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Tag: international relations and national security

  • Biden expected to meet with Hill leaders Tuesday following ‘productive’ debt limit meetings among staff | CNN Politics

    Biden expected to meet with Hill leaders Tuesday following ‘productive’ debt limit meetings among staff | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is expected to meet Tuesday with congressional leaders on the debt ceiling limit following “productive” staff-level negotiations over the weekend, two sources familiar with the talks told CNN on Sunday, as the US barrels toward a deadline that could come as soon as June 1.

    Negotiators have been able to pinpoint some areas on which congressional staff and the White House can find common ground, including revising the permitting process, rescinding unspent Covid-19 relief funds and potentially cutting spending, the sources said.

    Biden and the top four congressional leaders – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – held talks on the debt limit last week in the Oval Office. Tuesday’s meeting, which has not yet been officially confirmed, according to the sources, comes after a planned Friday meeting was postponed as the staff-level talks continued.

    Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that talks between the two sides have been “constructive.”

    Biden, Adeyamo said, “looks forward to getting together with the leaders to talk about how we continue to make progress.”

    Biden himself indicated on Sunday that he expected principal-level debt ceiling discussions to take place Tuesday.

    “We’re working on it right now,” he said in brief remarks to reporters as he completed a bike ride in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

    There is still not a clear path forward to avoid a default with just four more days before June 1 when both the House and Senate are scheduled to be in session. Biden also confirmed Sunday that he expects to depart Wednesday for Hiroshima, Japan, for the G7 summit.

    “That’s my plan as it stands now,” he told reporters in Rehoboth Beach.

    It’s become increasingly clear that some spending cuts must be included for a deal to materialize, one of the sources said, and that point of discussion has been the main sticking point in negotiations so far.

    Biden said Sunday that he was waiting to hear Republicans’ exact proposals on work requirements for certain government aid programs. He said he has voted in the past for “tougher aid programs” that are now law but “for Medicaid, it’s a different story.”

    White House spokesperson Michael Kikukawa later elaborated on the president’s answer, saying in a statement that Biden would evaluate the GOP proposals guided by the principle that they would “not take away people’s health coverage” or “push Americans into poverty.”

    Negotiators recognize they will likely need to have an outline of a deal by the end of the week to ensure a bill can pass through Congress by June 1, the sources said, but they also think there are potential congressional tools that can be used to speed up the process if needed. The sources did not specify what those tools are.

    Adeyemo reiterated Sunday that the US “can’t” default on its debt but declined to provide details on areas of agreement. He echoed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s assessment that default could happen “as early as June 1” but said it “can be sometime in early June,” calling on Congress to act as he warned that default would be “catastrophic.”

    Top Treasury official says debt ceiling negotiations have been ‘constructive’

    Pressed by Bash on the timing of a deal following McCarthy’s call for an agreement in principle by early this week and business leaders like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon warning of market panic in the absence of a deal, Adeyemo said Biden “believes we should raise the debt limit as soon as possible.”

    “Because it’s not only financial markets, but the (University of Michigan) survey of consumer sentiment last week showed that consumers are now worried about the debt limit – it’s affecting the way they’re spending,” Adeyemo said.

    Meanwhile, top Biden economic adviser Lael Brainard on Sunday echoed previous White House comments on preferring a whole deal rather than a short-term fix.

    “Short-term is not a fix. It is not really addressing that core uncertainty that CEOs are talking about. It’s just really important to take default and address it, and Congress has the tools to do that,” the director of the National Economic Council said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

    Biden expressed optimism Sunday for an eventual agreement.

    “I remain optimistic because I’m a congenital optimist. But I really think there’s a desire on their part, as well as ours, to reach an agreement. I think we’ll be able to do it,” he said in Rehoboth Beach.

    The president had indicated last week that he was prepared for talks to go down to the wire.

    “I’ve been involved in negotiations my whole career,” he told CNN during a trip to New York. “Some negotiations happen at the last second, some negotiations happen way ahead of time. So, we’ll see.”

    Biden resurfaced last week the controversial idea of lifting the borrowing cap without Congress by invoking the 14th Amendment, which some legal experts argue gives the president the authority to order the nation’s debts to be paid regardless of the debt limit Congress sets.

    But using the 14th Amendment to let the Treasury Department borrow above the debt ceiling to pay the nation’s obligations would almost certainly prompt a constitutional crisis and swift legal action.

    Asked Sunday whether the administration would consider invoking the 14th Amendment in the absence of a deal with Congress, Adeyemo said, “What the president said was that he did not think the 14th Amendment would solve our problems now. The only thing that can solve our problems now is for Congress to lift the debt limit.”

    This story and headline have been updated.

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  • Exclusive: Senior US general ordered Twitter announcement of drone strike on al Qaeda leader that may have instead killed civilian | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: Senior US general ordered Twitter announcement of drone strike on al Qaeda leader that may have instead killed civilian | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The senior general in charge of US forces in the Middle East ordered that his command announce on Twitter that a senior al Qaeda leader had been targeted by an American drone strike in Syria earlier this month – despite not yet having confirmation of who was actually killed in the strike, according to multiple defense officials.

    Nearly three weeks later, US Central Command still does not know whether a civilian died instead, officials said. CENTCOM did not open a review of the incident, officially known as a civilian-casualty credibility assessment report, until May 15 – twelve days after the strike. That review is ongoing.

    One defense official with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN that some of CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla’s subordinates urged him to hold off on the tweet until there was more clarity on who was actually killed.

    Two other officials denied that, and said they were not aware of any staffers voicing consternation or disagreement with the announcement.

    Either way, the statement ultimately posted to Twitter from the official CENTCOM Twitter account did not identify the supposed senior al Qaeda leader, raising more questions about what had occurred.

    “At 11:42 am local Syrian time on 3 May, US Central Command Forces conducted a unilateral strike in Northwest Syria targeting a senior Al Qaeda leader,” the tweet read. “We will provide more information as operational details become available.”

    The tweet has not been taken down and CENTCOM has not tweeted about the strike again.

    The episode raises questions about how thoroughly CENTCOM has implemented the military’s civilian harm mitigation policy – a process for preventing, mitigating and responding to civilian casualties caused by US military operations.

    The policy was developed in 2022 after a botched US drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians in August 2021.

    Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Tuesday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is “absolutely” confident in the Defense Department’s civilian harm mitigation efforts.

    “In terms of CENTCOM’s strike, as you know, they conducted that strike on the third of May. They are investigating the allegations of civilian casualties,” Ryder said at a Pentagon news briefing. “So, you know, I think our record speaks for itself in terms of how seriously we take these. Very few countries around the world do that. The secretary has complete confidence that we will continue to abide by the policies that we put into place.”

    CENTCOM acknowledged last week following a Washington Post report questioning the strike that the operation may have resulted in a civilian casualty and said in a statement that it was “investigating” the incident. The civilian casualty review was not launched until a week after the Post began presenting information to CENTCOM suggesting that the strike had killed a civilian.

    CENTCOM still has not opened a formal investigation into the strike, known as a 15-6 investigation, defense officials told CNN. The officials said the civilian casualty review first needs to determine that a noncombatant was indeed killed in the strike. Then, a commander needs to decide that there are other unanswered questions remaining about the operation that require a more thorough investigation. A 15-6 investigation was launched less than a week after the errant Kabul strike.

