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  • Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is holding its first hearing Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden – and Republicans on the committee have made a series of false and misleading claims, as well as some other claims that have left out critical context.

    Below is a CNN fact check. This article will be updated as additional fact checks are completed.

    Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

    Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the money went to the “associates” – Hunter Biden’s business partners – not even Biden’s family itself.

    So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family – almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)

    A Republican aide for the House Oversight Committee disputed the Post’s analysis on Thursday, saying that bank records obtained by the panel actually show that, of $24 million in payments between 2014 and 2019, $15 million went to members of the Biden family and $9 million went to associates. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment; the committee has not publicly released the underlying bank records that would definitively show the breakdown in payments.

    The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.

    Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.

    Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

    “Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.

    Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”

    When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”

    When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”

    Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.

    A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.

    Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.

    “We learned yesterday, in the search warrant…examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.”

    Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department.

    The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board.

    The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”

    Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.

    Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”

    Facts First: This lacks important context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”

    “This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in the statement. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”

    White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”

    Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.

    Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.

    Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.”

    According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim.

    Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, falsely claimed that Hunter Biden never paid taxes on his foreign income.

    He said Hunter Biden “failed to pay any taxes” on the millions of dollars he got from Ukrainian companies, and that this shows how “the Biden family doesn’t have to” pay taxes.

    “Who’s going to write the check for the money Hunter Biden didn’t pay?” Burchett asked, adding that “hardworking Americans” would end up footing the bill.

    Facts First: This is false. Hunter Biden repeatedly missed IRS deadlines, and his conduct was so egregious that federal investigators believe it was criminal, but he eventually belatedly paid all of his back taxes, plus interest and penalties, to the tune of about $2 million.

    Documents from Hunter Biden’s criminal cases indicate that he repeatedly missed tax deadlines, even though he had the funds and was repeatedly warned by his accountant and business partners. He was prepared to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in July, for failing to pay taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, before the plea deal collapsed.

    But there’s a difference between failing to pay taxes on time and failing to pay taxes at all. In 2021, while the criminal investigation was still underway and before any charges were filed, Hunter Biden paid roughly $2 million to the IRS to cover all the back taxes, plus penalties and interest.

    Hunter Biden was able to make the massive payment thanks to a roughly $2 million loan from a friend and attorney who has been supporting him during his legal troubles, according to court filings.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused a Republican member of the committee, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, of cutting out “critical context” from an image of a purported text message that Donalds displayed earlier in the Thursday hearing. Ocasio-Cortez also said that Donalds had displayed a “fabricated image.”

    The dispute was over an image Donalds showed of a purported 2018 text message from the president’s brother James Biden to the president’s son Hunter Biden – provided by IRS whistleblowers and released by House Republicans on Wednesday – in which James Biden purportedly wrote, “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father [sic] alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”

    After showing the image, Donalds asked a witness at the committee, “If you saw a text message like this between the president’s brother and the president’s son, wouldn’t you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings?”

    Facts First: Donalds didn’t invent the James Biden text message, but Ocasio-Cortez was correct that Donalds left out critical context – specifically, context that showed there was no sign that the purported text exchange between James Biden and Hunter Biden was about business dealings. The information released by House Republicans this week appeared to show that James Biden’s purported text about getting “help” from Joe Biden came in direct response to a purported Hunter Biden text saying he could not afford alimony, school tuition for his children, food and gas “w/o [without] Dad.” Donalds did not display this purported Hunter Biden text at the Thursday hearing.

    In other words, when James Biden purportedly mentioned the possibility of several months of help from Joe Biden, he gave no indication he was referring to some sort of business transaction, much less the foreign transactions that House Republicans have been focused on in their investigations into the president. But Donalds didn’t make that clear.

    With that said, Ocasio-Cortez herself could have been clearer about what she meant when she claimed the image Donalds showed was “fabricated.”

    The contents of the purported James Biden text Donalds displayed were not made up, according to the IRS whistleblowers. What appeared to be novel was the graphic Donalds used; he showed the text in a form that made it look like a screenshot from an iPhone text conversation, with white words over a blue background bubble. The House Republican spreadsheet that the words were taken from did not include any such graphics, and, again, it did include the preceding purported Hunter Biden message that Donalds didn’t show.

    Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said at the Thursday hearing, “In an interview back in 2019 with The New Yorker, even Hunter admitted that he talked to his dad about business, specifically Burisma.”

    Facts First: This needs context. The 2019 New Yorker article in question reported that Hunter Biden said he recalled Joe Biden discussing Burisma with him “just once” in a brief exchange that consisted of this: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’”

    It’s fair for Fallon to say that this counts as Joe Biden discussing business with his son, but Fallon did not mention how brief and limited Hunter Biden said the purported discussion was.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Jeff Sessions Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Jeff Sessions Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Jeff Sessions, former US attorney general and former Republican senator of Alabama.

    Birth date: December 24, 1946

    Birth place: Selma, Alabama

    Birth name: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

    Father: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions Jr., business owner

    Mother: Abbie (Powe) Sessions

    Marriage: Mary Blackshear Sessions (1969-present)

    Children: Mary Abigail, Ruth and Samuel

    Education: Huntingdon College, B.A., 1969; University of Alabama, J.D., 1973

    Military service: US Army Reserve, 1973-1986, Captain

    Religion: Methodist

    Is an Eagle Scout.

    Served on the Senate Budget, Judiciary, Armed Services, and Environment and Public Works Committees.

    Voted against both of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

    Supported building fencing along the US border, saying in 2006 that “good fences make good neighbors.”

    Was an opponent of the 2013 “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill.

    1973-1975 – Practices law in Alabama.

    1975-1977 – Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.

    1981-1993 – US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.

    1986 – President Ronald Reagan nominates Sessions to become a federal judge. The Senate Judiciary Committee opposes the nomination following testimony that Sessions made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU “un-American.”

    1995-1997- Alabama Attorney General. During this time, an Alabama judge accuses Sessions of prosecutorial misconduct related to the handling of evidence in a case but ultimately, Sessions is not disciplined for ethics violations.

    1996 – Elected to the US Senate. Reelected in 2002, 2008 and 2014.

    1997–February 2017 – Republican senator representing Alabama.

    February 2, 2009 – Votes in favor of the confirmation of Eric Holder as attorney general.

    April 23, 2015 – Votes against the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general.

    February 28, 2016 – Becomes the first sitting US senator to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid.

    November 18, 2016 – President-elect Trump announces he intends to nominate Sessions to be the next attorney general.

    January 3, 2017 – An NAACP sit-in to protest the nomination of Sessions as US attorney general ends when six people are arrested at Sessions’ Mobile, Alabama, office.

    February 8, 2017 – After 30 hours of debate, the US Senate confirms Sessions as attorney general by a 52-47 vote.

    March 1, 2017 – The Washington Post reports that Sessions failed to disclose pre-election meetings with the top Russian diplomat in Washington. Sessions did not mention either meeting during his confirmation hearings when he said he knew of no contacts between Trump surrogates and Russians.

    March 2, 2017 – Sessions recuses himself from any involvement in a Justice Department probe into links between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

    March 10, 2017 – The DOJ abruptly announces the firing of 46 US attorneys, including Preet Bharara of New York. Bharara said that during the transition, Trump asked him to stay on during a meeting at Trump Tower.

    April 3, 2017 – The Department of Justice releases a memorandum ordering a review of consent decrees and other police reforms overseen by the federal government in response to complaints of civil rights abuses and public safety issues. During his confirmation hearing, Sessions expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of Justice Department interventions in local police matters.

    July 21, 2017 – The Washington Post reports that Sessions discussed policy-related matters with Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak before the 2016 election, according to intelligence intercepts. Sessions had previously claimed that he did not talk about the campaign or relations with Russia during his meetings with Kislyak.

    October 4, 2017 – In a memo to all federal prosecutors, Sessions says that a 1964 federal civil rights law does not protect transgender workers from employment discrimination and the department will take this new position in all “pending and future matters.”

    November 14, 2017 – During a House judiciary committee hearing, Sessions says he did not lie under oath in earlier hearings regarding communications with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign, and denies participating in any collusion with Russia. Sessions also says the DOJ will consider investigations into Hillary Clinton and alleged ties between the Clinton Foundation and the sale of Uranium One.

    January 4, 2018 – Sessions announces that the DOJ is rescinding an Obama-era policy of non-interference with states that have legalized recreational marijuana. The reversal frees up federal prosecutors to pursue cases in states where recreational marijuana is legal.

    March 21, 2018 – Sessions issues a statement encouraging federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for certain drug-related crimes, as mandated by law. Seeking capital punishment in drug cases is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to combat opioid abuse.

    May 7, 2018 – Sessions announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings, warning that parents could be separated from children if they try to cross to the United States from Mexico. “If you cross the border unlawfully, even a first offense, we’re going to prosecute you. If you’re smuggling a child, we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law. If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally.” On June 20, Trump signs an executive order that will keep far more families together at the border.

    May 30, 2018 – Trump again expresses regret for choosing Sessions to lead the Justice Department. In a tweet, he quotes a remark from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) who said that the president could have picked someone else as attorney general. “I wish I did!,” Trump tweets. He had first said that he was rethinking his choice of Sessions as attorney general during a July 2017 interview with the New York Times.

    June 2018 – More than 600 members of the United Methodist Church issue a formal complaint against Sessions, arguing that the US government’s “zero tolerance” policy on immigration, which was separating migrant parents from their children at the US-Mexico border, violates church rules and may constitute child abuse. On August 8, church officials confirm that the charges filed against Sessions have been dropped.

    August 23, 2018 – In response to Trump saying during a Fox News interview that Sessions “never took control” of the Justice Department, Sessions issues a rare statement, saying, “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in…While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations…”

    November 7, 2018 – President Trump asks Sessions to resign, effectively firing him. “At your request I am submitting my resignation,” Sessions writes in a letter delivered to White House chief of staff John Kelly.

