Tag: iab-crime

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
Blinken says US is ‘engaged with Syria’ in efforts to free missing journalist Austin Tice | CNN Politics

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The United States is “engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries” to try to bring detained journalist Austin Tice home, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

“We are extensively engaged with regard to Austin, engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries, seeking to find a way to get him home. And we’re not going to relent until we do,” Blinken said in remarks at a Washington Post event on World Press Freedom Day.

Tice was taken hostage in Syria in 2012. President Joe Biden declared last year that the US government knows “with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime” and called on Damascus to cooperate on efforts to release him.

The government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has not publicly acknowledged they are detaining Tice. The US does not have diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime and has voiced opposition to rapprochement with Assad.

Blinken did not provide details about the engagements to bring Tice home. White House and State Department officials would not confirm a report from the Wall Street Journal that US officials had held talks with Syrian officials in Oman.

“We cannot confirm any specific meetings past or present. As you know in general meetings and negotiations to secure the release of wrongfully detained Americans, that is incredibly sensitive,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a White House briefing. “We want to be really, really careful and mindful and don’t want to confirm any specific conversation from the past or in the present.”

CNN reported last August that the Biden administration had direct engagements with the Syrian government in an effort to secure Tice’s release. In 2020 under the Trump administration, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens secretly traveled to Damascus and met with Assad regime officials.

Austin Tice’s mother Debra Tice told CNN Monday that she thinks that the administration is committed to bringing her son home but “they stumble over what needs to be done.” She said she had no doubt that her son would walk free.

Biden paid tribute to Austin Tice and other wrongfully detained Americans, including Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan in Russia, in remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

A number of family members of wrongfully detained Americans – many of whom have joined forces in an organization called the “Bring Our Families Home” campaign – as well as those who had been freed from detention gathered in Washington, DC, this week to seek a meeting with the president and call on the US government to do more to secure the release of their loved ones.

“Although our loved ones are wrongfully detained and held hostage abroad, including China, including Russia, including Iran, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, our voices are stronger together,” said Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, who is detained in China.

“Although each case has its own idiosyncrasies, we all need the same things: for President Biden to meet with us, and to use all tools to bring them home,” he said.

“We have asked for a meeting with the president for so long now that I frankly don’t know how else to ask or what else to say,” Hannah Sharghi, whose father Emad Shargi is detained in Iran, said at a news conference Wednesday.

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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
Ron DeSantis is campaigning on his record. Judges keep saying it’s unconstitutional | CNN Politics

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Gov. Ron DeSantis has toured the country calling Florida the place “where woke goes to die.” But it’s still alive at the company Sara Margulis runs.

At Honeyfund, a website for engaged couples to create gift registries that can pay for their honeymoons, Margulis’ Florida employees learn about privilege and institutional racism. Margulis, the CEO and co-founder, said the training makes her staff better suited to serve couples of any background. Planning for this fall’s employee retreat is underway, with a session scheduled on DEI – or diversity, equity and inclusion, a term DeSantis often rails against.

DeSantis tried to ban such employee training in 2022, when the Florida Republican championed what he called the Stop WOKE Act. But Honeyfund and others sued on the grounds that the law violated their free speech. A federal judge agreed and blocked it from going into effect. The DeSantis administration then appealed – one of many of the governor’s ongoing legal battles as he pursues the presidency.

“Companies aren’t ‘going woke’ out of allegiance to Democrats. Time after time, diversity has proven to be good for the bottom line,” Margulis said. “Valuing diversity means understanding it, understanding means training and training means having to deal with this law. We were really handed a chance to make a difference for other business owners by challenging it, and we took it.”

In his early outreach to Republican voters as a presidential candidate, DeSantis has portrayed himself as a fighter and, crucially, a winner in the cultural battles increasingly important to conservatives. If elected to the White House, he’ll take those fights to Washington, he has said.

“I will go on offense,” DeSantis said in Iowa last month. “I will lean into all the issues that matter.”

But back in Florida, the agenda at the centerpiece of his pitch remains unsettled. Still ongoing are more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.

In addition to halting parts of the Stop WOKE Act, judges have also intervened to freeze implementation of other DeSantis-led laws cracking down on protesters and Big Tech. The six-week abortion ban he signed this year – which he has called the “heartbeat bill” when speaking to conservative, and especially evangelical, audiences – won’t take effect unless the state Supreme Court determines that a privacy clause in Florida’s constitution doesn’t protect access to the procedure. Disney – the most famous of DeSantis’ political adversaries – has argued in court that the governor overstepped his power when he orchestrated a takeover of the entertainment giant’s special taxing district to punish the company for speaking out against his agenda. So did Andrew Warren, the twice-elected Tampa prosecutor whom DeSantis suspended last year in another act of political retaliation.

