CNN on Saturday, and said both Republicans and Democrats need to tone down the political rhetoric while admitting that he, too, could improve in that regard.

“It’s very difficult environment out there. You have a lot of people that get so fired up, because of various political causes. It puts many politicians in a dangerous spot,” he told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom.”

Several prominent Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have condemned the attack, though some others – most notably former President Donald Trump – have remained silent.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who chairs the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday that the attack was “disgusting,” but dodged questions about election conspiracy theories that were shared by the alleged attacker on social media.

Asked by Bash if his party should do more to reject false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection that were shared on social media by DePape, Scott did not directly respond.

And Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the House GOP campaign arm, condemned violence broadly in an interview with CBS on Sunday, but refused to commit to pulling advertisements targeting Nancy Pelosi.

Emmer also wouldn’t commit to taking down a recent tweet, which included a video of him firing a gun that read, “Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights … Let’s #FirePelosi,” telling CBS that he disagreed that the tweet was dangerous.

A CNN investigation into DePape found that he posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Most of the public posts on DePape’s Facebook page were from 2021. In earlier years, DePape also posted long screeds about religion, including claims that “Jesus is the anti christ.” None of the public posts appeared to mention Pelosi.

His stepfather, Gene DePape, said David DePape grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, and left Canada about 20 years ago to pursue a relationship that brought him to California.

People who knew DePape in California described him as an odd character, with one acquaintance, Linda Schneider, a California resident, telling CNN that she had received “really disturbing” emails from DePape in which he sounded like a “megalomaniac and so out of touch with reality.”

She said she stopped communicating with him “because it seemed so dangerous,” adding that she recalled him “using Biblical justification to do harm.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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October 31, 2022
Rick Scott calls attack on Paul Pelosi ‘disgusting’ but dodges questions about election conspiracies shared by alleged assailant | CNN Politics

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Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who chairs the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, on Sunday called the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, “disgusting” but dodged questions about election conspiracy theories that were shared by the alleged attacker on social media.

“It’s disgusting, this violence is horrible,” Scott said on “State of the Union” in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. “We had a door-knocker in Florida that was attacked. I mean, this stuff has to stop. … And my heart goes out to Paul Pelosi, and I hope he has a full recovery.”

Asked by Bash if Republicans should do more to reject false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection that were shared on social media by Paul Pelosi’s alleged assailant, Scott did not directly respond.

“I think what we have to do is, one, we have to condemn the violence, and then we have to do everything we can to get people – make sure people feel comfortable about these elections,” the senator said.

“I think what’s important is everybody do everything we can to make these elections fair,” he reiterated when Bash asked him again about it.

An intruder, identified by police as David DePape, 42, confronted the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer early Friday morning at his San Francisco home, shouting, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to a law enforcement source. The assailant attempted to tie Pelosi up “until Nancy got home,” two sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

The alleged assailant had posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6 attack, and an acquaintance told CNN that he seemed “out of touch with reality.”

Meanwhile, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the House GOP campaign arm, condemned violence broadly in an interview with CBS on Sunday.

“There’s no place for violence period in our society. Physical violence or violence against someone’s property,” Emmer, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, said when asked about political violence. “The incident in San Francisco, tragic as it is, I think we need some more information about it. But we should all be feeling for Paul Pelosi and his family. Hopefully, there’ll be a 100% recovery.”

But Emmer refused to commit to pulling advertisements targeting Nancy Pelosi. Nor would he commit to taking down a recent tweet, which included a video of him firing a gun and read, “Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights … Let’s #FirePelosi,” telling CBS that he disagreed that the tweet was dangerous.

“I never saw anyone after Steve Scalise was shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter trying to equate Democrat rhetoric with those actions. Please don’t do that,” Emmer said.

On Sunday, Bash asked Scott if his successor as Florida governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, should attend an upcoming rally in South Florida headlined by former President Donald Trump. The rally will feature Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who, like DeSantis, is also up for reelection next month, but not DeSantis, amid reports that the relationship between Trump and the governor has grown distant ahead of a possible presidential showdown in 2024.

“That’s a choice everybody makes. I mean, I know President Trump is trying to make sure we get a majority back in the Senate,” Scott said.

Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also predicted the GOP will control “52-plus” Senate seats after the midterm elections.

“Herschel Walker will win Georgia. We’re going to keep all 21 of ours. (Mehmet) Oz is going to win against Fetterman in Pennsylvania. And Adam Laxalt will win in Nevada,” he said, while also expressing optimism about GOP chances in Arizona and New Hampshire and noting that Republicans “have got shots” in Washington state, Colorado and Connecticut.

“This is our year,” Scott said.

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October 30, 2022
Facebook became Meta one year ago. Its metaverse dream feels as far away as ever | CNN Business

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Even by Facebook’s standards, 2021 was a rough year.

A series of damning reports based on leaks from a whistleblower raised uncomfortable questions about Facebook’s impact on society; the company continued reeling from concerns about the use of its platform to organize the January 6 Capitol riot; and privacy changes from Apple threatened its core advertising business. Meanwhile, young users were flocking to TikTok.

At a virtual reality event on October 28, 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to turn the page. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would change its name to Meta and go all in on building a future version of the internet called the “metaverse,” proving to all in the process that the company he launched in 2004 was more than just a social media business.

One year and billions of dollars later, the so-called metaverse still feels years away, if it ever manifests at all. And the company formerly known as Facebook remains very much a social media business — one that is facing more financial pressure than when it announced the change.

Meta’s Quest 2 consumer virtual-reality headset, released two years ago, is popular in its category but remains a niche product overall. Its newest headset, the much pricier $1,500 Quest Pro, is intended for enterprise customers and likely won’t move the needle with everyday consumers. And Meta’s flagship social VR app Horizon Worlds can feel like a ghost town (albeit a ghost town with laser tag).

While some brands have since made measured bets on the metaverse, including by hiring “chief metaverse officers,” it’s not clear whether consumers actually want to work or play in it, or even know what the hard-to-define term means. The metaverse refers, generally, to a sort of virtual world that people can walk around in, as well as the idea of making the internet more ubiquitous and interconnected.

Meanwhile, Meta’s core business is contracting as it confronts growing competition from TikTok and an advertising industry in retreat amid looming recession fears. The company this week reported its second-ever quarterly drop in revenue and saw profit cut in half from the prior year. It’s selling more ads but making less money on them, and user growth on its social media platforms is slowing. After hitting a $1 trillion market cap for the first time last summer, it’s now worth about a quarter of that, or less than Home Depot.

“The business is not growing in 2022,” said Gil Luria, technology strategist at D.A. Davidson. “There is expectation that it will grow going forward, but that expectation may prove to be optimistic.”

A bet that looked bold a year ago now looks borderline unhinged. Meta lost $9.4 billion in the first nine months of 2022 on its metaverse efforts and expects losses from the unit to “grow significantly year-over-year” in 2023. This has prompted even some of Meta’s supporters to urge it to rethink its strategy shift, and possibly slow it down. (It also prompted a tearful Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money,” to apologize to viewers for trusting Meta’s management team and recommending that investors buy the stock.)

“People are confused by what the metaverse even means. If the company were investing $1-2B per year into this project, then that confusion might not even be a problem. You would simply do R&D quietly and investors would focus on the core business,” Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, a shareholder in Meta, wrote in an open letter to Zuckerberg this week. He urged Meta to “cap its metaverse investments to no more than $5B per year with more discrete targets and measures of success.”

The current pace of spending, he added, “is super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

Meta did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Though the name change was just announced a year ago, the shift from Facebook to Meta has been years in the making. Zuckerberg has said in the past that it’s a long-term bet for the company — not an overnight transformation. It began with Facebook’s 2014 purchase of Oculus VR, and in the years since, the company has rolled out a series of headsets that are increasingly capable, affordable and portable.

Meta’s latest headset, the Quest Pro, is its first effort at combining the immersiveness of VR with the real world. It can display text and fine details in VR, track your eyes and facial features to give you a sense of connection with other people in virtual spaces, and show you a view of the world around you in color while letting you interact with digital objects — all nods toward Meta’s goal of attracting more business users.

It’s a far cry from the Oculus Rift headset available in 2016: That cost $599, but users also had to connect it to a powerful PC and use it with a sensor camera on a stand that tracked the headset. At first, that headset didn’t even come with tracked hand controllers; it initially shipped to customers with an Xbox controller and a small handheld remote.

Although the headsets have improved dramatically, VR and AR are still nascent technologies searching for purpose and popularity. The VR headset market is still tiny compared to, say, an established gadget market like console video games. ABI Research expects 11.1 million VR headsets will ship out this year, about 70% of which it predicts will be Quest 2 headsets. That’s a drop from its estimate of 14.5 million headsets in 2021, of which Quest 2 headsets made up 85% of the total.

There’s potential for these products, some technology experts say, including in the workplace, but in the near term its adoption by everyday users remains uncertain at best.

“I’m not sure this is going to translate to end-user consumers any time soon,” said David Lindlbauer, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who leads the school’s Augmented Perception Lab. (Meta is sponsoring Lindlbauer’s research into developing advanced user interfaces for AR and VR.)

For Zuckerberg, and Meta, that creates a unique challenge.

Zuckerberg successfully pivoted Facebook’s operations once before from desktop to mobile devices shortly after taking the company public, a move that helped supercharge its advertising business and ensure its dominance for much of the next decade. But smartphones were already ubiquitous at that time; if anything Facebook was a bit late.

Now, the company is trying to spearhead a new technology and hoping consumers will follow its lead.

Meta has positioned the shift as a sort of existential imperative for the company. After Apple’s app tracking changes hurt Meta’s ability to target ads to its users, the company doesn’t want to rely on any outside hardware or app store in the future.