    Defense officials told CNN that in the immediate aftermath of the strike, Kurilla and his staff had high confidence that they had killed the senior al-Qaeda leader, though they declined to say why they were so convinced. But they also knew it would likely take a few days to confirm the person’s identity definitively. The US has no military footprint in northwest Syria, an area still recovering from the effects of a devastating earthquake.

    But as the days passed, CENTCOM still could not determine the identity of who they had killed. Some defense officials considered that a red flag, they told CNN.

    By May 8, CENTCOM still had not confirmed the person’s identity, and began receiving information from the Washington Post that raised questions about whether a civilian had been killed, defense officials said. The Post’s information led CENTCOM to open a review into the strike, and whether it had killed a civilian, on May 15.

    There is still some disagreement within the administration about the identity of the person killed, defense officials told CNN. Some intelligence officials continue to believe that the target of the strike was a member of al-Qaeda, even if he wasn’t a senior leader. But there is a growing belief inside the Pentagon that the man – identified by his family as Loutfi Hassan Mesto, a 56-year-old father of ten – was a farmer with no ties to terrorism.

    Mesto’s family told CNN that he had been out grazing his sheep when he was killed. Loutfi never left his village during the Syrian uprisings and did not support any political faction, his brother said.

    Mohamed Sajee, a distant relative living in Qurqaniya, also told CNN that Loutfi was never known to be in favor or against the Syrian regime.

    “It’s impossible that he was with al Qaeda, he doesn’t even have a beard,” he said.

    The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, told CNN they arrived on the scene of the strike after being contacted on their local emergency number.

    “The team noticed only one crater caused by the missile, which was next to the man’s body,” the White Helmets said, also confirming that the man had been grazing his sheep.

    “When the team arrived, his wife, neighbors, and other people were at the location,” the group added.

    The White Helmets tweeted on May 3 that they had recovered the body of Mesto, who they described as “a civilian aged 60” who was killed in a missile strike while grazing sheep. CENTCOM was aware of the White Helmets’ tweet, officials said, but the group’s information was not considered solid enough yet to open a review.

    The May 3 incident bears a stunning similarity to another CENTCOM operation: a US drone strike in Kabul during the closing days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which killed 10 Afghan civilians, including 7 children. The Pentagon initially claimed it had eliminated an ISIS-K threat and defended the operation for weeks, with Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley going as far as to call it a “righteous” strike in a Pentagon briefing two days later.

    A suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport three days earlier, which killed 13 US service members, had added pressure on CENTCOM to act against any potential threats, and officials believed at the time that another attack was imminent.

    Austin ultimately decided no one would be punished over the botched operation, even as he instructed Central Command and Special Operations Command to improve policies and procedures to prevent civilian harm more effectively.

    Austin committed to adjusting Defense Department policies to better protect civilians, even establishing a civilian protection center of excellence in 2022.

    “Leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership,” Austin said at the time.

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  • Top US officials have ‘candid and productive discussions’ in Beijing amid ongoing tensions | CNN Politics

    Top US officials have ‘candid and productive discussions’ in Beijing amid ongoing tensions | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senior American and Chinese officials had “candid” and “productive” discussions on Monday in China, according to read-outs from both Washington and Beijing, as the two countries grapple with how to maintain communication amid intense friction.

    Top US State Department and National Security Council officials met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Monday “as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and build on recent high-level diplomacy between the two countries,” according to a readout from the US State Department.

    The trip by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and NSC Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs Sarah Beran to the Chinese capital comes as the Biden administration works to navigate its complicated relationship with Beijing.

    There have been a number of exchanges as the United States works to rectify normal channels of communications amid ongoing tensions between the two nations, including two military-related incidents in the past week.

    According to the readout from the State Department, Kritenbrink and Beran, accompanied by US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Director General of the North American and Oceanian Affairs Department Yang Tao. They also “met with members of the U.S. Embassy community.”

    “The two sides exchanged views on the bilateral relationship, cross-Strait issues, channels of communication, and other matters. U.S. officials made clear that the United States would compete vigorously and stand up for U.S. interests and values,” the readout said.

    China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the two sides had “candid, constructive, and productive communication on improving China-US relations” and “properly managing differences” in line with the consensus reached by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, who met on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November.

    China also clarified its “solemn position” on Taiwan and other major issues of principle, according to its readout, which added that the two sides agreed to continue communication.

    The self-governing democracy of Taiwan has become a key source of tension between the two countries. China’s ruling Communist Party claims the island as its own, despite never having controlled it and has not ruled out using force to take it.

    On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be “devastating” and affect the global economy “in ways we cannot imagine,” while underlining US support for the island democracy and the importance of deterrence.

    State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Monday that other bilateral issues discussed in Monday’s meeting included climate change, precursor chemicals from China that are used in fentanyl production, human rights, and wrongfully detained American citizens. There are three Americans publicly known to be wrongfully detained in China: Mark Swidan, Kai Li and David Lin.

    Patel did not say if the meeting in Beijing yielded progress on rescheduling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s own visit to the Chinese capital, which was postponed after the spy balloon incident earlier this year. Instead, Patel reiterated that the department hoped to schedule the trip “when conditions allow.”

    US officials have emphasized their desire to maintain open channels of communication with China as a means to prevent the “competitive” relationship from veering into conflict. China rebuffed a formal meeting of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu while they were both in Singapore, though the two ministers shook hands and “spoke briefly,” the Pentagon said.

    “The most dangerous thing is not to communicate and as a result, to have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication,” Blinken said at a press availability in Sweden last week after the US asserted that a Chinese fighter jet conducted an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace.

    On Sunday, the US accused a Chinese warship of cutting in front of an American vessel that was taking part in a joint exercise with the Canadian navy in the Taiwan Strait, forcing the American vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. The Chinese defense minister accused the US of “provocation.”

    John Kirby of the US National Security Council on Monday attributed the incidents to an “increasing level of aggressiveness” by China’s military.

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  • Another historic week in the investigation and prosecution of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    Another historic week in the investigation and prosecution of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    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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  • GOP battle brews over defense bill as McCarthy under pressure to appease the right on social issues | CNN Politics

    GOP battle brews over defense bill as McCarthy under pressure to appease the right on social issues | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House GOP leaders are confronting a legislative landmine over a massive defense bill as right-wing lawmakers are pushing for a slew of hot button amendments that could put moderate Republicans in a complicated position and threaten Democratic support for the must-pass bill.

    The lawmakers are demanding amendment votes this week on a wide-range of controversial issues – everything ranging from abortion to transgender rights to diversity programs at the Pentagon – and are even privately warning that they could scuttle the defense bill on the first procedural vote if they don’t get their way.

    The move has once again put the focus on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he tries to navigate the unyielding demands from members on his far-right while pushing legislation that many of his most vulnerable members are eager to tout back home. If he caters to the whims of members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, he could win over more far-right Republicans but could jeopardize support from Democrats and moderate Republicans, both of which will be essential to getting the bill through the chamber.