DeSantis has repeatedly predicted he will ultimately prevail in these challenges. Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for his campaign, called the lawsuits “the tactics of activists who seek to impose their will on people by judicial fiat.”

“These attempts to circumvent the will of the legislature are not indicative of anything beyond the failure of the left’s ideas at the ballot box,” Griffin said in a statement. “Governor DeSantis is a proven fighter who will bring the same temerity to the presidency.”

Recent weeks, though, have seen a handful of reminders that several pillars of his record remain fragile even as they figure prominently in his stump speeches.

On Friday, a federal judge blocked a new Florida law that gave the DeSantis administration the power to shut down bars or restaurants that admit children to certain “adult live performances,” widely seen as a crackdown on drag shows.

Another federal judge said Wednesday that Florida could not restrict transgender adults on Medicaid from receiving gender-affirming care. The same judge earlier this month had stepped in to allow three transgender children to receive puberty blockers while a lawsuit seeking to overturn a state ban on the treatment proceeds. In both rulings, the judge said there was “no rational basis” to prevent the care and declared “gender identity is real,” casting doubts on the future of the state’s prohibition.

DeSantis, as a presidential candidate, has seized on conservative concerns over such treatment, particularly for minors. His efforts to halt it – including signing a law that prohibits transgender children from receiving gender-affirming treatments and punish doctors who run afoul of it – are prominently featured in his stump speeches. Speaking to North Carolina Republicans after the ruling, the governor acknowledged the legal fight, but he assured the audience: “We are going to win.”

“It is mutilation, and it is wrong, and it has no place in our state,” he said.

DeSantis of late has also taken credit for the GOP’s narrow US House majority, noting the highly partisan map he pushed through his state legislature, which ultimately helped Republicans net four critical seats. But those suing Florida to invalidate the state’s congressional boundaries have new reason for optimism after the US Supreme Court ordered Alabama officials to redraw its map to allow an additional Black-majority district. The DeSantis map was similarly criticized as diminishing the power of minority voters in Florida.

“Many of the things coming from the governor are form over function,” said Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit. “They want to get to a certain result, so they find a means to do it, whether it makes logic or legal sense or not.”

The US District Court for the Northern District of Florida has in particular stymied DeSantis’ agenda. Two judges on the bench, Mark Walker and Robert Hinkle, have repeatedly ruled against the governor, often punctuating their opinions with harsh and colorful repudiations.

Walker, in one ruling blocking parts of the Stop WOKE Act, compared Florida’s treatment of the First Amendment under DeSantis to the “Upside Down,” the nightmare alternative dimension from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” In another lawsuit over the law, this one filed by college professors, Walker called the law “dystopian” and wrote that DeSantis and Florida Republicans had “declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom.’”

Hinkle, in January, chided DeSantis’ suspension of Warren as political, unconstitutional and executed with “not a hint of misconduct,” though he ultimately ruled he was powerless to intervene. Warren is appealing, though he suffered another defeat when the state Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a separate request to reinstate him.

Ruling this month against the state in the two cases dealing with transgender care prohibition, Hinkle called the law “an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

“Nothing could have motivated this remarkable intrusion into parental prerogatives other than opposition to transgender status itself,” he wrote.

DeSantis has shrugged off these defeats as the work of left-leaning judges. President Barack Obama nominated Walker to his district court judgeship in 2012, and Hinkle was selected by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Neither nomination drew objection from Senate Republicans at the time.

When Walker ruled to block Florida’s anti-riot law – comparing it to past attempts to squash dissent from Civil Rights activists in the 1950s and 60s – DeSantis dismissed it as “a foreordained conclusion in front of that court.”

“We will win that on appeal,” DeSantis said. “I guarantee we’ll win that on appeal.”

That assurance came 21 months ago. In the meantime, the law has yet to take effect.

Dana Thompson Dorsey, a professor of education law, was among seven Florida college professors who sued to block the Stop WOKE Act over provisions that limited how she and her colleagues could talk about race and sex with students. She called Walker’s decision halting the law a “work of art.”

Since then, she has continued to teach critical race studies to her doctoral students at the University of South Florida, while DeSantis has taken his fight against the concept national. But despite winning injunctive relief, she remains troubled by the new environment for higher education under DeSantis.

“There is a lot at stake and it’s not just for those of us brave enough to be plaintiffs,” she said. “The idea of telling adults what they can and cannot learn is unfathomable. The students who become our future leaders will repeat our mistakes if they don’t understand the past.”

While legal challenges have prevented DeSantis from fully realizing his vision for Florida, the uncertainty has not always benefited opponents and the plaintiffs suing to block his agenda.

Abortions after 15 weeks have paused in most cases in Florida while providers await a ruling on the state’s ban. Andrew Warren remains out of office. Transgender care providers are in uncertain territory – Hinkle’s limited rulings provided relief but only for those who sued the state.