But there’s a big difference between looking at a computer or smartphone display and wearing a headset. While Lindlbauer can imagine using a headset for perhaps an hour a day, alternating between immersive views in VR and digital imagery that mixes with the physical world, “I think we haven’t hit the sweet spot yet of something I want to wear all day,” he said.

Meta is also facing an enormous challenge when it comes to showing off VR content that users like the looks of and want to use repeatedly. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, internal documents show Horizon Worlds has fewer than 200,000 active monthly users, a rounding error for a company with 3.7 billion monthly active users across its various services. (A Meta spokesperson told the Journal that it’s “easy to be a cynic about the metaverse” but Meta thinks it is “the future of computing.”)

“They’re starting with this idea that they want to build one big space like Horizon Worlds in which everybody’s just going to show up and start building stuff,” said Avi Bar-Zeev, founder of AR and VR consultancy RealityPrime and a former employee at Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, where he worked on the HoloLens VR headset. “There’s no virtual world that was ever successful building a canvas that people would just come and start painting.”

Zuckerberg has personally received intense criticism for the way Meta envisions work and play interactions in virtual spaces after posting on Facebook an image of his blocky, cartoon-like avatar in Horizon Worlds — an image he later admitted was “pretty basic.”

“As far as the quick-twitch, give-me-more public is concerned, the progress seen so far is a letdown,” said Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. “Meta is suffering tremendous ridicule in social media and in the overall public zeitgeist.”

The Quest Pro’s face-tracking capabilities can help make avatars’ facial expressions look more realistic: Initially, users can access this tracking in Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms, Meta said, as well as in several developers’ apps such as Painting VR and DJ app Tribe XR.

But even with facial tracking, what users see when they pop in to Horizon Worlds — blocky, human-like avatars that exist only from the torso up, floating around a virtual plaza — will for now continue to contrast sharply with the image Zuckerberg portrayed during Meta’s Connect event on October 11 of his own full-body avatar.

In the meantime, investors appear to be getting fed up with the investments in the metaverse at a time when the future of its core business is also deeply uncertain.

“I think kind of summing up how investors are feeling right now is that there are just too many experimental bets versus proven bets on the core,” Jeffries analyst Brent Thill said on Meta’s earnings call this week.

Zuckerberg, for his part, is defending the strategy shift. “I’d say that there’s a difference between something being experimental and not knowing how good it’s going to end up being,” he responded. Separately, he added: “I think people are going to look back decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here.”

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October 30, 2022
What we know and still don’t know about the attack on Paul Pelosi | CNN Politics

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The man who is alleged to have attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in the couple’s San Francisco home on Friday is expected to be charged with multiple felonies Monday, according San Francisco law enforcement officials. He is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday.

“We are coordinating closely with federal and local law enforcement partners on this investigation. We will bring forward multiple felony charges on Monday and expect [suspect David DePape] to be arraigned on Tuesday. DePape will be held accountable for his heinous crimes,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins tweeted Friday evening.

Here’s a look at what we know – and still don’t know – about the attack:

An intruder, identified by police as David DePape, 42, confronted the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer early Friday morning, shouting, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to a law enforcement source. The assailant attempted to tie Pelosi up “until Nancy got home,” two sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

Pelosi called 911 when he encountered the threatening man and left the line open so a dispatcher could hear his conversation with DePape, speaking surreptitiously but making it clear that he needed help, according to a law enforcement source.

San Francisco police entered the home around 2:27 a.m. local time Friday (5:27 a.m. ET) to find Pelosi struggling over a hammer with a man, who has since been identified as DePape, according to the city’s police chief. Officers saw DePape “violently assault” Pelosi with the hammer before they tackled him to the ground and arrested him.

“It is really thanks to Mr. Pelosi having the ability to make that call, and truly the attention and the instincts of that dispatcher to realize that something was wrong in that situation and to make the police call a priority so they got there within two minutes to respond to this situation,” Jenkins told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday.

Police said the DePape entered through a back door and it wasn’t clear if he circumvented any security measures.

Pelosi was taken to a hospital after the attack and underwent a “successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement early Friday evening. He is expected to make a full recovery.

Authorities said Friday that the suspect is in the hospital for minor injuries. DePape was not known to US Capitol Police and was not in any federal databases tracking threats, according to three sources who were briefed on the investigation. But he had posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid-19 vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

US Capitol Police said in a statement Friday that it is assisting the FBI and the San Francisco Police “with a joint investigation” into the break-in.

Law enforcement officials have not provided a motive for the attack, but San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said in a news conference Friday that the attack was “intentional” and “not a random act.”

“It’s wrong. Our elected officials are here to do the business of their cities, their counties, their states and this nation. Their families don’t sign up for this to be harmed and it is wrong,” Scott said.

Nancy Pelosi was not home at the time of the attack but traveled to California on Friday to be with her husband. The security detail for lawmakers, including the speaker, does not protect their spouses when the members of Congress are not with them. Pelosi was able to speak to her husband following the attack and before he was taken into surgery, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The attack sent shock waves through Washington and sparked an outpouring of condolences and condemnation from congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle. It has also underscored fears of political violence directed toward lawmakers in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, as well as other high-profile violent incidents that have targeted lawmakers in recent years.

President Joe Biden described the attack on Paul Pelosi as “despicable” and directly tied the assault to growing strains of right-wing extremism.

“This is despicable. There’s no place in America – there’s too much violence, political violence. Too much hatred. Too much vitriol,” Biden told a fundraising dinner Friday in Philadelphia.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said in a tweet Friday that he was “horrified and disgusted” by the reports while House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s office said he had reached out to the speaker, a fellow Californian.

Vice President Kamala Harris said the assault was more evidence of “scary stuff” happening in politics around the country.

At a campaign rally Saturday in Baltimore, Harris recalled a time in the US when it was “appreciated that it is the diversity of opinions that will lead us to progress, to smart decisions.”

But now, she said, certain “so-called leaders” were using their positions to advance “preservation of their personal power” and to divide the country. They are “using the bully pulpit in a way that is propagating hate,” the vice president said.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, speaking at the same rally, asked people to pray for Paul Pelosi and reflect on what led to the brutal attack.

“I want you to think upon the environment that has been created in America by some who would bring us down, who would pit one another against one another, who would degrade our Constitution and our declaration and our proposition that ‘all men and women are created equal’” the Maryland Democrat said. “We say, ‘Those truths are self-evident,’ but they are not self-executing. It is up to us to make sure that America survives the hate and division that too many purvey in our country.”

Authorities in San Francisco are appealing to the public to provide tips regarding the attack.

“While an arrest has been made, this remains an open investigation,” the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement.

Anyone with information is asked to call the SFPD Tip Line at 1-415-575-4444.

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October 29, 2022
3 more men found guilty in Whitmer kidnapping plot | CNN Politics

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A jury in Michigan has found three men guilty of providing material support for a terrorist act and two other state charges related to the 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Paul Bellar, Joseph Morrison and Pete Musico were also convicted of gang membership and felony possession of a firearm. Prosecutors alleged the men “engaged in the planning and training for an operation to attack the state Capitol building and kidnap government officials, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.” Providing material support is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

In August, a federal jury found two men guilty of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer, a Democrat, in 2020.

Adam Fox and Barry Croft face a maximum sentence of life in prison for the kidnapping conspiracy conviction. They were also convicted of one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Their first trial ended in a mistrial.

A sentencing date for the three men has been set for December 15.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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October 26, 2022
DOJ asks judge to force Trump White House lawyers to testify in Jan. 6 probe | CNN Politics

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The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to force the top two lawyers from Donald Trump’s White House counsel’s office to testify about their conversations with the former President, as it tries to break through the privilege firewall Trump has used to avoid scrutiny of his actions on January 6, 2021, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

The move to compel additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin just last week is part of a set of secret court proceedings. Trump has been fighting to keep former advisers from testifying before a criminal grand jury about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down criminal investigators.

But the Justice Department successfully secured answers from top vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short over the past three weeks in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

Jacob’s testimony on October 6, which has not been previously reported, is the first identifiable time when the confidentiality Trump had tried to maintain around the West Wing after the 2020 election has been pierced in the criminal probe following a court battle. A week after Jacob spoke to the grand jury again, Short had his own grand jury appearance date, CNN reported.

All four men previously declined to answer some questions about advice and interactions with Trump when they testified in recent months in the secret criminal probe. Trump lost the court battles related to Jacob and Short before the chief judge of the trial-level US District Court in Washington, DC, last month.

Attorneys for the men whom the DOJ is seeking to compel have declined to comment for this story or haven’t responded to requests. Cipollone and Philbin didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Justice Department also declined to comment.

All four men have been willing to be as cooperative as the law demands, leaving Trump’s team to handle the fight over certain details in the investigation, the sources say.

The litigation around Cipollone and Philbin’s testimony may be important for investigators in the long run, given how close the pair was to the Trump leading up to and during the Capitol riot. Prosecutors are likely to aim for the grand jury to hear about their direct conversations with the then-President.

The disputes – conducted under seal in court because they involve grand jury activity – may also spawn several more court fights that will be crucial for prosecutors as they work to bring criminal charges related to Trump’s post-election efforts.

Witnesses the federal grand jury has subpoenaed, such as former White House officials Mark Meadows, Eric Herschmann, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, also could decline to describe their conversations with Trump or advice being given to him after the election, several sources familiar with the investigation say.