    November 7, 2019 – Announces he is running for his former Alabama Senate seat.

    July 14, 2020 – Sessions loses the Alabama Senate GOP primary runoff to former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville.

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  • What to know about the Georgia probe into Trump’s 2020 election subversion | CNN Politics

    What to know about the Georgia probe into Trump’s 2020 election subversion | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is facing a potential fourth indictment, this time in Georgia, where state prosecutors may soon bring charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results there.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, launched the probe in early 2021 and has investigated Trump’s attempts to pressure Georgia officials into interfering with the vote tally, the “fake electors” scheme to subvert the Electoral College and other efforts to undo the will of the voters.

    Many of these incidents also factored into Trump’s federal indictment on charges related to the 2020 election aftermath. (Trump pleaded not guilty last week to four federal charges in that case.) That probe, led by special counsel Jack Smith, is separate from the state-level inquiry in Georgia.

    Willis is expected to spend one or two days presenting her case before a grand jury next week, likely starting Monday. At least two witnesses have publicly confirmed that they were called to testify in front of the grand jury Tuesday.

    Trump has vehemently denied wrongdoing, as have his allies who are also under scrutiny in the probe. The former president has lashed out at Willis, who is Black, calling her “racist” and a “lunatic Marxist.”

    Here’s what to know about the investigation.

    Candidate Joe Biden beat Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes, or about 0.23% of nearly 5 million ballots cast. Biden’s razor-thin victory was confirmed by two recounts and certified by Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans.

    Instead of conceding, Trump launched a multi-pronged effort to overturn the results, including a pressure campaign targeting key state officials. Trump wanted them to abuse their powers to “find” enough votes to flip the results, or to block Biden’s victory from being certified. They refused.

    “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said in a phone call to Raffensperger on January 2, 2021.

    When these efforts failed, Trump urged Georgia lawmakers to convene a special session of the GOP-run legislature so they could overturn Biden’s victory. Trump allies, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani, presented bogus fraud claims to the state House and Senate at hearings in December 2020. The Trump campaign, with outside lawyers who supported their cause, filed meritless lawsuits that tried to overturn the Georgia results.

    Trump’s campaign also recruited a group of GOP activists in Georgia to serve as fake electors, who were part of a seven-state scheme to undermine the Electoral College. These fake slates of electors played a key role in Trump’s ill-fated plot to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.

    At the same time, Trump tried to weaponize the Justice Department to help him intervene in Georgia and elsewhere. He tried to cajole top Justice Department officials and federal prosecutors in Atlanta into falsely announcing that the election was “corrupt” and that Biden’s win was tainted by massive fraud.

    There were also efforts by Trump supporters to breach a voting system in rural Coffee County, Georgia, in hopes of proving that the election was rigged. CNN reported on Sunday that Willis’ investigators have obtained text messages connecting the Coffee County breach to Trump’s legal team.

    Some Trump supporters also allegedly tried to intimidate a Fulton County election worker into falsely admitting she was part of a massive anti-Trump fraud scheme in 2020.

    Trump is obviously at the center of the probe. The foreperson of the special grand jury that previously heard evidence in the case suggested in a series of interviews that the panel recommended charges against Trump, and that there was a long list of potential co-defendants. CNN recently reported that Willis is expected to seek more than a dozen indictments.

    Prosecutors have notified some key players that they are targets of the investigation. This includes Giuliani, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s federal indictment on 2020-related charges.

    The 16 Republican activists who served as fake electors, including the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, also got target letters, though some decided to cooperate with prosecutors.

    Earlier in the investigation, Willis said her team was investigating a wide array of potential crimes. This included solicitation of election fraud, making false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of an oath-of-office, and involvement in election-related threats.

    CNN reported in March that prosecutors were eying racketeering and conspiracy charges. Willis has previously used Georgia’s state RICO laws – which stands for “racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations” – to prosecute gangs and even public school officials who oversaw a cheating scheme.

    Willis’ team is expected to spend one or two days presenting their case before the grand jury. To secure an indictment in the Trump investigation, 16 of the 23 voting grand jury members would need to be present. Once that quorum is established, 12 votes would be needed to hand up an indictment.

    CNN has previously reported that some key witnesses were recently subpoenaed to appear, presumably as part of Willis’ upcoming presentation. This includes former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who is now a CNN political contributor, and former state Sen. Jen Jordan, a Democrat.

    Duncan told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday that he had received a notice to testify in front of the grand jury Tuesday. Shortly after, independent journalist George Chidi, who had also been subpoenaed, shared on social media that he had also received a similar notice.

    When a grand jury approves an indictment, a prosecutor and court officials typically walk the paperwork to the courtroom of the presiding Superior Court judge. That group then usually presents the stack of papers to the presiding judge, who reviews and signs them, and hands back the signed papers. The group then walks the signed indictments to the clerk’s office, where case numbers are assigned.

    Willis was elected Fulton County district attorney in November 2020 after defeating her former boss, a six-term incumbent, in the Democratic primary earlier that year. She was sworn in on January 1, 2021, just one day before Trump’s infamous call with Raffensperger.

    She is the first woman to hold the post in Fulton County, which is home to most of Atlanta, and includes some of the nearby suburbs. (Biden won approximately 73% of the vote in Fulton County in 2020.) She is up for reelection next year, so she might be leading an historic trial while also campaigning for votes.

    Asked by CNN in 2022 about potentially prosecuting a former president, she said, “What I could envision is that we actually live in a society where Lady Justice is blind, and that it doesn’t matter if you’re rich poor, Black, White, Democrat or Republican. If you violated the law, you’re going to be charged.”

    Trump has hammered Willis throughout the process, accusing her of partisan bias and claiming she is only pursuing the probe to fuel her future political ambitions. His critiques are largely unsupported, though Willis made a significant misstep last year, when she hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic opponent of one of the people she was investigating, Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican.

    Jones – who was one of the fake electors in Georgia – successfully sought a court order blocking Willis from further investigating him. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who issued the order, said it was a “‘what are you thinking moment” for Willis and that “the optics are horrific.”

    But McBurney, who presided over the special grand jury and related matters, has also praised Willis’ handling of the investigation. In a recent ruling in a related case, he contrasted her professional conduct with the “stream of personal invective flowing from” Trump and his lawyers.

    “Put differently, the District Attorney’s Office has been doing a fairly routine – and legally unobjectionable – job of public relations in a case that is anything but routine,” McBurney wrote.

    The federal election-subversion charges against Trump overlap with the Georgia probe in a big way, but the investigations are separate. If Trump is charged in Georgia, some procedural and logistical challenges may arise, such as deconflicting the schedule of the state case with the federal case.

    If Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, he could order the Justice Department to drop the cases and could pardon himself.

    But the Georgia case – a state-level prosecution – might still move forward.

    Trump has responded to the Georgia investigation with a steady stream of attacks against prosecutors, and by resurrecting many of his debunked lies that the 2020 election was rigged.

    He has also repeatedly invoked race in his public rants against Willis. At a campaign rally Tuesday, Trump called Willis “a young woman, a young racist” and baselessly claimed she has ties to gang members.

    Trump’s lawyers tried to essentially neuter the probe – by filing a motion with the judge who oversaw the special grand jury, and by separately asking the Georgia Supreme Court to intervene. They wanted a court order to block Willis from using the evidence she gathered in any future criminal or civil case. These legal moves were seen as a long shot, and they were rejected in the past few weeks.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Hunter Biden’s lawyers argue deal to resolve felony gun charge is still ‘valid and binding’ despite collapse of plea talks | CNN Politics

    Hunter Biden’s lawyers argue deal to resolve felony gun charge is still ‘valid and binding’ despite collapse of plea talks | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Hunter Biden’s lawyers said in a court filing Sunday that they believe their deal with the Justice Department to resolve a felony gun charge is still “valid and binding,” though it’s unclear if the newly appointed special counsel agrees with their interpretation.

    The filing comes two days after David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney investigating the president’s son, was granted special counsel status following a breakdown in plea talks to resolve tax and gun charges. By naming Weiss as a special counsel, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave him more powers than a typical US attorney and further independence from the Justice Department as he embarks on an unprecedented potential trial against the son of the sitting president, and as Republicans claim the department is politicized.

    The parties had previously struck two deals amid a sprawling Justice Department investigation: A “plea agreement” where Biden would plead guilty to two federal tax misdemeanors, and a “diversion agreement” where prosecutors would drop a felony gun charge in two years if he passed drug tests and stayed out of legal trouble.

    The probe had appeared to reach its conclusion when a plea deal was announced in June. But the deal dramatically unraveled in court last month under scrutiny from the federal judge overseeing the case, and the resumed negotiations collapsed last week.

    Lawyers for Biden argued in the filing Sunday that Weiss decided “on Friday to renege on the previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement,” referring to the tax deal, after negotiations fell apart earlier in the week.

    But in their view, the gun deal was fully “executed” when it was signed by both parties and presented to a federal judge at a court hearing last month in Delaware. A copy of the deal that was previously posted to the docket was signed by Biden, his attorney Chris Clark and federal prosecutor Leo Wise – but the line for a signature from a probation officer is blank.

    “The parties have a valid and binding bilateral Diversion Agreement,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote to the judge, referring to the gun deal, and adding that their client “intends to abide by the terms of the Diversion Agreement.”

    They also said that it was the prosecutors – not them – who crafted the two intertwining agreements that District Judge Maryellen Noreika balked at last month’s court hearing, which ended after she said she wasn’t ready to accept the deals.

    Earlier Sunday, a lawyer for Biden said a trial is “not inevitable,” days after the Trump-appointed US attorney investigating the president’s son was granted special counsel status following a breakdown in plea talks to resolve tax and gun charges.

