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Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics
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Republican presidential candidates delivered a smattering of false and misleading claims at the first debate of the 2024 election – though none of the eight candidates on stage in Milwaukee delivered anything close to the bombardment of false statements that typically characterized the debate performances of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner who skipped the Wednesday event.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina inaccurately described the state of the economy in early 2021 and repeated a long-ago-debunked false claim about the Biden-era Justice Department. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie misstated the sentence attached to a gun law relevant to the investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis misled about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, omitting mention of his early pandemic restrictions.

Below is a fact check of those claims and various others from the debate, some of which left out key context. In addition, below is a brief fact check of some of Trump’s claims from a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, which was posted online shortly before the debate aired. Trump made a variety of statements that were not true.

DeSantis and the pandemic

DeSantis criticized the federal government for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it had locked down the economy, and then said: “In Florida, we led the country out of lockdown, and we kept our state free and open.”

Facts First: DeSantis’s claim is misleading at best. Before he became a vocal opponent of pandemic restrictions, DeSantis imposed significant restrictions on individuals, businesses and other entities in Florida in March 2020 and April 2020; some of them extended months later into 2020. He did then open up the state, with a gradual phased approach, but he did not keep it open from the start.

DeSantis received criticism in March 2020 for what some critics perceived as a lax approach to the pandemic, which intensified as Florida beaches were packed during Spring Break. But that month and the month following, DeSantis issued a series of major restrictions. For example, DeSantis:
Closed Florida’s schools, first with a short-term closure in March 2020 and then, in April 2020, with a shutdown through the end of the school year. (In June 2020, he announced a plan for schools to reopen for the next school year that began in August. By October 2020, he was publicly denouncing school closures, calling them a major mistake and saying all the information hadn’t been available that March.)

On March 14, 2020, announced a ban on most visits to nursing homes. (He lifted the ban in September 2020.)

On March 17, 2020, ordered bars and nightclubs to close for 30 days and restaurants to operate at half-capacity. (He later approved a phased reopening plan that took effect in May 2020, then issued an order in September 2020 allowing these establishments to operate at full capacity.)

On March 17, 2020, ordered gatherings on public beaches to be limited to a maximum of 10 people staying at least six feet apart, then, three days later, ordered a shutdown of public beaches in two populous counties, Broward and Palm Beach. (He permitted those counties’ beaches to reopen by the last half of May.)

On March 20, 2020, prohibited “any medically unnecessary, non-urgent or non-emergency” medical procedures. (The prohibition was lifted in early May 2020.)

On March 23, 2020, ordered that anyone flying to Florida from an area with “substantial community spread” of the virus, “to include the New York Tri-State Area (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York),” isolate or quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their stay in Florida, whichever was shorter, or face possible jail time or a fine. Later that week, he added Louisiana to the list. (He lifted the Louisiana restriction in June 2020 and the rest in August 2020.)

On April 3, 2020, imposed a statewide stay-home order that temporarily required people in Florida to “limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities.” (Beginning in May 2020, the state switched to a phased reopening plan that, for months, included major restrictions on the operations of businesses and other entities; DeSantis described it at the time as a “very slow and methodical approach” to reopening.)
-From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for this.”

Facts First: Haley’s figure is accurate. The total public debt stood at about $19.9 trillion on the day Trump took office in 2017 and then increased by about $7.8 trillion over Trump’s four years, to about $27.8 trillion on the day he left office in 2021.

It’s worth noting, however, that the increase in the debt during any president’s tenure is not the fault of that president alone. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors – such as the creation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid decades ago – and by circumstances out of a president’s control, notably including the global Covid-19 pandemic under Trump; the debt spiked in 2020 after Trump approved trillions in emergency pandemic relief spending that Congress had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Still, Trump did choose to approve that spending. And his 2017 tax cuts, unanimously opposed by congressional Democrats, were another major contributor to the debt spike.

-From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed that Biden’s signature climate bill costs $1.2 trillion dollars and is “just subsidizing China.”

Facts First: This claim needs context. The clean energy pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act – Democrats’ climate bill – passed with an initial price tag of nearly $370 billion. However, since that bill is made up of tax incentives, that price tag could go up depending on how many consumers take advantage of tax credits to buy electric vehicles and put solar panels on their homes, and how many businesses use the subsidies to install new utility scale wind and solar in the United States.

Burgum’s figure comes from a Goldman Sachs report, which estimated the IRA could provide $1.2 trillion in clean energy tax incentives by 2032 – about a decade from now.

On Burgum’s claim that Biden’s clean energy agenda will be a boon to China, the IRA was specifically written to move the manufacturing supply chain for clean energy technology like solar panels and EV batteries away from China and to the United States.

In the year since it was passed, the IRA has spurred 83 new or expanded manufacturing facilities in the US, and close to 30,000 new clean energy manufacturing jobs, according to a tally from trade group American Clean Power.

-From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

With the economy as one of the main topics on the forefront of voters’ minds, Scott aimed to make a case for Republican policies, misleadingly suggesting they left the US economy in record shape before Biden took office.

“There is no doubt that during the Trump administration, when we were dealing with the COVID virus, we spent more money,” Scott said. “But here’s what happened at the end of our time in the majority: we had low unemployment, record low unemployment, 3.5% for the majority of the population, and a 70-year low for women. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians had an all-time low.”

Facts First: This is false. Scott’s claims don’t accurately reflect the state of the US economy at the end of the Republican majority in the Senate. And in some cases, his exaggerations echo what Trump himself frequently touted about the economy under his leadership.

By the time Trump left office and the Republicans lost the Senate majority in January 2021, US unemployment was not at a record low. The US unemployment rate dropped to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.5% in September 2019, the country’s lowest in 50 years. While it hovered around that level for five months, Scott’s assertion ignores the coronavirus pandemic-induced economic destruction that followed. In April 2020, the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% — the highest level since monthly records began in 1948. As of December 2020, the unemployment rate was at 6.7%.

Nor was the unemployment rate for women at a 70-year low by the end of Trump’s time in office. It reached a 66-year low during certain months of 2019, at 3.4% in April and 3.6% in August, but by December 2020, unemployment for women was at 6.7%.

The unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians were also not at all-time lows at the end of 2020, but they did reach record lows during Trump’s tenure as president.

-From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam

Scott said that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden is targeting “parents that show up at school board meetings. They are called, under this DOJ, they’re called domestic terrorists.”

Facts First: It is false that the Justice Department referred to parents as domestic terrorists. The claim has been debunked several times – during the uproar at school boards over Covid-19 restrictions and anti-racism curriculums; after Kevin McCarthy claimed Republicans would investigate Merrick Garland with a majority in the House; and even by a federal judge. The Justice Department never called parents terrorists for attending or wanting to attend school board meetings.

The claim stems from a 2021 letter from The National School Boards Associations asking the Justice Department to “deal with” the uptick in threats against education officials and saying that “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” In response, Garland released a memo encouraging federal and local authorities to work together against the harassment campaigns levied at schools, but never endorsed the “domestic terrorism” notion.

A federal judge even threw out a lawsuit over the accusation, ruling that Garland’s memo did little more than announce a “series of measures” that directed federal authorities to address increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other school employees.

-From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, said the US is spending “less than three and a half percent of our defense budget” on Ukraine aid, and that in terms of financial aid relative to GDP, “11 of the European countries have given more than the US.”

Facts First: This is partly true. Haley’s claim regarding the US aid to Ukraine compared to the total defense budget is slightly under the actual percentage, but it is accurate that 11 European countries have given more aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their total GDP than the US.

As of August 14, the US has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to the Defense Department. In comparison, the Fiscal Year 2023 defense budget was $858 billion – making aid to Ukraine just over 5% of the total US defense budget.

As of May 2023, according to a Council of Foreign Relations tracker, 11 countries were providing a higher share in aid to Ukraine relative to their GDP than the US – led by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

-From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the Trump administration “spent funding to backfill on the military cuts of the Obama administration.”

Facts First: This is misleading. While military spending decreased under the Obama administration, it was largely due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which received Republican support and resulted in automatic spending cuts to the defense budget.

Mike Pence, a senator at the time, voted in favor of the Budget Control Act.

-From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Christie said President Biden’s son Hunter Biden was “facing a 10-year mandatory minimum” for lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018.

Facts First: Christie, a former federal prosecutor, clearly misstated the law. This crime can lead to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, but it doesn’t have a 10-year mandatory minimum.

These comments are related to the highly scrutinized Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden, which is currently ongoing after a plea deal fell apart earlier this summer.

As part of the now-defunct deal, Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enter into a “diversion agreement” with prosecutors, who would drop the gun possession charge in two years if he consistently stayed out of legal trouble and passed drug tests.

The law in question makes it a crime to purchase a firearm while using or addicted to illegal drugs. Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time, and admitted at a court hearing and in court papers that he violated this law by signing the form.

The US Sentencing Commission says, “The statutory maximum penalty for the offense is ten years of imprisonment.” There isn’t a mandatory 10-year punishment, as Christie claimed.

During his answer, Christie also criticized the Justice Department for agreeing to a deal in June where Hunter Biden could avoid prosecution on the felony gun offense. That deal was negotiated by special counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed to the Justice Department by former President Donald Trump.

-From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

Burgum and Scott got into a back and forth over IRS staffing with Burgum saying that the “Biden administration wanted to put 87,000 people in the IRS,” and Scott suggesting they “fire the 87,000 IRS agents.”

Facts First: This figure needs context.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year without any Republican votes, authorized $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to be delivered over the course of a decade.

The 87,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees with a nearly $80 billion investment over 10 years.

While the funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees over time, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations.

Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up most of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

The IRS has not said precisely how many new “agents” will be hired with the funding. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000. And it’s worth noting that the IRS may not receive all of the $80 billion after Republicans were able to claw back $20 billion of the new funding as part of a deal to address the debt ceiling made earlier this year.

-From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Trump repeated a frequent claim during his interview with Carlson that streamed during the GOP debate that his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House was “covered” under the Presidential Records Act and that he is “allowed to do exactly that.”

Facts First: This is false. The Presidential Records Act says the exact opposite – that the moment presidents leave office, all presidential records are to be turned over to the federal government. Keeping documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency concluded was in clear contravention of that law.

According to the Presidential Records Act, “upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”

The sentence makes clear that a president has no authority to keep documents after leaving the White House.

The National Archives even released a statement refuting the notion that Trump’s retention of documents was covered by the Presidential Records Act, writing in a June news release that “the PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.”

-From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

While discussing electric vehicles, Trump claimed that California “is in a big brownout because their grid is a disaster,” adding that the state’s ambitious electric vehicle goals won’t work with the grid in such shape.

Facts First: Trump’s claim that California’s grid is currently in a “big brownout” and is a “disaster” isn’t true. California’s grid suffered rolling blackouts in 2020, but it has performed quite well in the face of extreme heat this summer, owing in large part to a massive influx of renewable energy including battery storage. These big batteries keep energy from wind and solar running when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining. (Batteries are also being deployed at a rapid rate in Texas, a red state.)

Another reason California’s grid has stayed stable this year even during extreme temperature spikes is the fact that a deluge of snow and rain this winter and spring has refilled reservoirs that generate electricity using hydropower.

As Trump insinuated, there are real questions about how well the state’s grid will hold up as California’s drivers shift to electric vehicles by the millions by 2035 – the same year it will phase out selling new gas-powered cars. California state officials say they are preparing by adding new capacity to the grid and urging more people to charge their vehicles overnight and during times of the day when fewer people are using energy. But independent experts say the state needs to exponentially increase its clean energy while also building out huge amounts of new EV chargers to achieve its goals.

-From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Trump and the border wall

Trump claimed to Carlson, “I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall. You know, they’d like to say, ‘Oh, was it less?’ No, I built 500 miles. In fact, if you check with the authorities on the border, we built almost 500 miles of wall.”

Facts First: This needs context. Trump and his critics are talking about different things when they use different figures for how much border wall was built during his presidency. Trump is referring to all of the wall built on the southern border during his administration, even in areas that already had some sort of barrier before. His critics are only counting the Trump-era wall that was built in parts of the border that did not have any previous barrier.

A total of 458 miles of southern border wall was built under Trump, according to a federal report written two days after Trump left office and obtained by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez. That is 52 miles of “primary” wall built where no barriers previously existed, plus 33 miles of “secondary” wall that was built in spots where no barriers previously existed, plus another 373 miles of primary and secondary wall that was built to replace previous barriers the federal government says had become “dilapidated and/or outdated.”

Some of Trump’s rival candidates, such DeSantis and Christie, have used figures around 50 miles while criticizing Trump for failing to finish the wall – counting only the primary wall built where no barriers previously existed.