Trump and his allies have used claims of confidentiality – both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege – with mixed results in multiple legal quagmires that surround the former President. Those include the January 6 federal criminal investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents federal criminal investigation, Georgia’s Fulton County investigation of election meddling, and the House select committee probe of January 6 as well. Some of the privilege arguments Trump has raised have never been settled in federal court, and some of the fights could lead to the Supreme Court.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich slammed the “weaponized” Justice Department in a statement and referred to the probes surrounding the former President as “witch hunts.”

According to the sources, the Justice Department won a trial-level judge’s order at the end of September that said Jacob and Short must testify in response to certain questions over which Trump’s team had tried to claim presidential and attorney-client confidentiality.

The sealed court case, stemming from the grand jury’s work, had been before the chief judge of the DC District Court, Beryl Howell. Howell refused to put on hold Jacob and Short’s testimony while Trump’s team appealed, a source said.

The Trump team, meanwhile, took several days to respond to their loss before Howell in court. The Justice Department set a quick-turnaround subpoena date for Jacob, leaving him to head into the grand jury under subpoena on October 6, according to several sources.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is still considering legal arguments from Trump’s defense lawyers and the Justice Department over his ability to make executive and attorney-client privilege claims.

How that is resolved – either by the appeals court or even the Supreme Court, if Trump pursues it that far – could have significant consequences for the January 6 criminal investigation, and for multiple witnesses who may be refusing to share some of what they know because of Trump’s privilege claims.

Among a large group of former top Trump officials, Jacob has been one of the most searing voices condemning the then-President’s actions after the election, especially regarding the pressure he and his election attorney, John Eastman, tried to place on then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of the presidential vote.

Jacob has been a harsh critic of Eastman, who is also of interest to prosecutors, dating back to when Eastman tried to convince Pence’s office the vice president alone could override the vote. He told Eastman at the time the right-wing attorney was a “serpent in the ear” of the President, and wrote while Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, “thanks to your bulls**t, we are now under siege.”

Jacob added to a parade of star witnesses at public House select committee hearings this summer, speaking candidly about his disgust with what he witnessed inside the White House complex from his high-ranking position administration.

“There is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person would choose the American President, and then unbroken historical practice for 230 years, that the vice president did not have such an authority,” Jacob testified in July.

But what Jacob and Short knew of Trump’s conversations, they wouldn’t disclose to the House nor to the grand jury until this month.

In a taped House select committee deposition, Cipollone answered many questions about what happened inside the West Wing on January 6 but declined to describe communications between him and Trump.

Cipollone’s and Philbin’s roles as White House lawyers raise complicated legal questions about whether Trump can claim confidentiality over the legal advice they gave him, as well as whether a former president can assert executive privilege to hold off criminal investigators.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly declined to assert executive privilege around January 6 information, essentially leaving the fight for Trump to wage opposite the Justice Department.

While the courts will look at each situation individually, history isn’t on Trump’s side. Federal prosecutors investigating former Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were able to overcome attorney-client privilege assertions for White House counsel as well as executive privilege assertions so the grand jury could hear closely guarded information.

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October 26, 2022
Start your week smart: China, Hurricane Roslyn, Boris Johnson, Red Bull, Jan. 6 | CNN

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The 2022 midterm elections are now just weeks away, and with control of both chambers of Congress and dozens of governorships, secretaries of state and attorneys general posts on the line, it’s important to know both how and when to vote in your state. To help you plan your vote, CNN has gathered the deadlines for early in-person voting, absentee/mail-in voting and for voter registration in each of the 50 states leading up to Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Here’s what else you need to know to Start Your Week Smart.

• Chinese leader Xi Jinping has formally stepped into his norm-breaking third term ruling China with an iron grip on power as he revealed a new leadership team today stacked with loyal allies.

• Hurricane Roslyn slammed into Mexico’s Pacific coast as a major Category 3 storm today, bringing dangerous storm surge and flooding to parts of the country, forecasters said.

• Boris Johnson is trying to win enough support to make what would be a stunning comeback as Britain’s prime minister, as senior Conservative politicians declared their support for former finance minister Rishi Sunak. The two men have become the early favorites to replace Liz Truss, who announced her resignation last week.

• Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner and co-founder of the sports drink company Red Bull, has died, the company announced Saturday. He was 78. As well as turning his energy drink into a market leader, the Austrian billionaire also founded one of the most successful Formula One teams in recent history.

• The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol announced on Friday that the panel has officially sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump as it paints him as the central figure in the multi-step plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Monday

Opening statements are scheduled to begin in the sexual assault trial of disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles. Weinstein, 70, was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape charges in New York more than two years ago and sentenced to 23 years in prison. In Los Angeles, Weinstein faces multiple sexual assault charges that he pleaded not guilty to last year.

Diwali, the Hindu celebration known as the “Festival of Lights,” also begins on Monday. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced last week that Diwali will be a public school holiday starting in 2023.

Tuesday

A Moscow regional court has set October 25 as an appeal date for WNBA star Brittney Griner. Griner was sentenced to nine years of jail time in early August for deliberately smuggling drugs into Russia. She was arrested with less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on February 17.

In what has become one of the most closely watched Senate contests in the country, Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman and Republican candidate Mehmet Oz will face each other in a televised debate in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Fetterman, who had a near-fatal stroke more than five months ago, has faced a number of questions about transparency surrounding his health and recovery. Fetterman’s primary care physician released a medical report earlier this month stating that the candidate is “recovering well from his stroke” and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.”

Wednesday

Hillary Clinton – former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic nominee for President – turns 75.

Saturday

October 29 is National Cat Day. “Meh,” said cats …

Hear a story of Iranian resistance

In this week’s One Thing podcast, CNN Chief International Investigative Correspondent Nima Elbagir joins us from Northern Iraq, where some Iranian dissidents have fled a brutal crackdown in response to nationwide protests set off by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. We explore if these protests will bring lasting change and hear from one Iranian-Kurdish activist who is now taking up arms across the border. Listen here.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation in front of 10 Downing Street in London on Thursday, October 20.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

a drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, October 17. A wave of drone attacks pummeled the capital city early Monday as commuters headed to work.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

ended a 15-game losing streak against Alabama. They won 52-49 with a last second 40-yard field goal.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

Mississippi to record lows.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

20th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sunday, October 16. Xi is poised to secure a norm-breaking third term in power.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

as it splashes down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday, October 14, with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins. They are returning after 170 days aboard the International Space Station.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

James Webb Space Telescope. It shows a highly detailed view of the Pillars of Creation, a vista of three looming towers made of interstellar dust and gas that’s speckled with newly formed stars. The area, which lies within the Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light-years from Earth, had previously been captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, creating an image deemed “iconic” by space observers.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

found him not liable for battery on allegations he picked up actor Anthony Rapp and briefly laid on top of him in a bed after a party in 1986. Jurors deliberated for about an hour and concluded Rapp did not prove that Spacey “touched a sexual or intimate part” of him.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

warned it could take up to six months for the water to recede in the wake of the country’s “unprecedented” flooding.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

expelled from the United States on Monday, October 17.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

deadly drone attacks.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

See last week in 32 photos.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>

Check out more moving, fascinating and thought-provoking images from the week that was, curated by CNN Photos.

TV and streaming

The season finale of “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” prequel that takes place almost 200 years before the events of its predecessor, airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.)

“Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities” makes its debut on Netflix Tuesday. The new horror anthology promises “eight tales of terror” curated by the Oscar-winning director of “The Shape of Water.”

“The Good Nurse,” starring Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain, tells the story of an infamous caregiver implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients. It begins streaming on Netflix Wednesday.

“All Quiet on the Western Front,” based on the classic World War I novel, arrives on Netflix Friday.

Baseball

Four teams remain in the battle to reach the 2022 World Series, which begins on Friday. Later today, the San Diego Padres face the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. On Saturday, the Phillies beat the Padres to take a 3-1 lead in the series. The Houston Astros, meanwhile, play the New York Yankees tonight in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. Houston leads that series 3-0.

Take CNN’s weekly news quiz to see how much you remember from the week that was! So far, 66% of fellow quiz fans have gotten eight or more questions right. How will you fare?

Christina Aguilera – Beautiful (2022 Version)

‘Beautiful’

A lot has changed about the world in the last 20 years, but Christina Aguilera still thinks you’re beautiful – despite what social media sometimes tells us. Watch the updated version of her “Beautiful” music video released last week that takes aim at the messages often delivered through social media that have negative effects on our body image and mental health. (Click here to view)

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October 23, 2022
Democrats predict an ‘extremely busy’ lame duck. Here’s what’s on the agenda | CNN Politics

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CNN
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A packed legislative to-do list awaits Congress when it returns to session after the midterms – and Democrats, who currently control both chambers, will face a ticking clock to enact key priorities if Republicans win back the House or manage to flip the Senate in the upcoming elections.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has predicted an “extremely busy” lame duck session – the period of time after the midterms and before a new Congress begins in January.

“We still have much to do and many important bills to consider,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor at the end of September. “Members should be prepared for an extremely, underline extremely, busy agenda in the last two months of this Congress.”

The jam-packed agenda for the lame-duck session includes: Funding the government to avert a shutdown before the end of the calendar year, passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the annual must-pass legislation that sets the policy agenda and authorizes funding for the Department of Defense, as well as a vote in the Senate to protect same-sex marriage and the potential consideration of other key pieces of legislation.

Democrats are still limited in what they can achieve, however, given their narrow majorities in both chambers. With a 50-50 partisan split in the Senate, Democrats lack the votes to overcome the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold – and do not have the votes to abolish the filibuster. As a result, major priorities for liberal voters – like the passage of legislation protecting access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – will still remain out of reach for the party for the foreseeable future.

