Tag: government bodies and offices

Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

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The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Justice Department’s use of a key criminal charge against hundreds of January 6 rioters, saying they can be charged with obstructing Congress.

The appeals court said obstruction can include a “wide range of conduct” when a defendant has a corrupt intent and is targeting an official proceeding, such as the congressional certification of the presidential election on January 6, 2021.

The major ruling affects more than 300 criminal cases brought in the wake of the Capitol riot. The Justice Department has used the charge – obstructing on official proceeding – as the cornerstone of many of the more serious Capitol riot cases, where defendants were outspoken about their desire to stop Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win or were instrumental in the physical breach of the Capitol building.

In the cases that prompted the appeal, the defendants had allegedly assaulted law enforcement at the Capitol, which overwhelmed the protection around members of Congress in the building and caused the Electoral College certification to stop for hours.

The statute makes it a felony to alter, destroy or mutilate a record, document or other object with the intent of making it unavailable in an official proceeding, or to “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.

The ruling has been hotly anticipated in the January 6 investigation, and a loss for the Justice Department would have imperiled hundreds of cases against individual rioters.

But the three judges on the panel weren’t united in their interpretation of the law, with each writing separately about how the obstruction statute should be interpreted.

“The broad interpretation of the statute – encompassing all forms of obstructive acts – is unambiguous and natural,” Judge Florence Pan of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote Friday in the 2-1 majority opinion.

The holding from Pan also lays out how prosecutors may use the obstruction charge, which carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence, when weighing defendants’ actions on January 6.

The circuit court’s opinion – which is now binding precedent in DC federal courts, unless additional appeals change the ruling – could potentially be used against future defendants in January 6-related cases, including ones being looked at by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Yet their opinions on Friday left unsettled a key question on how the Justice Department could use the charge against others with potentially less clear corrupt actions.

Pan’s majority opinion didn’t decide how the courts should define corrupt action taken by rioters – potentially putting limits around how the Justice Department could use the charge in the future.

Pan and Walker split on whether the definition of “corruptly” would mean that prosecutors would have to prove a defendants’ actions were to benefit themselves or others people, if they charge obstruction related to January 6.

That question could arise again in future appeals, and the judges weren’t clear which interpretation may be the controlling law now in DC.

“Because the task of defining ‘corruptly’ is not before us and I am satisfied that the government has alleged conduct by appellees sufficient to meet that element, I leave the exact contours of ‘corrupt’ intent for another day,” Pan wrote. She noted that the rioter cases that prompted the appeal left no room for disputing corrupt intent, seeing as the defendants were alleged to have assaulted police.

In his concurring opinion, Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker took a narrower approach to the obstruction law, finding that it requires a defendant to act “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”

Even so, Walker found that the obstruction law that the DOJ has charged rioters with applies in this case.

“True, the Defendants were allegedly trying to secure the presidency for Donald Trump, not for themselves or their close associates,” Walker wrote. “But the beneficiary of an unlawful benefit need not be the defendant or his friends. Few would doubt that a defendant could be convicted of corruptly bribing a presidential elector if he paid the elector to cast a vote in favor of a preferred candidate – even if the defendant had never met the candidate and was not associated with him.”

DC Circuit Judge Greg Katsas disagreed with his colleagues in the 2-1 decision. Katsas sided with a lower-court judge, who had thrown out obstruction charges against some January 6 rioters because the actions during the insurrection didn’t deal specifically with the mutilation of documents or evidence in an official proceeding.

Katsas argued that his colleagues’ interpretation of the obstruction law was too broad and would allow for aggressive criminal prosecutions any time a protester knew they may be breaking the law. He contended that the law requires that a defendant was trying to “seek an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage” while the January 6 cases in question involve “the much more diffuse, intangible benefit of having a preferred candidate remain President.”

Walker, however, wrote in his opinion that that law applied even under Katsas’ reading.

“The dissenting opinion says a defendant can act ‘corruptly’ only if the benefit he intends to procure is a ‘financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage.’ I am not so sure,” Walker wrote. “Besides, this case may involve a professional benefit. The Defendants’ conduct may have been an attempt to help Donald Trump unlawfully secure a professional advantage – the presidency.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions in the state | CNN Politics

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Republican Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota signed a near-total abortion ban bill into law Monday.

Senate Bill 2150, which passed in the state’s legislature last week, defines abortion as “the act of using, selling, or prescribing any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman.”

The law is one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the US and only allows exceptions for rape or incest within the first six weeks of pregnancy.

Exceptions are permitted in the case that the procedure is “deemed necessary based on reasonable medical judgment which was intended to prevent the death or a serious health risk to the pregnant female.”

Efforts to treat an ectopic or molar pregnancy would also be permissible at any stage of pregnancy under the law.

Abortion rights activists have furiously objected to similar bans, saying most women do not know they are pregnant at six weeks.

The bill joins other GOP-led legislation aimed at restricting abortion access that has become law in a post-Roe v. Wade world. Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Texas have also passed six-week abortion bans, sparking legal challenges.

North Dakota’s new law follows a legal battle over a 2007 trigger law that was blocked by a district judge last year.

The state’s Supreme Court upheld that ruling in March.

The trigger abortion ban was set to take effect last August and would have made it a felony to perform an abortion in the state but it did allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

With the trigger ban on pause, North Dakota law had allowed abortion up until 20 weeks or more post-fertilization.

In a statement to CNN, Burgum said SB 2150 “clarifies and refines existing state law which was triggered into effect by the Dobbs decision and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state.”

Physicians who violate the new law could be charged with a felony. In addition, an abortion can’t be performed until a woman is offered the opportunity to see an “active ultrasound” at least 24 hours before the scheduled procedure.

Any physician who fails to comply could face a misdemeanor charge.

Last week, Burgum signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for most minors with the possibility of a felony for health care professionals who provide it.

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April 12, 2021
Thousands of Afghans escaped the Taliban with the help of private veteran groups. Today, many remain in limbo, held in a compound in the UAE | CNN Politics

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About 2,100 Afghan refugees remain held in a sprawling compound in the United Arab Emirates more than 18 months after they were evacuated from Afghanistan largely by private groups working with the State Department.

They are what’s left of as many as 20,000 Afghans who were hastily relocated to the camp during the chaotic weeks surrounding the US withdrawal after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Several thousand were brought there by the State Department directly from Kabul and have since been relocated to the US or Canada.

But thousands more, including those still stuck in the UAE, were evacuated weeks later, and sometimes from hundreds of miles away from Kabul, by private groups working to get as many out of Afghanistan as possible.

Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that the private evacuation efforts, though well-intentioned, contributed at times to an already chaotic situation – though they also say that the frenzy of the withdrawal created unclear communication and expectations.

Consequently, thousands of Afghans evacuated by private groups were left in a legal limbo with seemingly no clear path to the US – or anywhere else. And though the effort to resettle them has picked up in recent months, refugees inside the compound known as Emirates Humanitarian City, or EHC, are restless after almost two years of waiting inside a camp they are barred from leaving.

Without a visa, they’re not allowed inside the country.

When they first arrived in the UAE in August 2021, Afghan evacuees were housed across dozens of buildings in the gated compound. Afghans were separated in rooms with their families across multi-level buildings divided by a common outdoor space.

They were supposed to be there for a few days. But that’s now approaching two years for the more than 2,000 people who remain there. The State Department says it continues to process refugees out of EHC “on an ongoing basis.” One American Marine veteran closely involved said that a family or two leave each week, bound mostly for the US and Canada, as well as Australia, with some scattered across Europe.

At that pace it could still take more than a year to empty out the entire population of evacuees who remain at the compound.

Their plight has gained recent attention from human rights groups, who say the refugees are being held arbitrarily by the UAE and have been subject to a host of abuses, including poor medical care and being held in “prison-like” conditions.

A report put out by Human Rights Watch in March said Afghan asylum seekers have been “locked up for over 15 months in cramped, miserable conditions with no hope of progress on their cases” and are “facing further trauma now, after spending well over a year in limbo.”

In a statement to CNN, a UAE official said the refugees at EHC have “received a comprehensive range of high-quality housing, sanitation, health, clinical, counseling, education, and food services to ensure their welfare.”

The official said the UAE “continues to do everything it can to bring this extraordinary exercise in humanitarian resettlement to a satisfactory conclusion. We understand that there are frustrations and this has taken longer than intended to complete.”

“The UAE remains committed to this ongoing cooperation with the US and other international partners to ensure that Afghan evacuees can live in safety, security, and dignity,” the official added.

Allegations similar to those raised by the HRW report were described in an appeal to the United Nations submitted last fall by an independent American attorney, who alleged “widespread human rights abuses,” including inadequate health and mental health care, “constant” surveillance and “restricted access” to government officials working their cases.

In a statement to CNN, Mara Tekach, State Department coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts, said that while the department is aware of the Human Rights Watch report, the US government “is not aware of any verified allegations of human rights violations at EHC.”

CNN has not independently verified those allegations.

One refugee still stuck at EHC who spoke to CNN described extreme frustration over a seemingly hopeless situation. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns, said he worries about the effect the ordeal is having on his young daughter.

“My daughter, from months ago until now, sometime when she starts talking, I can feel the pain in her voice,” he said.

The man showed CNN what appeared to be documentation that he was recommended for a Special Immigrant Visa by a US contractor with whom he worked in Afghanistan for almost two years. It was unclear whether that documentation is sufficient for what the State Department has required. He told CNN his daughter is growing anxious to leave.

“She says, ‘You have [taken] me somewhere that I cannot see anywhere, I cannot go outside,’” the man said. “She’s asking me every time, frequently, ‘When are we going to get out of here?’”

During the chaotic weeks of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, thousands of American military veterans rushed to help evacuate as many Afghans as possible.

Among them was US Marine veteran Pete Lucier, who worked with a coalition of veterans’ groups known collectively as the #AfghanEvac coalition. Lucier said he is proud of much of the work that veteran and civilian volunteers did in helping Afghans flee the Taliban, which has since reinstated many of the draconian laws it had in place before the US and allied forces invaded after 9/11.

Still, Lucier admitted there have been shortcomings, telling CNN that even well-intentioned veterans’ groups and individuals ended up “sometimes, unfortunately, making things worse for vulnerable and at-risk people.”

Many of the individuals involved in evacuating Afghans had a “lack of familiarity with international law and the requirements of international travel,” Lucier said. “Broadly, I think EHC represents and embodies many of those challenges.”

Dina Haynes, an international human rights lawyer and a professor at New England Law school in Boston, echoed those thoughts, saying that what has happened at EHC is “not a surprise at all to anybody who has paid attention” to the US immigration system.

“The only people that it was a surprise to were those new people that showed up thinking that they could fly people out and land them somewhere and get the US government to help,” Haynes said.

EHC is one of a few locations around the world where evacuated Afghans are still waiting to be processed for visas to the US or elsewhere. There are Afghans in Albania and Pakistan who were relocated there by private groups, as well as Afghans who were evacuated by the US government and are still being processed at Camp As-Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, according to the State Department.

Operated and funded by the UAE government, the EHC compound was first built in Abu Dhabi’s industrial Mussafah area to receive quarantine evacuees stranded in China following the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020. After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, thousands were evacuated to the compound as part of a wider regional humanitarian call to assist.

That was in part due to an agreement made in August 2021 between UAE officials and Joseph Robert III, a former US Marine and son of a wealthy real estate investor with connections in the country.

Robert’s group, the Black Feather Foundation, joined the #AfghanEvac coalition made up of roughly 200 nonprofits in November 2021. Robert told CNN that relationships with UAE officials who were close with his late father helped secure the agreement to bring Afghans to UAE, sealed by a memorandum of understanding, which, according to Robert, stated that the UAE would receive and temporarily house Afghan refugees until they were able to move on to a third country.