    “We were trying to avoid one all along and so were the prosecutors who came forward to us and we’re the ones to say: ‘Can there be a resolution short of a prosecution?’ So they wanted it and maybe they still do want it,” Abbe Lowell, Biden’s attorney, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

    Lowell defended Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys, placing the blame on federal prosecutors for the deal falling through. “What group of experienced defense lawyers would allow their client to plead guilty to a misdemeanor on a Monday, keeping in mind that they knew that there could be a felony charge on a Wednesday? That wouldn’t happen,” he said.

    Lowell described President Joe Biden as “nothing other than a loving father,” and said the evidence to indict the president in his son’s potential crimes “doesn’t exist.”

    The gun charge revolves around a firearm that Hunter Biden purchased in 2018 – he lied on a federal form when he swore that he was not using, and was not addicted to, illegal drugs. The tax offenses stem from Hunter Biden repeatedly missing IRS deadlines to pay his taxes on time, though he eventually paid roughly $2 million to settle his debts, along with penalties and interest.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and top Republicans on Capitol Hill were swift to criticize Garland’s decision to grant Weiss special counsel status and vowed to continue their own investigations.

    New York Rep. Dan Goldman, a member of the Democratic Oversight Committee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday that “if Hunter Biden has committed crimes, he should be charged with them. I’m a Democrat saying that.”

    “You don’t hear any currently elected Republican saying that, if Donald Trump committed crimes, he should be charged with them and held accountable. And that’s a critical distinction that the public needs to understand,” he added.

    “And this is just another reflection of the true independence of this Department of Justice. A Trump-appointed U.S. attorney is investigating the president’s son. That is pretty remarkable. And you don’t hear from the other side a respect for the fact that Joe Biden has stayed out of this investigation,” Goldman said.

    Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman, told Tapper in a separate interview on “State of the Union” that “the immediate family of a president should not be allowed to be lobbyists or consultants when their father or their husband is the president of the United States.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Special counsel says Hunter Biden’s gun deal is ‘withdrawn’ and invalid | CNN Politics

    Special counsel says Hunter Biden’s gun deal is ‘withdrawn’ and invalid | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Special counsel David Weiss said the deal his team previously reached with Hunter Biden to resolve a felony gun possession charge was never approved by a probation officer and is not binding.

    The Justice Department prosecutors said in a court filing on Tuesday that for the “diversion agreement” to be legally binding, it would have had to be signed by a probation officer after last month’s court hearing in Delaware.

    They said the official who needed to sign it was Margaret Bray, the chief United States probation officer for the District of Delaware.

    “In sum, because Ms. Bray, acting in her capacity as the Chief United States Probation Officer, did not approve the now-withdrawn diversion agreement, it never went into effect and, therefore, none of its terms are binding on either party,” prosecutors wrote.

    Biden’s lawyers on Sunday said they believed an agreement to resolve a felony gun possession charge was “valid and binding.”

    The filing states that negotiations to amend the plea deal continued after the court hearing on July 26 when a federal judge declined to accept a plea agreement on two tax charges.

    Biden’s team proposed changes, which prosecutors “did not believe they were in the best interests of the United States” and counter proposed. Biden’s team rejected those changes leading to prosecutors informing the judge they had reached an impasse.

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  • Special counsel probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents appears to be nearing end | CNN Politics

    Special counsel probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents appears to be nearing end | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Special counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Joe Biden is a sign that the classified documents investigation is nearing conclusion after casting a wide net that included dozens of witnesses during the ten-month long probe, multiple sources told CNN.

    The White House announced this week that Biden was questioned by Hur and his team over two days in a voluntary interview that CNN has reported was scheduled weeks earlier. While the White House has declined to discuss details of the questioning, including whether Biden invoked executive privilege, the interview is the first public development in months.

    One source told CNN that investigators have indicated they hope to wrap by the end of the year. As of now, it’s unclear if the probe will result in charges being filed, but sources familiar with the investigators’ line of questioning said they got the impression that’s unlikely, and there has been no discernible grand jury activity.

    The Justice Department has said that Hur will produce a final report explaining his findings from the investigation, a standard part of a special counsel’s work.

    “The breadth and depth of Hur’s work suggests that he is going to compile a detailed report to explain exactly how he conducted this investigation,” one source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

    Hur was appointed in January to investigate after classified documents were found at Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC, and at his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    Compared to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into classified materials found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, including the indictment handed down in June, Hur’s probe into Biden has continued to operate quietly behind the scenes.

    Still, the protracted length and exhaustive nature of the investigation has frustrated top Biden aides who expected it to wrap up months ago given the relatively small number of classified documents involved, according to a person familiar with the White House’s thinking.

    That person said some Biden aides believe Attorney General Merrick Garland was overly cautious in selecting Hur, an appointee to two top Justice Department roles during the Trump administration, to ensure the investigation was politically unassailable.

    Investigators working for Hur have interviewed a broad spectrum of witnesses — from longtime advisor and current counselor Steve Ricchetti, to former White House legal and communications aides, to a former low-level aide who helped pack up the vice president’s residence at the end of the Obama administration, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

    Hur’s team also has reached out to people who worked in the Senate during the time Biden served in that chamber, sources said. That’s because some of the documents with classified markings date back to Biden’s time in the Senate, according to a statement from Biden’s personal attorney.

    As part of the investigation, Hur has sought to examine the handling of classified documents during Biden’s time in the Senate, a period before many of the strict procedures now used for handling classified documents, according to sources.

    That has caused Hur to confront the delicate issues of the Senate’s constitutional speech or debate protections, which limit the Justice Department’s ability to interview Senate staff without coordination with Senate lawyers, people briefed on the matter said.

    It’s unclear whether and how the Senate and Justice Department’s discussions over Senate-related interviews have been resolved. A special counsel spokesman declined to comment on the idea of no charges or on any discussions with the Senate.

    One person familiar with the investigation described members of Hur’s team as being professional but tedious in the level of detail they have sought in witness interviews. Investigators have asked about where staffers sat in the office, where they stored briefing books, and how they operated an office safe.

    Another person described a lengthy interview with FBI agents and lawyers focused on understanding everything surrounding specific documents. Investigators appeared to be following a process that identified meetings connected to specific classified documents or notes recovered from Biden properties, the person familiar with the interview said. Everyone who attended a meeting or briefing connected the document is being interviewed, the person said.

    Investigators appear to be trying to establish a chain of custody for the documents and the circumstances surrounding them to discern how the classified documents ended up in Biden’s office and home.

    Another source said: “The central question in this case is: Did the vice president of the United States intentionally take classified documents for personal use?”

    The challenge for investigators is how they assess culpability and the circumstances surrounding how the documents got to the Penn Biden Center and the president’s house in Delaware, the source said.

    A lawyer for one witness also described Hur’s process as being slow and methodical. Investigators interviewed this lawyer’s client earlier this year, but recently came back and asked his witness for additional documents.

    “They are certainly being sufficiently thorough, and there is a temptation to think they are doing some things twice,” the lawyer said.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say Tuesday if the president answered all questions posed to him or invoked executive privilege during the interview with Hur. Jean-Pierre also wouldn’t say if the Biden administration requested that the interview be postponed following Hamas’ attack on Israel over the weekend.

    “He’s been very much focused on the issues of the – you know – horrific events that we have seen in Israel,” she said. “As president, he has to do multiple things at once, and that’s what you saw him do this weekend.”

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  • Hunter Biden is a sensitive topic that advisers rarely broach with the president | CNN Politics

    Hunter Biden is a sensitive topic that advisers rarely broach with the president | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Long among the most sensitive subjects inside the West Wing, Hunter Biden’s legal saga now appears destined to play out amid his father’s bid for reelection, frustrating the president but so far causing little real concern among his advisers.

    The probe into Hunter Biden is now one of two special counsel investigations – the other being an inquiry into his father’s handling of classified documents after leaving the Senate and the vice president’s office – that both appear poised to extend for months to come.

    Even some of Biden’s allies acknowledge they threaten to complicate or erode the moral high ground the president asserts as he seeks reelection. Hunter Biden, of course, is not himself running for president and the White House has taken pains to avoid interference in the case – all points of contrast with the president’s most likely Republican rival.

    The cases and consequences are entirely separate for both investigations. Although President Biden is so far not a part of special counsel David Weiss’s investigation into his son, his aides expect that he may be interviewed as part of special counsel Robert Hur’s documents probe.

    Still, both investigations take away the fundamental element of control for a White House heading into an election cycle. As multiple Biden advisers conceded privately this week, special counsels have a history of uncovering information they hadn’t set out initially to discover. The fact that it’s also a delicate family matter, people close to Biden say, is creating a level of personal angst unlike any other challenge for the president.

    David Weiss, left, and Hunter Biden

    ‘This is just a debacle’: Ex-federal prosecutor on length of Hunter Biden investigation

    How and whether those factors play into Biden’s reelection chances remains to be determined. Next to a likely rival who has now been indicted four times, Biden’s predicament is vastly different. Democratic strategists believe swing voters see Hunter Biden as a private citizen and are more concerned about the economy.

    Given the facts currently known, strategists say, these voters don’t believe President Biden has been implicated in any wrongdoing. Yet Biden’s advisers also concede the topic is mostly verboten with the president, raising the prospect of a critical blind spot heading into a bruising campaign where nothing will be off limits with their Republican rivals.

    “Hunter Biden is not a topic of discussion in campaign meetings,” a senior aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject. “It’s just not addressed.”

    It was a surprise to the West Wing last week when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he was giving special counsel status to Weiss – originally a Trump appointee – a fact that further underscores the separation between the White House and the Justice Department on the case. The decision was met with a range of responses by Biden’s allies last week, from resignation to frustration.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Department of Justice, Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Washington. Garland announced Friday he is appointing a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe, deepening the investigation of the president's son ahead of the 2024 election. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

    Garland appoints special counsel to Hunter Biden case

    For the president himself, the decision to name a special counsel amounted to another page in a chapter he would like to close. Even as the president and first lady try to move on from a dark period surrounding their son’s addiction, Republicans and now the Justice Department are extending the scrutiny into an indeterminable future.