While some Trump critics have scoffed at the replacement wall, the Trump-era construction was generally much more formidable than the older barriers it replaced, which were often designed to deter vehicles rather than people on foot. Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff tweeted in 2020: “As someone who has spent a lot of time lately in the shadow of the border wall, I need to puncture this notion that ‘replacement’ sections are ‘not new.’ There is really no comparison between vehicle barriers made from old rail ties and 30-foot bollards.”

Ideally, both Trump and his opponents would be clearer about what they are talking about: Trump that he is including replacement barriers, his opponents that they are excluding those barriers.

-From CNN’s Daniel Dale
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August 23, 2023
First on CNN: Burgum suffered high-grade Achilles tear playing basketball, throwing debate participation into question | CNN Politics

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North Dakota governor and Republican presidential candidate Doug Burgum suffered a high-grade tear of his Achilles tendon while playing a game of pick-up basketball with his staff Tuesday, requiring him to be on crutches, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Burgum, 67, will attend the candidates’ walk-through of the debate event site Wednesday afternoon and then decide whether he’s physically able to participate in the debate itself, the source said.

Burgum is focused on the debate, the Republican Party’s first of this primary season, and understands that as much as he’d like to participate, he would have to walk on stage and stand behind a podium for two hours, the source said.

“He is a total cowboy and isn’t phased by injuries and pain. His disposition is focused and tough. We’re going to see what happens at the walk-through and throughout the day,” the source told CNN. The governor is a lifelong athlete and is familiar with sports injuries, the source added.

Other candidates have privately reached out to ask how he’s doing, according to the source. Republican Sen. Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy posted on social media wishing the governor well.

Burgum is one of the eight candidates in the debate lineup. The event will air on Fox News at 9 p.m. ET.

The GOP governor, a wealthy former software executive, has described himself as the least-known contender on Wednesday night’s stage. He said Sunday on NBC that he’ll have succeeded in the debate “if we get a chance to explain who we are, what we’re about and why we’re running.”

He reached the Republican National Committee’s 40,000-unique-donors threshold to qualify for the debate stage in July – he attracted donors by giving away gift cards worth $20 in exchange for $1 donations. He later met the polling requirements and signed the pledge to back the eventual GOP presidential nominee, both also required by the RNC to participate in Wednesday night’s debate.

Burgum, who is currently serving his second term as North Dakota governor, announced in June his run for president in 2024 with considerably less name recognition than others vying for the GOP nomination. His campaign is primarily focused on the economy, energy and national security.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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August 23, 2023
8 candidates qualify for first 2024 Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics

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Eight Republicans have qualified for the party’s first 2024 presidential primary debate Wednesday night, the Republican National Committee announced Monday evening.

The list includes North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

Former President Donald Trump – the clear front-runner in national and early state polls – has said he would skip the debate in Milwaukee and called on his rivals to drop out.

To make the first debate stage, the RNC required candidates to draw at least 40,000 individual donors and register at least 1% support in three national polls or in two national and two early state polls that met the RNC’s criteria. The candidates were also required to sign a pledge to back the eventual winner of the GOP primary, no matter who it is. It’s not clear whether Trump, like those who will be onstage Wednesday, has signed that pledge.

“The RNC is excited to showcase our diverse candidate field and the conservative vision to beat Joe Biden on the debate stage Wednesday night,” RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said in Monday night’s statement.

Here’s a look at who’s in and who’s out of the first GOP debate of the 2024 presidential primary.

Ron DeSantis

The Florida governor could wear the biggest target Wednesday night, as the top-polling candidate onstage in Trump’s absence. DeSantis has downsized and reshuffled his campaign in recent weeks after failing to make progress toward unseating Trump as the GOP’s standard-bearer in the primary’s early months. His turn in the national spotlight Wednesday could become a turning point in the party’s primary – either launching DeSantis forward or displacing him as the top Trump alternative.

Vivek Ramaswamy

The tech entrepreneur posted a video of himself shirtless, practicing tennis, on Monday in a tweet he described as his debate prep. He has also made appearances on the sorts of liberal media programs that many Republican contenders skip, such as a podcast with HBO host Bill Maher. A memo by a pro-DeSantis super PAC made public last week advised the Florida governor to attack Ramaswamy, an indication of the 38-year-old’s rise in the race.

Mike Pence

The former vice president faced more difficulties than some of his rivals in reaching the 40,000 donor threshold but did so with two weeks to spare. He suggested he had looked forward to a showdown with his former ticket mate. Criticizing Trump’s decision to skip the debate, Pence said Sunday on ABC News that every candidate who qualified “ought to be on the stage willing to square off and answer those tough questions.”

Nikki Haley

The former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump offered a glimpse of how Republicans onstage could be more focused on chipping away at their lower-polling rivals’ support than on taking on Trump directly. On Monday, she criticized Ramaswamy, saying on social media that “his foreign policies have a common theme: they make America less safe.”

Tim Scott

The South Carolina senator has sought to offer a more positive contrast to rivals such as Trump and DeSantis – and he could be on a collision course with the Florida governor as they vie to become the top choice of those seeking to move on from the former president.

Chris Christie

The former New Jersey governor is perhaps the biggest wild card on Wednesday night’s stage. As a presidential contender in 2016, he all but ended Marco Rubio’s presidential hopes in a debate when he relentlessly mocked the Florida senator for delivering a “memorized 25-second speech.” Christie has positioned himself as a fierce Trump critic, but he won’t get a head-to-head showdown with Trump skipping the debate.

Doug Burgum

The North Dakota governor, who attracted donors with a gift-card scheme – $20 in exchange for $1 donations – has described himself as the least-known contender on Wednesday night’s stage. He said Sunday on NBC that he’ll have succeeded in the debate “if we get a chance to explain who we are, what we’re about and why we’re running.”

Asa Hutchinson

The former Arkansas governor has also positioned himself as a Trump critic. He previously complained about the RNC’s loyalty pledge requirement but told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Sunday that he was signing the pledge because he was “confident that Donald Trump’s not going to be the nominee.”

Donald Trump

The former president made official Sunday on his social media platform Truth Social what he’d hinted at for months: He is skipping the first debate. Trump pointed to his sizable leads in Republican primary polls and said Americans are already familiar with his record after four years in the White House.

Still, Trump’s campaign is attempting to seize some of the spotlight in Milwaukee. The former president has taped an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that is expected to be used as counterprogramming during the debate.

Perry Johnson

The Michigan businessman fell short of the RNC’s polling requirements despite a series of unusual schemes his campaign employed to rack up the minimum 40,000 donors necessary to qualify. It sold “I Stand with Tucker” T-shirts defending the former Fox News host after his firing. It also offered tickets to a concert by country duo Big & Rich to anyone who donated. And it handed out $10 gas cards to anyone willing to make a $1 contribution.

Perry insisted after the RNC announced the debate participants that he had met the committee’s qualification requirements. “The debate process has been corrupted, plain and simple,” he said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Francis Suarez

The Miami mayor, who had told Fox News it was “critical” for his 2024 chances to qualify for the debate, said he had exceeded the donor threshold, but he did not meet the RNC’s polling requirements. Suarez said in a statement Tuesday that he was “sorry” the event would not include his “perspectives,” but that he respects “the rules and process set forth by the RNC.”

His absence could be a break for DeSantis, who has faced sharp criticism from his fellow Florida Republican.

Will Hurd

The former Texas congressman is one of the most outspoken Trump critics in the race – and has faced backlash for it, such as when he was booed at the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner in July after telling the Des Moines crowd that the former president was “running to stay out of prison.”

Hurd on Tuesday criticized the RNC for its “unacceptable process” for determining the debate participants. He accused the committee of disregarding polls that included independents and Democrats who would have backed a Republican candidate. He previously said he wouldn’t sign the RNC pledge, but he appeared to have shifted his position last week when he said he was “confident” he would be onstage in Milwaukee.

Larry Elder

The conservative California talk radio host, who was the leading GOP candidate in the state’s 2021 gubernatorial recall, has sharply criticized the RNC’s debate qualification requirements. He said Tuesday on X that he intended sue the RNC to “halt” Wednesday’s proceedings, asserting that officials were “afraid of having my voice on the debate stage.”

Elder had attempted to meet the 40,000 donor threshold with a radio blitz Monday, but, according to CNN’s count, was also short of the polling requirements.

Ryan Binkley

The little-known Texas pastor and entrepreneur got a spot in the Iowa GOP Lincoln Dinner’s speaking lineup. He tweeted Sunday that he had more than 45,000 donors. But he has not made waves in primary polling.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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August 22, 2023
China’s defense minister warns against ‘playing with fire’ on Taiwan during Russia meeting | CNN

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CNN
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China’s defense minister Li Shangfu on Tuesday warned against “playing with fire” when it comes to Taiwan in a veiled jab at the United States as he addressed a security conference in Russia.

Speaking at the Moscow Conference on International Security, Li said attempts to “use Taiwan to contain China,” would “surely end in failure,” according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

Li’s comments echoed previous statements by Chinese officials but the location of his speech was significant and symbolic given Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary. It has repeatedly castigated American interactions with the island, with which Washington does not have official diplomatic ties, including for the sale of US arms to Taipei.

Li, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 for purchases of Russian weapons, joined the Moscow security conference as he began a six-day trip to Russia and its close ally Belarus.

Senior defense officials from more than 20 “friendly states,” including Belarus, Iran and Myanmar will also attend the forum, Russian state media previously reported, citing Moscow’s defense ministry, which organizes the annual event. No Western countries were invited, state media said.

The visit is Li’s second to Russia since assuming his role as defense chief earlier this year. It comes as Beijing has continued to bolster its security ties with Moscow, despite its unrelenting assault on Ukraine, which has triggered a humanitarian disaster with global ramifications.

In a pre-recorded message to the same Moscow conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of adding “fuel to the fire” of global conflicts, including through its support of Ukraine.

China has used similar rhetoric in its own official comments about the conflict, despite maintaining that it remains a neutral party and a proponent of peace.

Li on Tuesday also told attendees that China’s military was “a firm force in maintaining world peace,” and that Chinese leader Xi Jinping aimed to stabilize global security in “a world of chaos.”

“We are willing to work with other militaries to strengthen mutual trust in military security strategies and practical cooperation in various specialized fields,” Li added, according to Xinhua.

Russian state-run media Sputnik also cited Li as saying that military relations between China and Russia do not target any third party – a point Chinese officials have made in the past. The Xinhua report did not include the statement.

Li met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu to discuss cooperation between the two countries’ militaries, Xinhua said. China and Russia regularly carry out joint exercises – including a joint naval patrol off the coast of Alaska in recent weeks.

The Chinese defense chief also held bilateral meetings with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and other countries’ defense departments and military leaders on the sidelines of the conference.

Li’s comments on Taiwan come on the heels of a backlash from Beijing as Taiwan’s Vice President William Lai, a front-runner in the island’s upcoming presidential race, makes planned stopovers in the United States during travel for an official visit to Paraguay.

China’s foreign ministry condemned the stopover on Sunday, calling Lai a “trouble maker through and through.”

The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taipei after formally establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, but is bound by law to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.

During a speech in New York, Lai declared Taiwan will “never back down” to threats from China.

“No matter how great the threat of authoritarianism is to Taiwan, we absolutely will not be scared nor cower, we will uphold the values of democracy and freedom,” he said.

China has in recent years ramped up its military intimidation of the island, including following meetings between Taiwanese leaders and US lawmakers.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has also drawn increased attention to Taiwan as a potential security flashpoint in Asia.

Despite broad differences with the geopolitical circumstances of Russia and Ukraine, the optics of a seemingly more powerful aggressor launching an attack driven by a vision of unification have heightened focus on China’s intentions toward Taiwan.

Some analysts have suggested that China was watching Western reaction to Russian aggression in Ukraine with an eye to understanding possible responses to any potential, future moves against Taiwan.

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August 15, 2023
Biden urges UAW and Big Three automakers to reach deal to avoid strike | CNN Business

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Washington DC
CNN
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President Joe Biden sought to ramp up pressure on the United Auto Workers union and the nation’s three unionized automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, known as the “Big Three” – one month ahead of a critical deadline for labor talks.

“As the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers come together — one month before the expiration of their contract — to negotiate a new agreement, I want to be clear about where I stand. I’m asking all sides to work together to forge a fair agreement,” Biden said in a new statement Monday.

The White House has been closely monitoring the talks as the two sides appear far apart. The union is demanding significant pay raises of 40% or more for members to match increases in CEO pay at the companies over the last four years and a reversal of past concessions by the union.