    Yet the votes could even put the White House in a jam as a group of lawmakers from both parties are pushing to halt President Joe Biden’s move to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

    Even though the House Armed Services Committee sent its bill to the floor on a bipartisan vote, the top Democrat on that panel warned that his support would be in jeopardy if the final bill includes some of these controversial amendments, particularly around abortion.

    “The committee did a good job of presenting a bipartisan bill,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the committee’s top Democrat, told CNN. “But I am worried that the full House Republicans are not going to do that, that they’re going to push this bill too far into an extreme anti-inclusion direction that makes it difficult to support.”

    The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday afternoon to decide which of the over 1,500 amendments that have been submitted will actually be made in order, with the GOP leaders hoping to pass the final bill by the end of this week.

    But even the House Rules Committee has become a wild card for the National Defense Authorization Act. Republicans can only afford to lose two votes on the committee on a party-line vote, and McCarthy placed three far-right members on the panel in exchange for becoming speaker. At least one of the conservative lawmakers on the panel, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told CNN he plans to oppose the rule, citing concerns that the bill does not go far enough to target “woke” Pentagon policies, and won’t receive the amendment votes to change that.

    GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, one of the other far-right members on the panel said in a statement to CNN, “While this NDAA makes some improvements, there are still glaring issues at the DOD that it needs to address in order to receive my support” when asked how he plans to vote on the rule.

    “The Department of Defense’s transformation into a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform is the single greatest threat to this nation’s ability to defend itself – and Republicans are complicit,” Roy added. “Year after year, Republicans pass an NDAA that propagates the cultural rot at DOD while massive defense contractors get rich.”

    Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the other conservative on the committee, has not returned a request for comment about how he plans to vote, though a Republican source said they’re not as worried about Massie breaking ranks.

    While drama isn’t new in fights over the NDAA, which has been passed by Congress every year for the last six decades, this level of acrimony is something of a departure for what is a typically bipartisan affair. After receiving heat for the debt ceiling deal, McCarthy is under increasing pressure to cater to his right flank, ratcheting up concerns about the ability for lawmakers to reach a compromise that both chambers can agree on.

    GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who represents a swing district and has long been pushing her Republican colleagues to soften their stance on abortion, told CNN, “I don’t anticipate the NDAA not passing but the GOP has an opportunity to show it can be compassionate and pro-woman, and I hope they don’t drop the ball.”

    Aside from amendments that target culture war issues, Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who both serve on the Armed Services Committee, are also planning to offer an amendment aimed at stopping President Joe Biden’s cluster munition transfer to Ukraine. If it comes to the floor, the vote would reveal how much support Biden’s move has in the House.

    “Cluster munitions are unpredictable weapons that maim and kill indiscriminately, wreaking havoc on civilian populations and undermining economic rebuilding and recovery for decades,” Jacobs told CNN. “This amendment sends a strong message to the world that we will stand by our values and our commitment to protect civilians.”

    Gaetz voiced a similar refrain on Twitter.

    “These cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine and will not build a more stable country. Children will be left without limbs and without parents because of this decision if we do not work together in a bipartisan fashion to stop it,” Gaetz tweeted Monday.

    And while the version of the NDAA that passed out of the Armed Services Committee included more funding for the war in Ukraine, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and others are pushing to roll that funding back.

    The NDAA, which outlines the policy agenda for the Department of Defense and the US military and authorizes spending in line with the Pentagon’s priorities, passed out of the House Armed Services committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, even though some controversial GOP amendments – including on banning drag shows on military bases and reinstating troops who refused to comply with the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate – were adopted.

    Some of the amendments that will take center stage on the floor this week include prohibiting gender transition surgeries and treatments from Gaetz, eliminating any offices of diversity, equity and inclusion within the armed forces and Department of Defense from a number of members including Norman, and prohibiting the Department of Defense from “purchasing and having pornographic and radical gender ideology books in their libraries” from GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

    While a handful of Republicans do not believe those amendments go far enough, others warned their colleagues not to jeopardize the future of this crucial legislation as the $858 billion defense package boasts measures that modernize the US military, increase its readiness to counter foreign adversaries like Russia and China, and increase support for servicemembers and their families.

    “We need to get the NDAA passed. … It’s not something to ever put at risk and national security needs to be a priority for each and every one of us. If we don’t have world peace, we have nothing,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, a freshman Republican from a Virginia swing district, told CNN. “And we do that through providing the budget that the military needs. … So, it’s a responsibility.”

    GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who serves on the Armed Services committee and represents a district Biden won in 2020, told CNN, “I hope smart, common sense amendments are passed.”

    “The committee passed a bill near unanimously with only one dissenting vote, and it will take bipartisanship to get it also through the Senate,” Bacon told CNN.

    While the markup process of the NDAA touched on hot button issues, ultimately members on the committee came together to pass a package that most could support.

    Reflecting on the markup process, one GOP staffer told CNN, “People were pushing for DoD funds to be used for supporting war fighters over wokeness.”

    Those clashes, however, have only seemed to foreshadow the floor flights to come.

    “I think in committee, we tried to craft a bipartisan bill that would be able to get through the Senate and I’m hopeful that’s what everyone will try and do on the floor as well,” Jacobs told CNN. “But I think we’re already seeing the extreme Republicans try and put some poison pills in there that will make it very hard for Democrats to vote for the bill.”

    Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who told CNN he was “proud” to be the only member to vote against NDAA in committee because he needed to see “greater investment” in the Pacific region, called out the amendments that “hurt diversity and inclusion, education, and do nothing to strengthen our national security.”

    “I plan to vote no when it comes to the floor and encourage my colleagues to do the same,” Khanna added.

    One Democratic aide claimed, “Republicans are trying to hijack NDAA to make it a culture war battle.”

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  • Iran helping Russia build drone stockpile that is expected to be ‘orders of magnitude larger’ than previous arsenal, US says | CNN Politics

    Iran helping Russia build drone stockpile that is expected to be ‘orders of magnitude larger’ than previous arsenal, US says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US intelligence officials have warned that Russia is building a drone-manufacturing facility in country with Iran’s help that could have a significant impact on the war in Ukraine once it is completed.

    Analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency told a small group of reporters during a briefing on Friday that the drone-manufacturing facility now under construction is expected to provide Russia with a new drone stockpile that is “orders of magnitude larger” than what it has been able to procure from Iran to date.

    When the facility is completed, likely by early next year, the new drones could have a significant impact on the conflict, the analysts warned. In April, the US released a satellite image of the planned location of the purported drone manufacturing plant, inside Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone about 600 miles east of Moscow. The analysts said Iran has regularly been ferrying equipment to Russia to help with the facility’s construction.

    They added that to date, it is believed that Iran has provided Russia with over 400 Shahed 131, 136 and Mohajer drones – a stockpile that Russia has almost completely depleted, they said.

    Russia is primarily using the drones to attack critical Ukrainian infrastructure and stretch Ukraine’s air defenses, a senior DIA official said. Iran has been using the Caspian Sea to move drones, bullets and mortar shells to Russia, often using vessels that are “dark,” or have turned off their tracking data to disguise their movements, CNN has reported.

    The US obtained and analyzed several of the drones downed in Ukraine, and officials say there is “undeniable evidence” that the drones are Iranian, despite repeated denials from Tehran that it is providing the equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine.