    Just two weeks ago, the couple had hoped Hunter Biden’s expected plea deal would be a moment to admit mistakes and move on, one person familiar with the president’s thinking had said.

    But that plea deal fell apart and the special counsel appointment moves the legal issues into a new phase, including potentially a trial.

    From the beginning, the Bidens have tried to approach Hunter Biden’s issues through a personal lens, expressing their love and support for their son but otherwise declining to comment on the investigation. They have kept him close amid the legal proceedings with Hunter Biden appearing at family events and White House functions including a lavish state dinner days after his initial plea agreement was announced.

    President Joe Biden hugs his son Hunter Biden upon returning from a trip to Ireland, at Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware, on April 14.

    For some close to the president, however, there are now questions over how the matter has continued to persist, despite work toward a plea deal on tax and gun related charges, the resolution of a child support battle and no evidence yet that President Biden himself was implicated in any wrongdoing.

    They pin the blame mainly on Republicans, whom the White House blasted this week for waging years-long investigations into the president that haven’t produced evidence showing President Biden engaged in wrongdoing.

    “If you think about what Republicans in Congress have tried to do for years, they have been making claims and allegations about the president on this front over and over again. And month after month, year after year, they have been investigating every single angle of this and looking for any evidence to back their allegations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week. “And what’s been the result of that, if you ask yourself what we have seen from that? They keep turning up documents and witnesses showing that the president wasn’t involved.”

    Beneath the surface, however, private questions are now brewing among some Democrats about the abilities of Hunter Biden’s legal team and the wisdom of his visible presence around his father.

    On Tuesday, Hunter Biden’s lead criminal defense attorney asked a federal judge on Tuesday for permission to withdraw from the case because he could now be called as a witness in future proceedings. To some Biden advisers, the surprise collapse of a plea deal only exacerbated existing concerns about Hunter’s legal team.

    “I’m sure this didn’t land all that well over in the White House because I think they’d love this Hunter Biden case to be behind them. The Republicans are sort of pointing to it for purposes of what-about-ism,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser in the Obama White House and CNN senior political commentator, who said Republicans were eager to make false comparisons – essentially saying, “what about” Hunter’s legal issues?

    “They need to have a countervailing argument and their countervailing argument is, ‘Oh two standards of justice, they’re not indicting Hunter Biden,’” he said. “And they’re beating that horse to death, even though they’ve failed to make the connection between Hunter Biden and Joe Biden in the way that they allege. So I think that anything that extends the Hunter Biden case into the election year is not welcome news for Joe Biden.”

    Hunter Biden walks to a waiting SUV after arriving with US President Joe Biden on Marine One at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, on July 4, as they return to Washington after spending the weekend at Camp David.

    CNN reporter details why Hunter Biden’s top lawyer asked to withdraw from case

    Indeed, the actions of Hunter Biden are now becoming a central discussion point for Republicans in Congress and presidential candidates, who frequently point to the president’s son in their argument of a false equivalency in the Justice Department.

    Republicans have criticized the now defunct plea agreement between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors as a “sweetheart deal,” and they scoffed when Weiss was appointed as special counsel, despite many previously supporting the appointment of a special counsel.

    Some of the president’s potential Republican rivals also blasted the special counsel decision. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis argued Hunter Biden would receive “soft glove treatment.” A spokesperson for former President Donald Trump argued the Biden family has “been protected by the Justice Department for decades” – even though Trump appointed Weiss to his position and Biden kept him in the post upon taking office.

    Hunter Biden at a ceremony at the White House in Washington, July 7, 2022.

    The matter is likely to arise at the first Republican presidential debate next week in Milwaukee. The Democratic National Committee is not preparing specific responses to any criticism leveled against Hunter Biden at the Republican presidential debate but will be ready to respond as needed, a party official says.

    In 2020, plans were similarly laid ahead of general election debates with Trump, who seized on Hunter Biden as an attack line. Biden’s defense of his son and his pride in his sobriety proved one of the most memorable moments of that year’s debate circuit.

    First lady Dr. Jill Biden had previously told CNN that the investigations into their son Hunter did not impact the president’s decision to seek reelection this year.

    Some Democrats view the development as an opportunity to demonstrate the party’s view of a fair judicial system – a contrast to many Republicans who have cried foul at the multiple indictments of Trump.

    “If Hunter has done something beyond the tax issue and beyond the gun issue that deserves to be investigated, then that should happen. No one is above the law,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat. “That’s why you’re not hearing Democrats say that, you know, this is the weaponization of the Justice Department. No. We’re being consistent. When we say no one’s above the law when it comes to Donald Trump, we mean it even if it’s one of our own.”

    This story has been updated to clarify that the DNC may respond to criticism leveled against Hunter Biden but has not prepared any specific responses.

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  • Jim Jordan, the face of key GOP investigations, seeks the speaker’s gavel — again | CNN Politics

    Jim Jordan, the face of key GOP investigations, seeks the speaker’s gavel — again | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a key figure in House GOP-led investigations, is again seeking the speaker’s gavel as Republicans face a deepening leadership crisis and the chamber remains paralyzed without a speaker.

    Jordan has made a name for himself as a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump and was endorsed by Trump in his bid for the speakership. The Ohio Republican serves as chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee.

    Jordan has a longstanding reputation as a conservative agitator and helped found the hardline House Freedom Caucus. He has served in Congress since 2007.

    Jordan initially ran against House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and was defeated in a closed-door vote by the conference. Scalise went on to become the GOP speaker nominee – but dropped out of the race abruptly Thursday evening after facing a bloc of hardened opposition.

    The House GOP conference selected Jordan on Friday as its latest speaker-designee in a 124-81 vote over GOP Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia – who made a surprise last-minute bid. Jordan gained only 25 supporters compared to Wednesday’s vote when Scalise defeated Jordan, 113-99.

    Jordan then called a second vote asking members if they would support him on the floor, in an effort to see if that could shrink his opposition. That vote, which was cast by secret ballot, was 152-55 – laying out the long road ahead for Jordan’s speakership bid to succeed.

    In addition to chairing the Judiciary Committee, Jordan is also the chair of the select subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the federal government. When McCarthy announced a House GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, he said House Oversight Chairman James Comer would lead the effort in coordination with Jordan as Judiciary chair and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith.

    While Republicans say their investigative work is critical to informing the American public and ensuring accountability, Democrats frequently criticize Jordan as a hyper-partisan Trump defender and have accused him of using his perch to shield the former president in the run up to the 2024 presidential election.

    Rep. Jim Jordan, an ally of President Donald Trump who was recently appointed to the House Intelligence Committee, takes his seat on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in November 2019, during the first public impeachment hearings of President Trump's efforts to tie US aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents.

    As Jordan oversees key House GOP investigations, Democrats also point to the fact that he stonewalled in response to a subpoena for his testimony from the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Jordan as well as Scalise both supported objections to electoral college results when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s presidential win on January 6, 2021, the same day a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol seeking to overturn the election.

    Jordan has downplayed concerns that he may be too conservative for some of the more moderate members of the GOP.

    “I think we are a conservative-center-right party. I think I’m the guy who can help unite that. My politics are entirely consistent with where conservatives and Republicans are across the country,” Jordan told CNN’s Manu Raju.

    CNN reported in 2020 that six former Ohio State University wrestlers said they were present when Jordan heard or responded to sexual misconduct complaints about team doctor Richard Strauss.

    Jordan has emphatically denied that he knew anything about Strauss’ abuse during his own years working at OSU, between 1987 and 1995. “Congressman Jordan never saw any abuse, never heard about any abuse, and never had any abuse reported to him during his time as a coach at Ohio State,” his congressional office said in 2018.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Biden defers to Justice Department in first public answer on special counsel investigation into his son | CNN Politics

    Biden defers to Justice Department in first public answer on special counsel investigation into his son | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Friday said he had no comment and deferred to the Department of Justice when asked for his reaction to the special counsel appointment in the case of his son, Hunter Biden.

    “I have no comment on any investigation that’s going on,” the president said during a trilateral news conference with the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David. “That’s up to the Justice Department, and that’s all I have to say.”

    The answer to a reporter’s question was the first time the president had spoken publicly about the appointment of a special counsel since David Weiss was elevated to the role last week. Biden had previously ignored reporter questions on the matter.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last week that Weiss – a Trump-appointed US attorney who has been leading an investigation into Hunter Biden for years – had been given special counsel status after plea talks between the Justice Department and the president’s son fell apart. Weiss asked for the new authority after plea talks to resolve tax and gun charges fell apart.

    The probe appeared to reach its conclusion when a plea deal was announced in June. In a two-pronged agreement, Hunter Biden planned to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and prosecutors would drop a separate felony gun charge in two years if he stayed out of legal trouble and passed drug tests.

    Federal prosecutors also agreed to recommend probation, and no jail time, for the president’s son. The GOP had criticized the plea deal, accusing Weiss of giving Hunter Biden preferential treatment.

    But at a stunning three-hour court hearing last month, the deal nearly collapsed under scrutiny from the federal judge overseeing the case. District Judge Maryellen Noreika said the intertwined deals to resolve the tax and gun charges were “confusing,” “not straightforward,” “atypical” and “unprecedented.” At the end of that hearing, she ordered the Justice Department and Hunter Biden’s lawyers to file additional legal briefs defending the constitutionality of the agreement. Weiss said last week that the talks had failed.

    By naming Weiss as a special counsel, Garland gave him further independence from the Justice Department as he embarks on an unprecedented trial against the son of the sitting president, and as Republicans claim the department is politicized.

    The probe into Hunter Biden is now one of two special counsel investigations – the other being an inquiry into his father’s handling of classified documents after leaving the Senate and the vice president’s office – that both appear poised to extend for months to come. But the probe into Hunter Biden is among the most sensitive subjects inside the West Wing.