The EHC compound was not specifically part of the agreement, Robert told CNN, but was chosen by the UAE because of its capacity.

CNN visited the compound in August 2021, during the first days when Afghans were arriving. Afghans awaiting security and medical screenings were kept in assigned rooms until they were called for processing.

UAE officials and US embassy personnel were present at the main center at EHC, where dozens of Afghan men and women sat awaiting information on their next destination. It was not immediately clear who was processing information from the evacuees.

Robert said he has seen no signs of the alleged abuse taking place at EHC, which, he said, he visits every few weeks. He blames the US for not swiftly processing people out of EHC despite originally taking advantage of the extra hands that brought them there.

“The US government was using us at every turn when it benefited them,” Robert said. “And then when it came time to do the work on the back end, to process them out, they tried to leave us high and dry.”

Before going to Afghanistan in August 2021, Robert said he first flew to the UAE, where he had several meetings with officials about lining up commitments to take in refugees, as well as provide planes. When he finally landed at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on August 20, 2021, things began to change immediately.

“It became just an on-the-fly, ad hoc assistance operation,” Robert said, adding that, suddenly, “our planes were being loaded with just people from the airport that the US would have evacuated.”

Afghan refugees arrived at EHC in three distinct groups. The first two groups were evacuated from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in August 2021 by both the State Department and private groups working independently. The third group of Afghans were brought to EHC over the next two months by private groups, including Robert’s Black Feather Foundation, from Mazar-i-Sharif, a city roughly 260 miles from Kabul.

The EHC resident who spoke to CNN said he was flown out of Mazar-i-Sharif with his family after attempting to get through crowds of people at the Kabul airport during the evacuation in August 2021. Despite concerns about traveling from Kabul, especially with the possibility of running into the Taliban on the way, the resident said he thought it might his best chance “to get myself and my family out of the danger zone.”

Robert told CNN the manifests for those flights were submitted by other organizations either directly to him or through other members of his team. Robert said he then submitted the manifests to the UAE government, which ran them through its own security systems.

It is almost entirely this group of people – those evacuated after August 2021 – that remains stuck at EHC, both the State Department and Robert said. In her responses to CNN, Tekach said the State Department “had limited information” about refugees who came on those separate flights. She also emphasized that that the place where people were evacuated from “is not a determining factor as to whether” they qualify for relocation and resettlement.

Toward the end of October 2021, Robert said it was clear to him that the State Department was “not going to continue processing” any more people brought to the UAE since the evacuation had ended.

“That’s where things with State Department started to unravel,” he said. “They processed only those that came on their aircraft, not even the ones that came on our aircraft alongside theirs during the [noncombatant evacuation]. As one State Department official told me, ‘Not our plane, not our problem.’”

Tekach told CNN that the State Department paused processing in November 2021 “in support of US public health priorities” and began relocating individuals in March 2022.

Still, Lucier told CNN that the US government and State Department likely were not clear enough in their communication about what private organizations could or could not do, leading to much of the confusion and at-times chaotic interference that occurred.

Robert expressed frustration over security concerns the State Department has raised about the Afghans at EHC, saying that for the most part the evacuees are “able to provide everything they needed” in terms of paperwork and documents, including reference letters from US employers while in Afghanistan.

While he acknowledged that there were shortcomings and mistakes made in the broader evacuation effort by private groups, Robert also said that was in part due to a “US government plan that was nonexistent.”

All in all, Robert said volunteers were still able to evacuate “tens of thousands of individuals, despite the US government’s inability to appropriately evacuate them in the first place.”

Asked how many State Department officials have access to EHC and how frequently they are at the compound working to process people out, the State Deaprtment’s Tekach said US officials have access to the compound “for a number of purposes, including gathering information to work on case processing and to support the well-being of the Afghan population at the facility.”

Robert said that over the past six months, an average of three to five State Department personnel have come to EHC twice a week. After early frictions, Robert said his relationship with US government personnel who deal with EHC is “in a much better place now.”

Despite the delays, Robert said they’re slowly making progress in resettling the Afghans still at EHC.

“Having 20,000 people pass through the walls of EHC, and we’re down to the last 2,000 – that’s a rather remarkable effort, although things didn’t go as smoothly as we’d planned or hoped,” he said.

“Even though everyone wants it to be faster, things are moving at a rather steady and consistent pace, and everyone’s still actively doing everything they can to find suitable pathways for people and accommodate families, and find other opportunities if a previous one falls through. Everyone is working tremendously hard to do what is right by these people,” Robert said.

As the US and others work to process Afghans out, Human Rights Watch is still trying to bring attention to their plight.

“They’re still in this facility, which was never designed to hold people for this long,” said Joey Shea, the lead researcher on HRW’s recent report. “And they’ve been effectively imprisoned after an extremely traumatic experience of fleeing a Taliban takeover.”

Shea said the clearest solution is through the US government.

“There just needs to be more resources put by the US government to make sure that these asylum and humanitarian parole and other applications are processed quickly,” she said.

At EHC, the current resident who spoke to CNN described how happy he was to have been evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021. Aside from marrying “the love of my life” and having children, he said that leaving Afghanistan was “the best day of my life.”

“When the plane took off, I couldn’t fit in my own skin because of the happiness that I had,” he said emotionally. “This is a new life that I began to live with my family. I was happy and proud I could do something for my wife, my kids.”

The recommendation letter he received from his US employer says he is “completely trustworthy, intelligent, and a faithful employee” and the “kind of person who will make a valuable contribution and service to the US, if allowed to immigrate.”

But the longer he and his family languish at EHC, he said, the harder it is to explain his work with the US.

“‘What will happen to us? Why are we abandoned by the US?’” he said his wife asks him. “My wife tells me that maybe it was not right that you worked for the US government.”

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April 12, 2021
Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

Birth date: June 14, 1946

Birth place: New York, New York

Birth name: Donald John Trump

Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer

Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump

Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)

Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977

Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968

As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.

He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.

For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.

1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.

1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.

1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.

1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.

1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.

1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.

1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.

1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.

February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.

January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.

November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.

February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.

March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”

July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.

July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.

July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.

September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.

October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.

November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.

November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.

December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.

January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.

January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.

January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.

January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.

February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.

May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.

May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.

May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.

May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.

July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.

August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.

August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.

September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.

September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.

December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.

December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.

January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”

January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.

March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.

March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.

March 23, 2018 – The White House announces that it is adopting a policy, first proposed by Trump via tweet in July 2017, banning most transgender individuals from serving in the military.

April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.

April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.

May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.

May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

May 31, 2018 – The Trump administration announces it is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.

June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.

June 14, 2018 – The New York attorney general sues the Trump Foundation, alleging that the nonprofit run by Trump and his three eldest children violated state and federal charity law.

June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.

July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”

August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.

October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.

December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.

January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”

January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.

February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.

February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.

March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.

March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.

April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.

May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.

June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.

June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.

June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.

June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.

June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.

July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.

July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.

August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.

September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.

September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.

September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.

September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.

September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.

October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.

October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.

October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.

October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.

November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.

November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.

November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.

December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.

December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.

December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.

January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.

January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.

January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.

February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.

May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.

July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.

November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.

November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.

December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.

January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.

January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.

February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.

May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.

June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.

July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.

February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.

May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.

August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.

August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.

September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.

December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.

February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.

March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.

May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

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April 12, 2021
Out of the spotlight, Mark Meadows wields quiet political power amid Trump legal woes | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

In January, as Kevin McCarthy fought to win the House speakership through 15 rounds of grinding votes and late-night sessions at the Capitol, a few blocks away a group of right-wing holdouts huddled with a familiar but surprising source – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

A founding member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, Meadows spent years in the House agitating against GOP leadership, trying to move his party increasingly to the right. Now, Meadows was counseling a new batch of Republican rebels, advising them on specific demands to make and gaming out how McCarthy would react to their maneuvering, according to multiple GOP lawmakers who were part of the planning sessions.

The group was so taken by Meadows, at one point they considered nominating him for speaker. Meadows ultimately rejected the suggestion, telling lawmakers he preferred to operate behind the scenes.

“We talked to him about being speaker. We asked would he mind if we put his name up,” Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the McCarthy holdouts, confirmed to CNN. “That’s not something he thought he could win. His best use is doing what he does now. He can freelance and offer advice.”

Sources tell CNN that in recent weeks Meadows has also been advising right-wing lawmakers on negotiations over the nation’s debt ceiling, where McCarthy’s right-flank may try to stand in the way of any concessions made in a compromise with President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.

The former chief’s hands-on role in both the debt fight and the speaker’s battle – details of which have not been previously reported – underscores how Meadows has managed to stay politically relevant even as he covertly navigates potential criminal exposure for his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Meadows is viewed as a critical first-hand witness to the investigations of both special counsel Jack Smith and Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. He’s been ordered to testify before the grand jury in both investigations, and to provide documents to the special counsel after a judge rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

The special counsel’s criminal investigation into January 6 and Trump’s mishandling of classified documents appear to be barreling toward a conclusion. There’s been a flurry of grand jury activity, as anticipation builds for any sign that Meadows is cooperating.

It is unclear whether Meadows has responded to the special counsel’s requests or appeared in front of that grand jury in Washington. In front of the grand jury in Georgia, Meadows declined to answer questions, one of the grand jurors revealed in February.

While Meadows has faded from the public spotlight, interviews with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers and aides, Trump allies and political activists in Meadows’ home state of North Carolina show how he has quietly worked to shape conservative policy and wield influence with MAGA-aligned lawmakers — even as his relationship with Trump remains fraught.

Meadows has maintained a lucrative perch in the conservative world as a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, the pro-Trump think tank that pays him more than $500,000 and has seen its revenues soar to $45 million since Meadows joined in 2021, according to the group’s tax filings.

Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Meadows’ closest confidants when they served in Congress together, said he still considers Meadows one of his “best friends” and talks to him “at least” once a week. But when it comes to legal matters, Jordan said: “We make a point not to talk about that.”

A spokesman for Meadows declined to make him available for an interview and declined comment for this story.

A source close to Trump’s legal team said Trump’s lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing in the investigation, fueling speculation about whether Meadows is cooperating with the special counsel’s probe – or if Meadows himself is a target of the investigation.

The silence from Meadows has irked lawyers representing other defendants aligned with Trump who have been more open, according to several sources familiar with the Trump-aligned legal teams. In particular, they point to a $900,000 payment Trump’s Save America political action committee paid to the firm representing Meadows, McGuireWoods, at the end of last year.

“We’ve all heard the same rumors,” one Trump adviser told CNN. “No one really knows what he’s doing though.”

The Justice Department decided not to charge Meadows with a crime for refusing to testify before the House January 6 committee. In its final report last year, the January 6 House select committee said that Meadows appeared to be one of several participants in a criminal conspiracy as part of Trump’s attempt to delay and overturn the results of the 2020 election. The report paints Meadows as an integral part of that effort, as documented by the more than 2,000 text messages Meadows turned over to the committee before he stopped cooperating.

Meadows was also the key point of contact for dozens of people trying to get through to the president as the attack was unfolding, and the special counsel’s investigation has been trying to comb over many of those interactions.

A lawyer for Meadows declined to comment.

Despite silence on the legal front, Meadows remains in touch with members of Trump’s inner circle on political matters. He was actively involved in securing Trump’s endorsement in 2021 for now-US Sen. Ted Budd ahead of what was a contentious Republican primary in North Carolina. While less-and-less frequently since Trump left office, Meadows has been known to attend fundraisers and events at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he also helped organize a donor retreat for CPI last year.