Government funding is the most pressing priority that lawmakers will confront during the lame duck. The current deadline for the expiration of funding is December 16 after the House and Senate passed an extension to avert a shutdown at the end of September.

Since the funding bill is viewed as must-pass legislation it will likely become a magnet for other priorities that lawmakers may try to tack on to ride along with it. It’s possible that further aid for Ukraine could come up as Ukraine continues to counter Russia’s invasion of the country. While that funding has bipartisan support, some conservatives are balking at the pricey contributions to Ukraine and may scrutinize more closely additional requests from the administration, a dynamic that is dividing Republicans on this key issue.

Democrats also want more funding for pandemic response, but Republicans have pushed back on that request.

One issue that may come up during the government funding effort is money for the Department of Justice investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

A House Democratic aide told CNN that final fiscal year 2023 funding levels have yet to be determined. Justice Department needs and resources are part of this ongoing conversation, but under the leadership of Rep. Matt Cartwright, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, science, and related agencies, the House bill included $34 million that would allow DOJ to fund these prosecutions without reducing their efforts in other areas.

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro told CNN in a statement, “I look forward to working with my colleagues on the House and Senate appropriations committees and passing a final 2023 spending package by the December 16th deadline.”

Meanwhile, the Senate has begun work on the NDAA, and is expected to pass the massive piece of legislation during the lame duck. Consideration of the wide-ranging bill could spark debate and a push for amendments over a variety of topics.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa has called for punishing OPEC for its production cut by passing legislation that would hold foreign oil producers accountable for colluding to fix prices – and the senator has said he believes the measure can pass as an amendment to the NDAA. The legislation would clear the way for the Justice Department to sue Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations for antitrust violations.

Senate Democrats will also continue confirming judges to the federal bench nominated by President Joe Biden, a key priority for the party.

A Senate vote to protect same-sex marriage is also on tap for the lame-duck session. In mid-September, the chamber punted on a vote until after the November midterm elections as negotiators asked for more time to lock down support – a move that could make it more likely the bill will ultimately pass the chamber.

The bipartisan group of senators working on the bill said in a statement at the time, “We’ve asked Leader Schumer for additional time and we appreciate he has agreed. We are confident that when our legislation comes to the Senate floor for a vote, we will have the bipartisan support to pass the bill.” The bill would need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster.

Schumer has vowed to hold a vote on the bill, but the exact timing has not yet been locked in. Democrats have pushed for the vote after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, sparking fears that the court could take aim at same-sex marriage in the future.

The Senate could take up legislation during the lame duck in response to the January 6, 2021, attack by a mob of pro-Trump supporters attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Over the summer, a bipartisan group of senators reached a deal to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election. The proposal would still need, however, to be approved by both chambers. Notably, the Senate proposal has the backing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

“I strongly support the modest changes that our colleagues in the working group have fleshed out after literally months of detailed discussions,” McConnell said at the end of September. “I’ll proudly support the legislation, provided that nothing more than technical changes are made to its current form.”

If the bill passes the Senate, it would also need to clear the House, which in September, passed its own version of legislation to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election in the future by proposing changes to the Electoral Count Act.

Passing a bill to to restrict lawmakers from trading stocks is a priority for a number of moderate House Democrats – who may continue to push for the issue to be taken up during the lame duck, though whether there will be a vote is still to be determined and other pressing must-pass items like government funding could crowd out the issue. The House did not vote on a proposal prior to the midterm elections.

“It’s a complicated issue, as you can imagine, as a new rule for members they have to follow, and their families as I understand, so I think it deserves careful study to make sure if we do something, we do it right,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told CNN last month.

Meanwhile, it’s not yet clear when exactly the nation will run up against the debt limit and it appears unlikely for now that Congress will act to resolve the issue during the lame-duck session, especially as other must-pass bills compete for floor time. But political battle lines are already being drawn and maneuvering is underway in Washington over the contentious and high-stakes issue.

A group of House Democrats recently sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer calling for legislation to “permanently undo the threat posed by the debt limit” during the post-election lame-duck session. The letter, led by Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, was signed by several prominent House Democrats, including Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Biden on Friday gave a window into how he’s preparing for a looming political showdown over the debt ceiling, stating unequivocally that he will not relent to Republican lawmakers threatening to send the nation into default if he doesn’t meet their demands, but adding that he doesn’t support efforts from within his own party to abolish the debt limit entirely.

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October 23, 2022
Jan. 6 rioter who brought guns onto US Capitol grounds sentenced to 5 years in jail | CNN Politics

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CNN
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A January 6 rioter who carried two loaded handguns onto US Capitol grounds during the insurrection was sentenced to 60 months in jail on Friday after pleading guilty to assaulting an officer that day and unlawfully carrying a firearm.

Mark Mazza, 56, entered the Capitol grounds armed with two handguns, one of which – a revolver called the “Judge” loaded with shotgun shells and hollow point bullets – he lost on the lower west terrace just outside the building.

After losing the gun, Mazza joined the mob in a tunnel leading inside the Capitol, a scene where police were brutally attacked for hours by rioters armed with bats, poles, chemical spray, and the officer’s own weapons.

During the attack, Mazza – still armed with his second pistol, according to prosecutors – took a baton from one officer and used it against him.

“This is our f***ing house!” Mazza yelled after attacking the officer, according to his plea agreement. “We own this house! We want our house! Get out of the citizens of the United States’ way!”

Dressed in a forest green prison jumpsuit, Mazza told Judge James Boasberg on Friday that he “got caught up in the mob mentality that I never anticipated.”

“I’m not quite the monster” the government “painted me as,” Mazza added, saying that he had never intended to fight police that day and left the tunnel as soon as he realized what he was doing was wrong. Mazza also claimed that he assisted other officers outside of the tunnel.

“The tale you have to tell is a familiar one,” Boasberg told Mazza, adding that “it was the decisions people like you made (to) assault the Capitol in what was a true insurrection.”

Boasberg added he was “alarmed” Mazza had brought two firearms with him and that, while Mazza claimed he was only armed because he heard Washington, DC, was the “murder capital,” the mall and Capitol building are not dangerous areas.

Before being sentenced, Mazza again asked for mercy, telling the judge he was still “hoping I’m going to see my parents again.”

Mazza will also have to pay a fine of $2,000 in restitution for damage done to the Capitol.

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October 21, 2022
January 6 committee announces it has sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol announced on Friday that the panel has officially sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump as it paints him as the central figure in the multi-step plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The committee issued the subpoena to try to compel Trump to sit for a deposition under oath and to provide documents. The panel is ordering Trump turn over documents by November 4 and “one or more days of deposition testimony beginning on or about November 14.” Unlike with previous subpoena announcements, the committee released the entire subpoena it sent to Trump along with the documents it is requesting.

While it is not clear if Trump will comply with the subpoena, the action serves as a way for the committee to set down a marker and make clear they want information directly from Trump as the panel investigates the attack.

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” the committee wrote in its letter.

The panel summarizes what it presented in its hearings to demonstrate why it believes Trump “personally orchestrated and oversaw” the plan.

Trump and his legal team have been discussing how to respond to the subpoena, a source familiar with the situation told CNN, stressing that no firm decisions had been made. Trump has tapped lawyers Harmeet Dhillon and Jim Trusty to take the lead on responding to the subpoena.

The former president posted a lengthy response criticizing the committee on Truth Social after members voted unanimously to subpoena him but did not say whether he would comply. Trump also recently shared a Fox story on Truth Social that claimed he “loves the idea of testifying.” But Trump could also fight the subpoena in court, and such a legal challenge would likely outlast the committee’s mandate.

In its subpoena, the committee specifically demands Trump turn over any communications, sent or received during the period of November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021, with over a dozen of his close allies who have emerged as key players in the broader plan to overturn the 2020 election.

The committee also notes that it wants Trump to testify about his interactions with several individuals, including people on the same list, who invoked their Fifth Amendment rights when questioned by the committee about their dealings with the former President.

The House committee latest public hearing, where members voted to subpoena him, served as a closing argument to the American public ahead of the midterm election that Trump is at the center of the multifaceted plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“It is our obligation to seek Donald Trump’s testimony,” the panel’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said ahead of the subpoena vote during the hearing.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice chairwoman of the committee, said during the hearing that seeking Trump’s testimony under oath remains “a key task” because several witnesses closest to the former President invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to their interactions with Trump.

“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion” Cheney said, referring to Trump.

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October 21, 2022
‘People are just hitting their heads against the wall’: Democrats fret another Johnson win | CNN Politics

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Rhinelander, Wisconsin
CNN
—

Tom Nelson can hardly believe it.

In just a matter of two months, Democrats went from expecting to knock off the unpopular GOP incumbent, US Sen. Ron Johnson, to seeing their party’s nominee, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, scrambling to catch up.

Already, the finger pointing has begun.

“The national party did him a grave disservice by not closing the gap, by not being a stopgap measure in August and September to hit Johnson hard on good, effective negative ads, at the same time building up Mandela,” Nelson, a local county executive from central Wisconsin and former Senate Democratic candidate, told CNN. “The national party has totally failed us, and so it’s gonna come down to Wisconsin Democrats.”

Of possibly seeing Johnson, 67, win a third Senate race, Nelson said, “People are just hitting their heads against the wall. How do we let this happen?”

Over the summer, Barnes’ top Democratic opponents dropped out, clearing the way for him to win the primary and fully shift to attacking Johnson. Yet Barnes’ slim lead collapsed in September, when Republicans spent nearly $6 million more than Democrats on the air slamming Barnes primarily on crime. In August, a Marquette Law School poll of likely voters showed Barnes leading Johnson 52-45. By early October, those numbers reversed.