    Multiple Biden advisers conceded privately this week that special counsels have a history of uncovering information they hadn’t set out initially to discover. The fact that the probe into Hunter Biden is also a delicate family matter, people close to Biden say, is creating a level of personal angst unlike any other challenge for the president.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • New trove of emails and documents turned over to prosecutors in Georgia election subversion case | CNN Politics

    New trove of emails and documents turned over to prosecutors in Georgia election subversion case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A trove of emails and documents uncovered by state investigators looking into a voting systems breach in Georgia is being turned over to the Fulton County prosecutors who brought the sweeping racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and his allies.

    More than 15,000 emails and documents connected to Misty Hampton, the former election supervisor for Coffee County, were discovered this month by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation – after attorneys for the rural county’s board of elections claimed the information had been lost.

    Hampton has been charged alongside Trump and 17 other co-defendants with trying to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia. She has been accused of facilitating the unlawful breach of Coffee County’s voting systems.

    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had been looking into the Coffee County incident since the summer of 2022. Earlier this month, the agency completed its investigation and gave the case file to Fulton County prosecutors to be included as part of discovery to be turned over to defendants in the Trump election interference case.

    While it’s unclear what’s in the trove of emails and documents, the Coffee County breach features prominently in the Fulton County indictment. Prosecutors say Trump allies illegally breached the voting systems in hopes of finding proof that the election was fraudulent. Prosecutors also have evidence tying Trump campaign lawyers to the breach.

    Sidney Powell, the former Trump campaign attorney charged with crimes stemming from the Coffee County voting systems breach, has centered her defense around the claim that access to the data was authorized by Hampton. Powell and pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro are the first two defendants to go to trial, with jury selection set to begin Friday.

    In text messages previously obtained by CNN, Hampton allegedly gave Trump attorneys a “written invitation” to access Georgia voting systems.

    RELATED: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach

    Hampton’s attorney Jonathan Miller said he believes that the newly discovered emails and content will exonerate her.

    “There is nothing in the 15,000 emails that would do anything to make my client culpable of a crime, and I look forward to reviewing it all,” Miller told CNN. “She was acting under authority of Georgia statutes in doing what she did, and the evidence is going to show that. She did not commit any crimes.”

    Hampton and Powell each face seven charges in Fulton County, including conspiracy to commit election fraud and computer trespassing, in addition to racketeering. A trial date for Hampton has not been set, and Miller said his client has not received a plea offer she is “willing to facilitate.”

    All but one defendant, bail bondsman Scott Hall, who has agreed to testify for the prosecution, have pleaded not guilty.

    The security of Georgia’s elections had been the subject of litigation even before the 2020 presidential contest. The Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit organization, sued the Georgia secretary of state over the issue in 2017. Hampton’s alleged involvement in the Coffee County breach came to light as part of that ongoing civil lawsuit.

    “Few people believed the bizarre claims made by the Coffee County Board of Elections and their attorneys that Misty Hampton’s emails were suddenly lost shortly after she was terminated in February 2021,” the coalition said in a statement.

    The board of elections did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

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  • House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

    House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

    The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

    Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

    “I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

    It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

    As their target list on behalf of Trump grows, House Republicans are also cranking up the heat on their own investigations into the Biden family.

    Just this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to move ahead with an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden after the House returns from August recess if the Biden administration does not turn over more documents and information related to the Republican led investigations related to Hunter Biden – the strongest sign yet that House Republicans are poised to launch an impeachment inquiry of the president.

    A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment to elaborate on the speaker’s remark that opening an impeachment inquiry hinged on whether committees received the “bank statements, the credit card statements and other” documents they were asking for.

    House Oversight chair James Comer has subpoenaed six banks for information regarding specific Biden family business associates, received testimony from Hunter Biden’s associates and reviewed hundreds of suspicious activity reports related to the Biden family at the Treasury Department. The Kentucky Republican has not yet subpoenaed bank records from Biden family members themselves. He boasted in June on Fox Business that “every subpoena that I have signed as chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we’ve gotten 100% of what we’ve requested, whether it’s with the FBI, or with banks, or with Treasury.”

    The House Judiciary chair, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, just subpoenaed four individuals involved in the Hunter Biden criminal probe and has requested a number of documents and interviews pertaining to special counsel David Weiss’ ongoing criminal investigation.

    There is still some skepticism among more moderate Republicans, however, about whether they should be trying to intervene in ongoing investigations and whether an impeachment inquiry is warranted.

    Behind the scenes, members of the House Judiciary panel, who would help oversee an impeachment inquiry, have recently been discussing how all signs are pointing towards the House launching one in short order.

    “We had even some of our more moderate members saying that the oversight wasn’t serious if the next step wasn’t an impeachment inquiry,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a top Trump surrogate and Judiciary panel member, told CNN about a recent committee call. “There was great interest among my Judiciary colleagues to really include and involve everyone in the conference. There’s a real desire to get everyone on board and go through the evidence with those who might remain skeptical.”

    Trump’s allies have called for Congress to expunge Trump’s two previous impeachments, a move that has sparked pushback by many even among House Republicans.

    Greene, who spoke with McCarthy on Tuesday, said she doesn’t think the votes are there yet for expunging Trump’s previous two impeachments, even as the former president continues to promote the idea on Truth Social. But she said, “I think the impeachment inquiry looks very, very good.”

    “He is spending the recess talking about it constantly,” Greene added of McCarthy. “I really feel strongly that that’s something that’s going to happen.”

    Even before Trump’s indictment in Fulton County his congressional allies were laying the groundwork to take aim at Willis and broader election laws.

    GOP Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina introduced a longshot bill earlier this year to give current and former presidents and vice presidents the ability to move their civil or criminal cases from a state court to a federal court as the investigation in Fulton County was ongoing. Fry introduced the bill shortly after Trump was indicted by Bragg on more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

    The Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fry’s bill, is examining ways to move this bill forward and schedule a markup, two sources familiar with the process told CNN.

    Fry, who tweeted shortly after the Fulton County indictment that the outcome underscores the need for his bill, said in a statement to CNN, “these rogue prosecutors shouldn’t be able to wield unwarranted power and target our nation’s top leaders for their political agendas.”

    Separately, the House Committee on Administration has been working on a conservative election integrity package that Republicans are calling “transformative,” but Democrats frame as “designed to appease extremist election deniers.”

    Republicans argue the bill gives states the tools to strengthen voter integrity, implement selection reforms in Washington, DC, and protects conservatives’ political speech. Democrats, meanwhile, contest the legislation attacks the freedom to vote, burdens election workers and creates less transparency in elections.

    One of the nine hearings that Republicans held on the bill, which recently passed out of committee and is ready for a floor vote in the House, was held last month in Atlanta.

    The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, accused Republicans of playing defense for Trump through the field hearing, which Republicans have said was not the case.

    “One might ask, why are we here in Georgia? The answer is simple. We’re here because in 2020, Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost. There was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia, there were no suitcases full of fake ballots, no voting machines changed any votes. In fact, we know of only one possible crime that took place, because it was recorded on tape,” Morelle said.

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have also accused their Republican counterparts of coinciding the release of key interview transcripts with days consumed by Trump’s legal woes, according to a recent memo released by Democratic committee staff.

    An Oversight Committee spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, “to be clear, there was absolutely no connection between the transcript releases and anything else covered in the news.”

    The types of moves Republicans made on behalf of Trump in the wake of the Fulton County indictment are not necessarily new. After Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice in two separate cases, Greene called for Congress to defund Smith’s office, who is overseeing the two federal indictment cases, and House Freedom Caucus members issued a statement Monday that they would not support even a short-term government spending bill that does not address what they see as the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

    Gaetz recently introduced a resolution to censure and condemn the judge presiding over Trump’s federal indictment in the 2020 election subversion case.

    Despite the partisan back and forth, Trump’s Capitol Hill allies remain unfazed. But, not all Republicans have bought into the Trump defensive strategy.

    “Nobody is paying attention other than the people who are obsessed with Trump,” a senior Republican lawmaker told CNN.

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  • Michael Cohen to take stand in fraud trial of his former boss, Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    Michael Cohen to take stand in fraud trial of his former boss, Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Michael Cohen was once one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies.

    But after going to jail for tax crimes and lying to Congress, Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” became a star witness against his former boss, testifying before Congress about the hush-money payments he made to women claiming affairs with Trump and writing books highly critical of the former president.

    Tuesday, Trump and Cohen are expected to be face to face in a New York courtroom as Cohen delivers testimony as part of the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against the former president.

    When Cohen takes the stand, he will face down a very angry Donald Trump. It’s the first time the two have been in the same room or even spoken in five years, according to multiple sources.

    “It appears that I will be reunited with my old client @realDonaldTrump when I testify this Tuesday, October 24th at the @NewYorkStateAG civil fraud trial. See you there!” Cohen posted last week on the social media site Threads.

    Cohen’s testimony is the latest high-profile moment in the civil fraud trial, in which New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking to bar Trump from doing business in the state. While Trump has played only a passive role in the trial to date, he is expected to be called as a witness later on.

    Michael Cohen reacts to testimony about Eric Trump

    Trump voluntarily attended the civil trial’s opening days, and the former president returned last week, when Cohen was initially supposed to be called to testify, though Cohen’s appearance was delayed after he cited a medical issue.

    Trump is also returning to the courtroom after he was fined $5,000 last week by Judge Arthur Engoron – and warned about possible imprisonment – for violating a gag order not to speak about any members of the court staff. Engoron fined Trump over a social media post attacking Engoron’s clerk that had not been removed from Trump’s campaign website.

    Cohen is expected to testify about meetings with former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and Trump regarding Trump’s financial statements and net worth. Cohen has claimed there were meetings with Weisselberg and Trump about Trump’s net worth before the financial statements were filed. Weisselberg testified earlier in the trial, “I don’t believe it ever happened, no.”