The League of Women Voters of Florida is taking the state to court over new restrictions on third-party voter registration. Fines for violating the law could cost as much as $250,000 a year and the organization has asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent its enforcement. In the meantime, the league decided it would no longer collect and turn in voter registration forms, pausing for now a practice that has been central to its civic outreach for more than 75 years.

“That’s a very sad and horrible result, but we cannot figure out a way to protect ourselves without that major change,” Scoon said.

DeSantis has also managed to maneuver when legal challenges have threatened to stymie his efforts, thanks to a closely aligned Republican-led legislature.

When a lawsuit accused the governor of breaking state law when he sent two planes carrying migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, lawmakers helped change the law to allow him to do so. His administration recently orchestrated the transport of migrants from El Paso, Texas, to California.

After several individuals arrested last year for voter fraud by DeSantis’ new election security force had their cases dismissed, lawmakers again tweaked the law to try to make it easier for the state to secure convictions.

DeSantis and Florida Republicans have signaled they intend to keep fighting in court, too. The budget DeSantis signed earlier this month included $16 million for legal battles underway and the ones to come.

“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” the governor recently told an audience in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

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April 12, 2021
These are the big ideas Republicans are pushing for 2024 | 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
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Amend the Constitution! Touch the third rail! Think big and make things better!

This is the big ideas period of American politics – a time that occurs roughly every four years in the lead-up to a presidential election – when candidates push expansive proposals, usually short on specifics.

While the big ideas generally have little chance of becoming law, they speak to what the people who want to be president think will move primary voters.

With President Joe Biden currently a lock for the Democratic nomination, most of the intellectual action this year is among Republicans.

Below are some of the big ideas of the moment, which are usually unique to one or two candidates as opposed to positions that are standard for the party. I view these as distinct from the daily political issues – things like abortion rights, foreign policy, border security and gender rights, where there is a sliding scale of positions.

Nikki Haley: Biden ‘likely’ won’t make it to end of second term

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is 51, wants to impose a “mental competency” test for older candidates over 75.

With both of the current leading candidates – Biden and former President Donald Trump – well beyond when most people would consider retirement, age is already a major issue this year.

It’s a smart way to tap into fears that Biden, in particular, has lost a step. But it’s hard to imagine it actually put into use. Who would administer this test? Who would assess the results? Why not all candidates?

The point of the democratic system is that voters should get to choose. This proposal would necessarily limit their choices.

On the other hand, age limits are not an entirely crazy idea. Corporations impose them on executives, for instance. Pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65, although that could be raised in the near future to deal with a pilot shortage.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech founder, wants to raise the legal voting age to 25. It’s hard to imagine how this would work since the current voting age of 18 is guaranteed in the 26th Amendment.

Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have in recent years pushed to go in the opposite direction, arguing to lower the voting age to 16.

Ramaswamy says there would be exceptions to raising the voting age, such as for people who join the military or otherwise meet a “national service requirement.” Others could pass the same test given to naturalized immigrants.

“I want more civic engagement. My hypothesis is that when you attach greater value to the act, we will see more 18-to-25-year-olds actually vote than do now,” Ramaswamy told The Washington Post.

Nikki Haley calls for raising retirement age

Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence are among those pushing to change the age at which Americans can access retirement benefits.

While both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are swearing up and down that they will protect these key parts of the social safety net, Haley and Pence are calling for a more honest discussion about the nation’s finances.

In their telling, raising the retirement age would only affect the youngest Americans – people in their 20s and younger, generations sure to live and work longer than their forebears.

But specifics are hard to come by, as CNN’s Jake Tapper found when he asked Haley at a CNN town hall in early June what retirement age she is proposing. She said more calculations are needed to come up with a specific retirement age for people currently in their 20s.

Meantime, she said, “we’re going to go tell them ‘Times have changed.’ I think (Trump and DeSantis are) not being honest with the American people.”

DeSantis did recently acknowledge in New Hampshire that Social Security is “going to look a little bit different” for younger generations.

Pence, at his own CNN town hall in early June, said raising the eligibility age for Social Security is one option to have the tough conversation about national spending, but not the only one.

“It also could include letting younger Americans invest a portion of their payroll taxes in a mutual fund, like the TSP (Thrift Savings Plan) program that 10 million federal employees are in today,” he said.

Trump slams 14th Amendment at rally

Both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis want to revoke birthright citizenship, or the right of every person born in the US to be an American citizen.

They complain that even babies born to undocumented people become citizens. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, the key post-Civil War amendment that was meant to protect former slaves.

Trump has been teasing an end to birthright citizenship for years, but there is not currently a meaningful effort to change the Constitution.

Trump has pledged to sign an executive order. DeSantis has said he would lean on Congress and the court system. Actually changing the Constitution would be nearly impossible in today’s political environment.

Former President Donald Trump’s most outside-the-box ideas have a futuristic “Jetsons” feel.