Negotiations could put the White House at odds with the union. While the AFL-CIO, which is made up of multiple independent unions, has already endorsed Biden’s reelection bid, calling him the “most pro-union president in our lifetimes,” the UAW itself has yet to join in that endorsement. A strike could have massive economic – and political – consequences. Biden and UAW President Shawn Fain met briefly in the West Wing last month while UAW leadership was at the White House briefing senior staff on their positions.

The three contracts between the UAW and General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which sells cars and trucks under the Dodge, Ram and Chrysler brands, are due to expire September 14. Fain last week denounced the most recent offer from Stellantis, throwing a copy of the offer in the trash during a video for members. Plans for strike authorization votes at all three companies is expected to be announced soon, the union said Monday.

Traditionally the UAW will select one of the three companies to go first and have the other two put on hold while it concentrates on reaching a deal, then the union will push for similar from the other two automakers as part of a “pattern.”

The UAW is pushing for an aggressive set of demands at the negotiating table, and has been critical of the Biden administration’s financial support for the transition to electric vehicles, arguing that the Biden administration has been overly supportive of automakers’ plans for EV battery plants that are expected to pay far less than union wages. Fain has publicly warned that UAW is prepared to strike, saying nearly 150,000 members will strike if the three automakers do not meet their demands.

CNN has previously reported that while Biden enjoys hefty support from leadership of many unions, he has also faced lingering mistrust and concern among some of the rank-and-file of the UAW, according to people familiar with the dynamics, a perception fueled in part by the president’s intervention to avert a freight rail strike in December.

In a nod to the UAW’s demands, Biden used the union’s “fair transition” to clean energy language.

“I support a fair transition to a clean energy future. That means ensuring that Big Three auto jobs are good jobs that can support a family; that auto companies should honor the right to organize; take every possible step to avoid painful plant closings; and ensure that when transitions are needed, the transitions are fair and look to retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities at comparable wages, while giving existing workers the first shot to fill those jobs,” Biden said in the statement.

The UAW said it saw the White House statement as an endorsement of it bargaining position.

“We appreciate President Biden’s support for strong contracts that ensure good paying union jobs now and pave the way for a just transition to an EV future,” Fain said in a statement. “We agree with the president that the Big Three’s joint venture battery plants should have the same strong pay and safety standards that generations of UAW members have fought for.”

The three automakers said they, too, want to reach deals that would avoid a strike.

Ford pointed out that it employs more UAW members and builds more cars and trucks at US plants than any other automaker.

“We look forward to working with the UAW on creative solutions during this time when our dramatically changing industry needs a skilled and competitive workforce more than ever,” it said.

“Stellantis remains committed to working constructively and collaboratively with the UAW to negotiate a new agreement that balances the concerns of our 43,000 employees with our vision for the future,” said that company.

“We will continue to bargain in good faith with the UAW to maintain our momentum and to provide opportunities for all in our EV future,” GM said in a statement.

The union is concerned about the plans by all three automakers to convert from traditional gasoline powered vehicles to EVs in the coming decades. it takes an estimated one third less hours of work to assemble an EV than a car with an internal combustion engine, since that engine and the transmission that goes with it has so many moving parts missing from an EV.

The Biden administration has been active in supporting the switch to EVs, providing tax credits for EV buyers and loans to build plants necessary for EVs, such as those that make batteries.

There are about a dozen EV battery plants now under construction nationwide. For the most part, those plants are joint ventures between automakers and battery makers, and thus will not be covered under the UAW contracts with the Big Three. Workers at the one battery plant for one of the Big Three to open so far, a Warren, Ohio, plant for the joint venture between GM and LG, voted 98% in favor of joining the UAW. But the union has yet to reach a deal with plant management on a contract, and workers there are paid about half of what UAW members are paid at the Big Three.

– CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this story

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August 14, 2023
Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach | CNN Politics

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Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe.

Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.

While Trump’s January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and effort to put forward fake slates of electors have long been considered key pillars of Willis’ criminal probe, the voting system breach in Coffee County quietly emerged as an area of focus for investigators roughly one year ago. Since then, new evidence has slowly been uncovered about the role of Trump’s attorneys, the operatives they hired and how the breach, as well as others like it in other key states, factored into broader plans for overturning the election.

Together, the text messages and other court documents show how Trump lawyers and a group of hired operatives sought to access Coffee County’s voting systems in the days before January 6, 2021, as the former president’s allies continued a desperate hunt for any evidence of widespread fraud they could use to delay certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

 Last year, a former Trump official testified under oath to the House January 6 select committee that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020,  that included Trump. 

Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

Investigators have scrutinized the actions of various individuals who were involved, including Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official who authored the letter of invitation referenced in text messages and other documents that have been turned over to prosecutors, multiple sources told CNN.

They have also examined the involvement of Trump’s then attorney Rudy Giuliani – who was informed last year he was a target in the Fulton County investigation – and fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell as part of their probe, according to people familiar with the matter.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office declined to comment.

The letter of invitation was shared with attorneys and an investigator working with Giuliani at the time, the text messages obtained by CNN show.

On January 1, 2021 – days ahead of the January 7 voting systems breach – Katherine Friess – an attorney working with Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other Trump allies shared a “written invitation” to examine voting systems in Coffee County with a group of Trump allies.

That group included members of Sullivan Strickler, a firm hired by Trump’s attorneys to examine voting systems in the small, heavily Republican Georgia county, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

That same day, Friess sent a “Letter of invitation to Coffee County, Georgia” to former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who was working with Giuliani to find evidence that would back up their baseless claims of potential widespread voter fraud, according to court documents filed as part of an ongoing civil case.

Friess then notified operatives who carried out the Coffee County breach and others working directly with Giuliani that Trump’s team had secured written permission, the texts show.

CNN has not reviewed the substance of the invitation letter itself, only communications that confirm it was provided to Friess, Kerik and Sullivan Strickler employees.

Friess could not be reached for comment.

The messages and documents appear to link Giuliani to the Coffee County breach, while shedding light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and the battleground state operatives who worked together to provide unauthorized individuals access to sensitive voting equipment.

“Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this,” said Robert Costello, Giuliani’s attorney. “You can’t attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea.”

“Just landed back in DC with the Mayor huge things starting to come together!” an employee from the firm Sullivan Strickler, which was hired by Sidney Powell to examine voting systems in Coffee County, wrote in a group chat with other colleagues on January 1.

Former New York Mayor Giuliani was consistently referred to as “the Mayor,” in other texts sent by the same individual and others at the time.

“Most immediately, we were just granted access – by written invitation! – to Coffee County’s systems. Yay!” the text reads.

Shortly after Election Day, Hampton – still serving as the top election official for Coffee County – warned during a state election board meeting that Dominion voting machines could “very easily” be manipulated to flip votes from one candidate to another. It’s a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

But the Trump campaign officials took notice and reached out to Hampton that same day. “I would like to obtain as much information as possible,” a Trump campaign staffer emailed Hampton at the time, according to documents released as part of a public records request and first reported by the Washington Post.

In early December, Hampton then delayed certification of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia by refusing to validate the recount results by a key deadline. Coffee County was the only county in Georgia that failed to certify its election results due to issues raised by Hampton at the time.

Hampton also posted a video online claiming to expose problems with the county’s Dominion voting system. That video was used by Trump’s lawyers, including Giuliani, as part of their push to convince legislators from multiple states that there was evidence the 2020 election results were tainted by voting system issues.

Text messages and other documents obtained by CNN show Trump allies were seeking access to Coffee County’s voting system by mid-December amid increasing demands for proof of widespread election fraud.

Coffee County was specifically cited in draft executive orders for seizing voting machines that were presented to Trump on December 18, 2020, during a chaotic Oval Office meeting, CNN has reported. During that same meeting, Giuliani alluded to a plan to gain “voluntary access” to machines in Georgia, according to testimony from him and others before the House January 6 committee.

Days later, Hampton shared the written invitation to access the county’s election office with a Trump lawyer, text messages obtained by CNN show. She and another location elections official, Cathy Latham, allegedly helped Trump operatives gain access to the county’s voting systems, according to documents, testimony and surveillance video produced as part of a long-running civil lawsuit focused on election security in Georgia.

Latham, who also served as a fake elector from Georgia after the 2020 election, has come under scrutiny for her role in the Coffee County breach after surveillance video showed she allowed unauthorized outsiders to spend hours examining voting systems there.

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August 13, 2023
Maui wildfires kill at least 80 people, and the race to find survivors is grim as countless residents in torched areas remain missing | CNN

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At least 80 people have been killed in Maui’s wildfires, officials said late Friday, as search efforts for survivors are ongoing and many remain missing.

The death toll rose from an announced 67 earlier Friday, making the fires the largest natural disaster in the state’s history. The death toll continued to climb Friday, surpassing the state’s record natural disaster death toll of 61 from a 1960 tsunami that hit Hilo Bay.

On Friday evening, residents in Kaanapali were being evacuated after police said there was a fire in western Maui.

“At this time, there are no restrictions to exit the west side. Our priority is to ensure the safety of the community and first responders. We will allow entrance once it is safe to do so,” police said in a Facebook post.

Gov. Josh Green told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Friday that none of the human remains discovered in nearby Lahaina were found inside structures yet, but the confirmed fatalities “did occur out in the open as people tried to escape the fire.”

Green said that within days officials expect to have a more comprehensive idea of how many lives were lost.

“We will continue to see loss of life,” Green said during a news conference late Thursday. “We also have many hundreds of homes destroyed, and that’s going to take a great deal of time to recover from.”

Now, families wait in agony to learn what happened to their missing loved ones.

Live updates: Deadly wildfires burn across Maui

Timm Williams Sr., a 66-year-old disabled veteran who uses a wheelchair, last spoke with his family Wednesday as he was trying to flee Kaanapali, just north of the obliterated town of Lahaina.

Shortly before he went missing, Williams sent a photo of flames shooting toward the sky, his granddaughter Brittany Talley told CNN.

While he fled, Williams said he couldn’t tell exactly where he was due to the intense smoke in the air, Talley recalled. “He was attempting to make it to a shelter, but all of the roads were blocked,” she said.

The family has tried every means possible to find the missing grandfather, but to no avail.

“It has been difficult,” Talley said. “Every minute that goes by is another minute that he could be hurt or in danger.”

Satellite images taken on June 25 and August 9 show an overview of southern Lahaina, Hawaii, before and after the recent wildfires.

Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

While rescue crews scramble to find survivors, here’s the latest on the ongoing catastrophe:

• Cadaver dogs are looking for victims: Search-and-rescue teams with cadaver dogs from California and Washington are in Maui to help with recovery efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.

• Thousands are displaced: About 1,400 people slept at an airport Wednesday night and more than 1,300 stayed in emergency shelters before many of them were taken to the airport to leave the island, Maui County officials said. Thousands of people are believed to have been displaced, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN on Thursday.

• Billions of dollars in losses: Determining the full scope of the fires’ impacts on the island will take time, “but it will be in the billions of dollars without a doubt,” the governor said Thursday.

It will take many years to rebuild Lahaina, where “upwards of 1,700 buildings” may have been destroyed, Green told CNN. He said it appears about 80% of the town is “gone.”

• Housing appeal: With many having nowhere to stay, the governor asked residents to open up their homes and hotels to help those in need. “If you have additional space in your home, if you have the capacity to take someone in from west Maui, please do,” Green said.

“Please consider bringing those people into your lives.”

• Fires have burned for days: As of Thursday, the four largest fires still were active in Maui County, Fire Chief Bradford Ventura said. “Additionally, we’ve had many small fires in between these large fires,” the chief said.

“And with the current weather pattern that we’re facing, we still have the potential for rapid fire behavior.” The wildfire that torched Lahaina was 80% contained by Thursday morning, Maui County officials said.

• Communication and power outages: Officials have resorted to satellite phones to communicate with providers on the west side of Maui to restore power to the area, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said.

About 11,000 homes and businesses were in the dark early Friday, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us.

• Resources sent to Maui: President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration to provide federal funding for recovery costs in Maui County. California plans to send a search and rescue team to help support efforts on the ground in Maui. And more than 130 members from the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard have been assigned to provide assistance.

No one knows how many people were still missing Friday after wildfires annihilated the historic town of Lahaina, where 13,000 people lived.

“Here’s the challenge: There’s no power. There’s no internet. There’s no radio coverage,” Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier said Thursday.

Lahaina – an economic hub that draws millions of tourists each year and the one-time capital of the kingdom of Hawaii – is “all gone,” said Maui County Mayor Richard T. Bissen Jr.