    The attorney general’s office has said Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee in February 2019 – when Cohen alleged that officials at the Trump Organization inflated the value of its assets to secure loans and insurance and that they lowered the values for tax benefits – was the impetus for its investigation that led to the lawsuit against Trump.

    Assistant Attorney General Colleen Faherty is expected to question Cohen on direct examination.

    Cohen’s testimony is also a crucial part of the criminal case against Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump earlier this year with falsifying business records related to the hush-money payments.

    Cohen testified before Congress in 2019 about Trump’s involvement in the hush-money scheme involving both former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged having affairs with Trump (Trump has denied the affairs). Cohen even released a recording in which he and Trump can be heard discussing how they would buy the rights to McDougal’s story.

    Tuesday’s testimony, however, is expected to focus not on the hush-money payments but on Trump’s financial statements. Before Cohen testifies, the first witness will be Bill Kelly, the general counsel of Mazars, Trump’s onetime accounting firm.

    The trial is now in its fourth week. The attorney general’s office has called 12 witnesses to testify, including six current or former Trump Organization employees, two of whom are defendants in the case: Weisselberg and former Controller Jeff McConney.

    Trump’s lawyers have cross-examined only about half the witnesses so far, opting to reserve their right to call them in the defense case. Engoron set aside more than three months for the trial, which could continue through late December.

    An appraiser for Cushman & Wakefield testified last week that Trump’s son Eric Trump was closely involved in several appraisal consultations with the real estate firm for Trump assets Seven Springs and Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, that valued the properties substantially lower than the amounts that appeared on Trump’s financial statements in those years.

    Eric Trump said in a deposition for the case that he didn’t remember being involved in any appraisals for Trump properties.

    The attorneys are scheduled to argue at a hearing Friday morning whether Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter, can be forced to testify at trial even though an appellate court dismissed her as a defendant because the claims against her were too old.

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  • Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat | CNN Politics

    Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s wealth, power and fame acted like a magnet for new associates keen to enter his orbit. But now, key figures who sought a share of his reflected glory are turning against him to save themselves.

    The ex-president absorbed a trio of blows Tuesday that worsened his legal peril and underscored how the 2024 election – in which he is the front-runner for the GOP nomination – will play out in the courts rather than traditional voting battlegrounds.

    In the most significant development, ABC News reported that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had met federal prosecutors multiple times and had categorically undermined the ex-president’s narrative about a stolen election. Meadows was the gatekeeper to the Oval Office in the critical days when Trump was allegedly plotting to steal the 2020 election after voters rejected his bid for a second term. CNN has reached out to Meadows’ attorney for comment.

    In another damaging twist, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, who blanketed television networks after President Joe Biden’s victory to falsely claim he was elected because of fraud, reached a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors. Ellis on Tuesday tearfully confessed to the felony of aiding and abetting false statements that she and other lawyers told Peach State lawmakers. She was the third former Trump acolyte to agree to testify against the ex-president and others this week. The election subversion prosecution brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now following the classic playbook of a racketeering case wherein smaller fish are peeled away for reduced sentences to secure their testimony against the alleged kingpin.

    “If I knew then what I knew now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this experience with deep remorse,” Ellis said.

    Ellis was a comparatively junior figure in Trump’s schemes to overthrow the election, although there is reason to believe she was in critical meetings of interest to prosecutors. Her guilty plea also looks like terrible news for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also served as a Trump lawyer after the election and with whom Ellis worked closely.

    Her repudiation of her own behavior marks an ominous omen for Trump because it shows that while falsehoods about election fraud are still a potent political force in the GOP and conservative media, it’s the truth that matters in court. Under the legal system, the former president could face a level of accountability that the US political system, which is still buckling under his influence, can’t match.

    One of Trump’s former associates was feeling no remorse when he arrived in court in New York on Tuesday seeking to undermine another Trump legal defense. The former president’s longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, came face to face with his ex-boss for the first time in five years when he took the stand in a civil trial in which prosecutors are seeking to end Trump’s ability to do business in the state. Cohen has already gone to jail for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and campaign finance violations – some of which were linked to his work for Trump before he launched his political career. Cohen once vowed to take a bullet for his former boss but has left no doubt that he’s been itching to testify against him for many months. While his own conviction raises credibility issues about his testimony, Cohen implicated Trump on Tuesday, saying his former boss directed him to inflate his net worth on financial statements.

    “Heck of a reunion,” Cohen told reporters after testifying under Trump’s gaze.

    Each of Tuesday’s legal dramas threatened to undermine Trump’s position in separate cases, to which he has pleaded not guilty, and emphasized how the Republican front-runner’s bid to recapture the White House will be shadowed by his criminal liability.

    And for someone who has the exaggerated sense of loyalty harbored by Trump – albeit one that mostly goes one way – the spectacle of three former associates turning against him will be especially irksome.

    While the crush of legal cases bearing down on him hasn’t diminished his dominance in the GOP presidential race, there are increasing signs that the courtroom pressure is beginning to grate on a former president who, in a lifetime of business, personal and political scrapes, has made an art form of dodging accountability.

    In a rage-filled stream of consciousness on his Truth Social network on Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at the ABC report about Meadows.

    “I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!),” the former president wrote.

    “Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation. I don’t think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

    This came only a day after Trump absurdly compared himself to Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison – much of it in a tiny cell on Robben Island – enduring forced labor in a quarry for opposing the racist apartheid system in South Africa. After his release, the Nobel Peace Prize winner remade his divided nation as president and became a symbol of unity, humility, racial healing and forgiveness – qualities rarely shown by Trump.

    “I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela, because I’m doing it for a reason,” the ex-president told supporters in New Hampshire.

    Trump’s persecution complex is revealing, however. The former president is portraying himself as a bulwark against a government that he claims is weaponized against him and his supporters. The idea that he is a political martyr who is being unfairly targeted by the Biden administration – despite 91 charges across his four criminal indictments – may be his only credible campaign tactic. After all, he may be a convicted felon by Election Day in less than 13 months. While that prospect doesn’t seem to faze Republican primary voters, it may be a serious vulnerability among a broader electorate.

    Legal watchers in Washington have speculated for months about the activity of Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman who became the last chief of staff of Trump’s turbulent White House term.

    During his testimony before a federal grand jury, Meadows was also asked about efforts to overturn the election as well as Trump’s handling of classified documents, CNN previously reported.

    But if, as ABC News has reported, he has been granted immunity by special counsel Jack Smith and met federal prosecutors multiple times, that qualifies for the over-used term of “bombshell.”

    Haberman on why latest news on Mark Meadows feels ‘different’

    Meadows is also a key figure in the Fulton County, Georgia, probe, where he made a failed effort to have his case elevated to federal court after unsuccessfully arguing his actions at the behest of Trump’s election thwarting effort fell under his official duties.

    Meadows, who met Smith’s team at least three times this year, told investigators he did not believe the election was stolen and that Trump was being “dishonest” in claiming victory shortly after polls closed in 2020, according to ABC.

    The agreement is the first publicly known in the special counsel’s investigation into the events around January 6, 2021. The exact terms of Meadows’ deal with prosecutors are not clear, but often such agreements allow a person with valuable information about an investigation immunity from prosecution in exchange for fully cooperating.

    The reported details of Meadows’ testimony could be hugely damaging for Trump because a fundamental plank of the ex-president’s defense relies on the notion that he sincerely believed that the election was stolen and that his actions were not therefore criminal because they were an exercise of his right to free speech.

    It has long been the case that while those around Trump in business and politics often find themselves slipping deep into legal trouble, he skips free. The apparent decisions of Meadows, Ellis and Cohen – together with the mass of legal threats now facing the former president – suggest that charmed life is about to meet its biggest challenge yet.

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  • ‘This isn’t some random dude with a duffel bag’: To catch fentanyl traffickers, feds dig into crypto markets | CNN Politics

    ‘This isn’t some random dude with a duffel bag’: To catch fentanyl traffickers, feds dig into crypto markets | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has intensified its focus on tracing cryptocurrency payments that some of the most dangerous Mexican drug cartels use to buy fentanyl ingredients from Chinese chemical companies, the latest step in a renewed attempt to crack down on the multibillion-dollar fentanyl trade that kills thousands of Americans each year.

    The use of digital currency has exploded among fentanyl traffickers, with transactions for fentanyl ingredients surging 450% in the last year through April, according to data from private crypto-tracking analysis firm Elliptic.

    Federal agents are doing everything they can to catch up. While US diplomats have made fentanyl a point of emphasis in high-level talks with Mexican and Chinese counterparts, behind the scenes, a multi-agency effort is underway to keep pace with the rapidly changing nature of how fentanyl is financed and trafficked into the US. The work goes beyond the cartels to include tracking dark-web forums where Americans buy fentanyl.

    Current and former law enforcement officials from across the federal government described to CNN the digital-first tactics the administration is developing to disrupt the fentanyl trade.

    The Drug Enforcement Agency is investing in crypto-tracing software and identifying the cartels’ most sophisticated money launderers. The IRS has its most tech-savvy agents tracing payments on dark web forums. And a Department of Homeland Security investigations unit is leading a team of forensic specialists to pore over digital clues from stash houses near the Mexican border.

    Federal agents have been tracking the cartels’ finances and supply routes for years, but DHS, in particular, has ramped up its surveillance efforts in recent weeks, multiple US officials told CNN.

    There have been some notable busts recently, including nearly five tons of fentanyl seized this spring along the border. But there is still a lot of work left to do, officials caution, and the impact of the current surge may not be felt for months down the road.

    Agents have focused on the activities of two Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which officials say account for the majority of fentanyl on US streets. Sinaloa Cartel, in particular, has developed sophisticated crypto operations to finance its fentanyl business.

    “We’re dealing with a Fortune 50 company, which is what the Sinaloa Cartel is,” a US official with knowledge of the matter told CNN. “This isn’t some random dude with a duffel bag” selling fentanyl in daylight.