“[Meadows] still checks in,” said the Trump adviser, who has spoken to the former chief of staff in recent months. The adviser stressed that Meadows had not indicated any desire to join the Trump campaign team. “He still wants to talk about the politics.”

Allies say Meadows – who fashioned himself as a savvy political operator during his time in Congress and the White House – is motivated by a desire to help steer the direction of the country. But some people who worked closely with him are more skeptical, and think Meadows is driven by a desire for power.

“He is all about getting information so he can be seen as important to donors, other members, the media,” said a senior GOP source close to Trump world, who used to work for a Freedom Caucus member. “People don’t trust him.”

One source close to Meadows suggested that he has not expressed interest in running for office again, but could be open to a job in a future Trump administration – an idea a source close to the former president scoffed at, hinting that Meadows’ direct relationship with the former president had run its course.

“I think he enjoys what he’s doing,” Jordan said of Meadows’ current gig. But the Ohio Republican added: “I’m sure he misses certain aspects of the job as well. You know how involved Mark was.”

After leaving the White House in 2021, Meadows joined CPI, a “MAGA”-centric advocacy group headquartered just blocks from the Capitol that has become a clubhouse for conservative lawmakers, staffers and activists.

Members of the Freedom Caucus hold their weekly meetings at CPI. During the speaker’s race, CPI was home to some consequential strategy sessions involving Meadows.

Sources who attended those meetings say Meadows pushed for concessions like the ability for a single lawmaker to force a vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which McCarthy ultimately agreed to after initially calling it a red line.

Meadows also encouraged them to push for a committee on the “weaponization” of the federal government, which Jordan now helms as chair of the Judiciary Committee.

Five months later, some of those same Republicans say they are once again turning to Meadows as they ramp up for a brawl over the debt limit. Meadows has been encouraging the far-right flank of the House caucus to stick together in insisting on spending cuts and other demands in exchange for lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

“You’re talking about one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus,” Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, said of Meadows.

“He obviously wants it to continue to be successful. I think it has been. And so I think his role at CPI is to make sure that occurs,” Donalds said, adding that he had not personally spoken to Meadows about the debt limit debate.

When Meadows is in town, he will occasionally pop into Freedom Caucus meetings at CPI or huddle with members of the group beforehand. Norman said Meadows also recently helped him with a fundraiser in North Carolina. And Meadows is also known to dial up members frequently to talk shop.

“He called me today and he said that he wanted me to convey to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that he really appreciated her working with me and others on the stock bill,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, a staunch Trump ally, said earlier this month of legislation to restrict lawmakers from trading stocks.

Aside from outreach to lawmakers, Meadows and CPI have also helped congressional offices find and train conservative staffers, particularly when it comes to conducting oversight, multiple sources familiar with the group’s work told CNN. That issue has been a top priority for the right now that Republicans are in the majority, and it’s also an area of expertise for Meadows, who was previously the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee.

“Mark’s in the middle of all that,” Jordan said.

Meadows has helped usher in a groundswell of fundraising for CPI over the past two years and has been personally involved in a lot of the organizing fundraisers and courting donors, according to sources familiar with the matter.

According to the non-profit’s tax filings, CPI’s revenues jumped from $7 million in 2020 to more than $45 million in 2021, the year Meadows was brought in as a senior partner to help run the organization with former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who founded CPI in 2017. DeMint was previously ousted from the Heritage Foundation amid tensions with the board.

Among the donations to CPI: $1 million from Trump’s Save America PAC in 2021.

Sources familiar with CPI described Meadows as the working head of the advocacy group, which has spent millions of dollars purchasing several buildings just steps from the Capitol over the past two years. The goal, sources say, is to create a community for Trump-aligned “MAGA” conservatives.

“[CPI] wants Trump conservatives to have a home in Washington,” one source familiar with the organization said, adding that the buildings would be used for a variety of purposes, including for retreats and staff trainings. “Establishment Democrats and the Mitch McConnells have that and it keeps them here. [CPI] wants to keep [Trump Republicans] here.”

The buildings, purchased under limited liability corporations affiliated with CPI, are just down the street from the group’s current headquarters, blocks from the Capitol. Among the new real estate acquisitions, which were first reported by Grid News, are two storefronts on Pennsylvania Avenue surrounding a Heritage Foundation office, including the space of the old Capitol Lounge bar popular with congressional staffers of both parties.

There’s even a television studio at CPI so members can do cable TV interviews from the space – Jordan recently did an interview with Fox News from the studio, where he talked about Republican-led investigations into the Biden administration.

“There’s a real demand for what (CPI) provides to members. A lot of members like to go over there. I just wish I could get over there more,” said Donalds.

CPI did not respond to requests for comment.

Yet even as Meadows maintains close connections in Washington through his perch at CPI, the same can’t be said when it comes to the congressional district he once represented.

In North Carolina’s 11th district, conservative political activists say the once-beloved local congressman has lost his luster and made enemies after he waded into both the primary to replace him and the contentious 2022 Republican Senate primary, where Budd defeated former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker.

“I used to joke it was Jesus and then Mark Meadows in the 11th. He was just a couple rungs below Jesus in western North Carolina. He would arrive and it was like Elvis,” said one Republican activist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the political environment there. “Now I think he’s just kind of a non-factor if you were to talk to anyone in western North Carolina.”

Meadows has also decamped from his former congressional district to a home in South Carolina, where he splits his time along with his work in Washington, DC, according to sources.

After the 2020 election, Meadows got into hot water over his voter registration in North Carolina. The state investigated Meadows over registering to vote at a mobile home in Macon County where he had allegedly never lived or even visited, though the state’s Justice Department said in December there wasn’t sufficient evidence to pursue charges.

Meadows is now registered to vote in South Carolina, a county election official confirmed to CNN.

“He disconnected his 828 (area code) number,” the activist said. “Lots of us who had Mark Meadows on speed dial, that was just cut off, boom.”

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April 12, 2021
Exclusive: Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks, sources say | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Ukraine has cultivated a network of agents and sympathizers inside Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets and has begun providing them with drones to stage attacks, multiple people familiar with US intelligence on the matter told CNN.

US officials believe these pro-Ukrainian agents inside Russia carried out a drone attack that targeted the Kremlin in early May by launching drones from within Russia rather than flying them from Ukraine into Moscow.

It is not clear whether other drone attacks carried out in recent days – including one targeting a residential neighborhood near Moscow and another strike on oil refineries in southern Russia – were also launched from inside Russia or conducted by this network of pro-Ukrainian operatives.

But US officials believe that Ukraine has developed sabotage cells inside Russia made up of a mix of pro-Ukrainian sympathizers and operatives well-trained in this kind of warfare. Ukraine is believed to have provided them with Ukrainian-made drones, and two US officials told CNN there is no evidence that any of the drone strikes have been conducted using US-provided drones.

Officials could not say conclusively how Ukraine has managed to get the drones behind enemy lines, but two of the sources told CNN that it has established well-practiced smuggling routes that could be used to send drones or drone components into Russia where they could then be assembled.

A European intelligence official noted that the Russian-Ukrainian border is vast and very difficult to control, making it ripe for smuggling – something the official said the Ukrainians have been doing for the better part of the decade that they’ve been at war with pro-Russian forces.

“You also have to consider that this is a peripheral area of Russia,” the official said. “Survival is everyone’s problem, so cash works wonders.”

Who exactly is controlling these assets is also murky, the sources told CNN, though US officials believe that elements within Ukraine’s intelligence community are involved. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has set general parameters for what his intelligence and security services are allowed to do, two of the sources said, but not every operation requires his sign-off.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the head of the Ukrainian Security Service suggested to CNN that the mysterious explosions and drone strikes inside Russia would continue.

“We will comment on instances of ‘cotton’ only after our victory,” he said. Quoting the head of the Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk, the spokesperson added that regardless, “‘cotton’ has been burning, is burning, and will continue burning.”

“Cotton” is a slang-word that Ukrainians use to mean explosions, usually in Russia or Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. Its origins date back to the early weeks of the war and stem from the fact that the Russian word for a “pop” is very similar to the Ukrainian word for cotton.

There has been a steady drumbeat of mysterious fires and explosions inside Russia over the last year, targeting oil and fuel depots, railways, military enlistment offices, warehouses and pipelines. But officials have noticed an uptick in these attacks on Russian soil in recent weeks, beginning with the attack on the Kremlin building. It appears to be “a culmination of months of effort” by the Ukrainians to set up the infrastructure for such sabotage, said one of the sources familiar with the intelligence.

“There has been for months now a pretty consistent push by some in Ukraine to be more aggressive,” this person said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of US intelligence. “And there has certainly been some willingness at senior levels. The challenge has always been their ability to do it.”

Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, has consistently proposed some of the most brazen plans for operations against Russia and values symbolic acts, US officials told CNN.

Classified Pentagon documents leaked online earlier this year revealed that the CIA urged Budanov to “postpone” attacks on Russia on the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, according to the Washington Post. Budanov agreed to the CIA’s request, the classified documents reportedly said. But drones were spotted near Moscow on February 28, just days after the one-year anniversary of the war.

Another leaked US intelligence report obtained by CNN, which is sourced to signals intelligence, says that Zelensky in late February “suggested striking Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using drones, since Ukraine does not have long-range weapons capable of reaching that far.

It is not clear whether that plan moved forward, but oil facilities in Rostov Oblast have caught on fire after being hit by suspected drones several times over the last year – attacks Russia is now investigating and has blamed on “criminal actions by the Armed formations of Ukraine.”

“All I will comment on is that we’ve been killing Russians,” Budanov told Yahoo News last month when asked about the car bomb attack that killed the daughter of a prominent Russian political figure in Moscow’s suburbs last year. The US intelligence community assessed that that operation was authorized by elements within the Ukrainian government.

“And we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine,” Budanov added.

Publicly, senior US officials have condemned the strikes inside Russia, warning of the potential for an escalation of the war. But speaking privately to CNN, US and western officials said that they believe the cross-border attacks are a smart military strategy that could divert Russian resources to protecting its own territory, as Ukraine gears up for a major counteroffensive.

On Tuesday, the UK’s Foreign Secretary told reporters that Ukraine has “the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself. Legitimate military targets beyond its own borders are internationally recognized as being part of a nation’s self-defense…We should recognize that.”

French Vice Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, chief of operations of the Joint Staff, told CNN on Friday that the attacks inside Russia are merely “part of war” and offer an opportunity to send a message to Russia’s population.

“There is a war there and it could concern you [the Russian public] in the future,” Vaujour said of the attacks. “And so it’s a good way for Ukrainians to address a message not only to Vladimir Putin, but to the Russian population,” he added.

Regarding the attacks, he said that it wasn’t “forbidden” for Ukraine to think about that.

Ukrainian officials, moreover, have said privately that they plan to continue the attacks inside Russia because it is a good distraction tactic that is forcing Russia to be concerned with its own security at home, according to a US source who has spoken to Ukrainian officials in recent days.

In an intelligence update, the UK Ministry of Defense said that attacks by pro-Ukrainian partisan groups and drone strikes in the border region of Belgorod have forced Russia to deploy “the full range of military firepower on its own territory.”

“Russian commanders now face an acute dilemma,” the update said, “of whether to strength defences in Russia’s border regions or reinforce their lines in occupied Ukraine.”

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April 12, 2021
Iowa Supreme Court deadlocks on 6-week abortion ban and leaves block in place | CNN Politics

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Abortion will remain legal in Iowa for up to 20 weeks after the state Supreme Court on Friday declined to lift a block on a six-week ban.

In a 3-3 decision, the state’s high court could not reach a consensus on whether it should overturn a lower court decision to strike down Iowa’s restrictive “fetal heartbeat” law, which was passed in 2018. The law sought to prevent doctors from performing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Calling the case “extraordinary,” Justice Thomas D. Waterman explained in an order that lifting the block would be akin to bypassing the state legislature.