What’s happening in Wisconsin resembles Democratic struggles across the country. They’ve seen their leads evaporate in key House and Senate races as outside money floods in to hammer Democrats over crime and inflation, while they’ve tried to rail against Republicans over their opposition to abortion rights. In several key battleground states – Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida – GOP candidates and groups spent roughly $25 million more than their Democratic counterparts on air in September alone, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks ad spending.

In states like Wisconsin, the outside money has forced Barnes to go on defense, and air several ads accusing Johnson of lying in the attack ads.

Many of his supporters believe that is not enough.

“Oh, I’m terrified,” said Mary Hildebrand, a voter here in this small northern Wisconsin town. “His campaign seems to be faltering,” she said of Barnes.

In an interview, Barnes dismissed the polls showing him down in the race. Democrats are heartened that the same Marquette pollster tested a larger universe of voters – registered voters – and found the race there essentially a dead heat.

“Polls go up, polls go down,” Barnes, 35, told CNN. “The reality is we’re showing up, talking to everybody.”

“All they can do is try to distort my record and try to make people live in fear,” he added, rejecting the notion that he was caught flat-footed. “But that’s not what this is about. It’s about making sure that people know better is possible.”

Democrats have already reserved $2 million more in ads than Republicans in the final three weeks of the campaign, according to AdImpact. And officials with Democratic outside groups – namely the Senate Majority PAC and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – reject the criticism that their ad campaigns have been ineffective.

“Wisconsin is one of the top Senate battlegrounds because voters in the state are tired of Ron Johnson looking out for himself at their expense,” said Amanda Sherman Baity, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has ramped up its spending since the August 9 primary and has spent over $4.8 million in the race so far, including a $1 million ad buy coordinated with the Barnes campaign.

Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and its affiliated group have been on the air since May, having dropped $22 million in the state, with $6.2 million planned in the final three weeks.

“We have just under three weeks left to defeat Johnson and defend our Democratic Senate majority—that’s what we’re focusing on, and we strongly encourage our fellow Democrats to do the same,” said Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Veronica Yoo.

On the air, Republicans have had a near singular focus, hammering Barnes for violent crime and for previously advocating for shifting police funding to other social services in the community. Outside groups like Wisconsin Truth PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, have said he supports “defunding” the police, a slogan he rejects.

Of the GOP attacks, Marilyn Norden, a voter in northern Wisconsin, said: “They seem to be working. Yes, I’m very concerned.”

After a speech at a packed diner here in Oneida County, Barnes defended himself, telling reporters that the issue is personal for him since he’s lost friends to gun violence. He said he wants “fully funded” schools and “good-paying jobs,” and to prevent “dangerous weapons” from getting in the hands of criminals. He said that Johnson “is only playing politics with our safety.”

“Nobody is asking about interviews from six years ago, people are asking why Ron Johnson continues to leave them behind,” he told CNN when asked about recent reports he spoke out against police brutality on RT, a Kremlin-backed network, in 2015 and 2016.

Barnes is attempting to be the first Black person to become a US senator from Wisconsin, and his supporters see a racial component to the attacks.

“These ads have gone from crime ads to just blatant racism,” Nelson said. “This is something that Wisconsin has never seen before.”

Barnes’ attacks have mostly focused on the accusations that Johnson enriched himself while in office, an accusation the GOP senator rejects, and over his support for banning abortion.

Asked why he hasn’t focused on other issues during his paid media campaign – namely Johnson’s downplaying of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and sowing doubt over the Covid-19 vaccine – Barnes said there was plenty of controversy to choose from.

“We actually have focused on January 6th to an extent, but the reality is there are many different fronts to address Ron Johnson’s failures,” Barnes told CNN. “And it’s important for us to highlight where Ron Johnson has failed people right at home and at the dinner table.”

Johnson has remained behind closed doors this week. His campaign refused to disclose his campaign schedule this week or make him available for an interview. But he has appeared on Fox this week, including pleading for donations during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show Tuesday night. The Barnes and Johnson campaigns have each spent over $23 million so far on the race, but the lieutenant governor outraised the senator last quarter, $19.5 million to $11.6 million.

“I think so many people think this is won,” Johnson said to Hannity. “My fundraising is weaker. I rely on your audience.”

There are signs that Democrats are broadening their attacks. The Senate Majority PAC and End Citizens United launched Wednesday a new ad featuring a retired Madison police officer calling out Johnson for describing the January 6 attack on the Capitol as largely a “peaceful protest.” On Tuesday, SMP aired another ad attacking Johnson on China, for working to sweeten a tax break for companies connected to his donors and himself, and for his anti-abortion rights position.

At a speech here on Tuesday, Barnes attacked Johnson for not supporting federal legislation to codify same-sex marriage, for at one point facilitating an effort to contest the 2020 election and for later downplaying the January 6 riot.

Johnson’s supporters in the ultimate swing state have twice sent him to the Senate, drawn to his brash attitude, businessman background and conservative values. The Wisconsin Republican has also benefited from running in election cycles when the political environment favored his party, first in the 2010 tea party wave, then in 2016 as Donald Trump stunned the world and narrowly took Wisconsin on his way to the White House, and now in 2022, when inflation and a deteriorating economy threatens Democrats’ control of Congress.

Andy Loduha, Republican party chairman here in Oneida County, said Barnes doesn’t understand the economic issues that have come to the forefront of the race.

“I think abortion is another example of how the Democrats don’t really have anything to run on,” said Loduha. “They’re running on emotional issues like abortion, but they don’t want to try to touch inflation, crime, drugs.”

Wisconsin Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki is frustrated with the Democratic bedwetting, even though he said recognized the “tough national political environment.”

“I just think there’s too many Democrats wringing their hands and thinking this thing is like gone or on its way to being gone,” Zepecki said. “Guys, run through the tape. You’re right there, despite the f***ing onslaught that Barnes had to weather … And he’s still right there.”

Asked if she believed Barnes would win, Wisconsin Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who ran against Barnes before dropping out, told CNN, “If there’s one thing we know about Wisconsin, it’s we live by close elections, and we never press our luck.”

To get there, Barnes will be campaigning next week in Milwaukee with former President Barack Obama, in a bid to energize voters. But there are no plans yet to campaign with the current President, Joe Biden, whose unpopularity remains a liability here.

Asked if Biden should run for reelection, Barnes told CNN: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. We still gotta get through November 8, 2022.”

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October 19, 2022
Four takeaways from Utah’s only Senate debate | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Evan McMullin, the independent challenging Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, said in their only debate Monday night that Lee’s actions around the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol were “a betrayal of the American republic.”

Lee, meanwhile, said he accepted that President Joe Biden in 2020 had won the presidency in the “only election that matters – the election held by the Electoral College.” The senator defended his actions that day, pointing to his votes to certify states’ Electoral College results.

Their clash came on the day elections officials in Utah began mailing ballots to voters.

McMullin describes himself as conservative but has said he would caucus with neither party if he defeats Lee. He is attempting to unite a coalition of Democrats, independents and anti-Donald Trump Republicans – and he got an assist this spring when Utah Democrats opted to endorse him rather than field their own candidate. But in Utah, even that coalition might not be enough. Trump won 58% of the vote there in 2020.

McMullin’s entrance into politics came in an effort to serve as an antidote to Trump. He ran for president as an independent against Trump in 2016. He drew 22% of the vote in Utah, well behind Trump’s 46% and Hillary Clinton’s 27%. Among those who voted for McMullin in 2016 was Lee, who said at the time that it “was a protest vote.”

Here are four takeaways from their Monday night debate:

McMullin’s sharpest attacks on Lee came after a moderator raised the topic of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“You were there to stand up for our Constitution. But when the barbarians were at the gate, you were happy to let them in,” McMullin said.

Lee pointed out that ultimately, he accepted the Electoral College vote.

“Yes, there were people who behaved very badly on that day. I was not one of them. I was one of the people who tried to dismantle that situation,” Lee said.

McMullin, meanwhile, said Lee only voted to accept states’ electoral votes after no other plan to keep Trump in office materialized.

“You voted to certify the election in the last moment,” McMullin said. “In the same way that someone knows that a plot that’s not quite working out ought to abandon it, that’s what you did.”

McMullin repeatedly cited text messages reported by CNN in April between Lee and Trump’s then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which the two communicated about efforts to overturn Biden’s victory for weeks.

In early December 2020, Lee began texting Meadows about the idea that states could submit alternate slates of pro-Trump electors to Congress on January 6. Lee ultimately voted to certify states’ electoral votes.

McMullin said Lee was working “to keep a president who had been voted out of office, according to the will of the people, in power despite the will of the people.”

He pointed to Lee’s November 7, 2020, texts to Meadows asking him to help Sidney Powell – one of the most prominent attorneys fronting lawsuits that supported Trump and made accusations of widespread election fraud – get access to Trump.

He mocked the pocket Constitution that Lee carries, telling the senator that it is “not a prop for you to wave about and then when it’s convenient for your pursuit of power, to abandon without a thought. That’s what you’ve done with that.”

Lee shot back: “I disagree with everything my opponent just said, including the words ‘but,’ ‘and’ and ‘the.’ An information-free, truth-free statement – that’s something of a record.”

“There is absolutely nothing to the idea that I ever would have supported or ever did support a fake electors plot,” Lee said. “Nothing. Not a scintilla of evidence suggesting that. Yet you continue to suggest that with a cavalier, reckless disregard for the truth.”

In an effort to cast Lee as extreme, McMullin invoked Utah’s other GOP senator: Mitt Romney.

Criticizing Lee’s approach to fiscal measures, McMullin said he “routinely votes against bills that would improve water infrastructure.”