Residents of west Maui will be allowed to access Lahaina starting Friday at noon local time, according to a news release from the county. Residents will need identification with proof of residency. Visitors will need proof of hotel reservations. Barricades have been set up to prevent access to the “heavily impacted area of historic Lahaina town” where search crews are continuing to look for victims of the fires.

A curfew will also be in effect from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time “in historic Lahaina town and affected areas,” the news release says.

“Now I want to caution everyone, Lahaina is a devastated zone,” Green warned Friday in an interview with local station KHON. Returning residents “will see destruction like they’ve not ever seen in their lives. Everyone, please brace themselves as they go back.”

Green said a hotline will likely be established to connect displaced residents with available rooms in homes and hotels.

Search dogs have not yet been able to access every burned building, Green said, cautioning residents not to enter any charred structure that appears unsafe.

The governor said he plans to return to Maui on Saturday.

In a Friday news release, the Department of Water Supply also asked Maui residents to conserve water, as first responders continue to fight the flames and intermittent power outages take place. The department asked residents island-wide to refrain from washing cars, washing sidewalks and driveways, and irrigating lawns.

In pictures: The deadly Maui wildfires

Most of Maui looked like its idyllic self on Tuesday morning before the flames spread out of control.

At 9:55 a.m., Maui County posted a seemingly optimistic update on the Lahaina fire:

“Maui Fire Department declared the Lahaina brush fire 100% contained shortly before 9 a.m. today,” the county said on Facebook Tuesday.

About an hour later, the county updated residents on another wildfire burning:

“Kula Fire Update No. 2 at 10:50 a.m.: Firefighter crews remain on scene of a brush fire that was reported at 12:22 a.m. today near Olinda Road in Kula and led to evacuations of residents in the Kula 200 and Hanamu Road areas,” the county said.

By Tuesday afternoon, another wildfire became an increasing threat:

“With the potential risk of escalating conditions from an Upcountry brush fire, the Fire Department is strongly advising residents of Piʻiholo and Olinda roads to proactively evacuate,” Maui County posted at 3:20 p.m. Less than an hour later, it said, “The Fire Department is calling for the immediate evacuation of residents of the subdivision including Kulalani Drive and Kulalani Circle due to an Upcountry brush fire.”

Shortly later, the county said the Lahaina fire had resurged.

“An apparent flareup of the Lahaina fire forced the closure of Lahaina Bypass around 3:30 p.m.,” Maui County posted at 4:45 p.m.

And by 5:50 p.m. Tuesday, there were “Multiple evacuations in place for Lahaina and Upcountry Maui fires,” the county said.

As the ferocious fires spread, some people jumped into the ocean to escape the flames. Rescuers plucked dozens of people from the water or the shore.

Green said he has authorized a “comprehensive review” of the response to the fast-moving fires. Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez will spearhead that review, her office announced Friday.

“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” Lopez said in a statement. “As we continue to support all aspects of the ongoing relief effort, now is the time to begin this process of understanding.”

State records show that Maui’s warning sirens were not activated, and the emergency communications with residents was largely limited to mobile phones and broadcasters at a time when most power and cell service was already cut.

“The telecommunications were destroyed very rapidly,” the governor said, blaming the rapid spread of the fires on “global warming, combined with drought, combined with a superstorm.”

Green added that restoring utilities will likely to be a lengthy process because of Lahaina’s remote location, as workers and raw materials cannot simply be driven to Hawaii. “This is not to make an excuse. This is just to explain the realities of the island, especially in the post-Covid era,” he said.

May Wedelin-Lee is one of countless residents who lost homes in Lahaina. She described the horror and desperation of those trying to escape and survive.

“The apocalypse was happening,” she told CNN on Thursday.

“People were crying on the side of the road and begging,” Wedelin-Lee said. “Some people had bicycles, people ran, people had skateboards, people had cats under their arm. They had a baby in tow, just sprinting down the street.”

The fire moved so quickly that many left their homes immediately with little notice from authorities, Maui County’s fire chief said.

“What we experienced was such a fast-moving fire through the neighborhood that the initial neighborhood that caught fire, they were basically self-evacuating with fairly little notice,” fire chief Brad Ventura said.

The Coast Guard rescued 17 people who fled into the Pacific Ocean to escape the flames, the commander of Section Honolulu said Friday.

Coast Guard resources – including three cutters and two small boat crews – patrolled about 500 square miles of the harbor searching for survivors for more than 15 hours, Captain Aja Kirksey said at a Friday news conference.

One person was found dead and the survivors rescued are all in stable condition, according to Kirksey.

The fires have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures in Maui County, local officials estimate.

“All of those buildings virtually are going to have to be rebuilt,” Green said Thursday. “It will be a new Lahaina that Maui builds in its own image with its own values.”

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August 12, 2023
At least 6 dead as Maui wildfires overwhelm hospitals, sever 911 services and force people to flee into the ocean | CNN

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At least six people have died as a result of the fires that are continuing to ravage parts of Maui, the island’s mayor, Richard Bissen Jr., said at a Wednesday morning news conference.

“I’m sad to report that just before coming on this, it was confirmed we’ve had six fatalities,” he said. “We are still in a search and rescue mode.” He did not offer further details about the deaths.

More than a dozen people had to be rescued from the ocean, among them two young children, officials in Maui County said.

Several people are also unaccounted for, Bissen added.

“As a result of three fires that have occurred that are continuing here on our island we have had 13 evacuations from different neighborhoods and towns, we’ve had 16 road closures, we’ve opened five shelters,” Bissen said, noting more than 2,000 people were staying at shelters.

“We’ve had many dwellings – businesses, structures – that have been burned, many of them to the ground,” the mayor said, adding most were in the western town of Lahaina.

Bissen said helicopters that could not safely fly a day earlier due to high winds were in the sky Wednesday and using water drops to help suppress the flames. It will be impossible to estimate the extent of the damage until the blazes are put out, he added.

The flames have torched hundreds of acres and are still not contained.

“Local people have lost everything,” said James Kunane Tokioka, the state’s business, economic development and tourism director, at the news conference. “They’ve lost their house, they’ve lost their animals and it’s devastating.”

Video footage shot by Air Maui Helicopter Tours over parts of the Lahaina area shows entire blocks were decimated by the flames, with little but ruins and ashes left, and everything still engulfed in a thick, hazy smoke.

“We were not prepared for what we saw. It was heartbreaking, it looked like an area that had been bombed in the war,” Richie Olsten, the director of operations for the tour agency, told CNN’s Jake Tapper Wednesday. “It’s just destroyed.”

“In my 52 years of flying on Maui, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Olsten added.

Hawaii’s governor, who was on a personal trip this week, said he was rushing back to the state Wednesday.

The true scope of devastation on the idyllic Hawaiian island remains unknown.

That’s because the infernos have knocked out cell service, hindered emergency communications and trapped residents and tourists on the island, which is home to about 117,000.

The wildfires – fueled in part by Hurricane Dora churning some 800 miles away – have cut off 911 service and other communications in many parts of Maui.

“911 is down. Cell service is down. Phone service is down,” Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke told CNN on Wednesday.

“Our hospital system on Maui, they are overburdened with burn patients, people suffering from inhalation,” she said. “The reality is that we need to fly people out of Maui to give them burn support because Maui hospital cannot do extensive burn treatment.”

The disaster also has wiped out power to more than 12,000 homes and businesses in Maui, according to PowerOutage.us.

Tourists are being discouraged from going to Maui, Luke told reporters Wednesday.

“Today we signed another emergency proclamation which will discourage tourists from going to Maui,” she said. “Even as of this morning, planes were landing on Maui with tourists. This is not a safe place to be.”

In certain parts of the island, there are shelters that are overrun, Luke added: “We have resources that are being taxed.”

Hawaii isn’t the only US state grappling with devastating wildfires – a trend some experts had predicted for this season. Parts of Texas are under a critical fire risk Wednesday, a day after a brush fire engulfed an apartment building in the Austin area.

But the crisis unfolding in Maui is extraordinary, Hawaii’s lieutenant governor said.

“We never anticipated in this state that a hurricane which did not make impact on our islands, will cause this type of wildfires,” Luke told reporters at Wednesday’s news conference. “Wildfires that wiped out communities, wildfires that wiped out businesses, wildfires that destroyed homes.”

Alan Dickar just learned one of his rental properties went up in flames when he saw Lahaina, an economic hub, get swallowed by wildfire.

“Front Street exploded in flame,” Dickar told CNN Wednesday.

Dickar, who has lived in the area for 24 years, said there was little time to flee.

“I grabbed some people I saw on the street who didn’t seem to have a good plan. And I had told them, ‘Get your stuff, get in my truck,’” he said.

“And there’s only one road that leads out of Lahaina, so obviously it was backed up,” Dickar said. “I dropped everybody else off and then I went to a place in another part of Maui that’s far away. And as soon as I got there, that whole area had to evacuate because of a totally different fire. … Just as I arrived, that whole area got evacuated.”

Dickar eventually fled to a remote part of Maui. “I figured that was enough, and I’m safe here at least from a fire evacuation because it’s a rainforest,” he said.

Clint Hansen took drone video Tuesday night that showed wildfires spreading just north of Kihei.

“Lahaina has been devastated,” Hansen told CNN. “People jumping in the ocean to escape the flames, being rescued by the Coast Guard. All boat owners are being asked to rescue people. It’s apocalyptic.”

Live Updates: Wildfires burn in Maui, prompting rescues in Lahaina

And it’s not clear where the disaster will head next.

Maui fire officials warned that erratic wind, challenging terrain, steep slopes and dropping humidity, plus the direction and the location of the fire conditions make it difficult to predict path and speed of a wildfire, according to Maui County officials.

“The fire can be a mile or more from your house, but in a minute or two, it can be at your house,” Maui County Fire Assistant Chief Jeff Giesea said. “Burning airborne materials can light fires a great distance away from the main body of fire.”

State officials are working with hotels and a local airline to try to evacuate tourists to another island, Luke said. But severed communications have hindered efforts.

“Resorts and visitors and commercial districts have lost communication due to downed cell towers and landlines that only work within very local areas. “As a result, 911 service is currently down,” said Mahina Martin, chief communications officer from Maui Emergency Management Agency.

Maui County officials have not been able to communicate with many people on the west side – including those in the Lahaina area, Luke said.

Satellite phones have been the only reliable way to get in touch with some areas, including hotels, the lieutenant governor said.

The Kahului Airport was sheltering about 1,800 travelers from “canceled flights and flight arrivals,” the Hawaii Department of Transportation posted on social media.

Members of the Hawaii National Guard are assisting with the calamity in Maui – with more on the way.

“Hawaii National Guardsmen have been activated and are currently on Maui assisting Maui Police Department at traffic control points,” Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, Hawaii’s adjutant general, posted on Facebook.

The overnight deployment was hastened by the dynamic fire conditions, Hara wrote, adding more National Guard personnel would arrive in the counties of Maui and Hawaii later Wednesday.

Dora, a powerful Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 130 mph, was about 795 miles southwest of Honolulu as of Wednesday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect.

As Dora travels south of the islands, a strong high-pressure system remains in place to the north. The area of high pressure in combination with Dora is producing “very strong and damaging winds,” the National Weather Service said.

Winds as high as 60 mph are expected through the overnight in Hawaii, then will begin to diminish through the day on Wednesday.

“These strong winds coupled with low humidity levels are producing dangerous fire weather conditions that will last through Wednesday afternoon,” the weather service said.

By Wednesday afternoon, the area of high pressure, as well as Dora, will both drift westward, allowing the winds to subside.

Two brushfires were burning Tuesday on the Big Island, officials said in a news release, one in the North Kohala District and the other in the South Kohala District. Some residents were under mandatory evacuation orders as power outages were impacting communications, the release said.

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August 9, 2023
German man accused of spying for Russia | CNN

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A German national who worked for a government agency that equips the German armed forces, has been arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia, the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement Wednesday.

The man was employed the Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support– and is alleged to have passed information to the Russian intelligence service, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

“The defendant is strongly suspected of having worked for a foreign intelligence service,” it added. “Starting in May 2023, he approached the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian Embassy in Berlin several times on his own initiative and offered cooperation.”

“On one occasion, he passed on information he had obtained in the course of his professional activities for the purpose of forwarding it to a Russian intelligence service,” the statement said.

The man was arrested in the western Germany city of Koblenz and as part of the investigation, his and workplace were searched. An arrest warrant was issued by a Federal Supreme Court judge on July 27, 2023, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

“The investigation was conducted in close cooperation with the Federal Military Counter-Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” the federal prosecutor’s office said.