“When the statute was enacted in 2018, it had no chance of taking effect,” Waterman wrote, noting that its supporters anticipated a legal challenge at a time when federal protections for abortion rights remained in effect. “To put it politely, the legislature was enacting a hypothetical law. Today, such a statute might take effect given the change in the constitutional law landscape. But uncertainty exists about whether a fetal heartbeat bill would be passed today. To begin, a different general assembly is in place than was in place in 2018, with significant turnover of membership in the intervening three election cycles.”

Ruth Richardson, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, called the ruling an “enormous win” that “means that Iowans will be able to control their bodies and their futures.”

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said her office was reviewing legal options.

“To say that today’s lack of action by the Iowa Supreme Court is a disappointment is an understatement,” Reynolds said in a statement. “Not only does it disregard Iowa voters who elected representatives willing to stand up for the rights of unborn children, but it has sided with a single judge in a single county who struck down Iowa’s legislation based on principles that now have been flat-out rejected by the US Supreme Court.”

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April 12, 2021
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says justices are ‘destroying the legitimacy’ of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Sunday that some Supreme Court justices are “destroying the legitimacy of the court,” amid a lack of oversight, calling it “profoundly dangerous” for democracy.

“We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power, and the Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

The progressive lawmaker cited recent allegations against Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas over ethics improprieties. Her comments come as the court wrapped up its term with a slew of consequential rulings, including ending affirmative action for college admissions, clocking student loan debt relief and limiting LGBTQ protections.

Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf, ProPublica reported. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it published last month.

Thomas, meanwhile, has fielded sharp criticism after a separate ProPublica report detailed his relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, including luxury travel and other lavish gifts that Thomas received from Crow, as well as Crow’s purchase from Thomas and his family the home where the justice’s mother still lives.

The real estate transaction and the bulk of the hospitality went unreported on Thomas’ annual financial disclosures, as did Crow’s reported payments for the tuition of a grandnephew of the justice.

Thomas has defended the omission of the Crow-financed travel from his reports, saying he was advised at the time that he was not required to report the hospitality.

“If Chief Justice Roberts will not come before the Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe we should be considering subpoenas, we should be considering investigations, we should pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, previously said his committee would mark up legislation on Supreme Court ethics after lawmakers return from their July 4 recess. Durbin had also asked Chief Justice John Roberts to appear before the Judiciary panel – a request that Roberts declined in April.

Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday also called on the Biden administration to keep pursuing student loan cancellation after the Supreme Court blocked the president’s student loan forgiveness plan Friday, rejecting a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers.

“People should not be incurring interest during this 12-month on-ramp period,” she said, referring to the administration’s proposal to help borrowers avoid penalties if they miss a payment during the first 12 months after student loan repayments resume in October.

“So, I highly urge the administration to consider suspending those interest payments. Of course, we still believe in pursuing student loan cancellation and acting faster than that 12-month period wherever possible.”

“We truly believe that the president – Congress has given the president this authority. The Supreme Court is far overreaching their authority. And I believe, frankly, that we really need to be having conversations about judicial review as a check on the courts as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

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April 12, 2021
Pentagon seeks to increase pressure on Tuberville to break hold on military nominations | CNN Politics

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The Pentagon is seeking to increase pressure on Sen. Tommy Tuberville in an attempt to break the Alabama Republican’s one-man hold on hundreds of senior military nominations.

The effort includes back-channel conversations with Congress and members of the key oversight committees, but also a public campaign to increase awareness of the effects of the holds on the military and its families.

“Hill leadership knows this is a problem,” a Defense official told CNN.

As of July 7, Tuberville’s hold was impacting 265 senior military officers. An internal assessment put together by the Pentagon and obtained by CNN says the holds affect the families of 84 officers awaiting confirmation, including officers who have paid out of pocket to move their families, military spouses who have left their jobs anticipating new assignments, and children unable to enroll in new schools.

The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, Sabrina Singh, highlighted several of these examples at a press briefing Monday.

“This is having an incredible impact not just to our general and flag officers but to our families,” Singh said, “and we certainly urge Senator Tuberville to lift these holds.”

The assessment has been shared with lawmakers and is expected to be updated weekly as the number of holds grows. By the end of the year, Defense officials expect more than 600 senior officers to be up for nomination, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other top military leaders.

Publicizing the assessment and the effects the holds have on military families is a way of generating awareness of the blocked nominations, the defense official said, and the military services are compiling the increasing the numbers.

“We obviously keep up the pressure, because we don’t want anyone to forget about it,” the Defense official said.

Speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday, Tuberville insisted he is not blocking confirmations and that the Senate had plenty of time to take up the nominees.

“I’m just stopping them from confirming hundreds at a time,” Tuberville said. “They can confirm as many as they want, during the day. We’re just sitting around, twiddling our thumbs most of the time during the week and should be confirming people.”

Though Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has only spoken once with Tuberville, the senator said, the Pentagon’s legislative affairs team has been in regular contact with the Hill and the Senate Armed Services Committee, where the nominations are stalled. Tuberville has not backed down from maintaining his block on nominations as he protests the Defense Department’s reproductive health policies, claiming there is no impact on national security and no risk to US military readiness.

“I’m not gonna change my approach,” Tuberville said Monday.

Instead, Defense officials are trying to get Republican senators to put pressure on Tuberville to lift his holds. Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that “We need these officers in place.” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, has said in the past that Tuberville’s hold “is not the best way to go about it.”

But the criticism has done little to shift Tuberville’s position.

The hold disrupts what is typically a routine process of confirming hundreds of military nominations at once known as unanimous consent. With Tuberville’s hold in place, the Senate would need to take each nomination to the floor for an individual vote, which could take months and hundreds of hours of floor time to complete. 

“It’s a Senate question, and it’s really a Republican question,” the Defense official told CNN.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown, whose nomination to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on hold, was asked about the effects of the holds repeatedly in his confirmation hearing Tuesday. Brown spoke about the impacts on military readiness and retention, as well as the cascading effects on junior officers who can’t get promoted because of a blocked spot.

“The area that hits us, I think that we do need to think about is how it impacts our families, because it has an impact not just for the senior officer, but you know, all their staff and all those below them it has an impact,” Brown said in response to a question from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

On Monday, Austin reiterated those concerns at the relinquishment of command ceremony for Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps Commandant. Berger’s nominated successor, Gen. Eric Smith, has not yet been confirmed alongside the more than 200 other military officers stalled in Tuberville’s hold. 

Austin said Monday that smooth transitions of leadership “are central to the defense of the United States,” and crucial “for our military readiness” and “our military families.” 

“[O]ur military families give up so much to support those who serve. So they shouldn’t be weighed down with any extra uncertainty,” Austin said. “We have a sacred duty to do right by those who volunteer to wear the cloth of our nation. And I remain confident that all Americans can come together to agree on that basic obligation to those who keep us safe. I am also confident that the United States Senate will meet its responsibilities.” 

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April 12, 2021
DOJ says it’s assessing the situation along the Texas-Mexico border amid ‘troubling reports’ over migrant treatment | CNN Politics

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The Justice Department is assessing the situation along the Texas-Mexico border following reports that Texas troopers were told to push back migrants into the Rio Grande and ordered not to give them water, calling those reports “troubling” in a statement to CNN.

The Justice Department’s statement is the first public acknowledgment that the department is assessing the situation but falls short of opening an investigation. An assessment could be the first step toward an investigation.

“The department is aware of the troubling reports, and we are working with DHS and other relevant agencies to assess the situation,” DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa told CNN.

In a Tuesday joint statement with other Texas top officials, including Department of Public Safety Chief Steve McCraw, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said there have been no orders or directions given under Operation Lone Star that “would compromise the lives of those attempting to cross the border illegally.”

The Biden administration has repeatedly criticized Abbott’s actions along the US southern border and his decision to transport migrants to Democratic-led cities without coordination. CNN previously reported that the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department were in ongoing discussions about what actions could be taken against the state.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday called Abbott’s recent actions at the border a “political stunt” and “shameful” when asked about concerns from the Mexican government over the state’s floating barriers.

“I saw these reports and I think one of the things and I’ve been very clear about this that this governor has done over and over again is treated this situation we’re seeing at the border in an inhumane way. It is atrocious – the actions that he decides to take. … Instead of dealing with this issue in a way that we can get to a resolution and are working together, he turns it into a political stunt,” Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.

“This is not surprising. Just yesterday I was asked about abandoned children – or migrant children – not offering them water. This is what we see over and over and over again from this Texas governor, from Gov. Abbott and it is – all we’re asking for – as a country and what we should hold near and dear is the basic human decency. Basic human decency and we are just not seeing this from this governor.”

Jean-Pierre said she would not speak to the “legal piece” of the situation, adding she would refer any legal action to the Department of Justice.

Internal discussions about legal action against Texas date back to last year, when Abbott began sending migrants to cities nationwide without alerting them and have continued with the deployment of buoys in the Rio Grande, which pose a potential drowning risk to migrants and now, concern over the treatment of migrants.

Texas is already facing a lawsuit against its installation of a marine floating barrier. The owner of a Texas canoe and kayaking company filed the lawsuit earlier this month on the same day that Texas started deploying buoys for the barrier in an attempt to deter migrant crossings on the river along the US-Mexico border.

That suit lists the state of Texas and Abbott, as well as the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard.

It’s unclear whether the administration will take legal action against Texas, and officials have stressed that border agents have historically worked closely with Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

But it wouldn’t mark the first time the Justice Department has sued on border-related matters. Last year, the Justice Department sued Arizona for placing shipping containers along the US southern border – a move taken by then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey as an affront to Biden’s immigration policies. Arizona eventually agreed to remove the containers.

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April 12, 2021
Hunter Biden hearing ends after judge is not ready to accept revised plea deal | CNN Politics

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Wilmington, Delaware
CNN
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A plea deal between President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department is on hold after a dramatic court hearing Wednesday.

Hunter Biden failed to pay between $1.1 million and $1.5 million in federal taxes before the legal deadlines and was poised to plead guilty to two tax charges with prosecutors agreeing to recommend a sentence of probation.

But before the original plea could be entered, the deal began to unravel and a revised agreement reached during the hearing was not accepted by the judge.

“I cannot accept the plea agreement today, said District Judge Maryellen Noreika.

Noreika said she had “concerns” about the parties seemingly linking the tax plea agreement to resolving a felony gun charge. During the proceedings, prosecutors confirmed that the investigation into Biden was ongoing.

After negotiations, the president’s son then agreed to plead guilty to the two tax charges in a deal that only includes conduct related to tax offenses, drug use and gun possession. The two sides agreed that this deal does not shield him from potential future charges. But the judge wasn’t satisfied.

“What if it is unconstitutional?” she asked. “I’m trying to exercise due deliverance and consideration to make sure we don’t make a misstep.”

After the discussion, Hunter Biden entered a not guilty plea.

Noreika – a Donald Trump appointee who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate – presided over Wednesday’s hearing and has the sole authority to decide Hunter Biden’s ultimate punishment.

While the investigation was ongoing, Hunter Biden fully paid his federal tax bill, along with interest and penalties, his lawyers have previously said.

The Trump-era Justice Department started investigating Hunter Biden in 2018, and the probe steadily expanded to examine whether he violated money laundering and foreign lobbying laws with his multimillion-dollar overseas business dealings. Federal investigators also looked into Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes and lavish spending, which came amid a struggle with addiction.

US attorney David Weiss has led the investigation. He was appointed by Trump, and Joe Biden kept him at his post so he could continue handling the probe. There is no public indication that Joe Biden or the White House ever tried to intervene in the probe.