“Meanwhile, Senator Romney has worked hard and consistently over the last three years,” McMullin said. “He works with Republicans and Democrats, Senator Lee, to deliver for Utah. And he voted in favor of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that you voted against. And now tens of millions of dollars have already been directed to Utah to improve our water infrastructure.”

Lee responded: “Yeah, I voted against that bill – a bill that spent well over a trillion dollars more than we have on all sorts of things that weren’t appropriately federal.”

Romney has stayed out of the race.

Lee, in an appearance last week on Fox, made a plea directed at Romney: “Please get on board. Help me win reelection,” he said. The move seemed designed less to win over Romney than to rile up Lee’s conservative base.

Trump followed Lee’s pleas to Romney with a statement in which he called McMullin “McMuffin” and said that Lee was being “abused, in an unprecedented way” by Romney.

Lee said he was “thrilled” with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had made abortion legal nationwide. He said he believes states should decide how to regulate abortion.

“This is where it should remain, because it’s within the states that we can achieve the most consensus and protect the most babies,” Lee said.

McMullin, meanwhile, sought to find a middle ground on abortion rights, saying that he opposes “abortion on demand” but also opposes state legislation to force young rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

“Some of these bills that I see being passed around the country are extreme,” McMullin said.

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October 18, 2022
Kanye West to acquire conservative social media platform Parler | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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Kanye West is acquiring Parler, the alternative social media platform favored by many conservatives.

Parler’s parent company announced the deal on Monday morning, saying West had made “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

The acquisition comes after West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, had his account temporarily locked by Twitter this month over an antisemitic tweet.

Exact terms of the Parler deal weren’t disclosed, though Parler said it must still enter into a definitive agreement with West and expects to close in the fourth quarter. Parler’s parent, Parlement Technologies, would remain involved by providing technical services and cloud support.

Buying Parler could make West the latest celebrity owner of a social media platform after former President Donald Trump’s bid to win over conservatives with Truth Social and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter. It also highlights how a small group of wealthy men, some of whom were banned or suspended themselves for incendiary remarks, are looking to own social media platforms in an effort to bolster what they call “free speech.”

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” West said in a release by Parler.

As part of the announcement, Parler linked to West’s account on the platform, which appeared to have launched simultaneously. As of early Monday, the account had roughly 500 followers.

For Ye, the deal comes during a particularly controversial period. West has made headlines in recent weeks for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt in public and defending his use of the slogan — a phrase the Anti-Defamation League has linked to white supremacy groups — as “funny” to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. After the shirt incident, the apparel company Adidas this month said it was reviewing its partnership with West. In September, West also said he was abandoning a two-year partnership with the clothing retailer Gap.

Speaking on CNN Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, called Parler a “haven” of hate.

Parler was founded in 2018 and saw rapid growth surrounding the 2020 election. Billing itself as a loosely moderated free-speech haven, the app became popular with conservative politicians and media figures, peaking at an estimated 2.9 million daily users, according to the market research firm Apptopia. But since then, its fortunes have dimmed, with Parler’s estimated daily user count slipping to just 40,000, Apptopia told CNN on Monday. (Twitter, by comparison, has more than 237 million daily active users.)

In the weeks following the Jan. 6 riots, Parler was removed from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for what the companies said was a failure to adequately moderate violent rhetoric on the platform. Documents provided to the House committee investigating the Capitol riots have shown how the Secret Service was aware of posts on Parler that suggested the possibility of violence surrounding that day. Separately, Parler has written to Congress claiming that lawmakers’ interest in the app’s role in the riots has been intended to “scapegoat” the app.

Parler has since been restored to both app stores after making changes to its content moderation practices.

Parler has faced more competition in recent months as the burgeoning right-wing digital media ecosystem has expanded. Truth Social launched in February on Apple’s app store, and was approved for Google’s app store on Oct. 13. Truth Social saw a spike of downloads last week due to its appearance on the Google Play Store, Apptopia said, and before then had been hovering at 144,000 daily active users.

Musk’s move to buy Twitter, if the deal goes through, also has the potential to upend Parler and similar services. Musk has repeatedly called for eliminating permanent bans and rethinking Twitter’s approach to content moderation, which could once again make the much larger platform a home for some of the users who jumped to small services like Parler.

It could also effectively mean that Musk and Ye, who are said to be friends, are now competing with each other. After Ye’s antisemitic tweet sparked an outcry, Musk tweeted: “Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.”

One week later, Ye’s deal to buy Parler was announced.

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October 17, 2022
Arizona Attorney General’s office asks for federal investigation of conservative nonprofit True the Vote | CNN Politics

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The Arizona Attorney General’s office has asked for a federal investigation related to potential violations of the Internal Revenue Code by the conservative nonprofit True the Vote, which claims to be trying to expose voter fraud.

An investigator in Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office, Reginald Grigsby, said in a letter that the group has “raised considerable sums of money alleging they had evidence of widespread voter fraud” but has failed to provide any evidence to its office, despite publicly indicating they had shared the information with law enforcement agencies.

“Given TTV’s status as a nonprofit organization, it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted,” the letter, released on Friday, reads in a striking move for an office overseen by a Republican. Brnovich had sought to win over former President Donald Trump and his supporters in his unsuccessful bid for the nomination for Senate earlier this year.

Grigsby detailed three meetings representatives from the attorney general’s office had with Catherine Engelbrecht, who founded the Texas-based nonprofit, and Gregg Phillips, who is a contracted partner.

The meetings were spread out over a year – the first took place in June 2021 and the following two occurred in April and June of this year. Grigsby said prior to each meeting, Engelbrecht and Phillips said they would provide the attorney general’s office with information to support their claims of voter fraud but they never provided any so-called evidence.

In a statement, True the Vote called the letter “false” and said it “smacks of retribution for the AG’s own decision to ignore suspicious voting activity.” The statement also countered that its hard drive of data is “available to any law enforcement agency which issues a lawful subpoena for the data” and said that it “has documentary records of correspondence with the State of Arizona and the FBI, detailing the evidence and its limitations.”

In its letter, the attorney general’s office stated that it had requested the information by electronic and US mail and by leaving voicemails after the latest in-person meeting, but it did not indicate whether it had formally subpoenaed the data.

An IRS spokesperson told CNN, “Due to privacy regulations, the IRS will not comment on the status of an individual or organization.”

True the Vote and Engelbrecht have advanced claims of election-fraud for years. But the group recently gained new prominence through the film, “2000 Mules” produced by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. It claims “mules” were used to illegally collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes in key states in the 2020 election.

True the Vote has said it purchased cellphone geo-tracking data to identify devices that went repeatedly near drop boxes and certain nonprofits ahead of the election to advance the argument that illegal ballot harvesting occurred in key swing states.

Multiple fact-checkers have debunked those claims. And in testimony that aired during a hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, former Attorney General William Barr called the film’s premise flawed.

The film has been touted by Trump and some Trump-aligned candidates. Earlier this year, the former President hosted a screening of the film at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront Florida resort and home.

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October 17, 2022
January 6 committee member says panel will ask former Secret Service agent to testify again | CNN Politics

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Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, told CNN on Sunday the panel will ask former Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato to testify again.

“We’re in a position in the very near future to call the witnesses from the Secret Service back in for a few additional questions,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom,” explaining that the panel had wanted to “get through all the documentary evidence … over a million documents,” which they’ve now done.

The House select committee has made clear it believes Ornato was a central figure who could provide valuable information about former President Donald Trump’s movements and intentions leading up to and on January 6.

Not only did Ornato once run Trump’s detail, but he also made the unprecedented move of joining White House staff as the deputy chief of staff in December 2019 on a temporary assignment and eventually returned to the Secret Service to run its training program.

To this point, Ornato has met with the panel on two occasions – in January and March – as part of its investigation.

It’s not clear whether Ornato will end up testifying related to the claims from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson specifically testified that Ornato had told her about Trump lashing out in anger and lunging at a member of his protective detail as he demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6.

Asked Sunday who else from the Secret Service would be called back to testify, Lofgren also mentioned the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail, Robert Engel, “and a few others,” but did not specify whom.

“We want to make sure that we’re getting the straight story. Some of the testimony received doesn’t seem to align with some of the documents, so we have a need to understand that better from them,” she said.

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October 16, 2022
January 6 panel asks Secret Service for information about contacts between agents and Oath Keeper members | CNN Politics

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Investigators with the House select committee probing the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol have asked the United States Secret Service for information about contacts between its agents and members of the far-right Oath Keepers group.

The inquiry comes after it was revealed during court testimony that members of the group, including leader Stewart Rhodes, claimed to be in contact with Secret Service agents prior to rallies for former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election. Members of the Oath Keepers are currently on trial for charges relating to the Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed to CNN that the January 6 panel had reached out to the agency and “a verbal briefing was provided to the staff.”

NBC News first reported the inquiry.

Guglielmi told CNN the Secret Service would provide records of contact between the Oath Keepers and Secret Service agents.

Members of the Oath Keepers occasionally reached out to the Secret Service prior to January 6, 2021, with questions about permissible items for rallies, an official with the agency told CNN earlier this week. Further, when agents learned the group planned to attend events, agents reached out and met with members.

While it’s not uncommon for law enforcement agents to maintain contacts with groups that are of investigative interest, the relationship with the Oath Keepers has come under increased scrutiny during the trial.

John Zimmerman, a former North Carolina leader of the Oath Keepers, testified earlier this month that to prepare for the rally, Rhodes said he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service who offered advice on what weapons were allowed near the rally. Rhodes also repeatedly represented he was in touch with an agent, said Zimmerman, who noted that he had not heard the entire conversation.