    The DIA analysts showcased debris from drones recovered in Ukraine in 2022 during the briefing on Friday, comparing them side-by-side with Iranian-made drones found in Iraq last year.

    One of the drones recovered in Ukraine had only its wings and engine partially intact. But judging by its shape and size, it appeared to be a Shahed-131, the same model as an Iranian-made drone found in Iraq. The analysts removed components from one and easily slid them onto the other, showing that they are virtually “indistinguishable” in their design.

    Other drone components found downed in Ukraine were nearly identical to Iranian-made components found in Iraq, the only apparent difference being that the components found in Ukraine featured cyrillic lettering. A phrase written on one component roughly translated to “for grandfather” in Russian, a reference to Russia’s fight against the Nazis in World War II.

    The analysts said they were allowing journalists to see the drones in person because they want to give policy makers and the public “undeniable evidence” that Iranian-made drones are being used by Russia in Ukraine.

    Components from Iranian-made drones found in Iraq (left) and Ukraine (right). Photo shared by the US Defense Intelligence Agency's Office of Corporate Communications.

    The US also wants to raise awareness so that western companies begin to better monitor their supply chains for signs that their components are being illegally diverted to help manufacture the drones. The  Biden administration launched an expansive task force last year to investigate how US and western components, including American-made microelectronics, were ending up in the Iranian-made drones being used in Russia.

    Tehran, for its part, has flatly denied providing the drones for Russia during the war.

    “The Islamic Republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the war in Ukraine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in October. In November, Amir-Abdollahian acknowledged that Iran had supplied drones to Russia, but said they had been delivered to Russia months before the war began.

    A senior DIA official said on Friday that analysts first saw signs of a growing Russian-Iranian military partnership in April 2022. The White House revealed in July 2022 that Iran was preparing to provide Russia with the drones.

    The DIA also showcased an Iranian-made Shahed-101 drone recovered in Iraq, which is smaller and lighter than the Shahed-131 and has not previously been shown to the public, the analysts said. There is a possibility that Iran could begin providing the Shahed-101 to Russia, particularly because they are more compact and easier to ship, they added.

    The US had intelligence late last year that Iran was considering providing ballistic missiles to Iran, but that plan appears to have been “put on hold” for now, one of the analysts said.

    Iran benefits from providing Russia with military equipment because it can showcase its weapons to international buyers and gets money and support from Russia for its space and missile programs in return, the analysts said. But providing ballistic missiles would represent a “monumental” escalation in Iranian support for Russia’s war, the analysts said, and it is not clear that Tehran is willing to take that risk at this point in the conflict.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

    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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  • Biden administration to roll out new tracking measures for migrant families | CNN Politics

    Biden administration to roll out new tracking measures for migrant families | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration is rolling out a new program for migrant families released in the United States to track them as they go through a speedy deportation process, including a measure that would require they stay under home confinement, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans.

    The so-called Family Expedited Removal Management (FERM) will place certain heads of household for families on an alternative to detention, such as a GPS ankle monitor, and subject them to curfew in four cities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed in a statement.

    The Los Angeles Times first reported on the program.

    The families still have the opportunity to claim asylum under the program and if they qualify, go through the asylum process. Families not found to have credible fear are subject to removal under the fast-track deportation process, known as “expedited removal,” which would bar them from the US for five years.

    The program is one of many initiatives being rolled out by the Biden administration to try to manage the flow of migrants at the US-Mexico border – in this case, families – following the expiration of a Covid-era border restriction, known as Title 42.

    “[Enforcement and Removal Operations] is committed to imposing immigration consequences in a safe and humane manner to those who unlawfully enter the United States,” said ICE ERO Executive Associate Director Corey Price in a statement.

    “Families should not listen to the lies of smugglers. Like single adults, noncitizens travelling with their children who do not have a lawful basis to remain in the United States will be quickly removed and barred from reentry for at least five years,” the statement continued.

    Last year, ICE piloted a similar program with migrants who resided in Baltimore and Houston and set a curfew from dusk until dawn.

    Administration officials have been racing to deal with a significant increase in the number of migrants trying to cross into the US as Title 42 – a pandemic-era rule that has allowed authorities to swiftly expel migrants encountered at the border – is set to expire.

    The Biden administration came under fierce criticism earlier this year amid reports that officials were considering restarting family detention, a practice that had been ended by President Joe Biden. Officials have since maintained that there are no plans to return the practice.

    But the high number of border arrests in recent days has put the challenge facing the administration into sharp focus.

    US border authorities encountered more than 10,000 migrants along the US southern border on Tuesday, according to a Homeland Security official, already surpassing government estimates for the Title 42 aftermath.

    Among the new policy measures the administration is putting into place is a new asylum rule that will largely bar migrants who passed through another country from seeking asylum in the US. The rule, proposed earlier this year, will presume migrants are ineligible for asylum in the US if they didn’t first seek refuge in a country they transited through, like Mexico, on the way to the border. Migrants who secure an appointment through the CBP One app will be exempt, according to officials.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    CORRECTION: The headline and story have been updated to reflect The Los Angeles Times was the first to report on the program’s roll out.

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  • Pentagon seeks to increase pressure on Tuberville to break hold on military nominations | CNN Politics

    Pentagon seeks to increase pressure on Tuberville to break hold on military nominations | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    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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  • Blinken speaks to Russian foreign minister about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan | CNN Politics

    Blinken speaks to Russian foreign minister about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and called for the “immediate release” of detained Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, according to the US State Department.

    “Secretary Blinken conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist,” a readout from the department said.

    “Secretary Blinken further urged the Kremlin to immediately release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan,” the readout continued, adding that the secretary and Lavrov “also discussed the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work.”

    Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Russia, was detained last week on charges of espionage – the first time an American journalist has been detained on such accusations by Moscow since the Cold War. US officials in Moscow had not yet been granted consular access to Gershkovich as of Sunday.

    The Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said Sunday that the call between Blinken and Lavrov was “hugely reassuring.”

    “We know that the US government is taking the case very seriously right up to the top,” she told CBS News.

    Whelan, meanwhile, is serving out a 16-year prison sentence for the same charges, which he strongly denies. His brother David Whelan said in an email to the press Thursday that his family was sorry to hear “that another American family will have to experience the same trauma that we have had to endure for the past 1,553 days.”

    Whelan has been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department, and Gershkovich is expected to receive the same designation but had not yet as of Sunday morning. Tucker said she hopes the US government will act swiftly to label Gershkovich as wrongfully detained, saying it will be anofficial recognition that the charges against the reporter are “entirely bogus.”

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Sunday’s phone call was initiated by the US and that Lavrov told Blinken that Gershkovich’s fate would be determined by a Russian court.

    Lavrov also blamed Washington and the Western press for politicizing the arrest.

    “It was emphasized that it is unacceptable for officials in Washington and Western media to hype up [the issue] with the clear intention of giving this case a political coloring,” the statement said.

    Gershkovich is currently being held in the notorious Lefortovo pre-detention center until May 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges.

    Sunday’s call was only the third time that Blinken has spoken with his Russian counterpart since the war in Ukraine began, and all of those conversations have discussed detained US citizens. The two spoke in person for the first time since the war broke out on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in India last month, and Blinken said he raised the issues of the war, Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START nuclear agreement, and Whelan’s ongoing detention.