A bizarre legal clash between a top Republican lawmaker and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, which erupted on the eve of his court appearance, did not come up at Wednesday’s hearing.

The dispute revolves around whether a member of Hunter Biden’s legal team lied to the court about her identity so they would remove a Tuesday filing from GOP Rep. Jason Smith, the House Ways and Means Committee chair, about alleged political interference in the probe.

In a late twist, the judge threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s lawyers over the matter. They denied the claims and called the incident an “unintentional miscommunication” by court staff.

Hanging over the plea hearing are recent claims from two IRS whistleblowers who helped lead the investigation that the Justice Department gave preferential treatment to Hunter Biden beginning when Trump was president in 2020.

Their claims dovetail with the GOP-fueled narrative that Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal,” even though it’s fairly common for first-time offenders to avoid incarceration in a misdemeanor-only case.

The career IRS agents told Congress that Justice Department officials undercut their attempts to further scrutinize Biden family members, slow-walked requests for subpoenas and search warrants and blocked Weiss from filing the felony tax evasion charges that they had recommended.

The relevant parties – including Weiss, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other senior Justice Department officials – have publicly refuted the whistleblowers’ claims of politicization.

In letters to Congress, Weiss has maintained that he has “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.” And earlier this week, he offered to testify at a public House Oversight Committee hearing, likely sometime this fall.

House Republicans have zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s finances as part of their broader oversight probes into the Biden family. They are seeking testimony from Weiss about the criminal probe, and the House GOP’s right-wing flank is already clamoring for a possible Garland impeachment.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers called the IRS whistleblowers “disgruntled agents” with “an axe to grind.”

They’ve also said their client is pleading guilty because he believes “it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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April 12, 2021
Donald Trump has been indicted following an investigation into a hush money payment scheme. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

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Former President Donald Trump’s indictment by a New York grand jury has thrust the nation into uncharted political, legal and historical waters, and raised a slew of questions about how the criminal case will unfold.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election.

Though the indictment – which has been filed under seal – has yet to be unveiled, Trump and his allies have already torn into Bragg and the grand jury’s decision, blasting it as “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

Here’s what we know about Trump’s indictment so far.

Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment, CNN has reported. It remains under seal.

The investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair.

A target in the probe has been the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization’s reimbursement to Cohen.

According to court filings when Cohen faced federal criminal charges, Trump Org. executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original $130,000 payment and tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus. The company noted the reimbursements as a legal expense in its internal books. Trump has denied knowledge of the payment.

Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Ahead of the indictment, prosecutors were weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how it reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Cohen, who said he advanced the money to Daniels. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York.

Prosecutors were also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony and carries a sentence of a minimum of one year and as much as four years. To prove the case, prosecutors would need to show Trump intended to commit a crime.

Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. While the former president was bracing for an indictment last week, he began to believe news reports that a potential indictment was weeks – or more – away.

The former president has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the matter and continued his attacks on Bragg and other Democrats following news of the indictment.

“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” the former president said in a statement Thursday. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The former president had first been asked to surrender Friday in New York, his lawyer said, but his defense said more time was needed and he’s expected in court on Tuesday.

As for the former president’s initial court appearance, it’ll look, in some ways, like that of any other defendant, and in others, look very different.

First appearances are usually public proceedings. If an arrest of a defendant is not needed, arrangements are made with them or their lawyers for a voluntary surrender to law enforcement. With their first appearance in court, defendants are usually booked and finger-printed. And if a first appearance is also an arraignment, a plea is expected to be entered.

Trump will have to go through certain processes that any other defendant must go through when a charge has been brought against him. But Trump’s status as a former president who is currently running for the White House again will undoubtedly inject additional security and practical concerns around the next steps in his case.

Yes. This is the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

That alone makes it historic. But Trump is currently a few months into his third White House bid, and his criminal case jolts the 2024 presidential campaign into a new phase, as the former president has vowed to keep running in the face of criminal charges.

That’s one of many big questions here. So far, a number of congressional Republicans have rallied to Trump’s defense, attacking Bragg on Twitter and accusing the district attorney of a political witch hunt.

“Outrageous,” tweeted House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican committee chairmen who has demanded Bragg testify before Congress about the Trump investigation.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called the indictment “completely unprecedented” and said it is “a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”

And as part of the response to the indictment, Trump and his team will be rolling out surrogates beginning to hit Democrats, the investigation and Bragg across various forms of media as they work to shape the public narrative, according to sources close to Trump.

Yes.

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April 12, 2021
Inside the furious week-long scramble to hunt down a massive Pentagon leak | CNN Politics

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Jack Teixeira, wearing a green t-shirt and bright red gym shorts with his hands above his head, walked slowly backward toward the armed federal agents outside his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, who took him into custody on charges of leaking classified documents.

The carefully choreographed arrest of the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman stood in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s scramble one week earlier to deal with the fallout from the revelation that highly classified documents had been sitting publicly on the internet for weeks.

Those leaked documents, which appeared to catch the Biden administration flat-footed, disclosed a blunt US intelligence assessment of the war in Ukraine, as well as details revealing US intelligence collection on allies.

The Biden administration raced to determine the identity of the leaker who had posted pictures of folded-up documents online, to understand the full scope of what had been leaked and to soothe allies who were varying degrees of angry that their secrets had spilled out for the world to see.

While the suspected leaker has been arrested, the administration’s damage assessment is still ongoing. It remains unclear whether the full extent of the impact of the leaks is known, as details from additional classified documents continued to be published throughout the week – even on Friday morning, the day after his arrest.

Inside the Pentagon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was “pissed” at the leak and “deeply concerned” about its national security implications, a US official told CNN. The Defense Department has been holding daily meetings on the leak since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was first briefed last Thursday.

The episode represents the most egregious disclosure of classified documents in years. The leaked documents have exposed what officials say are lingering vulnerabilities in the management of government secrets, even after agencies overhauled their computer systems following the 2013 Edward Snowden leak, which revealed the scope of the National Security Agency’s intelligence gathering apparatus.

It is unlikely, however, that those safeguards would have prevented the most recent leak, sources said. “All classified systems have multiple levels of risk controls, but a determined insider will find the weak points over time,” said a former US official.

The Pentagon has already taken steps to clamp down on who can access sensitive classified material, while Austin has ordered a review over access to classified documents. And Congress is vowing to investigate exactly what happened and why the US intelligence community failed to discover its secrets were sitting on a public internet forum for weeks.

In a statement acknowledging the extent of the problem that the leaks exposed, President Joe Biden said Friday that he had directed both the military and intelligence community to “take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information.”

“This is a breakdown,” Chris Krebs, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, told CNN. “There’s no question that there will be a lot of introspection inside the intelligence community and across the government of where were those breakdowns? How do we ensure that we tighten that system of military discipline that that was referred to earlier to ensure that these things do not happen?”

According to charging documents unsealed on Friday, Teixeira allegedly began posting classified information on the Discord server in December 2022.

Teixeira is believed to be the head of obscure invite-only Discord chatroom called “Thug Shaker Central,” multiple US officials told CNN, where information from the classified documents was first posted.

One of the users on the Discord server told FBI investigators that Teixeira began posting photographs of documents that appeared to be classified in January 2023, according to the affidavit unsealed Friday after Teixeira was arraigned.

Investigators wrote in the affidavit that at least one of the documents that described the status of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, was classified at the TS-SCI level, meaning it contains top-secret, sensitive compartmentalized information.

“The Government Document is based on sensitive U.S. intelligence, gathered through classified sources and methods, and contains national defense information,” the affidavit states.

Teixeira, an airman first class stationed at Otis Air National Guard Base, was assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing, which is a “24/7 operational mission” that takes in intelligence from various sources and packages it into a product for some of the most senior military leaders around the globe, a defense official said.

His job was not to be the one packaging the intelligence for those senior commanders, but rather to work on the network on which that highly classified intelligence lived. For that purpose, the official said Teixeira would be required to have a TS/SCI clearance, in the instance that he was exposed to that level of intelligence.

“It’s not like your regular IT guy where you call a help desk and they come fix your computer,” the official said. “They’re working on a very highly classified system, so they require that clearance.”

CNN has reviewed 53 documents that were posted on social media sites, which include US intelligence assessments of Ukrainian and Russian forces, as well as details about other countries providing weapons to Ukraine and other intelligence matters. The Washington Post has reported on an additional tranche of documents from the server.

The photos showed crumpled documents laid on top of magazines and surrounded by other random objects, such as zip-close bags and Gorilla Glue, suggesting they had been hastily folded up and shoved into a pocket before being removed from a secure location.

A Discord user told investigators that Teixeira had become concerned “he may be discovered making the transcriptions of text in the workplace, so he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” according to the affidavit.

Four Discord users active in a different Discord chatroom where the documents later appeared told CNN they began circulating on Thug Shaker. Another user who was in the Thug Shaker chatroom told CNN they saw the original posts of classified documents but declined to speak further about them.

While the documents were being shared on Discord, there’s no indication that the US intelligence community was aware they were on the internet. Discord servers are typically small, private online communities that require an invitation to join.

On April 6, The New York Times first reported on the leaked documents and the Pentagon having launched an investigation into who may have been behind the leak.

The investigation into finding the leaker quickly moved into the hands of the Justice Department, while the Pentagon investigation focused on a damage assessment of the leaks themselves.

But the number of leaked documents continued to grow in the hours and days that followed the initial disclosure, revealing new intelligence assessments on everything from South Korea’s hesitance to provide the US weapons that might be sent to Ukraine to intelligence suggesting Egypt planned to supply rockets to Russia.

US diplomats were forced to deal with the fallout. Seoul said it would hold “necessary discussions with the US” following the leak.

The documents that were leaked appear to be part of a daily intelligence briefing deck prepared for the Pentagon’s senior leaders, including Milley, the top US military general. On any given day, the slides in that deck can be properly accessed by hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the government, officials said.

Last Friday’s announcement of a Justice Department investigation underscored just how high a priority the leak was considered.

By Monday, FBI agents from Washington to California to Boston were combing through evidence, conducting interviews and tracking volumes of computer data that within days pointed to Teixeira. They worked with Army CID investigators experienced in classified document probes.

Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent, said that the “first few hours are critical” in a case like the Discord leaks as investigators rush to preserve digital evidence before it becomes harder to find online or vanishes altogether.

FBI agents likely worked backward from the initial Discord posts to build a profile of the leaker, combing through his other online accounts to “put a human behind a keyboard,” Ferrante, who is now global head of cybersecurity at FTI Consulting, told CNN.

Even though Teixeira emerged quickly as the most obvious suspect, counterintelligence agents trained in uncovering foreign spies looked through Teixeira’s background to try to find any sign that he could be working with a foreign intelligence service.

The FBI agents’ work was made more urgent because the trove of documents had set off a media frenzy and reporters found ready interviews among members of Teixeira’s Internet social circle.

On Monday, the FBI interviewed a user of the Discord chatroom where the classified information had been posted, according to the affidavit. That person told investigators that a user who went by “Jack” and said he was in the Air National Guard was the server’s administrator.

A day earlier, the investigative news outlet Bellingcat posted an interview with a member of that same chatroom.

On Wednesday, a day before Teixeira’s arrest, the FBI obtained records from Discord that included the subscriber information of the server’s administrator, which had Teixeira’s name and address, according to the affidavit.

By day 5 of the FBI’s search, agents believed they had enough to charge Teixeira, and they began surveilling him.

In a different scenario, without the intense public attention, agents might have watched him for weeks to see if he was meeting anyone suspicious or if he had accomplices.

Instead, they moved to make an arrest Thursday, as news helicopters flew above.