The man was brought before the Federal Supreme Court investigating judge on Wednesday. The judge ordered that he be remanded in custody, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

The Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support has almost 12,000 people working for it, including 18,000 soldiers, according to Reuters.

In December, a German citizen who worked for the country’s foreign intelligence service was arrested on charges of spying for Russia.

It comes after a large expulsion of Russian diplomats, many of whom are alleged to be operating as spies, from European countries last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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August 9, 2023
NYT: Architect of Trump fake electors plot thought SCOTUS would ‘likely’ reject plan, but pushed ahead anyway | CNN Politics

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An internal Trump campaign memo from December 2020, made public Tuesday by The New York Times, reveals new details about how the campaign initiated its plan to subvert the Electoral College process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.

In the December 6, 2020, memo, pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that then-President Donald Trump lost. The memo then outlines how then-Vice President Mike Pence, while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021, should declare “that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as President of the Senate, to both open and count the votes” from the GOP electors.

Chesebro conceded in the memo that this idea was a “controversial” long shot that would “likely” be rejected by the Supreme Court – but nonetheless promoted the strategy. He wrote that despite the legal dubiousness, “letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”

The fake electors scheme has become an integral part of the recent federal indictment against Trump, which alleges the plot took shape after it became clear that efforts to convince state officials to not certify Joe Biden’s victories would be unsuccessful.

CNN previously reported that the scheme was overseen by Trump campaign officials and led by Rudy Giuliani. Chesebro, who authored the newly released memo, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Trump indictment and was described by prosecutors as “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” He has not been charged with any crimes.

According to Trump’s January 6-related indictment and previous CNN reporting, there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and Giuliani participated in at least one call. The Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that they later signed.

At the time, their actions were largely dismissed as an elaborate political cosplay. But it eventually became clear that this was part of an orchestrated plan.

“Under the plan, the submission of these fraudulent slates would create a fake controversy at the certification proceeding and position the Vice President-presiding on January 6 as President of the Senate to supplant legitimate electors with the Defendant’s fake electors and certify the Defendant as president,” the indictment states.

Prosecutors say Chesebro told Guiliani – both identified in the indictment only as co-conspirator 5 and co-conspirator 1, respectively – that he had been told by state-level operatives that “it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding.”

“I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Chesebro wrote in the December 6 memo, despite pushing the idea and outlining a plan in the days to come. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

That is ultimately what ended up happening on December 14, 2020.

Many of the fake GOP electors who signed the phony certificates that day have since come under legal scrutiny: The fake electors from Michigan are facing state-level felony charges for forgery and publishing a counterfeit record, and many of the fake electors from Georgia are targets of the 2020-related criminal probe in Fulton County.

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August 9, 2023
Pence campaign meets donor threshold to make first primary debate | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former Vice President Mike Pence has reached the donor threshold to qualify for the first GOP presidential debate later this month in Milwaukee, an aide told CNN on Monday.

The Republican National Committee set a requirement of 40,000 unique donors minimum to qualify for the first debate, in addition to polling requirements and a commitment to support the eventual GOP nominee. Pence had already met the polling criteria to make the stage.

Fox News first reported on Pence reaching the threshold.

As CNN has reported, seven other candidates have met the polling threshold and say they’ve also reached the fundraising requirements for the August debate: Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also meets the polling threshold for inclusion in the debate following the release of a new national poll from Morning Consult on Tuesday, though his campaign has not yet said that it has met the fundraising requirement.

While some candidates offered gift cards or a percentage of the money raised to appeal for donations, Pence and his team relied on direct mail and asking for just $1.

Trump, the current front-runner who was federally indicted in the special counsel’s 2020 election interference probe last week, has not yet committed to participating in the debate. If Trump attends, Pence would be sharing a debate stage with his former running mate and boss.

“Sometimes people ask me what it would be like to debate Donald Trump and I tell people I’ve debated Donald Trump a thousand times. Never with cameras on,” Pence told reporters last week in New Hampshire.

Pence – who often says he’s “well-known” but not “known well” – added that being on the debate stage will allow voters to “take a fresh look” at him.

The former vice president jumped into the race in June and has cast himself as a Reagan conservative. He has called for cuts to government spending, the tax cuts enacted under the Trump administration to be made permanent, increased military spending and domestic energy production, and continued US support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. He’s also been outspoken against abortion and gender-affirming treatment for minors.

Pence’s path to the nomination, however, is complicated by how voters in his party view his handling of January 6, 2021. While some Republicans have thanked Pence for his actions that day, many Trump supporters remain convinced that Pence could have stopped Congress’ certification of the election results.

In a recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Pence said Trump “was wrong then, and he’s wrong now” that he – then the vice president presiding over Congress’ count of the Electoral College vote – had a right to reject the election result.

“The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution, but I kept my oath and I always will. And I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” he said.

Pence received more than 7,200 donations last Wednesday, the day after Trump was indicted on federal charges, according to his campaign.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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August 8, 2023
A day of legal action in Trump imbroglio previews a chaotic 2024 election year | CNN Politics

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A whirl of developments in a quartet of cases in four separate cities encapsulate the vast legal quagmire swamping Donald Trump and threatening to overwhelm the entire 2024 presidential campaign.

But Monday’s hectic lawyering was just a tame preview of next year when the ex-president and current Republican front-runner may be constantly shuttling between courtroom criminal trials and the campaign trail.

A day of legal intrigue brought revelations, judgments, disputes and filings in cases related to Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, the classified documents case, efforts to thwart Joe Biden’s win in Georgia, and even in a defamation case dating back to Trump’s personal behavior toward women in the 1990s.

It’s already almost impossible for voters who may be asked to decide whether Trump is fit for a return to the Oval Office – or at least to carry the GOP banner into the election – to keep pace with all the competing legal twists and the scale of his plight.

A confusing fog in which all the cases blend together could work to the former president’s advantage as he seeks a White House comeback while proclaiming he’s a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration.

But the deeper his legal mire gets, Trump’s rivals for the GOP nomination are getting braver in suggesting that his fight against becoming a convicted felon could be a general election liability. Trump’s dominance in the GOP primary has been boosted from his criminal indictments to date. But the sheer volume of cases unfolding alongside his campaign is increasingly daunting.

In Washington, Trump’s lawyers just beat a deadline to file a brief in a dispute over the handling of evidence ahead of a trial in the election subversion case, and accused the government of seeking to muzzle his voice as he runs for a new White House term.

In another glimpse into the breadth of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation that could prove troubling to the ex-president, CNN exclusively reported that Trump ally Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, met Smith’s investigators for an interview on Monday. The discussion focused on what Trump’s former attorney and Kerik’s associate, Rudy Giuliani – otherwise known as Co-Conspirator 1 – did to try to convince the former president he actually won the 2020 election. The question will be a key one when the case finally comes to trial.

Trump’s tough day in the courts had opened with a judge in Manhattan throwing out his defamation counter suit against E. Jean Carroll, which he did in stark language that recalled the ex-president’s loss in an earlier civil trial in which the jury found he sexually abused the writer.

Then, in a surprise move in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Trump-appointed judge who will oversee his classified documents trial asked lawyers for co-defendant Walt Nauta to comment on the legality of prosecutors using a Washington grand jury to keep investigating. The fact the probe is still active despite several indictments is hardly a good sign for Trump. And Judge Aileen Cannon’s move revived debate over whether she was favoring the ex-president’s team following criticism of her earlier handling of a dispute over documents taken from Trump’s home in an FBI search.

There were also new signs in Atlanta that indictments could be imminent in a probe into efforts to steal Biden’s election win in the key state, as it emerged that ex-Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican and CNN political contributor, has been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury.

All of this frenzied activity unfolding on one day represents just a snapshot of the complex legal morass now surrounding Trump. It’s just a taste of the enormous strain the ex-president is about to feel as he campaigns for a return to the Oval Office. The crush of cases will also impose increasing financial demands. Already, Trump’s leadership PAC has been diverting cash raised from small-dollar donors to pay legal fees for the former president and associates that might instead have gone toward the 2024 campaign.

In several of the cases on Monday, there were signs of the extraordinary complications inherent in prosecuting a former president and the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Judges, for instance, are faced with decisions that would normally go unnoticed by the public in the court system but that will now attract a glaring media and political spotlight.

And while Monday was notable for a head-spinning sequence of legal maneuvering, it did not even encompass all of the pending cases against Trump. He is also due to go on trial in March – in the middle of the GOP primary season – in a case arising from a hush money payment to an adult film star. As with his other indictments, Trump has pleaded not guilty.

For all his capacity to operate in the eye of converging storms of scandal and controversy, Trump’s mood is becoming increasingly agitated. In recent days he has attacked Smith, the Justice Department, the judge in the election subversion case, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, and even the US national women’s soccer team after they crashed out of the World Cup on penalties.

One of Trump’s most incendiary posts on his Truth Social network was at the center of one of Monday’s legal dramas – wrangling between Smith’s prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers over the handling of evidence at the center of the forthcoming trial.

Prosecutors cited Trump writing on his Truth Social network on Friday, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” in a filing that requested strict rules on how he could use evidence that will be turned over to the defense as part of the pre-trial discovery process. Trump’s lawyers had asked for an extension to Monday’s deadline, but Judge Tanya Chutkan refused, in a fresh sign of her possible willingness to schedule a swift trial, which the ex-president wants to delay until after the 2024 election.

In its brief, the defense proposed narrower rules than those sought by prosecutors. Spats over discovery aren’t unusual early in a trial process. But Trump’s filing added insight into how his team will approach a case in which he has pleaded not guilty.

“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” the attorneys said in the court filing.

When it comes to Smith’s indictment, Trump’s lawyers are arguing that he was within his rights to claim the election was stolen. Smith’s strategy is, however, apparently designed to avoid a First Amendment trap, and alleges that the criminal activity occurred not in what Trump said, but in actions like the ex-president’s pressure on local officials over the election and on former Vice President Mike Pence to delay its certification.

The Trump team’s filing went on to claim that the case was in itself an example of political victimization of their client, underscoring the fusion between his courtroom defense and his presidential campaign.

“Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations,” the filing said.

In a Monday night order, Chutkan signaled she would hold a hearing this week on the dispute and told the parties to come up with, by 3 p.m. Tuesday, two options for when such a hearing could be held this week.

Any prolonged debate over the terms of the pre-discovery process – let alone the many other expected pre-trial motions – will play into the hands of the defense. Trump is showing every sign that part of his motivation in running for a second White House term is to reacquire executive powers that could lead to federal cases against him being frozen. The timing of the January 6, 2021, case, and any potential conviction, is therefore hugely significant with a general election looming in November 2024.

Trump has called for the recusal of Chutkan, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. His legal team has called for a shift of trial venue away from the diverse US capital, potentially to West Virginia, one of the Whitest and most pro-Trump states in the nation. These pre-trial gambits are unlikely to succeed. But they help to create extreme pressure on the judge and to build a case for Trump supporters that the legal process is biased against him – a narrative that could provide especially inflammatory if he is eventually convicted.

Trump’s rhetoric about the case has raised some concerns about the possibility of witness intimidation – especially as some of his supporters who were tried for their part in the mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, have testified that they were spurred to action by his rhetoric.

CNN observed increased security around Chutkan on Monday. Security is also increased around the Superior Court in Fulton County, Georgia, where a decision is expected in days on whether to hit Trump with a fourth criminal indictment.

Any normal political candidate would have seen their political ambitions crushed by even one of the cases in Trump’s bulging portfolio of legal jeopardy. It is, however, a sign of the ex-president’s extraordinary and unbroken hold on the Republican Party and its voters that he is still the runaway front-runner in the primary.

But one of his top rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is slowly becoming more willing to criticize Trump publicly, after being cautious about alienating Trump supporters who feel the ex-president is the victim of a political witch hunt. DeSantis told NBC that “of course” Trump lost the 2024 election, as he blitzes early voting states New Hampshire and Iowa and makes the case that the ex-president’s legal exposure is a distraction the GOP cannot afford if it is to oust Biden from the White House after a single term. It may seem absurd that DeSantis is risking his political career by stating the obvious truth about the 2020 election, but Trump has made signing up to his false reality a test of loyalty among base voters.

And Pence, who rejected Trump’s public pressure to thwart the certification of Biden’s election – a scheme at the center of Smith’s case – indicated over the weekend that he may testify in Trump’s trial if required to do so by law.

The spectacle of a former vice presidential running mate testifying against the man who picked him for his ticket would be an extreme twist even in the Trump era of shattered political conventions.

Thanks to Trump’s unfathomable and widening legal nightmare, nothing about the 2024 election is going to be anywhere near normal.