CNN has asked the Secret Service for dates of contacts and names of Oath Keepers contacted, as well as whether the contacts were documented at the time.

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October 15, 2022
Secret Service reached out to Oath Keepers ahead of January 6 riot | CNN Politics

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Secret Service agents were in contact with members of the Oath Keepers prior to January 6 an official with the agency tells CNN, as part of standard intelligence and response duties.

The official said members of the Oath Keepers occasionally reached out to the Secret Service with questions about permissible items for rallies. Further, when agents learned the group planned to attend events, agents reached out and met with members. The official noted that is common when groups plan to demonstrate.

The Washington Post first reported the agency’s outreach to the Oath Keepers ahead of January 6, 2021.

“We are aware that individuals from the Oath Keepers have contacted us in the past to make inquiries,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told CNN last week.

It’s not uncommon for law enforcement agents to maintain contacts with groups that are of investigative interest. The Oath Keepers and other extremist groups that traveled to Washington for rallies after the 2020 election had numerous contacts with local and federal law enforcement agencies, testimony gathered in congressional and federal investigations has shown.

The relationship between the Oath Keepers has come under increased scrutiny after testimony last week revealed the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, purported to be in touch with agents.

John Zimmerman, a former North Carolina leader of the Oath Keepers, testified that he believed Rhodes was in touch with a Secret Service agent in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Zimmerman, who has not been charged with a crime, said members of the Oath Keepers – who are currently on trial for charges relating to the January 6 US Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy – gathered in September in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump

Members of the Oath Keepers were recruiting at the rally and working as personal security details, he said.

To prepare for the rally, Zimmerman testified, Rhodes said he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service who advised the leader on what weapons were allowed near the rally. Zimmerman said he did not hear the entire conversation, but that Rhodes repeatedly represented he was in touch with an agent.

Rhodes allegedly told other members of the Oath Keepers in a group chat that if Trump called upon them as a militia, he believed the US Secret Service would be “happy” to have their help, according to evidence presented in court Thursday.

The text was presented during the seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes and four other defendants. All five have pleaded not guilty.

“If he calls us up as a militia I think the secret service would be happy to have us out there,” Rhodes wrote, according to prosecutors. Rhodes went on to say this conclusion was based upon numerous positive contacts between Oath Keepers and the Secret Service before several Trump rallies before January 6.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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October 13, 2022
Barnes seeks to rebut crime attacks headed into final Senate debate with Johnson in Wisconsin | CNN Politics

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Mandela Barnes, the Democrat taking on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin’s Senate race, on Thursday faces what could be his last clear shot at rebutting the avalanche of GOP attacks on crime and police funding that have taken a months-long toll on his campaign.

Barnes and Johnson are set to meet for their second and final debate Thursday night – hours after the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds a hearing that is expected to function as its closing argument ahead of the November midterm elections.

Barnes is highlighting Johnson’s actions on that day, seeking to cast him as an unreliable and hypocritical messenger on what it means to support police officers. Johnson, who played a role in trying to push “fake electors” for then-President Donald Trump before the start of the congressional certification of the 2020 electoral votes, has repeatedly downplayed the attack on the Capitol, saying it was not an “armed insurrection,” including as recently as earlier this month.

Johnson and Republican outside spending groups have hammered Barnes, the Wisconsin lieutenant governor, throughout the fall in television advertisements, at events and in their first debate on crime – echoing a theme the GOP has made a core component of its closing message in Senate races across the map. Those attacks have coincided with Johnson rebounding from a summer slump in the polls less than four weeks from Election Day.

During a campaign event Tuesday in Milwaukee where the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police and the West Allis Professional Police Association endorsed the two-term Republican senator, Johnson said that Barnes has shown “far greater sympathy for the criminal or criminals versus law enforcement or the victims.” He pointed to Barnes’ history of statements in support of decreasing or redirecting police funding.

“The dispiriting nature of attempting to cut or use the code words of ‘reallocate,’ ‘over bloated budgets,’ – my opponent says that it pains him to see a fully funded police budget. I mean, that type of rhetoric,” Johnson said, “Those types of policies are very dispiriting for police.”

Barnes, who says he does not support defunding the police, is attempting to shift the debate over crime away from his previous comments by targeting Johnson’s actions around the attack on the Capitol after President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Ahead of Thursday’s debate, Barnes plans to hold a virtual news conference with retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served on the National Security Council and emerged as a star witness against Trump during the his first impeachment. Barnes’ campaign said the event would serve to “hold Ron Johnson accountable for his attempt to send a fake slate of electors to the Vice President.”

Johnson’s role in trying to put forward the slate of electors who had not been certified by any state legislature was uncovered in June by the House select committee investigating the events around the insurrection. “I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out to Pence’s office,” Johnson told CNN at the time.

In his first debate with Barnes, Johnson said he did not know what he was being asked to hand Pence.

“I had no idea when I got a call from the lawyers for the president of the United States to deliver something to the vice president, did I have a staffer who could help out with that – I had no idea what it was,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t even involved. I had no knowledge of an alternate state of electors.”

His comment was part of perhaps the most memorable clash in their first debate last week. Barnes said that Johnson didn’t have any concern for the “140 officers that were injured in the January 6 insurrection.”

“One officer was stabbed with a metal stake. Another crushed between a revolving door. Another hit in the head with a fire extinguisher,” Barnes said. “Let’s talk about the 140 officers that he left behind because of an insurrection that he supported.”

Johnson said of the insurrection that he “immediately and forcefully and have repeatedly condemned it and condemned it strongly.”

Barnes consistently led polls of the Senate race over the summer. But that edge has evaporated, more recent polls show – a change that has coincided with Republicans spending millions on TV ads focused on crime.

A Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin released Wednesday showed movement among likely voters toward Johnson. The Republican led Barnes by 6 percentage points, 52% to 46%, among likely voters, the poll found. That’s a jump in Johnson’s favor from the neck-and-neck race the same poll found, with Johnson at 49% to Barnes’ 48%, in September.

The poll’s results among likely voters are significantly more favorable to the GOP than are its results among all registered voters, suggesting substantial uncertainty hinging on Democrats’ ability to turn out less motivated supporters. By contrast, in Marquette’s latest results among all registered voters, Barnes and Johnson are tied at 47% in the Senate race.

Other recent polls of the race have found likely voters deadlocked. In a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, Johnson took 50% to Barnes’ 49% among likely voters.

The Marquette poll found that inflation is a top issue in Wisconsin, with 68% of registered voters saying they are very concerned about it. Smaller majorities are also very concerned about public schools (60%), gun violence (60%), abortion policy (56%), crime (56%) and an “accurate vote count” (52%).

But it’s crime that Republican strategists say has been central to Johnson’s rebound in the race.

The attacks have taken place against the backdrop of rising violent crime figures, including a 70% increase in Wisconsin’s homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, according to the state’s Department of Justice. Republicans have also highlighted those convicted of violent crimes who have been paroled by the Wisconsin Parole Commission, an independent agency whose chairperson is appointed by the governor.

“They don’t have an answer,” Brian Schimming, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin, said of Barnes’ campaign. “With Mandela Barnes, it’s not just one thing. It’s not anecdotal. There are three, four, five issues there that are not playing with an electorate that’s pretty concerned about crime right now, and not just if they’re in Milwaukee.”

In the month of September, 61% of the nearly $9 million that Johnson and GOP groups spent on TV ads in the Wisconsin Senate race was behind ads focused on crime, according to data from the firm AdImpact.

That share has dropped to 30% so far in October, but nine of the 14 ads that Republican groups have aired so far have been focused on crime.

It has forced Democrats to respond. Barnes and Democratic groups have focused 40% of their TV ad spending so far in October on crime, with ads rebutting the GOP groups.

The Republican attacks have focused on Barnes’ efforts as a state lawmaker to end cash bail, as well as a 2020 interview with PBS Wisconsin – weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in neighboring Minnesota – in which Barnes suggested that funding should be redirected from police budgets to other social services.

“We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end,” he said then. “Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments.”

He did, however, also stress in that same interview that he did not want police budgets completely done away with, saying, “The more money we invest in opportunity for people, the less money we have to spend on prisons.”

One Johnson campaign ad shows video of Barnes saying that “reducing prison population is now sexy.” A narrator in the ad highlights Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration’s efforts to reduce the state’s prison population and says: “That’s not sexy. It’s terrifying. And as a mother, I don’t want Mandela Barnes anywhere near the Senate, from defunding our police to releasing predators.”

Another Johnson spot features the sheriffs of Ozaukee and Waukesha counties, both huge sources of Republican votes in the Milwaukee suburbs.

“Barnes wants to defund our police,” Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson says in the ad.

“Mandela Barnes’ policies are a threat to your family,” Ozaukee County Sheriff Jim Johnson says.

Barnes’ campaign has responded with ads of its own, including one in which Barnes says of GOP ads claiming he supports defunding the police, “That’s a lie.”

“Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police,” a retired Racine Police Department sergeant says in another Barnes spot. “He’s very supportive of law enforcement and I know his objective is to make every community in the state of Wisconsin better.”

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October 13, 2022
Locks, laws and bullet-resistant shields: Election officials boost security as midterms draw closer | CNN Politics

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In Douglasville, Georgia – just west of Atlanta – a new buzzer-entry system secures the doors of the Douglas County election office. And elections director Milton Kidd said he now varies the times and the routes he uses to travel to work – all to evade the attention of election conspiracy theorists who have targeted the office.

In Madison, Wisconsin, where a top election official faced death threats in the aftermath of the 2020 election, officials have redesigned the city clerk’s office, adding cameras, locking doors and covering the windows with white paper, said city attorney Michael Haas. In addition, a new city ordinance establishes a fine of up to $1,000 for disorderly conduct directed at election officials.