    Cryptocurrency has enhanced cartels’ ability to smuggle fentanyl into the US by allowing them to move vast sums of money instantaneously across a decentralized, digital banking system – all without having to deal with actual banks.

    “The speed the criminals can muster, it’s very hard for law enforcement to keep up,” said one top DEA official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity to describe the agency’s counter-narcotics work.

    Cash is still king for the cartels and often preferred for local operations. But the expanded use of digital currency at both the supply and demand ends of the drug trade has made some traditional law enforcement methods obsolete. For example, drug dealers might hold fewer in-person meetings to hand over cash, reducing the opportunities for stakeouts by federal agents, said Jarod Koopman, head of the IRS’s Cyber and Forensics Services division.

    Cryptocurrency “eliminates the potential for hand-to-hand transactions,” said Koopman, whose team focuses on illicit financial flows, including dark-web purchases that are multiple steps removed from when the cartels get the drugs over the US border. “So now it’s … in a different world where some of the contacts might be online and we’re trying to facilitate or do transactions in a different manner.”

    But digital money also leaves a trail that investigators can follow.

    Federal agents have found cryptocurrency addresses written down on scraps of paper at stash houses in Arizona, Scott Brown, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in that state, told CNN.

    In another case, DHS agents monitored a cartel-connected crypto account for over a year until it sent $200,000 to an accountant they were using to launder money, Brown said. After the accountant used the money to buy property in the US, federal agents are working to seize the property, he said.

    A “significant portion” of fentanyl is sold over the dark web and paid for in cryptocurrency, Brown said, adding: “That is a vulnerability that we can attack much like we attack the money movements in a traditional narcotics investigation.”

    Most of the fentanyl that enters the US comes from ingredients made in China that are then pressed into pills – or packed in powder – and smuggled in from Mexico by drug cartels, according to the DEA.

    A US indictment unsealed in June illustrates the scope of the problem. Just one Chinese chemical company allegedly shipped more than 440 pounds of fentanyl to undercover DEA agents in exchange for payment in cryptocurrency. It was enough drugs to kill 25 million Americans, according to prosecutors.

    The two cartels, Sinaloa and CJNG, have used their control of the fentanyl trade to develop sophisticated money-laundering techniques that exploit cryptocurrency, according to US officials.

    “We’ve identified people in the cartels that specialize in cryptocurrency movements,” the senior DEA official told CNN, describing longstanding efforts to surveil both the cartels.

    The Sinaloa Cartel has made hundreds of millions of dollars from the fentanyl trade, according to the Justice Department. Run by the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the cartel has allegedly used airplanes, submarines, fishing boats and tractor trailers to transport fentanyl chemicals and other drugs. Four of the “Chapitos,” as Guzmán’s sons are known, are under indictment in the US for fentanyl trafficking, money laundering and weapons charges.

    With their father in jail, the younger generation of Sinaloa leaders is making more of an effort to cover their tracks and avoid law enforcement scrutiny, including by using cryptocurrency, the senior DEA official told CNN.

    In one case, the Sinaloa Cartel laundered more than $869,000 using cryptocurrency between August 2022 and February 2023, according to a US indictment unsealed in April. But that was likely just a fraction of the Sinaloa money laundered during that time, based on the huge profits the cartel has made in recent years.

    The scheme involved two of the cartel’s top money launderers directing US-based couriers to pick up cash from fentanyl traffickers and deposit the money to cryptocurrency accounts controlled by the cartel, the indictment said.

    “Not every seizure is going to get you to Chapo Guzman,” said Brown, the DHS official in Arizona. “It’s certainly more impactful when we can go after the people that are behind the production of the drugs, behind the production of the precursors, behind the movement of the money, behind running the transportation cells.”

    That’s why Brown and his colleagues are trying to make the most of a huge series of fentanyl busts in Arizona and California this spring, when agents seized nearly five tons of the deadly drug, worth over $100 million.

    Evidence was quickly shipped to a forensics lab in Northern Virginia, where DHS analysts hunted for digital clues – things like a common cell phone number called by drug runners near border towns or, better yet, a cryptocurrency account connected to one of the Mexican cartels, according to Brown.

    Based in Phoenix, Brown’s office oversees a recently announced federal task force that aims to thwart drug sales online by infiltrating dark-web forums and tracking crypto payments. The goal is to find “another vulnerability [in] the larger cartel infrastructure” that agents can attack, he said.

    The cartels “are very willing to invest in technology,” Brown said. “That’s one of the things that we need to be equally willing to do.”

    Crypto-based transactions can be traced publicly, giving US officials a much clearer picture of the Mexican cartels’ reliance on Chinese chemical companies to produce fentanyl.

    The Chinese government banned the sale of fentanyl in 2019. But Chinese chemical companies have since shifted to making fentanyl ingredients instead of the finished product, according to US officials and outside experts.

    A recent CNN investigation dug into the activities of US-sanctioned Chinese chemical companies that advertise fentanyl ingredients. When one sanctioned company shut down, another company launched, and told CNN it purchased the sanctioned company’s email, phone number and Facebook page to “attract internet traffic.”

    While the amount of fentanyl directly mailed to the US from China fell dramatically following the 2019 Chinese ban, according to a Brookings Institution study, US officials say Chinese companies are still producing and exporting large quantities of fentanyl ingredients.

    This January 2019 photo shows a display of fentanyl and meth that was seized by federal officers at the Nogales Port of Entry.

    Chinese companies selling ingredients to make fentanyl have received cryptocurrency payments worth tens of millions of dollars over the last five years, enough to potentially produce billions of dollars’ worth of fentanyl sold in the US and other markets, according to research from crypto-tracking firms.

    One of the firms, London-based Elliptic, found 100 China-based chemical companies touting fentanyl, fentanyl ingredients or equipment to make the drugs that accepted payments in cryptocurrency.

    Elliptic didn’t identify any cartel-controlled crypto accounts that sent money to the Chinese companies. That could be due to the cartels’ use of middlemen to buy ingredients and the fact that fentanyl traffickers in Europe also buy from the Chinese companies, according to US officials and cryptocurrency experts interviewed by CNN

    But that data is still only a partial picture of the problem. The Chinese chemicals industry is worth over a trillion dollars, according to some estimates, and comprises tens of thousands of companies, most of them doing legitimate business.

    “It’s impossible to know how many of [those companies] are actually sending chemicals over” to the US that can be used to make fentanyl, a former DEA agent who worked in Mexico told CNN. The former agent spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

    Barring more cooperation from the Chinese government on the issue, which US officials say has been limited, the Biden administration has sanctioned and secured federal indictments against several Chinese companies allegedly involved in the production of fentanyl. Federal agents, meanwhile, follow the money and look for opportunities to seize it.

    “You can at least try to pinch off the financial flow to [the Chinese companies] and then … follow that money trail to whether it’s the Mexican cartels or if it’s in Guatemala or other places, for the actual supply,” Koopman told CNN.

    Cryptocurrency has also allowed cartels to diversify the way they move money around the world. The cartels have a network of money launderers in dozens of countries, from Thailand to Colombia, the senior DEA official said.

    These money launderers, known as “spinners,” might receive drug money in one type of cryptocurrency and convert it to another to try to obscure the source of the funds.

    “They might take Bitcoin and then buy Ethereum with it, and then send the Ethereum to the cartel members,” the senior DEA official said, referring to different types of cryptocurrencies. “The cartels have insulated themselves so they’re not receiving the cryptocurrency directly.”

    The cartels also use “mixing” services, or publicly available cryptocurrency tools, to try to obscure the source of their digital money, the DEA official said. That process is also favored by North Korean hackers who launder stolen cryptocurrency to support Pyongyang’s weapons program, CNN investigations have found.

    The volatility of cryptocurrency means the cartels often quickly look to convert their crypto to cash by moving it through a series of virtual currencies, the senior DEA official told CNN.

    But there are moments in the laundering process where federal agents can strike. A cryptocurrency exchange serving a customer in Mexico might be headquartered in the US, allowing federal agents to issue a subpoena and potentially seize money.

    For Brown, the DHS agent in Arizona, the issue is personal: one of his employees had a family member who died of a fentanyl overdose after buying the drug online , he said.

    “My people are burned out, and yet they come to work and work exceedingly hard every day,” Brown told CNN.

    But he’s optimistic when the subject turns to high-tech methods to hunt the cartels.

    “Are they as anonymous as they think they are? Absolutely … not.”

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  • What happened this week and what’s next in Trump legal world | CNN Politics

    What happened this week and what’s next in Trump legal world | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s legal schedule is getting fuller by the day as the political season heats up, with the former president facing multiple criminal charges with more possibly on the way.

    This week, Trump was indicted on charges of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat and had to travel to Washington, DC, to plead not guilty in federal court.

    Now comes a flurry of legal filings and the possibility of yet another indictment, this time in Georgia, where a grand jury is looking at efforts to flip his defeat in the Peach State.

    READ: Tracking the criminal indictments in one place

    Here’s what happened this week and what’s next:

    Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the hammer against Trump on Tuesday, charging the former president with conspiracy and attempting to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That effort ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    “(F)or more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states.

    “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” it adds, referring to Trump. “But the defendant disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

    READ: CNN’s annotation of the indictment

    Trump took the short trip from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to appear in federal court on Thursday to enter a not guilty plea to all charges.

    The arraignment was at a courthouse that’s been central to the efforts to hold people accountable for the January 6 riot. Over 1,000 people charged in Capitol riot cases have made a similar appearance as Trump’s – the building is located within sight of the Capitol and judges there have overseen trials or sentencing of the rioters.

    One of the next major issues in the Trump case will be when to set a trial date. Judge Tanya Chutkan – who has sentenced multiple rioters – appears to be moving quickly on that front.

    The Trump team signaled Thursday that it doesn’t think this case can be sent to trial in the normal timeline as dictated under a federal law known the Speedy Trial Act that allows for exemptions in certain circumstance. The special counsel’s office disagrees.