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August 7, 2023
Trump argues against more restrictive rules over evidence in 2020 election interference case | CNN Politics

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Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has proposed narrower rules than those sought by prosecutors over what he can do with evidence he is provided in the criminal election interference case.

In a new court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers leaned heavily into claims that special counsel prosecutors are on a politically motivated campaign to restrict his First Amendment rights.

“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” the attorneys said in the court filing. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”

Prosecutors have proposed a more restrictive protective order over evidence in the case, pointing to Trump’s public statements that they say could have a “harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case.”

The latest filing shows that prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers are in disagreement over the most granular details of the so-called protective order, a type of order that can usually be issued in a case without much drama.

The Justice Department previously hasn’t asked for any special protections over records Trump’s team already has that may relate to the case, or information that’s already publicly available.

Smith’s and Trump’s teams have also fought bitterly in court filings over the schedule for resolving the dispute over the rules.

Trump’s new submission to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan – who rejected his weekend bid to push back the deadline for his response to the prosecutors’ proposal – pointed to comments from President Joe Biden and even a meme posted on his Twitter account that Trump’s lawyers claim show how Biden has “capitalized on the indictment.”

Trump’s lawyers acknowledged in the filing that there was a need to keep private certain classes of evidence handed over to him in the case, suggesting that – despite the tone of their submission – their position was not actually that far apart from what prosecutors recommended.

“However, the need to protect that information does not require a blanket gag order over all documents produced by the government,” the Trump filing said. “Rather, the Court can, and should, limit its protective order to genuinely sensitive materials – a less restrictive alternative that would satisfy any government interest in confidentiality while preserving the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the public.”

Among the changes to the Smith team proposal that Trump is asking for is a narrowing of what would be considered “sensitive” discovery materials in the case – a subset of documents for which prosecutors are seeking stricter disclosure rules. The former president also wants to expand who can access certain evidentiary materials, so to include people not being employed to work on Trump’s case, such as volunteers.

Trump’s lawyers also recommended changes to procedures for establishing how non-public evidence will be dealt with during pre-trial proceedings, as well as in trial.

Prosecutors in a criminal case can seek a protective order from a court to prevent defendants from speaking publicly about sensitive and confidential information produced during discovery in the case.

The government usually asks for such orders to ensure other individuals involved in a case – like witnesses – won’t be potentially subjected to undue pressure by defendants in a case. Such orders also often hew to federal rules that limit what can be made public from a grand jury proceeding and under what circumstances that information can be disclosed. Requests for the orders are routine, and judges typically issue them in both criminal and civil cases.

Unlike protective orders, which tend to be narrow in scope, a gag order prevents a defendant from talking publicly about a pending case. These orders are seen more often in high-profile cases but are still less common than protective orders due to the constitutional concerns surrounding them.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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August 7, 2023
Florida’s feud with the College Board’s AP Psychology course explained | CNN

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CNN
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A long-simmering feud between the College Board, the non-profit that administers Advanced Placement courses, and Florida’s Department of Education became public this week, as officials argued over whether the Advanced Placement Psychology course could be taught in Florida without breaking state laws.

In Florida, students are prohibited from learning about sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom.

But the College Board says these lessons are a core component of the AP Psychology course and have refused to change the curriculum.

On Thursday, the College Board announced that unless AP Psychology is taught in its entirety – including lessons on sexuality and gender – “the “AP Psychology” designation cannot be utilized on student transcripts.”

The future of the course appeared to be in jeopardy until, late Friday, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr., informed school superintendents that students will be able to take the class “in its entirety” but only if the course is taught “in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate.”

The public scuffle over the AP Psychology course is just the latest installment in an ongoing feud between the College Board and Florida education officials over what subjects can be taught in the state’s classrooms. Let’s discuss how we got here.

In July, a new law came into effect in Florida that banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for students in pre-K through the 8th grade. For high school students, instruction must be “according to state standards,” the Board of Education said.

But over the last year, Florida’s education officials have amended state standards to effectively ban all students from learning about sexual orientation and gender identity.

The changes are in line with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vow to eradicate so-called “woke” gender ideology from Florida’s classrooms.

In 2022, the governor signed a bill titled “Parental Rights in Education,” which prohibited discussion of gender and sexuality issues in kindergarten through third grade. The bill also gave parents the right to take legal action if a school violates the law. DeSantis has since amended the law to prohibit instruction on sexuality and gender from pre-K through the eighth grade.

The governor has said he believes parents should “have a fundamental role in the education, health care and well-being of their children.”

Supporters say the bill allows parents to decide when to talk to their children about LGBTQ+ topics instead of the schools. But critics have dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law and say it will further marginalize LGBTQ+ students.

The College Board’s AP Psychology course is organized into nine units of study. The unit on developmental psychology includes lessons on gender and sexual orientation.

According to the College Board, the course asks students to “describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.”

These lessons are now considered illegal under Florida law.

In June, Board of Education officials sent a letter to the College Board requesting the non-profit “conduct a thorough review” of all Advanced Placement courses to ensure they were compliant with Florida law.

In a statement, the College Board equated the request to censorship.

“(We) will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics. Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for careers in the discipline,” the non-profit said.

Advanced Placement courses are standardized to ensure students who pass the final exam can transfer college credits to participating colleges and universities nationwide. The College Board has said all required topics, including sexual orientation and gender identity, must be included for the course to be designated advanced placement and count toward college credit.

This isn’t the first time the College Board has sparred with the Florida Board of Education over what can be taught in Advanced Placement classes.

Earlier this year, DeSantis rejected the non-profit’s AP African American Studies course because it included lessons on reparations, Black queer studies, and the Movement for Black Lives.

The College Board initially attempted to revise the course framework, but the decision sparked outrage among academics and activists who said students should learn the “full history” of the Black experience in America.

“We have learned from our mistakes in the recent rollout of AP African American Studies and know that we must be clear from the outset where we stand,” the non-profit later said in a statement.

With days to go until students return to school, the College Board announced it would not remove AP Psychology lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. Instead, the non-profit advised school districts to “not to offer AP Psychology until Florida reverses their decision and allows parents and students to choose to take the full course.”

Florida education officials responded by accusing the non-profit of “hurting Florida students.”

It is unclear how the state’s directive to teach the course “in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate,” will be enforced.

“AP Psychology is and will remain in the course directory making it available to Florida students,” Diaz said in a statement.

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August 6, 2023
Kentucky Republicans seek to nationalize gubernatorial race as state Democrats keep focus local | CNN Politics

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Kentucky Republicans are seeking to tie Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to President Joe Biden as they work to take back the governor’s mansion in November, a strategy that state Democrats have pushed back on with a focus on local issues.

Biden remains unpopular in the deep red state, and with the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, the Republican gubernatorial nominee and Kentucky’s Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, is in a tight race to lock down the state for the GOP.

At the historic Fancy Farm picnic in Western Kentucky this weekend, Cameron told a combined crowd of Democrats and Republicans, “Andy Beshear and Joe Biden are liberal elites that have a lot of rules for you, and none for themselves.”

“The governor has the audacity to lecture Kentuckians on right and wrong when he and Joe Biden can’t even tell the difference between a man and a woman,” he added, to loud boos from the Democratic side.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell similarly tied Kentucky’s governor to the president telling voters, “Biden and Beshear aren’t working for Kentucky. Andy might as well be on the White House payroll.”

The Beshear campaign, however, has argued the race is not about Biden or national politics. Beshear didn’t mention Biden once in his speech Saturday – focusing instead on how he handled major crises like the Covid-19 pandemic, tornadoes that devastated the state, as well as floods and a mass shooting in which Beshear knew one of the victims.

“Daniel Cameron will show up for a political rally but not for tornado survivors,” Beshear said at the picnic.

The dueling messages came as Beshear, Cameron, and candidates for other state offices across Kentucky descended on the town of Fancy Farm for their annual picnic and barbecue this weekend, a tradition that has become a mainstay of state politics.

The picnic took on particular importance this year as it showcased each side’s messaging posture in a race that carries significant implications for 2024’s elections.

The Kentucky race will test whether a Democratic incumbent can survive in a deep-red state where his party’s voter registration advantage has been erased in recent years and the political environment is increasingly dominated by national themes.

Though he has remained popular, Republicans argue that Beshear’s 0.4-percentage-point-victory was the result of an unfavorable political landscape – one that has shifted drastically in recent years.

One Kentucky GOP voter, Brian Smith, told CNN on Saturday of Beshear: “I think he’s absolutely chasing the National Democratic Party. But when decisions needed to be made about supporting small businesses, about keeping kids in school and keeping churches open, he was on the wrong side of those decisions.”

Another Cameron supporter came to the picnic in a Biden mask, carrying a sign that read “Beshear’s #1 fan.”

But Jeremy Edge, a Beshear supporter, told CNN, “I think they’re trying to make Andy out as some sort of radical, which is a mess because he is a straight arrow kind of dude, and the negative stuff, it’s kind of gross.”

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August 5, 2023
Trump heads to South Carolina after a week filled with his legal drama | CNN Politics

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Former President Donald Trump is set to visit South Carolina on Saturday, wrapping up a week that has been defined by his historic third indictment.

Trump’s Saturday trip to the early-primary state – he’ll visit Columbia, South Carolina, for the state GOP’s Silver Elephant Dinner – follows a Friday night stop in Alabama. The two were his first campaign events after his arraignment Thursday in Washington,DC, in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into his efforts to remain in the White House despite losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

In Montgomery on Friday night, Trump conflated his actions in seeking to overturn the 2020 election with those of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Stacey Abrams after the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, in the wake of their losses. He said he faces “bogus charges.”

He also said if he is elected in 2024, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden’s family.

“When they indicted their political opponent and they did that, I said, well, now the gloves are off,” Trump said of Biden. “The Republicans better get tough, and they better get smart, because most of them look like a bunch of weak jerks right now. … You have to fight fire with fire. You can’t allow this to go on.”

Trump’s campaign on Friday went on the attack against the prosecutors who have brought cases against or are investigating the former president. It released a video attacking those prosecutors one day after Trump was arrested and arraigned for a third time.

The video attacks Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, dubbing the group the “Fraud Squad.”

“Meet the cast of unscrupulous accomplices he’s assembled to get Trump,” the narrator says in the video of Biden.

The video also uses footage of Biden falling off his bike and tripping up the stairs to Air Force One.

Lashing out over the costs of defending himself and his allies in myriad legal battles, Trump also called for the Supreme Court to “intercede.”

“CRAZY! My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump complained on Truth Social. “Resources that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country. I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”

His campaign has used the legal proceedings as a fundraising tool, hauling in small-dollar donations.

“Trump is in THE AIR!” his campaign said in an email to supporters Thursday. “Before he arrives at the courthouse for his hearing, can 10,000 pro-Trump patriots sign on to defend him & end the witch hunt?”

A handful of GOP presidential candidates, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, have criticized Trump’s actions.

Hurd, on Fox News on Thursday, said that Trump’s court appearance was the “third time in four months in courts. It’s unacceptable, we didn’t have to be here.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s campaign is selling T-shirts and hats branded with the phrase “Too Honest,” referencing a phrase Trump allegedly uttered to Pence when he refused to go along with the then-president’s request to reject electoral votes and change the outcome of the 2020 election.

According to the federal indictment, in one conversation on January 1, 2021, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” when the then-vice president said that he lacked the authority to change the results.

After Trump was indicted earlier this week, Pence said that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president” and added that Trump “was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers who kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.”

However, much of the Republican field has so far refused to take aim at Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which are at the heart of the federal charges he faces in Washington.

Trump’s top-polling rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, on Friday said he would pardon Trump if he is elected in 2024. He also defended the former president, arguing that the laws federal prosecutors say Trump broke were “never intended to apply to this type of situation.”

The Florida governor, who was campaigning in Iowa, told reporters his candidacy for president would be focused on the future and starting to heal “divisions in this country.”

DeSantis indicated that he would pardon Trump if he were convicted, echoing comments he recently made on “Outkick” with Clay Travis.

“I’ve said for many weeks now, I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the country to have a former president – that’s almost 80 years old – go to prison. Just like Nixon or Ford pardoned Nixon, you know, sometimes you got to put this stuff behind you,” he said.

DeSantis’ comments underscored the reality that most of Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals see little to gain by angering a base that is still largely supportive of the former president.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott on Friday criticized the Justice Department for the “weaponization of their power” in his first on-camera reaction to the third indictment and arraignment of Trump.

Scott told reporters following an immigration roundtable event in Yuma, Arizona, he believes DOJ spends “a lot of time hunting Republicans” while protecting Democrats, specifically referencing the president’s son Hunter Biden.