In Colorado, meanwhile, a new state law – the Vote Without Fear Act – prohibits carrying firearms at polling places or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box. And in Tallahassee, Florida, officials have added Kevlar and bullet-resistant acrylic shields to the Leon County elections office, said Mark Earley, who runs elections in the county.

With Election Day less than a month away – and early voting already happening in some states – the officials charged with administering the midterms are racing to boost security for their staff, polling places and voters, as baseless conspiracy theories about fraud continue to swirl around the 2020 election and the one now underway.

As CNN recently reported, the concerns about threats and harassment are so great that federal officials are now offering de-escalation training to local and state officials to help avert violence at the polls.

“We certainly are in territory that we have not navigated in the past,” said Tina Barton, a former election official in Michigan who sits on the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. It’s a bipartisan group of election experts and law enforcement officials, working to prevent threats against voters and election officials.

“I’m sad about the fact that it took a scenario like this for us to have to look at all of these things and say, ‘How do we keep ourselves safe?’” she added of the threats that started after the 2020 election. “But we’re seeing unprecedented threats and harassment.”

Barton said election officials are deploying a bevy of tactics to secure the elections – from installing cameras and lighting at drop boxes to adding GPS and other tracking devices to ballot bags to monitor their movement on Election Day.

Election officials in North Carolina last week issued what they described as their “most comprehensive” guidance to local elections officials for maintaining order at polling places this fall. It reinforces that it’s a crime to interfere with voter or election workers. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has also developed a guide for local law enforcement to help officers identify and respond to voter intimidation.

In Leon County, Florida, Earley said his staff has received active-shooter training as part of their preparations in recent election cycles. But he said it has taken on “more significance since January 6,” referring to the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

The extra steps to secure the building and protect the staff, Earley said, have sprung from worries about “people buying into myths and disinformation and feeling it’s their patriotic duty to take action.”

“In today’s world, that action, unfortunately, oftentimes comes with firearms,” he added.

In Oregon, meanwhile, the secretary of state’s office is urging local election officials to install signs outside ballot boxes that spell out voters’ rights and warn that voter intimidation violates the law – following social media references to activists targeting the boxes, said Ben Morris, a spokesman for the office.

The state mails a ballot to every voter, which Oregonians return either by mail or by depositing into drop boxes. About 200 drop boxes are used around the state.

In neighboring Washington state, officials in the Seattle area found and removed some 11 signs that had been posted by an “election integrity” activist and that warned that drop boxes were “under surveillance” ahead of the August 2 primary. King County officials called the signs an example of voter intimidation.

(Amber Krabach, the activist who erected the signs, has sued King County and state officials in federal court, arguing that removing the signs violated her First Amendment right to free speech.)

King County election officials are not aware of any security issues with their 76 ballot drop boxes right now, said Kendall Hodson, the county election office’s chief of staff, but “given what happened in the primary, we are keeping our eyes peeled for any unusual behavior.”

Back in Douglas County, Georgia – a community of roughly 145,000 people that backed President Joe Biden in 2020 – Kidd said he’s dismayed and discouraged by what he and his staff have endured.

Activists have trailed workers and photographed their license plates. In the 2020 election, people claiming election fraud dug through the trash at one polling location, found destroyed sample ballots and accused officials of throwing out votes, he said.

And this year, he’s had several companies refuse to rent the trucks to the county that it needs to transport equipment to precincts.

“In this climate, any business that’s associated with elections becomes a target,” he said. (Kidd has secured the trucks but said he doesn’t want to name the supplier for fear of further trouble.)

Kidd, who has worked in the county’s election system for seven years, said he’s lost much of his once-stable workforce of temporary poll workers as a result of all the harassment and stress.

“We’re able do things at the precinct” to protect workers, he said. “But we’re not able to go home with you. We’re not able to be with you in the grocery store.”

“The level of depression, the level of anxiety that is now present in election administration is ridiculous,” he added. “And I don’t know, personally myself, how much longer I am going to do this.”

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October 10, 2022
Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

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A board seat accepted and then rejected. A stunning $44 billion takeover offer with uncertain financing. And a surprise early morning tweet putting the deal on hold, temporarily.

Even by the standards of Twitter, a company that has known plenty of chaos and dysfunction in its history, the weeks-long effort by billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company has proven to be uniquely tumultuous – and there’s no clear end in sight.

Should the deal go through, it would place the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. The acquisition has the potential to upend not just Twitter itself but politics, media and the tech industry. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly stressed that his goal is to bolster what he calls “free speech” on the platform, by which he means all legal speech that complies with local laws in the markets where Twitter operates. He has also said he would reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump.

But the attempt by Musk, a wildly successful entrepreneur with a history of erratic behavior, to buy Twitter has been viewed with some skepticism from the start. On the day he made his offer, Musk said: “I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to acquire it.” Some have questioned how he would finance the deal, especially as shares of Tesla

(TSLA), which he’s partially using to back his financing of the Twitter deal, and the broader tech sector have declined in the weeks since.

After Musk recently said he was temporarily pausing the deal so he could assess the amount of spam and fake accounts, it prompted speculation that the billionaire might be looking to renegotiate the deal – or back out of it entirely. His actions in the days that followed only reinforced that thinking.

Here is a look back at the many twists and turns in one of the most high-profile tech deals in recent memory.

Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.

Musk’s stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.

The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. “Twitter algorithm should be open source,” he wrote, with a poll for users to vote “yes” or “no.”

The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.

Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company’s board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that “he and Mr. Musk were friends,” according to the filing.

In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to “‘standstill’ provisions”,” according to the filing. This would effectively “limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board.”

Musk is revealed to be Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.

News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.

As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.

Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. “I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.

The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company – and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.

Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company’s biggest shareholder.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk writes in his offer letter. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

Twitter’s board of directors adopts a “poison pill” provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.

Musk lines u p $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.

The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is “seeking to negotiate” a definite acquisition agreement and “is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately” — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his “best and final” offer.

Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.

Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about “the future of civilization,” not just making money.

At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.

Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.

Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.

Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk’s pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter’s subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company’s reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.

Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it’s morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for “business critical” roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.

Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter’s most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk’s announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. “Still committed to acquisition,” he wrote.

Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter’s numbers and “picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate

Musk tweets out that Twitter’s legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform’s sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.

“Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened,” wrote Musk.

The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.

Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk asked. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he added.

Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter “cannot move forward” until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is “20% fake/spam accounts” and suggests Twitter’s previous filings with the SEC were misleading.

Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform’s numbers. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.

In a statement, Twitter says it remains “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.” Later, the company says it intends to “enforce the merger agreement.”

In a letter to Twitter’s head of legal, Musk threatens to walk away from his purchase of the platform, alleging that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal.

In the letter, an attorney for Musk accuses the social media company of breaching the merger agreement by not providing the data he has requested on Twitter spam bots, stating that the lack of information gives him a right “not to consummate the transaction” and “to terminate the merger agreement.”

Musk moved to terminate the acquisition agreement. A lawyer representing him claimed in a letter to Twitter’s top lawyer that the company is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the deal over its alleged failure to provide all the data Musk says he needs to evaluate the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” the letter reads. “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement. … Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

Twitter was not having it.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter board chair Bret Taylor said in a tweet Friday, echoing earlier statements by the company that it planned to follow through with the deal. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Twitter sued the Tesla billionaire in Delaware court in an attempt to force him to complete the deal.

The 62-page lawsuit, sprinkled with memes, tweets and a poop emoji, effectively highlighted the bizarre spectacle of the deal from the start. The company paints Musk as a non-serious potential owner — alleging at one point that he has “disdain” for the company, and at another saying, “Musk’s strategy is … a model of bad faith” — while seeking to compel him to become its owner. (Twitter’s board has an obligation to its shareholders to try to see the deal through if they believe it is in their best interest. The dispute could also end in a settlement.)

Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk over his move to terminate their $44 billion acquisition agreement will go to trial on Oct. 17 and run for five days, a Delaware judge ruled.

The decision came after Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, who is overseeing the case, previously ruled in Twitter’s favor that the proceedings could be expedited and take place in October. Twitter initially pushed for an October 10th start.

Musk’s legal team had asked for the trial to take place in 2023. Twitter’s legal team argued it was necessary to expedite the case in order to limit the “harm” to its business and to ensure the deal can be completed before Oct. 24, the “drop dead” date by which the two sides had previously agreed to close the deal.

Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko testifies before Congress in his first public appearance after his bombshell allegations against the social media company were reported in August by CNN and The Washington Post.

In a whistleblower disclosure sent to multiple lawmakers and government agencies in July, Zatko accused Twitter of failing to safeguard users’ personal information and of exposing the most sensitive parts of its operation to too many people, including potentially to foreign spies. Zatko — who was Twitter’s head of security from November 2020 until he was fired in January — also alleged company executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, have deliberately misled regulators and the company’s own board about its shortcomings.

Zatko claimed in his testimony that Twitter is extremely vulnerable to being penetrated and exploited by agents of foreign governments, as well as detailed some of the personal information Twitter collects on users and alleged that the company does not know where the majority of its collected data goes.

Days earlier, a judge allowed Musk’s legal team to add arguments based on the whistleblower disclosure to its case.

Musk sends a letter to Twitter proposing to complete the deal as originally signed for $54.20 per share, citing people familiar with the negotiations. News of the letter, revealed in a security filing the next day, sends Twitter stock surging more than 20%, approaching the deal price for the first time in months.

Such an agreement could bring to an end a contentious, months-long back and forth between Musk and Twitter that has caused massive uncertainty for employees, investors and users of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

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October 9, 2022