    The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday expressed support for the Biden administration’s efforts to negotiate with Russia for Gershkovich’s release.

    “Certainly the Biden administration should continue its efforts to negotiate and to try to get the release of this journalist, but overall, people should be very cautious about staying in Russia,” Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Turner noted that the US government “gave people notice that they should get out of Russia” and said he would continued to encourage people to do so. The Biden administration has echoed those assessments. While the Kremlin has asserted that Russia is safe for accredited journalists, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN on Friday, “Russia is not safe for Americans.”

    Turner appeared on “State of the Union” on Sunday from southern Poland, where he said he is “meeting with those who are active in intelligence and meeting with our servicemembers who are active in the support of Ukraine.”

    Pressed by Bash on remarks by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley that the war in Ukraine will likely not be won this year, the Ohio lawmaker appeared to agree.

    “One thing I can tell you is that Russia is not going to win either,” he said. “This is a war that Russia is not winning, and they’re not winning it because Ukraine realizes that they’re standing up for democracy, they’re fighting for their country. And as they continue to do so, the United States’ assistance and certainly the assistance of our NATO allies and partners are making a huge turnout for the battlefield.”

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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  • US transfers alleged al-Qaeda associate from Guantanamo Bay to Algeria | CNN Politics

    US transfers alleged al-Qaeda associate from Guantanamo Bay to Algeria | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US transferred an alleged al-Qaeda associate from Guantanamo Bay to Algeria, the Defense Department announced Thursday, part of the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to close the prison facility.

    Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush, a 72-year-old Algerian native who has been held in detention in Guantanamo Bay for 20 years, was sent to Algeria after a review board determined he no longer needed to be held to protect against “a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States,” the Defense Department said. The transfer included a set of security measures, including monitoring, travel restrictions and continued information sharing.

    The Biden administration has made it a priority to reduce the number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay as part of the ongoing effort to close the prison facility.

    Last month, the US transferred an alleged al-Qaeda bombmaker to his native Saudi Arabia after more than 20 years of detention. Two weeks earlier, the US transferred two brothers accused of running al-Qaeda safehouses to Pakistan.

    The latest transfer brings the number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay down to 30, 16 of whom are eligible for transfer, according to the Defense Department.

    Umran Bakush was a trusted associate of al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah and al-Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, according to government records. In the late-90s, Umban Bakush attended basic and advanced training in Afghanistan, later serving as an instructor at an extremist camp, the records said.

    He was captured at a safehouse in March 2002, where members were training for future attacks, including US interests, records said. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in June 2002.

    But investigators were never able to learn more about what motivated Umran Bakush to allegedly join al-Qaeda and participate in planning terrorist attacks, records said, and he never admitted to involvement in extremist activities. He has consistently denied involvement in terrorist activities and shown little interest or sympathy for al-Qaeda or radical Islamic views, according to government records. He has also not shown a strong interest in being released from prison, but he feared returning to Algeria because he worried authorities there would arrest him.

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  • Trump lawyers rail against DOJ in letter, reveal foreign leader briefings may be among classified documents taken from White House | CNN Politics

    Trump lawyers rail against DOJ in letter, reveal foreign leader briefings may be among classified documents taken from White House | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Two of Donald Trump’s defense lawyers now believe that classified briefings of phone calls with foreign leaders were among “all manner of documents” in 15 boxes that Trump returned to the National Archives a year after he left the presidency, according to a new letter his lawyers sent to Congress.

    This organization of the materials “indicates that the White House staff simply swept all documents from the President’s desk and other areas into boxes, where they have resided ever since,” the two lawyers, Timothy Parlatore and Jim Trusty, wrote to the GOP chair of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

    Their characterization not only reveals new details about the documents but also comes as part of a broadside against the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump over the classified documents that lays out talking points for Republicans as they try to portray the ongoing probe as politically motivated.

    The lawyers urge Congress to tell the Justice Department to “stand down,” even as special counsel Jack Smith’s probe has shown signs of nearing its end and even though Congress doesn’t have the power to control DOJ criminal investigations.

    Parlatore and Trusty say they reviewed the 15 boxes earlier this year that are now part of the Justice Department’s investigation. They saw placeholder pages where classified documents were removed by the National Archives, according to the letter.

    “The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls,” the lawyers wrote.

    The 15 boxes were turned over to the Archives in January 2022. The FBI seized more boxes in August 2022 during a court-authorized search that found more than 100 classified documents, including 18 at the highest “top secret” classification level. Trump’s own legal team later found more classified materials in a search other locations.

    The Justice Department has never said exactly what was in the classified material found in Trump’s possession after the presidency. Trump’s lawyers say in their letter that the Justice Department has refused to tell them whether any of the documents remain classified.

    It’s not clear why at this point in the special counsel’s investigation that the Trump legal team was given access to the boxes turned over to the National Archives to look through them.

    Wednesday’s letter was sent to House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner, and it represents Trump’s legal team seeking a political lifeline by asking Congress tell the Justice Department to step aside because they believe the intelligence community should conduct the investigation into what happened with the classified documents.

    “DOJ should be ordered to stand down, and the intelligence community should instead conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this Committee, as well as your counterparts in the Senate,” the lawyers wrote to Turner.

    “This is indicative of the staff’s packing processes and not any criminal intent by President Trump,” the lawyers argued.

    The lawyers also pointed to classified documents since discovered at the residences and offices of President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

    “As demonstrated by the discovery of documents with classification markings in the homes of President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Pence, deficient document handling and storage procedures are not limited to any individual, administration, or political party,” the lawyers wrote.

    The intelligence community said in August following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that it was conducting its own damage assessment of the classified documents that had been retrieved.

    Earlier this month, intelligence leaders in Congress were provided access to some of the classified documents that had been taken from the residences and offices of Trump, Biden and Pence so that Congress could do its own review.

    Trump’s legal team sent Wednesday’s letter to Turner and copied other intelligence leaders in Congress, including the Democratic-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump’s allies have for years assailed the various probes into the former president, yet even his former attorney general, William Barr, has said the classified documents investigation puts the former president in serious legal jeopardy.

    In a February interview with CNN, Parlatore signaled Trump’s legal strategy, saying that DOJ should be “benched” on matters related to classified material and it should be left up to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to conduct an administrative review of the White House’s procedure for handling such documents at the end of each presidency.

    In Wednesday’s letter, Trump’s lawyers criticized the Justice Department’s handling of the case before the search of Mar-a-Lago, arguing that federal investigators put Trump on the defensive by issuing a grand jury subpoena instead of working cooperatively with Trump.

    The letter also tried to defend a certification made by one of Trump’s attorneys last year following the subpoena. In June 2022, the lawyer, Christina Bobb, signed a certification that Trump had complied with the subpoena by turning over the classified documents in his possession.

    “Ultimately, President Trump’s legal team complied with DOJ’s demands, performing as diligent a search as they could by Mr. (Jay) Bratt’s arbitrary deadline, and submitted a certification that affirmed the same,” the lawyers wrote in Wednesday’s letter.