“My perspective is that the DOJ continues to weaponize their power against political opponents. It seems like they spend a lot of time protecting Hunter Biden and Democrats and a lot of time hunting Republicans,” Scott said.

The most recent polls show that Trump remains the clear front-runner in the 2024 GOP primary. A poll of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa from The New York Times/Siena College released Friday showed Trump with 44% support, compared to DeSantis’ 20% and Scott’s 9%, with no other candidate topping 5%.

His lead is even wider nationally. Trump holds the support of 54% of likely GOP primary voters, a New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this week found, while DeSantis has 17% support and no other candidate exceeds 3%.

Just 17% of likely Republican primary voters think that Trump has “committed any serious federal crimes,” and only 10% more say that although they don’t think he committed a serious crime, he “did something wrong in his handling of classified documents.” Three-quarters (75%) say that after the 2020 elections, Trump “was just exercising his right to contest the election,” while only 19% believe he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.” And 71% say that regarding the investigations Trump is facing, Republicans “need to stand behind Trump.”

The Republican base could be at odds with the broader electorate: Two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that the charges Trump faces over efforts to overturn the 2020 elections are serious, according to a new poll from ABC News and Ipsos conducted after Trump’s latest indictment.

There are broad partisan gaps in views of the seriousness of the new charges, with 91% of Democrats calling them serious along with 67% of independents, though just 38% of Republicans agree. The gap between Democrats and Republicans widens to 65 points when looking at those who call the charges “very serious” (84% of Democrats feel that way vs. 19% of Republicans; 53% of independents say the same).

While many of Trump’s rivals are carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the former president, Trump is taking direct aim at DeSantis.

Top Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita sent an open memo on Thursday attacking DeSantis’ efforts to reboot his campaign.

“DeSantis’s campaign is marred by idiocy,” the memo reads, as it touts Trump’s lead in polls over his GOP rivals.

The memo compared DeSantis’ campaign to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 bid and argued both campaigns overspent and didn’t fundraise enough. The late McCain and Trump had a bitter feud for years.

“John McCain did not spend the opening week of his reboot explaining why his staff produced a video with Nazi imagery, and defending his comments that slavery provided ‘some benefit’ to enslaved Americans – while attacking black Republicans publicly in the process,” the memo reads, referencing several recent missteps DeSantis and his campaign have made.

Developments on Capitol Hill also underscored that most of the GOP has not abandoned Trump.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican leadership team, on Thursday called on Congress to scrutinize the federal investigation into Trump’s actions.

Tillis said in a statement that the new indictment carries “a heavy burden” to show that “criminal conduct actually occurred.”

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August 5, 2023
Takeaways from the arraignment of Donald Trump in the special counsel’s election subversion case | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a Washington, DC, federal courthouse Thursday to federal criminal charges stemming from his plots to overturn the 2020 election, in a 27-minute proceeding where the first flashes of the defense’s tactics emerged.

It was the third occasion that Trump was arraigned on criminal charges this year, and the hearing marked the public debut of the team of lawyers in special counsel Jack Smith’s office who will be leading the prosecution.

Here are takeaways from the hearing:

In the classified documents case that Smith has also brought against the former president in June, the Trump team has sought to slow-walk the schedule for the proceedings. There were hints of a similar strategy in the first hearing in the election subversion case.

Much of Thursday’s hearing was staid and to-script. But the tone sharpened when the judge said the prosecutors should file recommendations for the trial date and length in seven days, and that the Trump team should respond within seven days after that.

Trump attorney John Lauro told the judge that they would need to look at the amount of evidence they’ll be receiving from the government – which he said could be “massive” — before they could address that question.

“There is no question in our mind, your honor, that Mr. Trump is entitled to a fair and just trial,” Lauro said, nodding both to Trump’s right to a speedy trial as well as his right to due process.

Prosecutor Thomas Windom previewed that the special counsel would propose this case unfolding under a normal timeline under the Speedy Trial Act, which sets a time limit – unless certain exemptions are sought – for criminal cases to go to trial.

Judge Tanya Chutkan intends to schedule a trial date at an August 28 hearing, a magistrate judge said Thursday. Before the trial, Chutkan may need to preside over disputes over whether the case should be dismissed to do legal flaws, when the trial should start and what evidence can be presented to a jury.

Trump may argue that a trial should wait until after the 2024 election, an argument his legal team made unsuccessfully in the classified documents case, and his lawyers have also previewed efforts to seek a change of venue for the case, with claims that the DC jury pool is politically biased against the former president and 2024 Republican front-runner.

There’s likely to be more added to the pile of legal problems on the former president’s plate.

In Georgia, in the coming weeks, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to bring charges in her election subversion probe and it’s possible that Trump will be indicted in that.

And then there’s the other case from Smith alleging Trump mishandled classified documents from his White House and then obstructed the probe into the materials. That case is currently scheduled to go trial next May, and there will be regular pre-trial proceedings (at which, Trump is not required to appear) before that. There’s also the criminal case that Manhattan prosecutors brought against Trump for a 2016 campaign hush money scheme, currently slated for trial in March.

Additionally there’s number of civil lawsuits he faces, including a second defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, well as the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against his family and businesses.

This court calendar is overlaid against his 2024 campaign schedule as well. The first Republican presidential debate, for instance, is on August 23.

Though Trump will not be required to appear in court for hearings on pre-trial matters, he may seek to do so, if he embraces a strategy of making a spectacle out of the election subversion case. Speaking on the airport tarmac, Trump made brief remarks that the prosecution was political after Thursday’s hearing, and he routinely fundraises off of every new development putting him in deeper legal trouble.

Thursday marked the public debut of the Smith team that will handle the election subversion prosecution. (Some of the special counsel lawyers who are leading the classified documents case were previously involved in the public proceedings stemming from the lawsuit Trump filed last year challenging the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago).

Smith himself attended the hearing, as he did for Trump’s first appearance in the classified documents case in Florida earlier this year. As the courtroom waited for the hearing to start, Smith and Trump occasionally looked over at one another – Smith looking towards Trump more often than Trump looked over to him.

Windom – who moved from the US attorney’s office in Maryland to play a central role in the federal election subversion investigation, spoke on behalf of the government Thursday. Also at the prosecutors’ table was Molly Gaston, an alum of the DC US attorney’s public integrity section, which handles some of the most politically sensitive cases for the Justice Department.

Gaston was a lead prosecutor on last year’s contempt of Congress case against ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and also worked on the prosecutions of Rick Gates – a former Trump campaign aide – and Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman. Gaston was also present in the courtroom Tuesday when the foreperson of the grand jury for the 2020 election probe returned the indictment against Trump.

Trump was represented by Lauro and Todd Blanche at Thursday’s hearing. Lauro is a relatively recent addition to the Trump legal team and is handling the 2020-election related matters.

Blanche, meanwhile, has been across several Trump cases. He is representing Trump in Smith’s classified documents prosecution as well is in the 2016 campaign hush money case brought by Manhattan’s district attorney.

Evan Corcoran, who has not formally entered an appearance in the case, attended the hearing, sitting on the row in the courtroom well behind the defense table.

Lauro did the talking for the defense at Thursday’s hearing. He’s also made himself a prominent defender of the former president in the public arena, with multiple appearance in recent days on CNN and other networks.

While the defense lawyers were mostly there Thursday to walk Trump through the steps of a first appearance and arraignment, Lauro had the opportunity to show the vigor with which he’ll argue on behalf of his client. He didn’t get into the substantive defense arguments that he has previewed in TV hits, but his insistence that the Trump team may need more time before nailing down a trial schedule was emphatic.

“All that we would ask, your honor, is the time to fairly defend our client. And to do that we need a little time,” he said.

While Trump’s hearing Thursday largely followed the script of the arraignments he’s had in the classified documents and the 2016 hush money criminal cases against him. But it was happening in a courthouse that has had to constantly had to process and re-process the violence of January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that his election lies helped provoke.

For the last two-and-a-half years since the attack, the former president has been a stalking horse in the DC courthouse, which has hosted the proceedings for more than 1,000 Trump supporters who have been have been charged for the riot.

Judges have obliquely acknowledged the role the former president played in egging on the mob, while recounting the direct view they had to the violence that day. Defense attorneys and prosecutors have argued over how much of the blame should be placed on him. Metropolitan and Capitol police officers are frequently seen in the courthouse to testify about the physical and psychological trauma they suffered from the riot. And defendants and their families, in their pleas for mercy, have invoked Trump as well.

In the election subversion case, Trump’s attorneys have previewed arguments that the case should be moved elsewhere, given the city’s political bent. But the DC federal courthouse is where hundreds of his supporters have received fair trials, with some securing acquittals, in the Capitol mob cases.

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August 3, 2023
21 Donald Trump election lies listed in his new indictment | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday that the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was “fueled by lies” told by former President Donald Trump. The indictment of Trump on four new federal criminal charges, all related to the former president’s effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, lays out some of those lies one by one.

Even in listing 21 lies, the 45-page indictment does not come close to capturing the entirety of Trump’s massive catalogue of false claims about the election. But the list is illustrative nonetheless – highlighting the breadth of election-related topics Trump was dishonest about, the large number of states his election dishonesty spanned, and, critically, his willingness to persist in privately and publicly making dishonest assertions even after they had been debunked to him directly.

Here is the list of 21.

1. The lie that fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, that Trump “had actually won,” and that the election was “stolen.” (Pages 1 and 40-41 of the indictment)

Trump’s claim of a stolen election whose winner was determined by massive fraud was (and continues to be) his overarching lie about the election. The indictment asserts that Trump knew as early as 2020 that his narrative was false – and had been told as such by numerous senior officials in his administration and allies outside the federal government – but persisted in deploying it anyway, including on January 6 itself.

2. The lie that fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in seven states were legitimate electors. (Pages 5 and 26)

The indictment alleges that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators “organized” the phony slates of electors and then “caused” the slates to be transmitted to Vice President Mike Pence and other government officials to try to get them counted on January 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes.

3. The lie that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election. (Pages 6 and 27)

Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials had told Trump that his claims of major fraud had proved to be untrue. But the indictment alleges that Trump still sought to have the Justice Department “make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General’s signature, thus giving the Defendant’s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the Defendant’s.”

4. The lie that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 6, 32-38)

Pence had repeatedly and correctly told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. The indictment notes that Trump nonetheless repeatedly declared that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and White House meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, then in Trump’s January 6 speech in Washington at a rally before the riot – in which Trump, angry at Pence, allegedly inserted the false claim into his prepared text even after advisors had managed to temporarily get it removed.

5. The lie that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” (Page 36)

The indictment alleges that the day before the riot, Trump “approved and caused” his campaign to issue a false statement saying Pence agreed with him about having the power to reject electoral votes – even though Trump knew, from a one-on-one meeting with Pence hours prior, that Pence continued to firmly disagree.

6. The lie that Georgia had thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead people. (Pages 8 and 16)

The indictment notes that Georgia’s top elections official – Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – a republican – explained to Trump in a phone call on January 2, 2021 that this claim was false, but that Trump repeated it in his January 6 rally speech anyway. Raffensperger said in the phone call and then in a January 6 letter to Congress that just two potential dead-voter cases had been discovered in the state; Raffensperger said in late 2021 that the total had been updated and stood at four.

7. The lie that Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than voters. (Pages 8 and 20)

The indictment notes that Trump’s acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue had both told him that this claim was false, but he kept making it anyway – including in the January 6 rally speech.

8. The lie that there had been a suspicious “dump” of votes in Detroit, Michigan. (Pages 9 and 17)

The indictment notes that Barr, the attorney general, told Trump on December 1, 2020 that this was false – as CNN and others had noted, supposedly nefarious “dumps” Trump kept talking about were merely ballots being counted and added to the public totals as normal – but that Trump still repeated the false claim in public remarks the next day. And Barr wasn’t the only one to try to dissuade Trump from this claim. The indictment also notes that Michigan’s Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, had told Trump in an Oval Office meeting on November 20, 2020 that Trump had lost the state “not because of fraud” but because Trump had “underperformed with certain voter populations.”

9. The lie that Nevada had tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud. (Page 9)

The indictment notes that Nevada’s top elections official – Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, also a Republican – had publicly posted a “Facts vs. Myths” document explaining that Nevada judges had rejected such claims.

10. The lie that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona. (Pages 9 and 11)

The indictment notes that Trump put the number at “over 36,000” in his January 6 speech – even though, the indictment says, his own campaign manager “had explained to him that such claims were false” and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who had supported Trump in the election, “had issued a public statement that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona.”