He wants to build new “freedom cities” on federal land to reopen the American frontier and give people a chance at home ownership. He argues the plan could revitalize American manufacturing.

And he envisions freeing Americans from hellish commutes by looking to the skies, taking the initiative to innovate vertical-takeoff vehicles. CNN’s report on Trump’s proposals notes that technology is already underway by industry, but a long way from being available to consumers.

A government-planned city might seem like a strange proposal for a candidate whose party has long embraced free market ideals. But the idea of a planned city is not completely foreign – just look at Washington, DC.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to undo Trump’s greatest bipartisan achievement: The First Step Act, a criminal justice and sentencing reform law.

The product of intense bipartisan negotiations during Trump’s term in office, the law was hailed for rethinking harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

But the political landscape has changed since 2018, when Trump signed the law as president and DeSantis voted for it as a congressman. Now, DeSantis calls the law the “jailbreak bill.”

Both men want to impose the death penalty for drug offenders, an especially awkward pivot for Trump, who has bragged about his compassion in setting drug dealers like Alice Johnson free when he commuted her sentence. The case helped build support for the First Step Act. Her crime could have made her eligible for the death penalty under his new plan.

Trump still brags about the First Step Act, and repealing it would take help from Democrats in the Senate.

DeSantis, meanwhile, is moving to the right of Trump on crime and even vetoed a bipartisan criminal justice law in Florida that passed easily through the Republican-dominated legislature.

Pence also said in his CNN town hall he would “take a step back” from the First Step Act – though it is unclear what that means in practical terms.

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April 12, 2021
Top Treasury sanctions official to visit southern border as it ramps up efforts to crack down on deadly fentanyl trade | CNN Politics

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Treasury’s top sanctions official Brian Nelson will travel to the southern border Tuesday as part of the department’s ongoing push to crack down on the cartels and illicit financial networks fueling the deadly fentanyl trade, Treasury officials told CNN.

Nelson’s trip – his second in sixth months – and a spate of recent sanctions activity is the latest indicator that Treasury is ramping up efforts to tackle the illegal fentanyl trade through actions that disrupt the supply chains funneling “precursor” chemicals from China to producers in Mexico where much of the deadly drug is made.

Nelson and Treasury officials will meet with fellow law enforcement representatives, including from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as private financial institutions and local officials.

“What we are doing is trying to be as effective as we possibly can in combining Treasury’s tools with the efforts that other US government agencies and allied governments are deploying in this space,” said Nelson, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at Treasury, in an interview with CNN.

The engagements over the 48-hour trip will provide officials an opportunity to discuss how Treasury’s tools and information can complement law enforcement and to learn about the big issues and patterns that agents are seeing on the ground. The trip is also aimed at exploring how trends and information from the extensive financial information Treasury collects can be helpful to the broader government-wide effort to quell the synthetic opioid epidemic.

Nelson, who will also be joined by the acting director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Himamauli Das, will visit Laredo and San Antonio in Texas on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In Laredo, Nelson will receive briefings on border operations from CBP officials at the city’s port of entry as well as discuss cargo processing and inspections.

“There’s a credible value in seeing that in person,” Nelson said.

In San Antonio, Nelson and Das will host a “FinCEN Exchange,” which is a public-private information sharing forum where Treasury can share the different patterns and connections they’re seeing with financial institutions, as well as discuss further ways the federal government can partner with the private sector to better spot red flags and identify illicit financial networks.

The department has been involved in the counter-narcotics business for decades, using its tools and financial expertise to both starve criminal organizations of critical financing through sanctions and blocking assets, as well as providing crucial financial data to other law enforcement and federal agencies.

“We can help disrupt financial flows and target the whole supply chain, starting with the precursor chemicals all the way down to distributors bound for US markets. And it’s not just sanctions,” Nelson said, pointing also to FinCEN’s financial mapping tools as well as Treasury’s focus on cooperating with Mexico to improve their capacity to trace and combat illicit finance.

“These tools, combined with financial mapping that our FinCEN team does, is very, very powerful insight,” he added.

Investigators from the Treasury, especially those at FinCEN, can access and share powerful financial data with enforcement bodies like the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and others as they work to track and disrupt the fentanyl trade and drug suppliers.

Nelson also said that Treasury is “absolutely” looking to build on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s latest engagements in China, which included discussing where the two nations could cooperate on curbing the flow of precursor chemicals from China. Blinken, who traveled to Beijing last month, said both sides agreed to “explore” establishing a working group on the precursor chemicals used to produce the deadly synthetic drug.

There has been a government-wide push to curb synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are the main driver of overdose deaths in the US. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a more than seven-fold increase overall in deaths from 2015-2021, and despite a recent slowing, overdose deaths still hover near record levels and remain the third leading cause of death in adolescents aged 19 and younger.

In April, the Biden administration announced a broad effort to target the production and distribution of fentanyl, which included criminal charges from the Department of Justice and a host of new Treasury sanctions.