    “To be clear, the certification stated that a diligent search was conducted, and all responsive documents found were provided — not that the search turned up all possible materials, as many media outlets have falsely characterized the certification as saying,” they added.

    The certification that Bobb signed, however, states that “any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.” Trump did not, however, turn over all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    Bobb has since testified to the grand jury, and another attorney who worked on the draft response to the subpoena, Evan Corcoran, was recently forced to testify to the federal grand jury about the response and other discussions with Trump, after prosecutors believed Trump used his attorney to advance a crime.

    Wednesday’s letter also did not note that the FBI’s August 2022 search warrant came after federal investigators were told that Trump directed the movement of boxes from a basement storage room to his residence at Mar-a-Lago following receipt of the subpoena.

    This story has been updated to reflect additional lawmakers copied on the letter from Trump’s lawyers.

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  • Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

    Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

    Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

    The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

    The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

    The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

    “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

    When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

    When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

    Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

    “It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

    Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

    Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

    “I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

    When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

    Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

    Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

    Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

    The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

    Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

    The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

    “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

    When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

    “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

    Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

    That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

    “If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

    While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

    Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

    There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

    But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

    “If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

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

    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.

    Meadows shakes hands with attendees after a forum on House and GOP conference rules for the 118th Congress at FreedomWorks, a conservative and libertarian advocacy group, in Washington, D.C., on Monday, November 14, 2022.

    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.

    Meadows greets supporters in front of senior aide Cassidy Hutchinson during a presidential campaign rally for President Trump in Pennsylvania, on October 31, 2020.

    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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  • Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that the ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship | CNN Business

    Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that the ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    For months, Twitter owner Elon Musk and his allies have amplified baseless claims that the US government illegally coerced Twitter into censoring a 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden. The foundation for those claims rests on the so-called “Twitter Files,” a series of reports by a set of handpicked journalists who, at Musk’s discretion, were given selective access to historical company archives.

    Now, though, Twitter’s own lawyers are disputing those claims in a case involving former President Donald Trump — forcefully rejecting any suggestion that the Twitter Files show what Musk and many Republicans assert they contain.

    In a court filing last week, Twitter’s attorneys contested one of the most central allegations to emerge from the Twitter Files: that regular communications between the FBI and Twitter ahead of the 2020 election amounted to government coercion to censor content or, worse, that Twitter had become an actual arm of the US government.

    In tweets last year, Musk alleged that the communications showed a clear breach of the US constitution.

    “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” he said of a screenshot purportedly showing Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 asking Twitter to review several tweets it suggested were violations of the company’s terms. Some of the tweets in question included nonconsensual nude images that violated Twitter’s policies.

    In another push to promote misleading allegations of government malfeasance stemming from the Twitter Files, Musk also claimed that the “government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public.”

    Legal experts have said the claim of a constitutional violation is weak because the First Amendment binds the government, not political campaigns, and Trump was president at the time, not Biden. The Twitter Files also show the Trump administration made its own requests for removal of Twitter content. And the payments to Twitter have also been identified as routine reimbursements for responding to subpoenas and investigations, not payments for content moderation decisions.

    “Nothing in the new materials shows any governmental actor compelling or even discussing any content-moderation action with respect to Trump” and others participating in the suit, Twitter argued.

    The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion, Twitter’s lawyers wrote, “because they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”

    “Instead,” the filing continued, the communications “show that the [FBI] issued general updates about their efforts to combat foreign interference in the 2020 election.”

    The evidence outlined by Twitter’s lawyers is consistent with public statements by former Twitter employees and the FBI, along with prior CNN analysis of the Twitter Files.

    Altogether, the filing by Musk’s own corporate lawyers represents a step-by-step refutation of some of the most explosive claims to come out of the Twitter Files and that in some cases have been promoted by Musk himself.

    Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Even as the filing undercuts Musk’s effort to portray the Twitter Files as a smoking gun, the filing may still work to his benefit because, if successful, it may save Twitter from a costly re-litigation of its handling of Trump’s account and others.

    The communications in question, some of which also came out in a deposition of an FBI agent in a separate case, were invoked last year as part of a bid to revive litigation over Twitter’s banning of Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. The lawsuit had been dismissed last summer, after the federal judge overseeing the case said there was no evidence of a First Amendment violation.

    Musk’s release of company files has given lawyers for Trump and other plaintiffs in the case another shot. If the court decides the new evidence is enough to suspend the prior judgment, the lawyers for Trump and others said in May, then they might decide to file a fresh amended complaint.

    But Twitter argued last week that the judge should not allow the case to be reopened because nothing in the Twitter Files supports the already dismissed claim of federal coercion.

    Even the FBI’s flagging of specific problematic tweets were merely suggestions that they might violate Twitter’s terms of service, not a request that they be removed or an implication of retribution if Twitter failed to take the tweets down, Twitter’s lawyers said.

    Citing another case, Twitter wrote: “The FBI’s ‘flags’ cannot amount to coercion because there was ‘no intimation that Twitter would suffer adverse consequences if it refused.’”

    Twitter also objected to the claim, amplified by Musk, that Twitter was paid to censor conservative speech when it sought reimbursement for complying with government requests for user data.

    “The reimbursements were not for responding to requests to remove any accounts or content and thus are wholly irrelevant to Plaintiffs’ joint-action theory,” Twitter wrote.

    It added: “The new materials demonstrate only that Twitter exercised its statutory right—provided to all private actors—to seek reimbursement for time spent processing a government official’s legal requests for information under the Stored Communications Act. The payments therefore do not concern content moderation at all—let alone specific requests to take down content.”

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  • Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics

    Trump should not be trusted with national secrets if charges prove true, his ex-Defense secretary says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s onetime Defense secretary said Sunday that the former president should not be trusted with the nation’s secrets again should the allegations made in his federal indictment over his handling of classified documents prove true.

    “Based on his actions – again, if proven true – under the indictment by the special counsel, no,” Mark Esper told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    “It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation security risk. You cannot have these documents floating around. They need to be secured,” he said.

    Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges, including 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information.” The former president denies any wrongdoing.

    Esper’s critical remarks about his onetime boss follow damning language by another high-profile Trump administration official – former Attorney General Bill Barr – who said last week that Trump was “toast” if even half of the details in his indictment were true.

    “The revelations are very troubling, disturbing,” Esper said Sunday when asked by Tapper if Trump’s actions put America’s national security at risk. “Yes, I do. If the allegations are true that it contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other items, it could be quite harmful to the nation. And, look, no one is above the law. And so I think this process needs to play out and people held to account, the president held to account.”

    Trump fired Esper as his Defense secretary in November 2020, shortly after Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the presidential election.

    Meanwhile, in a separate interview on “State of the Union,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner said he was “not going to defend the behavior” listed in the indictment against Trump but the government would need to prove its case as the legal process moves forward.

    The Ohio Republican also said he had “grave concern” about the way documents were stored not just as it pertained to Trump but to Biden as well. A separate special counsel is leading an investigation into Obama-era classified documents found at Biden’s home and former private office.