Teixeira was charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials. He will next appear on Wednesday in federal court in Massachusetts.

For the Biden administration, the episode has already prompted the Pentagon to begin to limit who across the government receives its highly classified daily intelligence briefs, amid lingering questions over why a 21-year-old junior Air National Guardsman had access to such classified information – and why it wasn’t discovered more quickly.

Austin and Milley spent time on the phone speaking with US allies and partners around the world regarding the sensitive intelligence and top-secret documents suddenly thrust into the public sphere. Those conversations were expected to continue through the end of the week, another US official said.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was tapped to lead the diplomatic response to the leaked US intelligence documents, according to a US official familiar with the matter.

Biden was continually briefed on the state of the investigation while abroad, as well as the efforts of his top officials to engage with allies over the leaked information, officials said. Behind the scenes, that effort was a reality that loomed over a deeply personal and important foreign trip for Biden, one official acknowledged. 

Still, the leaks didn’t arise when Biden met Wednesday with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Five Eyes intelligence sharing ally.

Biden publicly downplayed the significance of the leak when he made his first comments on the matter. “I’m concerned that it happened, but there is nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence,” Biden told reporters Thursday.

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April 12, 2021
Chief Justice John Roberts will not testify before Congress about Supreme Court ethics | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Chief Justice John Roberts has notified Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin that he won’t testify at an upcoming hearing on Supreme Court ethics, instead releasing a new statement signed by all nine justices that is meant to provide “clarity” to the public about the high court’s ethics practices.

“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” Roberts wrote in a letter to Durbin, which was released by a spokesperson for the high court Tuesday.

“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” he added.

Without addressing Durbin’s specific concerns over ethics Roberts simply attached a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” to which he said, “All of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”

The Illinois Democrat had asked Roberts, in a letter, to voluntarily testify in a hearing on Supreme Court ethics set to take place May 2. The request came in the wake of a ProPublica report that found that Justice Clarence Thomas had gone on several luxury trips at the invitation of a GOP megadonor. The trips were not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings.

Thomas said in a statement that he had not reported the trips because the ethics guidelines in effect at the time had not required such disclosures.

It was widely expected that Roberts would decline Durbin’s invitation to appear before a separate branch of government to discuss ethics reform.

Durbin responded to the refusal in a statement Tuesday.

“Make no mistake: Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the Court participates in the process or not,” Durbin said in the statement.

He also noted that he was surprised that the chief justice had amended his letter with a statement meant to provide “clarity” to the public about how the justices consider ethics issues.

Durbin dismissed the statement as a “recounting of existing legal standards of ethics” and said that Roberts’ suggestion that current law is adequate “ignores the obvious.”

“It is time for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it,” Durbin said.

The new statement, signed by all nine members of the court, says that the justices want to provide “new clarity” to the public. It might serve instead, to infuriate critics of the court who will say it falls far short of what is necessary to provide more binding regulations applicable to the justices.

Less than an hour after the court released the statement, for example, Gabe Roth, who runs watchdog group Fix the Court, blasted what he called a “rehashing of things we already knew and found insufficient.”

“Following weeks of scandal, Americans had been seeking some reassurance that nine of the most powerful people in the country understood their responsibility to act above board, avoid corrupting influences and be honest in their dealings and disclosures,” Roth said in a statement.

The newly drafted statement by the court notes that the justices “today reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe in carrying out their responsibilities as Members of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The statement reiterates something that Roberts has stressed before: that the justices “consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues.”

“They may turn to judicial opinions, treatises, scholarly articles, disciplinary decisions, and the historical practice of the Court and the federal judiciary” and they “may also seek advice from the Court’s Legal Office and from their colleagues,” the statement says.

Indeed, Thomas in a rare statement on April 7 said that he had turned to the advice of his colleagues when deciding that luxury trips paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow did not need to be disclosed in his yearly financial disclosure reports under the ethics guidelines that were in place at the time.

Last weekend, Durbin released a separate statement noting that Roberts had declined to directly respond to a letter asking him to investigate Thomas’ filings but had referred the letter to the Judicial Conference, which serves as the policy-making body of the federal courts.

Durbin had also included a letter from Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, the secretary of the Judicial Conference, who said that she would send the matter to the conference’s Committee on Financial Disclosure.

But the new statement emphasizes that while the Judicial Conference has a code of conduct that is followed by lower court judges, the conference “does not supervise the Supreme Court.”

The statement does note that in 1991, members of the court “voluntarily adopted” a resolution to follow the financial disclosure requirements and limitations on gifts that apply to all other federal judges.

But when it comes to recusals, the standards are necessarily more restrictive because unlike the lower courts that can freely substitute one district or circuit court judge for the other, the Supreme Court allows only its own members to hear a dispute.

The statement explains why individual justices “rather than the Court” must decide recusal issues.

“If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual Justices, it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its Members may participate,” it says.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024 | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Opportunity is ripe for Republicans to win back the Senate next year – if they can land the candidates to pull it off.

The GOP needs a net gain of one or two seats to flip the chamber, depending on which party wins the White House in 2024, and it’s Democrats who are defending the tougher seats. Democrats hold seven of the 10 seats that CNN ranks as most likely to flip party control next year – and the top three are all in states former President Donald Trump carried twice.

But this spring’s recruitment season, coming on the heels of a midterm cycle marred by problematic GOP candidates, will likely go a long way toward determining how competitive the Senate map is next year.

National Republicans got a top pick last week, with Gov. Jim Justice announcing his Senate bid in West Virginia – the seat most likely to flip party control in 2024. (Rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising figures and historical data about how states and candidates have performed.) But Justice appears headed for a contentious and expensive primary. And in many other top races, the GOP hasn’t yet landed any major candidates.

Democrats, meanwhile, are thankful that most of their vulnerable incumbents are running for reelection, while a high-profile House member has largely cleared the field for one of their open Senate seats.

Pollster asked Democrats who they like for 2024. Here’s what he found

The unknown remains West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Responding to Justice’s candidacy, Manchin – who has said he’ll decide about running by the end of the year – had this to say to CNN about a potentially messy GOP primary: “Let the games begin.”

The anti-tax Club for Growth’s political arm has already committed to spending $10 million to back West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary. And tensions between the club, which has turned against Trump, and more establishment Republicans could become a feature of several top Senate races this cycle, especially with the National Republican Senatorial Committee weighing more aggressive involvement in primaries to weed out candidates it doesn’t think can win general elections.

In the 2022 cycle, most of Trump’s handpicked candidates in swing states stumbled in the general election. But the former president picked up a key endorsement this week from NRSC Chair Steve Daines. The Montana Republican has stayed close with Trump, CNN has previously reported, in a bid to ensure he’s aligned with leadership.

Democrats defending tough seats have previously used GOP primaries to their advantage. Manchin survived in 2018 in part because his opponent was state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. That wasn’t an accident. Democrats had spent big attacking one of his primary opponents to keep him out of the general election.

Last year’s midterms underscored that candidates really do matter after Republicans failed to harness favorable national winds in some key races. In a presidential year, the national environment is likely to loom large, especially with battleground states hosting key Senate races. It will also test whether some of the last remaining senators who represent states that back the opposite parties’ presidential nominees can hold on.

President Joe Biden, who carried half of the states on this list in 2020, made official last week that he’s running for reelection. The GOP presidential field is slowly growing, with Trump still dominating most primary polling. It’s too early to know, however, what next year’s race for the White House will look like or which issues, whether it’s abortion or crime or the economy, will resonate.

So for now, the parties are focused on what they can control: candidates. Even though the 2024 map is stacked in their favor, Republicans can’t win with nobody. But there’s plenty of time for would-be senators to get into these races. Some filing deadlines – in Arizona, for example – aren’t for nearly another year. And there’s an argument to be made that well-funded or high-profile names have no reason to get in early.

Here’s where the Senate map stands 18 months from Election Day.

Incumbent: Democrat Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin isn’t one to shy away from attention – and he’s getting plenty of it by keeping everyone guessing about his reelection plans. Assuming he runs, Democrats will have a fighting chance to defend this seat in a state Trump carried by 39 points in 2020. The senator has repeatedly broken with the White House – on Biden’s first veto and the White House’s debt ceiling stance, for example.

Without Manchin, Democrats know West Virginia is all but lost. Manchin raised only $371,000 in this year’s first fundraising quarter, which ended March 31, and Republicans are already attacking him, with One Nation – the issue advocacy group aligned with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell – launching an ad campaign tying him to the Inflation Reduction Act. (The senator went on Fox News last week and threatened to back a repeal of his own bill.) Still, Manchin has nearly $10 million in the bank, as well as outside cover from Democratic-allied groups.

Republicans will likely be spending quite a lot of time and money attacking each other in the primary. The Club for Growth’s political arm is backing House Freedom Caucus member Alex Mooney, while Gov. Jim Justice will likely have backup from GOP party leaders. The wealthy governor, who was first elected as a Democrat before switching parties in 2017, has high name ID and is close with Trump. Mooney also has Trumpian credentials, having won a member-on-member House primary last year with the former president’s endorsement. The congressman is already attacking the governor in an ad as “Liberal Jim Justice,” using imagery of his opponent in a face mask.

Incumbent: Democrat Jon Tester

Democrats got welcome news with Sen. Jon Tester’s announcement that he’s running for a fourth term – and that he raised $5 million in the first quarter (more than a million of which came from small-dollar donors). Tester is running in Trump country – Montana backed the former president by 16 points in 2020 – but like Manchin he has a well-established brand to draw on, which includes breaking with Biden when he needs to. (Tester also voted for a GOP resolution to roll back a Biden administration ESG investing rule, which prompted the president’s first veto.) The GOP field is still taking shape. Republicans are interested in retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, a businessman with the potential to self-fund, and state Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

Another potential candidate is Rep. Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester in 2018 after winning the GOP nomination with the help of the Club for Growth, which has recently been at odds with Trump. Rosendale made a telling appearance at Mar-a-Lago in April for Trump’s post-indictment speech after snubbing the former president’s pick for House speaker in January when he didn’t back Kevin McCarthy. The congressman hasn’t said yet whether he’s running, but he raised only about $127,000 in the first quarter of the year – well short of what he’d need for a competitive Senate bid.

Incumbent: Democrat Sherrod Brown

Sen. Sherrod Brown is the only Democrat to win a nonjudicial statewide race in Ohio over the past decade, so the big question for 2024 is whether he can defy expectations again in his red-trending state. Trump has twice carried the Buckeye State by 8 points, and his handpicked candidate, JD Vance, defeated Democrat Tim Ryan by about 6 points in last year’s Senate race despite the Republican’s campaign struggles.

Brown is much more of an institution in Ohio than Ryan, and he’s built up relationships not just among White working-class communities but urban centers too. He raised $3.6 million in the first quarter of the year. Two wealthy Republicans are in the race to try to take him on – businessman Bernie Moreno, whom Trump has praised, and state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Both men ran for Senate in 2022, but Moreno dropped out ahead of the primary. Dolan, who ran as a moderate conservative less than enthralled with Trump and his election lies, finished third in a crowded field. Rep. Warren Davidson and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose could also jump into this year’s GOP race.

Incumbent: Independent Kyrsten Sinema

Arizona has the potential to be one of the most interesting races this cycle, but a lot depends on whether Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema runs for reelection. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who’s running to her left, outraised the incumbent $3.8 million to $2.1 million in the first quarter. Sinema has a clear cash-on-hand advantage – nearly $10 million to Gallego’s $2.7 million.