11. The lie that voting machines in swing states had switched votes from Trump to Biden. (Page 9)

This is a reference to false conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which Trump kept repeating long after it was thoroughly debunked by his own administration’s election cybersecurity security arm and many others. The indictment says, “The Defendant’s Attorney General, Acting Attorney General, and Acting Deputy Attorney General all had explained to him that this was false, and numerous recounts and audits had confirmed the accuracy of voting machines.”

12. The lie that Dominion machines had been involved in “massive election fraud.” (Page 12)

The indictment notes that Trump, on Twitter, promoted a lawsuit filed by an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as lawyer Sidney Powell, that alleged “massive election fraud” involving Dominion – even though, the indictment says, Trump privately acknowledged to advisors that the claims were “unsupported” and told them Powell sounded “crazy.”

13. The lie that “a substantial number of non-citizens, non-residents, and dead people had voted fraudulently in Arizona.” (Page 10)

The indictment alleges that Trump and an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, made these baseless claims on a November 22, 2020 phone call with Bowers; the indictment says Giuliani never provided evidence and eventually said, at a December 1, 2020 meeting with Bowers, “words to the effect of, ‘We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.”

14. The lie that Fulton County, Georgia elections workers had engaged in “ballot stuffing.” (Pages 13 and 14)

This is the long-debunked lie – which Trump has continued to repeat in 2023 – that a video had caught two elections workers in Atlanta breaking the law. The workers were simply doing their jobs, and, as the indictment notes, they were cleared of wrongdoing by state officials in 2020 – but Trump continued to make the claims even after Raffensperger and Justice Department officials directly and repeatedly told him they were unfounded.

15. The lie that thousands of out-of-state voters cast ballots in Georgia. (Page 16)

The indictment notes that Trump made this claim on his infamous January 2, 2021 call with Raffensperger, whose staff responded that the claim was inaccurate. An official in Raffensberger’s office explained to Trump that the voters in question had authentically moved back to Georgia and legitimately cast ballots.

16. The lie that Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable,” to address Trump’s claims about a “‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.” (Page 16)

In fact, contrary to this Trump tweet the day after the call, Raffensperger and his staff had addressed and debunked all of these false Trump claims.

17. The lie that there was substantial fraud in Wisconsin and that the state had tens of thousands of unlawful votes. (Page 21)

False and false. But the indictment notes that Trump made the vague fraud claim in a tweet on December 21, 2020, after the state Supreme Court upheld Biden’s win, and repeated the more specific claim about tens of thousands of unlawful votes in the January 6 speech.

18. The lie that Wisconsin had more votes counted than it had actual voters. (Page 21)

This, like Trump’s similar claim about Pennsylvania, is not true. But the indictment alleges that Trump raised the claim in a December 27, 2020 conversation with acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue, who informed him that it was false.

19. The lie that the election was “corrupt.” (Page 28)

The indictment alleges that when acting attorney general Rosen told Trump on the December 27, 2020 call that the Justice Department couldn’t and wouldn’t change the outcome of the election, Trump responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” (Deputy attorney general Donoghue memorialized the reported Trump remark in his handwritten notes, which CNN reported on in 2021 and which were subsequently published by the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.)

20. The lie that Trump won every state by hundreds of thousands of votes. (Page 34)

The indictment says that, at a January 4, 2021 meeting intended to convince Pence to unlawfully reject Biden’s electoral votes and send them back to swing-state legislatures, Pence took notes describing Trump as saying, “Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes.” This was, obviously, false even if Trump was specifically talking about swing states won by Biden rather than every state in the nation.

21. The lie that Pennsylvania “want[s] to recertify.” (Page 38)

Trump made this false claim in his January 6 speech. In reality, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania had expressed a desire to at least delay the congressional affirmation of Biden’s victory – but the state’s Democratic governor and top elections official, who actually had election certification power in the state, had no desire to recertify Biden’s legitimate win.

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August 2, 2023
Deadly communal violence flares in India a month before world leader summit | CNN

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Gurugram and New Delhi
CNN
—

Separate outbreaks of violence this week, including the alleged shooting of three Muslim men by a police officer on a train, have exposed the deep communal fissures in India weeks before it welcomes Group of 20 (G20) leaders to the capital.

Violence erupted in the northern state of Harayana state on Monday after a right-wing Hindu organization led a religious procession in the city of Nuh.

Clashes spread to several districts of the finance and tech hub, Gurugram, also known as Gurgaon, home to more than 1.5 million people and hundreds of global firms, where violent mobs predominantly targeted Muslim-owned properties, setting buildings ablaze and smashing shops and restaurants.

At least six people died, including a cleric who was inside a mosque that was set alight, and more than 110 people have been arrested, authorities said.

Gurugram’s district counselor urged residents to remain home and ordered the closure of some private education institutes and government offices.

As the violence unfolded, about 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) south in Maharashtra on a train traveling to Mumbai, another deadly attack demonstrated the depth of the country’s sectarian divide.

A police officer opened fire on a moving train, killing four people, including a senior constable and three Muslim passengers, according to local reports and some family members CNN has spoken with.

In a video that has emerged of the aftermath and quickly gone viral, the officer can be seen standing over a lifeless body, rifle in arm, as terrified travelers huddle at the end the coach.

The officer glances at the body, then scans the carriage before saying: “If you want to vote, if you want to live in Hindustan (India), then there’s only (Narendra) Modi and Yogi (Adityanath).”

Referencing the country’s leader, and the Hindu monk turned chief minister of India’s most populous state, he appeared to be advocating for their popular, but deeply divisive policies.

One of the victims, Asgar Ali, was a bangle seller on his way to take a new job in Mumbai when the fatal attack took place, his cousin Mohammed told CNN, adding that Ali is survived by a wife and four children.

“We haven’t heard a lot from the authorities,” he added. “But I believe this happened because we are Muslim.”

Police have arrested the officer and a motive is yet to be determined, authorities have said. However, opposition politicians and activists have called the attack a “hate crime” that targeted India’s Muslim minority population.

Police haven’t released the names of the passengers. CNN has contacted the Maharashtra police but is yet to receive a response.

Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of parliament and leader of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen political party called it a “terror attack that specifically targeted Muslims.”

Another lawmaker and member of India’s main opposition Congress party, Jairam Ramesh, said it was a “cold-blooded murder” that was the result of a polarized media and political landscape.

The image of India that Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) want to project is one of a confident, vibrant, and modern superpower – and it will be one they want on display in India when G20 leaders meet in New Delhi next month.

But analysts say these scenes of violence underscore an uncomfortable reality as the BJP’s Hindu nationalist policies gain momentum in the world’s largest democracy after nearly a decade of Modi’s rule.

On Wednesday, hundreds of members from the Hindu extremist right-wing Bajrang Dal group took to the streets in several cities, including Delhi, burning effigies and chanting slogans against Muslims in protest against what they called “Islamic jihad and terrorism.”

Asim Ali, a political researcher based in New Delhi and no relation to Asgar Ali, said that official silence over sectarian assaults and rhetoric is encouraging for the radical groups and such attacks have become “more brazen” since BJP ascended to power nearly a decade ago.

“When you don’t take action against these elements, the message that gets sent is that it’s okay,” he told CNN. “If the government spoke (against it), it would help.”

Ethnic violence has been raging in the northeastern state of Manipur for the last two months, a topic that has received little public comment from Modi.

Ali fears sectarian tensions may only worsen next year as India heads into a bitterly fought election with Modi seeking a third term and an opposition building a coalition to unseat him.

The latest communal violence come against a broader rise in hate crimes against minority groups.

A study by economist Deepankar Basu noted a 786% increase in hate crimes against all minorities between 2014 and 2018, following the BJP’s election victory.

The BJP, however, says it does not discriminate against minorities and “treats all its citizens with equality.”

But Basu’s study shows – and news reports indicate – the brunt of these hate crimes targeted Muslims. And activists point to a host of recent incidents that they say contribute to India’s sharp communal divide.

Last month, the BJP chief minister of the state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, blamed Muslims for the soaring prices of tomatoes. His accusation came weeks after he lashed out at former US President Barack Obama, saying Indian police should “take care of” the many “Hussain Obama” in the country, referring to the country’s Muslims.

Former US President Obama is not a Muslim.

Meanwhile Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who was referenced by the police officer allegedly involved in the train shooting, is among the most divisive of the BJP politicians.

Since he took office, the state has already passed legislation that, critics say, is rooted in “Hindutva” – the ideological bedrock of Hindu nationalism.

It has protected cows, an animal considered sacred to Hindus, from slaughter, and made it increasingly difficult to transport cattle. It also introduced a controversial anti-conversion bill, which makes it difficult for interfaith couples to marry or for people to convert to Islam or Christianity. Some cities named after historic Muslim figures have also been renamed to reflect India’s Hindu history.

Adityanath is also known for his provocative rhetoric against Muslims.

He once praised former US President Donald Trump’s travel ban barring citizens of several Muslim-majority countries and called for India to take similar measures, according to local channel NDTV.

India has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world with an estimated 170 million adherents, roughly 15 percent of its 1.4 billion population.

Adityanath’s cabinet members have previously denied allegations they are promoting Hindu nationalism.

But prominent Muslim author and journalist, Rana Ayyub, who has written extensively about India’s sectarian shift, says the current political rhetoric “emboldens” radical right wing groups who feel increasingly protected and untouchable in today’s India.

“It feels like an Orwellian novel playing out in front of you,” she said, adding she fears for the safety of her Muslim friends and family. “I think the silence of the country is a tacit approval for these hate politics.”

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August 2, 2023
Why was Weiss named special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden? It’s complicated. | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Attorney General Merrick Garland did not provide a robust explanation on Friday for why he needed to give US attorney David Weiss special counsel status for the Hunter Biden probe, or why it was necessary five years after the investigation began.

In a televised statement, Garland only said that Weiss informed him on Tuesday that “his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel.” Garland said he reviewed Weiss’ request, “as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter” and “concluded it is in the public interest” to make him a special counsel.

But the attorney general did not say what those “extraordinary circumstances” were. And Weiss didn’t make any statements on Friday.

The simplest explanation is that the plea talks between Weiss and Hunter Biden over tax and gun charges have collapsed, and the case now appears to be headed to trial. Indeed, it is “extraordinary” for the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch, to go to trial against the son of a siting president. Instead of a speedy resolution with a plea, a trial guarantees there will be months or even years of future litigation.

But no one at the Justice Department has publicly offered this explanation. Friday, Garland never mentioned this major change in the trajectory of the case – from a misdemeanor plea deal to an unprecedented trial with potentially several felony charges.

It’s not clear what else may have changed to trigger the special counsel appointment.

IRS whistleblowers who worked on the case and congressional Republicans have claimed that Weiss needed special counsel powers because, as the US attorney in Delaware, he couldn’t pursue charges in other jurisdictions. The whistleblowers testified that Justice Department officials blocked Weiss from filing felony tax evasion charges in California and Washington, DC.

But as these questions mounted, Weiss and Garland have repeatedly insisted that Weiss always had the powers he needed, even as a US attorney. Weiss said he retained “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.” As recently as July 10, he said he never asked to be appointed as special counsel.

So why elevate him to special counsel now?

This is the third time Garland has appointed a special counsel. In the two past instances, he specifically mentioned that the ongoing investigations involved a presidential candidate and therefore the independence of a special counsel was warranted, for the public interest. (Those probes are separately scrutinizing President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.)

That raises the question of whether the ongoing Hunter Biden probe has moved closer to the president, though there is no public indication that this is the case.

Indeed, the IRS whistleblowers told Congress they wanted to interview Biden family members, after finding financial improprieties in Hunter Biden’s tax records, but were blocked by Justice Department officials. Also, an unverified tip from an FBI informant about supposed bribes paid to Joe and Hunter Biden was passed onto Weiss’ prosecutors, potentially for further inquiry. (Joe Biden says these claims are false.)

Politics is also hanging over the investigation, especially emanating from Capitol Hill.

House Republicans are investigating the claims from the IRS whistleblower and are asking questions about how Hunter Biden nearly walked away with what they call a “sweetheart deal.”

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is seeking interviews with nearly a dozen Justice Department officials who were involved in the investigation. He also has sought testimony from Weiss, who previously committed to appearing at a public hearing this fall.

But Weiss’ new role as special counsel, and the implosion of the plea talks, could put all of that on ice. It will be much easier now for the Justice Department to do what it often does – swat away oversight requests because of an ongoing investigation, especially with a trial looming.

Justice Department officials stressed Friday that Weiss will issue a public report as part of his special counsel responsibilities. But that could be years away: Past special counsels, like Robert Mueller and John Durham, only testified on the Hill after their reports were released.

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August 2, 2023