It was an announcement that built off of an executive order signed in 2021 that expanded Treasury’s authorities to target the distribution chains of fentanyl and other narcotics, which Nelson said has been critical to helping Treasury “increase the pace at which we are able to target and designate the key nodes in fentanyl distribution.”

Since then, Treasury has continued to issue sanctions against precursor chemical supply networks, particularly in China, as well as other corrupt activity like arms trafficking and money laundering that helps support the trade.

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April 12, 2021
Microsoft under European antitrust investigation over Teams | CNN Business

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European officials are investigating whether Microsoft’s practice of bundling its Teams software with Office 365 is anticompetitive, the European Commission said Thursday.

The EU probe follows a formal complaint by Microsoft’s rival, the Salesforce-owned Slack, in 2020, alleging that Microsoft has illegally circumvented competition.

By packaging Teams together with its “well-entrenched” productivity suite, including apps such as Word and Outlook, Microsoft could be effectively blocking customers from seeking out rival collaboration tools, the Commission said. Antitrust officials are also concerned about interoperability issues between Microsoft’s software and third-party products, it added.

“These practices may constitute anti-competitive tying or bundling and prevent suppliers of other communication and collaboration tools from competing,” the Commission said in a statement.

Microsoft said in a statement it is cooperating with the probe.

“We respect the European Commission’s work on this case and take our own responsibilities very seriously,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.”

In a press briefing Thursday, EU spokesperson Arianna Podesta told reporters that “at this stage, possible commitments [by Microsoft to resolve the concerns] are too early to be discussed. We first need to identify indeed if there is a breach of antitrust considerations.”

The in-depth investigation reflects rising EU antitrust scrutiny for Microsoft, which was last fined on a competition violation in 2013 for not honoring a commitment to give European consumers a choice in web browsers.

Slack’s initial EU complaint alleged that Microsoft forces Teams onto millions of customers, “blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.”

A Slack executive at the time argued that Microsoft sells a closed ecosystem of its own products, while Slack provides customers with more freedom to mix and match services.

“This is a proxy for two very different philosophies for the future of digital ecosystems, gateways versus gatekeepers,” said Slack’s VP of communications and policy, Jonathan Prince.

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April 12, 2021
Jessica Watkins: Oath Keepers member and Army veteran sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for January 6 | CNN Politics

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Jessica Watkins, an Army veteran and member of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced Friday to 8.5 years in prison for participating in a plot to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election culminating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Judge Amit Mehta said Watkins’ efforts at the Capitol were “aggressive” and said she did not have immediate remorse, even though she has since apologized.

“Your role that day was more aggressive, more assaultive, more purposeful than perhaps others’. And you led others to fulfill your purposes,” Mehta said. “And there was not in the immediate aftermath any sense of shame or contrition, just the opposite. Your comments were celebratory and lacked a real sense of the gravity of that day and your role in it.”

At trial, prosecutors showed evidence that Watkins founded and led a small militia in Ohio and mobilized her group in coordination with the Oath Keepers to Washington, DC, on January 6. Watkins and her counterparts ultimately marched in tactical gear to the Capitol and encouraged other rioters to push past police outside the Senate chamber.

“I was just another idiot running around the hallway,” Watkins told the court before the sentence was handed down Friday. “But idiots are responsible, and today you are going to hold this idiot responsible.”

Two of Watkins’ codefendants, Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, were sentenced Thursday to 18 and 12 years in prison, respectively, for seditious conspiracy.

Unlike Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins was acquitted of the top charge of seditious conspiracy, but convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding – which carries the same 20-year maximum prison sentence as seditious conspiracy – as well as other felony charges.

“Nobody would suggest you are Stewart Rhodes, and I don’t think you are Kelly Meggs,” Mehta told Watkins on Friday. “But your role in those events is more than that of just a foot soldier. I think you can appreciate that.”

Watkins, who is transgender, gave emotional testimony during the trial about struggling with her identity in the Army while the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was still in effect, and about being dragged into the underbelly of conspiracy theories around the 2020 presidential election.

She tearfully reiterated to the judge on Friday that she was “very fearful and paranoid” at that time, and that while “for a long time I was in denial of my own culpability,” she now “can see my actions for what they were – they were wrong and I am sorry.”

“I understand now that my presence in and around the Capitol that day probably inspired those individuals to a degree,” Watkins said. “They saw us there and that probably fired them up. Oath Keepers are here, and they were patting us on the back.”

She continued: “How many people went in because of us? We’re responsible for that.”

Prosecutor Alexandra Hughes disagreed, telling Mehta that Watkins was not remorseful.

Hughes quoted a January phone call from jail, in which Watkins allegedly said of officers at the Capitol “boo hoo the poor little police officers, got a little PTSD, waaaa, I had to stand there and hold a door open for people waaaaaa.”