Earlier this month, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb became the first major Republican to enter the race, leaning into a law enforcement message. But the filing deadline isn’t until next April, so there’s still plenty of time for others to jump in. Some Republicans are anxious about the potential entry of Kari Lake, last year’s losing gubernatorial nominee, who still maintains she won. She’d likely be popular with the base in a state that’s become a hotbed of election denialism, but her candidacy could pose a serious risk for the party in a general election. The NRSC recently pushed her to move away from election conspiracy theories, CNN reported.

Former attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh and Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost last year’s gubernatorial primary to Lake, have also met with NRSC officials, CNN reported. Also in the mix could be Republican businessman Jim Lamon, who lost the party nod for the state’s other Senate seat last year. Republicans would like to see Sinema run because she and Gallego would likely split the vote on the left. But they’ve got their work cut out from them in landing a candidate who can appeal to the GOP base without alienating the general electorate in a state that narrowly backed Biden in 2020.

Incumbent: Democrat Jacky Rosen

Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is, as expected, running for reelection, touting her middle-class roots and bipartisan legislative wins in an announcement video in April. “Nevada is always a battleground,” the senator says – a reminder that Democrats don’t want to take this state for granted. Rosen was first elected in 2018 – a midterm year – by 5 points. Last fall, her Democratic colleague, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, defeated former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt by less than a point.

The state tends to get bluer in presidential years, but Biden and Hillary Clinton both carried it only by about 2 points. Republicans don’t yet have a major name in the race, but they’re watching two defeated candidates from last year – Army veteran Sam Brown, who lost the GOP Senate nod, and attorney April Becker, who lost a bid for a redrawn House seat.

Incumbent: Democrat Tammy Baldwin

Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced earlier this month that she’s running for a third term, giving Democrats an automatic advantage for now over Republicans, who have no declared candidates in this perennial battleground state. Baldwin raised $2.1 million in the first quarter, ending with nearly $4 million in the bank.

Establishment Republicans have expressed strong interest in Rep. Mike Gallagher. Even Rep. Tom Tiffany, who recently bought Senate web domain names, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he thought his fellow congressman should run. But there’s little sign that Gallagher, the chair of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is interested. Two businessmen with the ability to tap into or raise significant resources could be in the mix – Eric Hovde, who lost the GOP Senate nomination in 2012, and Scott Mayer. And then there’s controversial former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who could draw support in a GOP primary but seriously complicate a general election for Republicans.

Democrats are feeling good about the recent state Supreme Court election, which the Democratic-backed candidate won by 10 points, flipping control of the bench to liberals. Still, the competitiveness of this state – which Biden carried by about half a point after Trump had won it by a similar margin four years earlier – shouldn’t be underestimated.

Incumbent: Democrat Debbie Stabenow (retiring)

Rep. Elissa Slotkin has mostly cleared the Democratic field of major rivals in the race to succeed retiring Democrat Debbie Stabenow in another Midwestern battleground state. A few less-known names are in, and actor Hill Harper – of “The Good Doctor” and “CSI: NY” – could throw his hat in the Democratic ring, but it’ll be hard to rival Slotkin’s fundraising. She brought in about $3 million in the first quarter.

On the GOP side, State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder announced her campaign in mid-February, but she hadn’t raised much money by the end of the first quarter. Former Rep. Peter Meijer could run, but his vote to impeach Trump would likely kill his prospects of winning the nomination – unless it were a heavily splintered primary field. Other possible GOP names include businessman Kevin Rinke and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who finished second and sixth, respectively, in last year’s gubernatorial primary. (Craig was a write-in candidate after failing to make the ballot because of invalid signatures.)

Michigan Democrats did well last year – retaining the top three executive offices and flipping the state legislature – and they feel optimistic about their chances in the state in a presidential year. Still, Biden only won the state by less than 3 points. And while Slotkin has experience winning tough races, a lot may depend on whom the GOP nominates and which way the national winds are blowing next year.

Incumbent: Democrat Bob Casey

Democrats breathed another sigh of relief when Sen. Bob Casey, who disclosed a prostate cancer diagnosis earlier this year, announced that he was running for a fourth term. A former state auditor general and treasurer and the son of a two-term governor, Casey is well known in the Keystone State. He most recently won reelection by 13 points against a hard-line congressman who had tied himself closely to Trump.

This year, national Republicans are eyeing former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who lost the GOP nomination for Senate last year, as a top-tier recruit. Upon Casey’s reelection announcement, McCormick immediately attacked him, saying in a statement that a vote for Casey was “a vote for Biden and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer.” The wealthy Republican has been on tour promoting his new book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” and has hired staff but has yet to launch a campaign.

And consternation remains among national Republicans that losing 2022 gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano could jump into the race. An election denier who lost by 15 points last fall, Mastriano could jeopardize the race for Republicans. His candidacy would likely inspire a concerted effort by national Republicans to defeat him in the primary.

Incumbent: Republican Ted Cruz

Texas and Florida – both in a far different category of competitiveness compared with the rest of the states on this list – are trading places this month. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is running for reelection after passing on another presidential bid. He raised $1.3 million in the first quarter – relatively little for a massive, expensive state – and ended March with $3.3 million in the bank. He’s proved to be a compelling boogeyman for the left, with Democrat Beto O’Rourke raising millions to try to unseat him in 2018, ultimately coming up less than 3 points short.

After a gubernatorial loss last year, O’Rourke hasn’t made any noise about this race. But Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who raised about half a million dollars in the first quarter, is looking at it. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, is also weighing a bid, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Still, unseating Cruz in a state Trump won by nearly 6 points in 2020 will be a tall order.

Incumbent: Republican Rick Scott

Sen. Rick Scott has a history of close elections – he was first elected in 2018 by a fraction of a point following two prior narrow wins for governor. But GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis won commanding victories last fall, suggesting the state is getting redder.

Democrats don’t seem to have a major candidate as yet, but whoever opposes Scott is likely to use his controversial policy proposal – released last year during his NRSC chairmanship – against him. Scott’s plan had originally proposed sunsetting all federal programs every five years, but the senator later added a carve-out for Medicare and Social Security amid backlash from his own party. His most immediate headache could come in the form of intraparty attacks along those lines – and others.

Attorney Keith Gross has launched a primary challenge, alluding in his announcement video to Scott’s tenure as the head of a hospital chain company that the Justice Department investigated for health care fraud. While the company pleaded guilty to fraudulent Medicare billing, among other things, and paid $1.7 billion in fines, Scott wasn’t charged with a crime. It’s unclear how much of his own money Gross, who previously ran for office in Georgia as a Democrat, would put into a campaign.

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April 12, 2021
What to expect from a Ron DeSantis presidential campaign | CNN Politics

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

CNN
—

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to make his presidential campaign official next week.

After a solid reelection in 2022 and using Florida as a testing ground for conservative priorities, his entrance into the 2024 primary race has seemed like a foregone conclusion.

While DeSantis remains the top challenger to former President Donald Trump, at least according to public opinion polls, he has slipped in some polling in recent weeks.

I talked to CNN’s Steve Contorno, who is based in Florida and covers DeSantis, about what to expect from his campaign and what kind of candidate he could turn out to be.

Some of Contorno’s recent reports include:

Our conversation, conducted by email, is below.

WOLF: More than any other Republican, DeSantis has generated national media scrutiny and buzz that he could be the candidate best positioned to challenge Trump. Are he and his advisers concerned that all that attention has not translated to a stronger position in GOP primary polls?

CONTORNO: Inside DeSantis’ insular orbit, his campaign is largely on schedule. His allies spent the spring raising money, launching a super PAC, building out a national campaign and enlisting supporters so that when he enters the race, it won’t be from a traditional day one.

To them, DeSantis survived the onslaught of Trump attacks without slipping, and this race will change dramatically once he’s in.

But campaigns ideally want to launch with momentum, and DeSantis has undoubtedly lost control of the narrative a bit since his decisive reelection victory. And people close to his campaign have raised concerns that DeSantis is entering this in a more precarious position than six months ago.

An announcement around the Memorial Day weekend is on the earlier side of the timeline that the governor’s political operation had targeted six months ago when it eyed a launch after Florida’s legislative session. This suggests DeSantis is responding to donors and supporters anxious to see him get in the race and more directly challenge Trump.

WOLF: You’ve written about this, but I was hoping you could recap how DeSantis has used his office as governor to create a record of achievement tailor-made for a Republican primary, because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

CONTORNO: Armed with a perceived mandate from his historic reelection victory and GOP supermajorities in both of his state legislatures, DeSantis has used the spring to push through an aggressive conservative agenda focused on topics that are animating Republican voters.

He has essentially built the tenants of a platform from which he can launch. And thanks to his popularity within the party, Republican lawmakers have gone along with his agenda.

This includes a six-week abortion ban, eliminating permits to carry a gun in public, a crackdown on illegal immigration and new restrictions that will alter the lives of transgender people.

Other priorities were not on the radar of many going into this year – including lowering the threshold to put someone on death row and allowing some child rapists to be executed – but have quickly become talking points for DeSantis as he travels the country.

All of it is a reminder that DeSantis as a sitting governor has the ability to set an agenda, a potential advantage in a field of Republicans with “former” in their title.

WOLF: His standoff with Disney is, I think, one of the most important and interesting things happening in Republican politics right now since it signals a shift in how Republicans try to appeal to business and capitalist America. What’s your read of this new anti-corporate strain in the GOP?

CONTORNO: This is something that you have heard a lot at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) and in other corners of the GOP for a while, but DeSantis is among the first to move this fight into the mainstream.

There is a belief among conservatives that progressives are advancing their causes through corporate boardrooms instead of at the ballot box, and that these companies are marginalizing certain industries in pursuit of this agenda.

DeSantis is the first to really flex government power to force businesses to avoid certain investment strategies, employment recruitment and retention efforts or causes that the right views as political.

For example, he has signed legislation that says a bank cannot refuse to loan to a gun manufacturer on principle alone.

Many in the GOP are not comfortable with these tactics and believe it’s anti-free market to use government authority to effectively punish corporations for their political speech and how they run their businesses. DeSantis, though, is unmoved by these arguments.

WOLF: Given that his actions as governor are intended to appeal specifically to Republicans, has he gone too far to be an appealing general election candidate? Is that something his campaign-in-waiting acknowledges?

CONTORNO: Some would-be DeSantis donors and close allies have said publicly and privately that they believe the governor has tracked too far to the right, especially on guns and abortion, in a way that will hurt his ability to build support outside of the GOP base.

But he has stylized himself as someone who is not afraid to take sides on divisive issues, and there was tremendous pressure to take advantage of the Republican supermajority to move on these conservative priorities.

WOLF: What would be the DeSantis strategy as a candidate? On which early primary states would he focus? How would he position himself?

CONTORNO: As we previously reported several months ago, DeSantis’ political operation believes he has the money and the name recognition to launch a national campaign out of the gate.

They are gearing up for a protracted delegate battle against Trump that will carry on through the first four nominating states, and a super PAC supporting him is already enlisting help in states through Super Tuesday.

He has said in the past that if he got in the race, he would consider Joe Biden his opponent, not Trump. It will be tough to maintain that posture, though, once he’s in the race and taking fire from Trump (as well as Nikki Haley and others).

WOLF: The Trump vs. DeSantis theme of the primary has already gotten contentious. How are they jockeying behind the scenes?

CONTORNO: Some of Trump’s top advisers once ran DeSantis’ political operation, and several former Trump operatives and donors are now in DeSantis’ camp, so the sniping is already becoming pronounced.

Trump has very publicly attacked DeSantis over his policies, personality and political chops, repeating often that the governor owes his career to Trump’s early endorsement.

DeSantis has attempted to stay above the fray for now, opting to draw contrasts between his massive victory, drama-free administration and policy wins against Trump’s 2020 defeat, leak-prone White House and distracted presidency.