    ‘Grave concern’: GOP House Intel Chair on classified Trump docs – full interview

    “The chair and ranking (member) of both the House Intel and Senate Intel (committees) have seen some of the documents, both from the Biden cache and the Trump documents itself. And I can tell you that, from having looked at both of those documents, I have grave concern about both of those type of documents being out in an unsecured place,” Turner said. “Both of them included details of national security issues that should not have been outside of a controlled environment.”

    Turner also previewed a closed-door meeting Tuesday his committee will be holding with John Durham, the special counsel who concluded in a report released last month that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

    “We’re pulling him in to our committee to say, ‘OK, now that we have seen that there were abuses, that this was wrong, and that there are problems with (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) itself, what are the recommendations that you think we should pursue?’” Turner said.

    Durham is expected to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

    His 300-plus page report states that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” to launch its Trump-Russia investigation but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

    Durham, however, did 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.

    This report has been updated with additional details.

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  • The US immigration story extends well beyond the border | CNN Politics

    The US immigration story extends well beyond the border | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    There is a tendency to view the different elements of the immigration landscape in isolation.

    • Texas is being sued by the US Department of Justice for acting on its own to put obstructions along the border.
    • New York and other cities complain they are overwhelmed by buses of migrants being sent from the border.
    • In the absence of action by Congress, court decisions are setting US border policy.

    But the elements are all interrelated.

    I talked to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez to get her perspective as a White House reporter with a deep background in reporting on all aspects of the larger immigration story. Our conversation, conducted by email, is below. And don’t miss her story that published Tuesday: Federal judge blocks Biden’s controversial asylum policy in a major blow to administration.

    WOLF: The US government is suing Texas to remove floating barriers from the Rio Grande. But it’s just the latest in a series of escalating measures Texas has undertaken on its own to keep migrants out of the country. What is the state of play at the border?

    ALVAREZ: The handling of the US-Mexico border has long been a point of contention between President (Joe) Biden and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s argued that the administration hasn’t done enough to enforce the border.

    As an affront to Biden’s border policies, Abbott has transported migrants to Democratic-led cities without coordinating with city officials, deployed more personnel to the Texas-Mexico border, and earlier this month, installed buoys in the Rio Grande.

    Border agents have historically worked closely with the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety. But the latest steps taken by the state have made day-to-day operations more difficult.

    DPS made certain portions of the Texas-Mexico border more difficult to access, marking a departure from the coordination that previously existed between law enforcement. Agents on the ground have also sent regular reports to US Customs and Border Protection headquarters about what they’ve observed as Abbott’s operation has been underway, a Homeland Security official told me.

    But disturbing images of migrants with injuries and troubling reports of Texas troops pushing migrants back to Mexico forced the Biden’s administration hands.

    Last week, the Justice Department said it’s assessing the situation along the Texas-Mexico border and on Monday, the DOJ filed a lawsuit on a separate, though related matter: the installation of a floating barrier. The lawsuit says Texas didn’t seek authorization before placing the floating barrier in the Rio Grande and poses a threat to navigation.

    That court battle could take months to play out. But in the interim, it could fuel tensions between agents and troops on the ground and further escalate the feud between Biden and Abbott.

    WOLF: You’ve written about how an expected surge of migrants after the end of a Covid-era policy known as Title 42 never materialized. What happened?

    ALVAREZ: Let’s provide some context first. Migration often ebbs and flows.

    But the Biden administration has had to grapple with unprecedented mass movement of people in the Western hemisphere, which is in part the outcome of the coronavirus pandemic decimating conditions in the region.

    The administration relied on a public health authority, known as Title 42, to quickly expel migrants back to Mexico or their origin countries. That authority had been invoked under former President (Donald) Trump and used to turn away migrants, including asylum-seekers, at the US-Mexico border on public health grounds.

    In the days leading up to the expiration of Title 42, thousands of migrants tried to cross the US southern border, knowing that they could face tougher penalties after the end of the authority including bans on reentry to the United States.

    And that’s indeed been the case. Increased deportations and tougher policies, paired with other, new legal pathways to the United States, appear to have driven down the number of people attempting to unlawfully cross the US-Mexico border.

    In June, for example, US Border Patrol arrested nearly 100,000 migrants along the US southern border, marking a decrease from May and marking the lowest monthly border encounters since February 2021, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

    WOLF: Far from the border in Texas, New York Mayor Eric Adams, after earlier welcoming migrants bused to his city, has said with increasing urgency that the city is full. Migrants are now also being bused to Los Angeles. What’s the latest on the busing angle?

    ALVAREZ: The busing is still happening. Since last year, Texas has bused more than 27,000 migrants to six cities, according to Abbott’s office. The cities include Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles.

    One of the main issues with the transport of migrants to these cities that officials often raise alarm about is the lack of coordination. The governor’s office doesn’t generally notify cities that migrants are being sent there, leaving border NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to try to fill the information void.

    It’s important to note, though, that migrants who are released from government custody have been vetted and processed by federal authorities and are released as they go through their immigration court proceedings. An immigration judge ultimately decides whether a migrant has grounds to stay in the United States or be ordered removed.

    WOLF: All of these things are related – the efforts by Texas to create its own border policy, the difficulty New York and cities are facing as they deal with an influx of migrants … everything feeds from the lack of more comprehensive immigration reform. Is there any movement in Congress toward dealing with all of this in a comprehensive way?

    ALVAREZ: Bills addressing the immigration system have been introduced by both parties. Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, for example, has introduced legislation that addresses work visa programs, among other parts of the system. But it’s such a divisive issue that legislation struggles to move forward.

    Both parties are so far apart on the issue that even though Democrats and Republicans acknowledge the US immigration system is broken, they can’t agree on how to fix it.

    Without comprehensive reform, the federal government is left to implementing a patchwork of policies and then playing defense when lawsuits are filed against them, often resulting in policy whiplash.

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  • Why Israel’s instability matters to the US | CNN Politics

    Why Israel’s instability matters to the US | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    The pictures from Israel are incredible: seas of protesters rising up across the country.

    A general strike interrupted daily life and threatens to cripple the economy.

    The country’s defense minister has been sacked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    The flashpoint for all of this is Netanyahu’s controversial plan to change the country’s judicial system, weaken its Supreme Court and give Israel’s parliament – the Knesset, which is currently controlled by his government – more say over appointing justices.

    Netanyahu’s government acknowledged the pushback and hit a monthlong pause on that judicial overhaul plan late Monday, perhaps trying to cool things down without abandoning the plan.

    Read updates from throughout Monday.

    Frustration with the court extends beyond Netanyahu, but his effort just so happens to coincide with his trial for corruption. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and any link between the judicial changes and his trial – but not everyone takes his denials at face value.

    “He’s embraced this judicial reform movement – it’s actually a revolution movement – to try to give him the ability to stack … the Supreme Court in a way that people, Israelis generally, suspect is designed to protect him from the consequences of the prosecution, the trial that he’s now going through,” former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk noted on CNN on Monday.

    “So, it looks like it’s more of a personal agenda than a national agenda that he’s pursuing.”

    Netanyahu has defended the plan, which he argued in a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper maintains the judiciary’s independence without allowing it to be “unbridled.”

    Indyk noted that other members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition have their own reasons for wanting to overhaul the country’s Supreme Court.

    Far-right allies of Netanyahu don’t want the court to protect Palestinian land rights in the West Bank, Indyk said, and religious parties don’t want the court to force their orthodox religious students to serve in the army like other Israelis.