“It is perhaps an unsurprising fact of human nature that those who are subjected to injustice occasionally bring injustice on others,” Hughes said. “We do not dispute what she has been through, but what she did on that day has deep and devastating – devastating – effects on individuals who showed up to work that day and never did anything to Jessica Watkins.”

Before handing down the sentence, Mehta addressed Watkins’ traumatic history directly, saying that “I think you would not have a human … who heard your testimony and would not have been moved.”

“Your story itself shows a great deal of courage and resilience,” Mehta said. “You have overcome a lot, and you are to be held out as someone who can actually be a role model for other people in that journey. And I say that at a time when people who are trans in our country are so often vilified and used for political purposes.”

The judge added: “It makes it all the more hard for me to understand the lack of empathy for those who suffered that day.”

Kenneth Harrelson, an Oath Keeper from Florida who chanted “treason” inside the Capitol on January 6, was also sentenced Friday to four years in prison for his role in the sprawling conspiracy.

Prosecutors alleged that Harrelson was appointed the “ground team leader” of the Oath Keepers on January 6, stockpiled weapons at a so-called quick reaction force just outside Washington, DC, and moved through the Capitol chanting “treason.”

In an address to the judge before he was sentenced, Harrelson said that he has “no gripes against the government, then or now” and merely “got in the wrong car at the wrong time and went to the wrong place with the wrong people.”

“I didn’t have a clue,” Harrelson said. “It’s not to say I didn’t have signs or warnings that I should have paid attention to, but it just didn’t register.”

He continued, at times sobbing and supporting his body with a lectern inside the well of the court: “I don’t know why. I have destroyed my life and I am fully responsible.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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April 12, 2021
Rep. George Santos’ lawyer asks to keep bond cosigners’ names sealed | CNN Politics

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Indicted Rep. George Santos’ attorney has filed a letter asking the judge overseeing the New York Republican’s case to keep the names of the people who put up his $500,000 bond sealed.

Attorney Joseph Murray objected to a motion by news organizations, including CNN, for the judge to make public the names of the cosigners following Santos’ indictment on campaign finance and fraud charges in New York in early May. If their names are released, the attorney said, they “are likely to suffer great distress, may lose their jobs, and God forbid, may suffer physical injury.”

In the letter, Murray wrote that “there is little doubt that the suretors will suffer some unnecessary form of retaliation if their identities and employment are revealed” and claimed that Santos “would rather surrender to pre trial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come” if their names are made public.

Murray also blamed CNN – which first reported that Santos had been charged by the Department of Justice – for the media being present at the congressman’s arraignment, saying it caused a “frenzy” which he claimed led to one of the suretors backing out.

“Unfortunately, on May 9, 2023, shortly after the defense was notified of the indictment and arrest warrant, this information was apparently leaked to the Cable News Network (‘CNN’), resulting in an immediate media frenzy. Also, at this time, defense counsel had been in the process of engaging our suretors and presenting their documentation and contact information to the government, in preparation for the arraignment on May 10, 2023,” the filing states. “As the media frenzy progressively got worse our suretors tors [sic] grew very fearful and concerned. As of the morning of May 10, 2023, we only had two confirmed suretors, while our third suretor had a change of heart and backed out.”

Last month, Santos pleaded not guilty to 13 federal charges: seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

Santos was released on a $500,000 bond, but was ordered to surrender his passport and will need permission to travel outside of Washington, DC, New York City and Long Island.

After his arraignment, Santos told reporters that he has been “compliant throughout this entire process” but blasted the indictment as a “witch hunt” and said he will “fight my battle.”

The freshman congressman, whose astonishing pattern of lies and fabrications stunned even hardened politicos and led top Democrats and some New York Republicans to call for his resignation earlier this year, has said he will not resign from his seat and that he plans to seek reelection next year.

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April 12, 2021
On Trump indictment, Senate GOP leaders silent while top House Republicans vow payback | CNN Politics

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The top two Republican leaders in the Senate remain silent a day after former President Donald Trump, the current GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, was indicted by the federal government.

While the charges have yet to be unsealed, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Whip John Thune have not put out statements, a stark contrast to the swift reaction among House GOP leaders who quickly rushed to Trump’s defense.

“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Thursday night. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

The third ranking GOP senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, put out a statement Friday, saying, “This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice.”

“Nobody is above the law,” Barrasso tweeted. “Yet it seems like some are.”

House and Senate Republican leaders have diverged for years on how and whether to even respond to Donald Trump’s legal woes. During Trump’s first indictment this spring, McConnell didn’t jump in to defend Trump and when he returned in April after a fall and was asked at a news conference by CNN’s Manu Raju about the indictment, he dodged.

“I may have hit my head, but I didn’t hit it that hard,” McConnell said at the time. “Good try.”