But in a move widely seen as an attempt to one-up Trump, DeSantis in Iowa made an unannounced visit to a BBQ joint in Des Moines – minutes from where the former president planned to hold a rally before he canceled due to threat of (bad) weather.

WOLF: Trump still holds important sway in the party. How has DeSantis tried to not alienate Trump supporters?

CONTORNO: The minute he gets in the race, he is going to alienate a large swath of Trump supporters who think DeSantis should wait his turn. That’s unavoidable to a degree.

As much as he will be angling for the “Never Trump” crowd, his camp knows there are “Always Trump” voters too.

But I’ve also talked to many Republicans who are either open to alternatives or ready to move on from Trump, and this is who all the GOP contenders will be fighting for.

WOLF: One knock on DeSantis from his opponents is that he is not the most personable of candidates. I’m suspect of that as a fatal flaw since he was twice elected Florida governor. What’s your impression of his ability to do retail politics and appeal to voters?

CONTORNO: Donors, operatives, former staffers and former colleagues in Congress all have stories to share about their awkward interactions with DeSantis. He is curt, dismissive and generally not congenial in personal settings.

Former Rep. David Jolly, a former Republican who used to represent DeSantis’ hometown, said DeSantis as a member of the US House wouldn’t show up for bipartisan meetings of the Florida delegation, didn’t work with them on bills of importance to the state and tended to sit in the back of the chamber with ear buds.

Whether that matters to voters, though, remains to be seen. He is well received at his events, some of which have been held in Trump country, is drawing large crowds, and people have taken note of his improvements at making connections with voters.

Chris Ager, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party who recently hosted DeSantis in his state, told me after the visit: “It was said he wasn’t good at retail and didn’t connect with people. That’s the exact opposite of what I saw.”

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April 12, 2021
House passes bill to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness program | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The Biden administration’s one-time student loan forgiveness program is facing a fresh threat from House Republicans while it awaits a ruling from the Supreme Court about whether the proposal can take effect.

The House voted Wednesday to pass a resolution seeking to block the forgiveness program as well as end the pandemic-related pause on federal student loan payments.

Two Democrats, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, joined Republicans in voting for the bill.

The proposed forgiveness program, which promises up to $20,000 in federal student debt relief to millions of low- and middle-income borrowers, was halted by lower courts late last year before any student debt was canceled. The pause on payments, which has been in place since March 2020, is set to end later this year.

President Joe Biden has pledged to veto the Republican-led resolution if it passes in both the House and Senate. The administration said that the resolution would “weaken America’s middle class.”

“The president’s plan is a good one. It’s a popular one. And it will help prevent borrowers from default when loan payments restart this summer,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier Wednesday.

But Republicans argue that the student loan forgiveness program is unlawful and shifts the cost of the debt to taxpayers who chose not to go to college or already paid off their student loans. Blocking the program could reduce the deficit by nearly $320 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“President Biden’s so-called student loan forgiveness programs do not make the debt go away, but merely transfer the costs from student loan borrowers onto taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars,” said Rep. Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia, in a statement released when he introduced the resolution in March.

Even though Biden has pledged to veto the bill, votes in the House and Senate could force more moderate members of the Democratic Party to take a public stance regarding the student loan forgiveness program. Some lawmakers have been critical of the proposal in the past.

The Senate has yet to schedule a vote on the resolution, but nearly all of the 49 Republican senators have signed on as sponsors.

Republican lawmakers introduced their joint resolution in late March, using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations from the executive branch without needing to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate that is necessary for most legislation.

If the student loan forgiveness program is allowed to move forward, individual borrowers who made less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who made less than $250,000 a year could see up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual is eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness.

While the debt relief would help borrowers with student loans now, the program wouldn’t change the cost of college in the future – and some critics argue that it could even lead to an increase in tuition.

In February, the Supreme Court heard two legal challenges to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. One was filed by six Republican-led states, and the other was brought by two student loan borrowers who did not qualify for the full benefits of the program. The individuals are backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative organization.

The lawsuits argue that the Biden administration is abusing its power and using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext for fulfilling the president’s campaign pledge to cancel student debt.

The White House has said that it received 26 million applications before a lower court in Texas put a nationwide block on the program in November, and that 16 million of those applications have been approved for relief.

No debt has been canceled yet. But if the Supreme Court allows the program to take effect, it’s possible the government moves quickly to forgive those debts.

If the justices strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, it could be possible for the administration to make some modifications to the policy and try again – though that process could take months.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in late June or early July.

Biden has extended the pause on federal student loan payments several times. Accounts have been frozen and most federal borrowers have not been required to make a payment for more than three years.

But the pause is set to end later this year. The Biden administration has tied the restart date to the litigation over the separate student loan forgiveness program. Payments are set to resume 60 days after the Supreme Court issues its ruling or 60 days after June 30, whichever comes first.

But the Biden administration has also made some lesser-known but potentially longer-lasting changes to the federal student loan system.

New rules set to take effect in July could broaden eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is aimed at helping government and nonprofit workers. And a new income-driven repayment plan proposal is meant to lower eligible borrowers’ monthly payments and reduce the amount they pay back over time. Parts of that new repayment plan are expected to go into effect later this year.

The Department of Education has also made it easier for borrowers who were misled by their for-profit college to apply for student loan forgiveness under a program known as borrower defense to repayment, as well as for those who are permanently disabled.

Altogether, the Biden administration has approved more than $66 billion in targeted loan relief to nearly 2.2 million borrowers.

This headline and story have been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
Convicted spy Robert Hanssen dies in prison | CNN Politics

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Robert Philip Hanssen, who received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds for the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia, has died, the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced Monday. He was 79 years old.

Hanssen had been in custody at Colorado’s USP Florence ADMAX since July 17, 2002.

“On Monday, June 5, 2023, at approximately 6:55 am, inmate Robert Hanssen was found unresponsive at the United States Penitentiary (USP) Florence ADMAX in Florence, Colorado,” a release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. “Responding staff immediately initiated life-saving measures. Staff requested emergency medical services (EMS) and life-saving efforts continued.”

“Mr. Hanssen was subsequently pronounced deceased by EMS personnel,” the release said.

In 2001, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy in exchange for the government not seeking the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Investigators accused him of compromising dozens of Soviet personnel who were working for the United States, some of whom were executed. He shared details of several US technical operations such as eavesdropping, surveillance and interception of communications. And he gave the Soviets the US plans of how it would react to a Soviet nuclear attack, both in protecting top government officials and retaliating against such an attack.

The

Hanssen case rocked the US intelligence community, exposing major flaws in how the FBI and other agencies vet those with access to the nation’s secrets.

After Hanssen’s treachery was exposed, investigators learned he had full access to the FBI and State Department’s computer systems and would spend hours trawling undetected for classified information. In his 25 years with the bureau, with access to highly sensitive sources and methods about US intelligence efforts targeting the Soviet Union and Russia, Hanssen had never been subjected to a polygraph examination.

After the Hanssen case, the FBI moved to strengthen its so-called insider threat programs aimed at safeguarding the nation’s secrets by closely scrutinizing the finances and travel of personnel with access to classified information, and increasing the use of polygraphs to routinely assess employees for continued allegiance and suitability.

Before Hanssen was exposed, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “security was not a principle priority. There was no security division. The FBI didn’t have enough expertise. We moved to address that.”

Hanssen began spying for the Soviet Union in 1979, three years after he had joined the FBI as a special agent.

The counterintelligence officer worked as a spy for nearly 15 years, during some of the most consequential times for US and Russia relations and continuing past the end of the Cold War. He took a hiatus from spying for four years in the 1980s after being convinced by his wife, Bonnie.

In a letter allegedly written by Hanssen to the Russians, he said that he was inspired as a teen by the memoirs of British double agent Kim Philby.

“I decided on this course when I was 14 years old,” says the letter cited in the FBI’s affidavit. “I’d read Philby’s book. Now that is insane, eh!”

The FBI began surveilling Hanssen in 2000 after he was identified from a fingerprint and from a tape recording supplied by a disgruntled Russian intelligence operative.

After he was caught in 2001, Hanssen told his US interrogators, “I could have been a devastating spy, I think, but I didn’t want to be a devastating spy. I wanted to get a little money and get out of it.”

Hanssen apologized for his actions during his sentencing in 2002. “I am shamed by it. Beyond its illegality, I have torn the trust of so many. Worse, I have opened the door for calumny against my totally innocent wife and our children. I hurt them deeply. I have hurt so many deeply,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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April 12, 2021
Wagner chief rejects Russian Defense Ministry efforts to rein in his force | CNN

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CNN
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The boss of the Russian private military company Wagner says he won’t sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry, rejecting an attempt to bring his force in line.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s comments follow an announcement by the Russian Ministry of Defense Saturday that “volunteer units” and private military groups would be required to sign a contract with the ministry.

The order – signed by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu – said the move would “give the voluntary formations the necessary legal status,” and create “unified approaches” to their work.

The order did not name the Wagner group but the move is seen a way of controlling the influential military force.

Prigozhin – who has publicly feuded with defense chiefs – said the move did not apply to Wagner.

“The orders and decrees issued by (Defense Minister Sergei) Shoigu apply to employees of the Ministry of Defense and military personnel. PMC ‘Wagner’ will not sign any contracts with Shoigu,” Prigozhin said in a Telegram post.

Wagner, he said, would “absolutely” pursue the “the interests of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.”

Prigozhin and Wagner have played a prominent role in the Ukraine war. In May he said his troops had capture Bakhmut in a costly and largely symbolic gain for Russia.

The Wagner chief has previously criticized Russia’s traditional military hierarchy, blaming Russian defense chiefs for “tens of thousands” of casualties and stating that divisions could end in a “revolution.”

He also accused Russian military leaders “sit like fat cats” in “luxury offices,” while his fighters are “dying,” and later accused the Russian Defense Ministry of trying to sabotage his troops’ withdrawal from Bakhmut, claiming the ministry laid mines along the exit routes.

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April 12, 2021
White House preparations for state dinner with India’s Modi include plant-based chef and violinist Joshua Bell | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Preparations are underway at the White House as President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden will welcome India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington for an official state visit on Thursday, rolling out pomp and circumstance at a state dinner in the evening as the two countries reaffirm close ties.

There has been close attention to diplomatic detail in advance of Thursday’s state dinner, including catering to the guest’s dietary restrictions.

Nina Curtis, a plant-based chef from Sacramento, California, will be the dinner’s guest chef, working with White House Executive Chef Cris Comerford, and White House Executive Pastry Chef Susie Morrison to develop the menu, the office of the first lady said.

Modi, a White House official said, is a vegetarian and “the First Lady selected Chef Curtis for her experience with plant-based cuisine.”

And Grammy Award-winning American violinist and conductor Joshua Bell will provide the evening’s entertainment, the office of the first lady said.

The state dinner is one element of an elaborate visit for the prime minister, which comes amid some criticism over Modi’s human rights record.

State dinners, former White House curator Betty Monkman said, are “a courtesy, an expression of good will, and a way of extending hospitality,” as well as “an event that also showcases global power and influence.” The office of the first lady works closely with her social team, executive residence staff from the calligraphers to the florists to the pastry chefs and the State Department in preparation for these dinners.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to India this week ahead of the dinner, meeting with Modi and other officials.

“He reviewed preparations for the upcoming official state visit of the prime minister, and discussed a range of strategic, regional, and bilateral issues including steps to advance the strategic technology and defense partnership between the United States and India,” a readout of Sullivan’s trip stated.

This will mark the third state dinner of the Biden administration after the Bidens hosted French President Emmanuel Macron in December and South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol in April.

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April 12, 2021