    CNN’s Hadas Gold, who has been reporting all day from the protests, has an in-depth look at the judicial overhaul effort, who supports it and why it has created so much controversy. Read her story.

    The protests have been building for months, but it is a general strike that shut down daily life and the firing by Netanyahu of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that appear to have changed the situation.

    “It’s clear that he’s lost control of the country,” Indyk said. “There’s never been a general strike like this, which is shutting down the ports, the airport, the hospitals, schools.”

    Netanyahu has few options to pull back from the judicial overhaul plan, Amir Tibon, a senior editor at the Haaretz newspaper, said on CNN International on Monday.

    “On the one hand, he’s got a coalition that is based purely on Israel’s right wing, ultra-religious, far-right nationalistic political elements,” Tibon said, noting that those elements have long wanted to curb the power of the Supreme Court, which they see as a liberalizing force in Israel that has pushed for LGBTQ and women’s rights in the country.

    “On the other hand, the people protesting in the streets in Israel against this judicial overhaul, this is really the backbone of the Israeli economy,” Tibon said. “It’s the high-tech industry, it’s academia, a lot of people are from the high ranks of the military.”

    Gallant, before his firing, warned the country’s military could dissolve if there is a perception it is sliding away from democracy.

    Tibon envisioned another flare-up in a month if the judicial overhaul plan returns, and worried that the Knesset could be on a collision course with the courts.

    “Israel’s enemies are watching this and rubbing their hands in glee,” Indyk said. “And that affects American national security interests as well because we depend on Israel to stabilize the region.”

    President Joe Biden, who Indyk noted has a long history with Netanyahu, “needs to adopt the ‘friends don’t let friends drive drunk’ approach, put his arm around Bibi (a commonly used nickname for Netanyahu) and say, listen old pal, you need to back off and you need to do it quickly – not just for the sake of Israel, which we care about deeply. But also for the sake of American national security interests.”

    Netanyahu may bristle at Americans trying to influence the judicial overhaul plan, but he has similarly gotten involved in domestic US politics. He actively campaigned in the US against the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration and got very close to former President Donald Trump, who ended it. The relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has since soured.

    Efforts by the Biden administration to reinstate the deal have so far failed.

    The US subsidizes Israel’s security to the tune of billions of dollars. In addition to a 10-year agreement to give Israel $3.3 billion in financing annually, the US also spends $500 million per year on the country’s missile defense system. In fact, Israel is “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II,” according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

    Biden, like most US politicians, likes to say that US support for Israel is absolute, but there is growing frustration with Israel among his Democratic Party.

    In fact, Democrats’ sympathies are now more likely to lay with Palestinians over Israel for the first time since Gallup started tracking the issue in 2001. That shift is driven mostly by young Americans – millennials born between 1980 and 2000.

    There is more vocal opposition to Israel’s policy moves among Democratic lawmakers.

    “What Bibi is doing is alarming, appalling, and perilous for the relationship between our two countries,” Sen. Brian Schatz, the Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter. “We stand for democracy.”

    The Biden administration is set to convene its second virtual summit to promote democracy this week, an incredible coincidence as it watches a key democracy struggle. Israel has been invited to participate, and Netanyahu is scheduled to partake in the summit on Wednesday, though he is not listed on the public schedule of the event. US officials familiar with the planning told CNN’s White House team that there are no plans to change Netanyahu’s participation in the event as of now.

    Ultimately, the stakes are much larger than the judicial overhaul push that has set the recent events off.

    “It’s about what is the nature of Israel,” the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “Will Israel remain a Jewish democratic state or (become) a nondemocratic … dictatorship or more religious country.”

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  • Inside the furious week-long scramble to hunt down a massive Pentagon leak | CNN Politics

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

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    CNN
     — 

    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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  • Prosecutors tell judge information Teixeira took ‘far exceeds’ what has been reported | CNN Politics

    Prosecutors tell judge information Teixeira took ‘far exceeds’ what has been reported | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Federal prosecutors asked a judge Wednesday to continue the detention of the Air National Guardsman accused of posting a trove of classified documents to social media, saying that he posed a flight risk and that the government was still grappling with the amount of stolen classified information.

    In a court filing Wednesday evening, prosecutors said that the information Jack Teixeira allegedly took “far exceeds” what has been reported, and that releasing him from jail could pose a grave threat to national security.

    Teixeira, prosecutors alleged, viewed hundreds of classified documents – which the government said he may still have access to – and conducted hundreds more keyword searches “in what appears to be a deliberate effort to disseminate this country’s secrets.”

    “The Defendant knows where the information is,” prosecutors wrote. “He knows how to access it. And based on his specialized IT skills, he presumably knows how to disseminate that information without being immediately noticed.”

    They continued: “Put simply, there is nothing a court can do to ensure the Defendant’s compliance with his conditions of release other than take the Defendant at his word. And the Defendant’s history of honoring similar types of agreements is abysmal.”

    The filing is the most detailed look yet into what government prosecutors have uncovered about the 21-year-old’s alleged efforts to steal and disseminate classified information. Teixeira is slated to stand before a magistrate judge in Massachusetts on Thursday, who will decide whether he will have to stay behind bars while he awaits trial.

    He has not yet entered a formal plea.

    The filings also come with new allegations about Teixeira’s conduct once the leak was publicized, including allegedly destroying his electronics and acquiring a new phone number and email address.

    “Not only does the Defendant stand charged with having betrayed his oath and his country but—when those actions began to surface—he appears to have taken a series of obstructive steps intended to thwart the government’s ability to ascertain the full scope of what he has obtained and the universe of unauthorized users with whom he shared these materials,” prosecutors wrote.

    Those steps, prosecutors say, included telling others on social media to “delete all messages” and that “[i]f anyone comes looking, don’t tell them shit.”

    In addition, prosecutors say that when law enforcement searched Teixeira’s house following his arrest, authorities found “a tablet, a laptop, and an Xbox gaming console, all of which had been smashed” in a dumpster at the home. Prosecutors argued that this showed Teixeira’s willingness to destroy evidence.

    In seeking to continue detaining him, prosecutors argued that Teixeira is an “attractive candidate” for a foreign government to recruit in an effort to procure classified information.

    “The same adversaries have every incentive to contact the defendant, to seek additional information he may have physical access to or knowledge of, and to provide him with the means to help him flee the country in return for that information.”

    Prosecutors also flagged concerns about Teixeira’s alleged history of violent threats, saying that he “regularly made comments about violence and murder.”

    In comments cited in court filings, Teixiera spoke of wanting to “kill a [expletive] ton of people” because it would be “culling the weak minded,” and discussed wanting to make a minivan into an “assassination van.” Teixeira also allegedly searched for the terms “Ruby Ridge,” “Las Vegas shooting,” “Mandalay Bay shooting,” “Buffalo Tops shooting” and “Uvalde.”

    At his home in Massachusetts, prosecutors say, Teixeira had access to an “arsenal” of weapons and accessories – including handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, an AK-style high-capacity weapon, a gas mask, ammunition, tactical pouches, and a “silencer-style accessory” – all of which he kept in his bedroom.

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