For McConnell, who has not maintained a relationship with Trump since January 6, 2021, the former president could be viewed as a distraction from his ultimate goals of recapturing the Senate. But for McCarthy, an alliance to Trump is an important factor for assuaging those in his right flank, especially at a moment when the House speaker has come under fire for a deal he cut with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling.

There are still a number of Senate Republicans who have come out backing Trump including Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and who is backing the former president. Daines has stayed in touch with Trump, as he’s sought to recruit candidates in primaries across the country. He tweeted Friday, “The two standards of justice under Biden’s DOJ is appalling. When will Hunter Biden be charged?”

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, was asked multiple times during an interview on Fox News on Thursday night about the lack of response from Senate leadership. Hawley’s only response was he did not know why leadership had not weighed in yet, and, “I can’t speak for anyone else.”

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also a member of the GOP Senate leadership team, tweeted Friday that the presumption of innocence in America should also apply to Trump and attacked Democrats who cheered the news.

“It is sad to see some Democratic politicians cheering this indictment and presuming guilt for sheer political gain, despite the fact that President Biden himself is under federal investigation for mishandling classified documents,” Tillis said in his statement.

Several Republican senators, many of whom have already endorsed Trump in the upcoming presidential election, were quick to jump to Trump’s defense and attacked the Department of Justice.

But in stark contrast to the silence from Senate Republican leadership and staunch support from House GOP members, Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski stressed the severity of the charges Friday.

Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, said, “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others.”

In a statement, Romney added, “These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection.”

Murkowski, who also voted to convict Trump in an impeachment trial after the insurrection, said Friday evening that the charges against the former president are “quite serious.”

“Mishandling classified documents is a federal crime because it can expose national secrets, as well as the sources and methods they were obtained through. The unlawful retention and obstruction of justice related to classified documents are also criminal matters,” she said on Twitter.

“Anyone found guilty – whether an analyst, a former president, or another elected or appointed official – should face the same set of consequences,” she added.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, meanwhile, called the obstruction allegations against Trump “inexcusable.”

“As a retired brigadier general who worked with classified materials my entire career, I am shocked at the callousness of how these documents were handled,” Bacon told CNN on Friday. The congressman has long been critical of Trump and represents a swing state in Nebraska.

“The alleged obstruction to the requests of the National Archives and FBI, if true, is inexcusable,” he said in the statement, adding: “No one is above the law, and we demand due process and expect equality under the law.”

Meanwhile, top House Republicans took swift aim at the Department of Justice, special counsel Jack Smith, the FBI and Attorney General Merrick Garland in the wake of the indictment.

“We ought to defund and dismantle the DOJ,” ultra-conservative Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted shortly after Trump announced the news on Truth Social.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise immediately rushed to Trump’s defense, attacking the Justice Department over his indictment and vowing to hold the administration accountable.

“Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival. This sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump,” Scalise tweeted.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer echoed that sentiment Friday morning, tweeting, “This is the ultimate abuse of power, and they will be held accountable.”

Some House Republicans, going much further than the speaker, called for the impeachment of Biden, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray before seeing the details of the indictment.

“It is time for Congress to rein in the FBI and DOJ, and impeach President Biden, Attorney General Garland, and Director Wray,” Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins said in a statement.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
Another historic week in the investigation and prosecution of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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Former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned on federal charges this week in a never-before-seen moment in American political and legal history that captured the attention of a nation that has for years been captivated by his norm-busting episodes.

The former president’s booking at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified government documents is just the latest twist in his post-presidency legal drama – which has now become a key issue in the GOP primary contest as Trump mounts a third White House bid.

Here’s the latest on Trump’s legal troubles:

On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the judge.

Trump’s aide and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, was also arrested, fingerprinted and processed. He had an initial appearance Tuesday but will not be arraigned until June 27.

The DOJ recommended that both Trump and Nauta be released with no financial or special conditions. Prosecutor David Harbach said that “the government does not view either defendant as a flight risk.”

The federal criminal charges Trump faces were brought following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, who attended Tuesday’s arraignment.

In the indictment unsealed last week, the Justice Department charged Trump with 37 felony counts, alleging he illegally retained national defense information and that he concealed documents in violation of witness-tampering laws in the Justice Department’s probe into the materials.

The charges are drastically more serious than those he faces in a separate New York case and present the possibility of several years in prison if Trump is ultimately convicted.

For his part, Nauta, who serves as Trump’s personal valet, faces six counts, including several obstruction- and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.

In her first order after the indictment,US District Judge Aileen Cannon – a Trump appointee – told DOJ and Trump attorneys’ parties to get the ball rolling to obtain security clearances for the lawyers who will need them.

Both of Trump’s attorneys – Blanche and Chris Kise – have already been in touch with the Justice Department about obtaining the necessary security clearances to try the case, a source familiar with the outreach told CNN Thursday evening.

Cannon’s order reflects how the case concerns highly sensitive, classified materials – adding another layer of complexity to the high-stakes, first-of-its-kind federal prosecution of a former president.

How long the proceedings stretch out, and whether the trial takes place before or after the 2024 election, will depend in part on how efficiently Cannon manages her docket. Thursday’s move by Cannon suggests an interest, at least for now, in moving the proceedings along without delay.

In an expected, procedural step Friday, Smith’s team asked the judge to bar Trump and his defense team from publicly disclosing some of the materials shared in the criminal case as part of the discovery process. Lawyers for Trump and Nauta do not oppose the requested protective order, according to the new filing, and Cannon has referred the matter to a magistrate judge.

Trump had already been indicted earlier this spring in a separate case, this one brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in New York state court.

Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The case has remained relatively quiet since Trump pleaded not guilty to all of those charges in April, with the judge setting a trial date in New York County for March 2024.

Still, the former president’s legal team has been attempting to move the case to federal court, and on Thursday his attorneys asked a federal judge to deny Bragg’s motion to remand the case back to the state Supreme Court, again arguing that the charges are related to his duties as president and therefore should not be heard in state court.

A hearing on the issue is scheduled for June 27.

Trump still has other active investigations looming over him, including a probe by Smith, the special counsel, into the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

And in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has recently indicated that she’s likely to make charging decisions public in August as part of her probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

In a letter obtained by CNN last month, Willis announced remote workdays for her staff in August and asked judges to refrain from in-person hearings for parts of that month.

Trump has insisted that any criminal charges will not stop his 2024 campaign, and so far he’s keeping to that commitment.

On Wednesday, his campaign said it had raised more than $7 million since the former president was indicted in the federal case.

“The donations are coming in at a really rapid pace,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.

Meanwhile, his GOP primary opponents have been weighing in on the new charges in a number of different ways, with some casting the prosecution as political while also stressing that the charges are concerning.

Trump can still run for president after being indicted or if he is eventually convicted.

Still, the existing indictments, as well as a potential conviction ahead of the 2024 election, could make it more difficult for Trump to win back the White House.

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April 12, 2021
Elizabeth Holmes could be released from prison two years earlier than expected | CNN Business

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Disgraced former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes could be out of prison nearly two years earlier than expected, according to the projected release date posted by the Bureau of Prisons.

Holmes reported to a Texas prison camp in late May after being sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison at the end of last year. The Bureau of Prisons online database now reports, however, that Holmes’ expected release date is December 29, 2032 – which would take roughly two years off of her full sentence.

The discrepancy appears to be due to how the Bureau of Prisons calculates its estimated release date.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons told CNN that the agency cannot comment on the conditions of any individual inmate, but said that inmates can earn Good Conduct Time (or GCT) that is calculated into their projected release date. Qualified inmates are currently eligible for up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court.

Moreover, inmates have other ways of earning time credits while incarcerated, the spokesperson said, pointing to a range of other factors that could go into calculating the agency’s estimated release date, including an inmate’s participation in various prison programs. These factors that go into calculating an estimated release date are not unique to Holmes’ case, but standard for inmates.

Holmes is currently serving out her sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a minimum security federal prison camp that is approximately 100 miles from Houston. Her request to remain free on bail while she fights to overturn her conviction was denied by an appellate court in May.

Holmes was once an icon in the tech world, serving as a poster child for the limitless ambitions and potential of Silicon Valley. She is now one of the rare tech executives to be serving prison time after being convicted early last year on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running Theranos.

Theranos was valued at $9 billion at its peak – making Holmes a paper billionaire. The company began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy. It also came to light that Theranos was relying on third-party manufactured devices from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology.

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April 12, 2021
FBI investigating ‘suspicious death’ of woman on Carnival cruise ship | CNN

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The FBI is investigating the “suspicious death” of a female passenger onboard the Carnival Sunshine cruise ship, the agency announced in a news release Sunday.

The woman was found unresponsive during the ship’s February 27 voyage to Nassau, Bahamas, the FBI field office in Columbia, South Carolina, said.

Medical staff and crew members attempted life-saving measures after learning she was unresponsive, but the woman was pronounced dead on the ship, the FBI said.

“Both the deceased and her husband were debarked in Nassau and Bahamian authorities have already investigated the circumstances and are conducting an autopsy,” Carnival Cruise Line spokesperson Matt Lupoli said in a statement to CNN.

“We are fully cooperating. This is a matter for authorities in the Bahamas and Charleston and we have no further comments,” said Lupoli.

On March 4, when the ship returned to Charleston, an FBI team processed the passenger’s room for evidence, the FBI release states.

The incident was isolated and there wasn’t a threat to any other passengers before or after the woman was found dead, the FBI said.

The FBI investigates suspicious deaths of US nationals as well as “certain crimes on the high seas,” the release states.

The incident remains under investigation, the FBI said.

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December 31, 1969