    Trump has until Tuesday to file a motion that would pause the clock under the Speedy Trial Act, which would help to slow the pace down, and prosecutors have until August 13 to issue any objection to the request.

    Another critical filing will be next Thursday, when the special counsel must propose a trial date and say how long it will likely take them to put on their case before the jury. Trump must respond by August 17.

    The next hearing – the first before Chutkan – will be August 28. Trump does not have to appear in person.

    Meanwhile, the first Republican primary debate is August 23, though it’s unclear if Trump will participate.

    Meanwhile, Smith’s indictment cites six unnamed co-conspirators who allegedly worked with Trump to support his efforts. CNN can identify five of the six.

    “Co-Conspirator 1” is former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “2” is former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who masterminded the plan to appoint false electors and is now facing disbarment proceedings in California. “3” is former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who worked with Giuliani in court. “4” is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump at one point hoped to install as acting attorney general to help him overturn the election. “5” is pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who sent an email to Giuliani about the fake electors plot.

    The identity of “6” is unclear. The indictment says this person is a political consultant who is tied to the fake elector slate in Pennsylvania.

    The next moment in the criminal case against Trump is Thursday, August 10, when a magistrate judge in Florida will hear the plea of Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, who allegedly attempted to delete security camera footage at the former president’s resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it.

    Trump, via court filing Friday, pleaded not guilty to the charges recently added to the case and indicated to the court that he would not be physically present for the arraignment.

    Lawyers for co-defendant Walt Nauta will be present to enter their client’s plea to the new counts.

    READ: Mar-a-lago indictment annotated

    A grand jury hearing evidence in Smith’s investigation returned the superseding indictment in late July against Trump, who had already faced 37 criminal charges, charging the former president with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

    Also next week, Trump’s lawyers will have a chance to respond to claims by prosecutors that he is unwilling to travel to a secured facility to access classified documents being turned over to the defense for the case. By August 10, Trump will have to respond to Smith’s proposal for a protective order restricting access to classified discovery in the case, and in the filings with the proposal, prosecutors have said that Trump has requested to view the documents in Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster – a request Smith’s team opposes.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to ask a grand jury to file charges by September 1 in her probe into efforts by Trump and allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result.

    “The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

    Security at the Fulton County courthouse has notably increased in anticipation of Willis’ actions.

    READ: Timeline of Trump’s efforts in Georgia to overturn the election

    A federal judge last week dismissed a $475 million defamation lawsuit Trump brought against CNN that accused the network of defaming him by using the phrase “the big lie” and allegedly comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

    District Judge Raag Singhal, a 2019 appointee of Trump’s, said that use of the phrase or similar statements are opinion that don’t meet the standard for defamation.

    “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference,” Singhal wrote.

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  • FBI agent contests whistleblower claims in Hunter Biden case, transcript shows | CNN Politics

    FBI agent contests whistleblower claims in Hunter Biden case, transcript shows | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The FBI agent managing the team on the Hunter Biden criminal case testified to the House Judiciary Committee that US Attorney David Weiss had ultimate authority over the case, contesting testimony brought forward by whistleblowers.

    Thomas Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, told committee investigators in a closed-door interview last week that from his perspective, Weiss had the authority to bring forward whatever charges he wanted in whatever venue he preferred.

    “It was my understanding that David Weiss had the authority, and at no point did I ever differ from that,” Sobociniski said, according to a copy of his interview transcript obtained by CNN. “There’s never been anything in my view that changed that.”

    Sobocinski’s transcript, which was first reported by The Washington Post, comes as House Republicans continue to investigate allegations that the criminal case of President Joe Biden’s son was mishandled. It’s all part of the House GOP impeachment inquiry into the president, even though Republicans have yet to find evidence that the president did anything illegal.

    Sobocinski’s testimony disputes a number of claims from an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower about a key October 2022 meeting including FBI and IRS agents, Weiss, and other Justice Department prosecutors that occurred at a critical point in the criminal probe. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who was in the meeting and worked on this case, said Weiss revealed in that meeting that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed. Shapley provided his notes on that meeting and email exchanges about it to Congress to support his claim. The notes say, “Weiss stated – He is not the deciding person.”

    But Sobocinski was also in that October 2022 meeting and said Weiss never said that.

    “I went into that meeting believing he had the authority, and I have left that meeting believing he had the authority to bring charges,” Sobocinski testified.

    Reflecting on Shapley’s accusation of Weiss, Sobocinski said, “In my recollection, if he would have said that, I would have remembered it.”

    In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee responding to Sobocinski’s testimony, Shapley’s legal team contested Sobocinski’s testimony, noting that Shapley took notes of the October 2022 meeting while Sobocinski did not.

    “Mr. Sobocinski apparently acknowledged that he took no notes in the meeting, nor did he document it in any contemporaneous fashion afterwards,” wrote Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt and attorney Mark Lytle, according to the letter obtained by CNN. “By contrast, SSA Shapley took notes during the meeting. These notes, combined with his fresh memory of the meeting, formed the basis for the email he sent later that day and corroborate his current recollection.”

    House Republicans responded to the comments saying that the whistleblowers, Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year IRS special agent with the Criminal Investigation Division, were “wholly consistent.”

    “Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler have been wholly consistent throughout their disclosures to Congress, and the only people who haven’t are people like David Weiss, Merrick Garland, and their liberal cronies,” said Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican.

    Sobocinski also disputed Shapley’s claim that Weiss said in the October 2022 meeting he was denied special counsel status and denied venues to bring forward charges.

    Sobocinski told the House Judiciary panel he was informed of Weiss’ special counsel status the day Attorney General Merrick Garland announced it last month, and that Weiss was not previously denied special counsel status as Shapley has claimed.

    “I don’t have a recollection with him saying that there or at any point in my communication with Mr. Weiss,” Sobocinski said. “That would have been a total 180 from all our previous conversations about authorities.”

    When asked if anybody at FBI headquarters ever prevented Weiss from taking any steps or accessing any necessary resources, Sobocinski replied, “Not that I’m aware of.”

    Sobocinski told congressional investigators that he did raise concerns repeatedly about the pace of the investigation into Hunter Biden.

    “I would have liked for it to move faster,” he said.

    Republicans on the committee raised the question of why Weiss was eventually given special counsel status if Weiss had the ultimate authority as Sobocinski has argued. Sobocinski acknowledged that Weiss would be the best person to answer these questions, and more specifics about how special counsel status was granted.

    On whether Weiss was denied venues to bring forward charges against the president’s son, Sobocinski said he only had “high-level conversations” about the specific charges, but from his understanding “there was a process” within the Justice Department for US attorneys to bring forward charges outside of their district that involved a lot of “bureaucracy” but was “not a permission issue.”

    “Without going into specifics, there were discussion about taxes and venue,” Sobocinski said. “And, once again, Mr. Weiss had the authority to bring it.”

    Shapley’s notes on the October 2022 meeting included that an FBI agent asked the group if they were concerned about the investigation being politicized. Sobocinski noted that part of why the meeting was called was in response to a media leak about the status of the criminal investigation. He told congressional investigators that he wanted to ask anyone in the room if they felt the investigation into the president’s son had been politicized, and he said no one in the room, not even Shapley, raised any concerns.

    “I wanted to go on record in the room of the leaders who were involved in this investigation,” Sobocinski said. “Thought that it was no, and nobody in that room raised their voice to say anything other.”

    Sobocinski also addressed broader claims made about how the Hunter Biden criminal investigation has been handled. To discredit GOP claims that prosecutors colluded with Hunter Biden’s Secret Service by informing them they wanted to interview Hunter, Sobocinski said that as a former Secret Service agent, he said it was “expected” for an investigative entity to speak with him ahead of interviewing a protectee of his. Sobocinski also said he is not aware of any evidence that the Department of Justice has retaliated against the IRS whistleblowers who have come forward.

    The Department of Justice sent Sobocinski a letter the day before his interview giving him permission to discuss the details of the October 7, 2022, meeting and Weiss’ authority on the case. But Sobocinski was not permitted to discuss the ongoing criminal investigation.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • DC grand jury that handed up 2020 election indictment against Trump meets again | CNN Politics

    DC grand jury that handed up 2020 election indictment against Trump meets again | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal grand jury reconvened on Tuesday for the first time since handing up an indictment last week against former President Donald Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    CNN spotted grand jury members at the federal courthouse in Washington, an indication that the investigation into election interference is not over.

    The grand jury has been hearing evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the aftermath of the election leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol for nearly a year. In the Trump indictment, prosecutors refer to six unnamed co-conspirators, raising questions about whether they also could face charges in the case.

    One of the co-conspirators identified by CNN is ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. On Monday, Bernie Kerik, a longtime Giuliani associate who coordinated with him after the 2020 election, met with investigators at the special counsel’s office. Kerik spoke with investigators about Giuliani’s efforts to try to uncover election fraud in 2020, according to his attorney Tim Parlatore.

    Prosecutors allege in the indictment that the co-conspirator identified as Giuliani “was willing to spread knowingly false claims” about supposed election fraud.

    A political adviser to Giuliani, Ted Goodman, previously told CNN that they were acting in good faith and that the indictment “eviscerates” the First Amendment.

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  • 'Change is necessary': Coast Guard pledges reforms after mishandling reports of sexual assault | CNN Politics

    'Change is necessary': Coast Guard pledges reforms after mishandling reports of sexual assault | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Coast Guard, rocked by allegations that its leaders for years concealed damning information about sexual assaults and other serious misconduct, released a highly critical report Wednesday acknowledging it had “failed to keep our people safe,” while vowing to make reforms that would better protect them.

    After spending 90 days speaking with hundreds of service members, reading through more than 170 written comments and “sifting through a mountain of data,” an internal review team said it had heard a resounding message from the workforce that “these failures and lack of accountability are entirely unacceptable” and that leaders “must do something about it.”

    “Too many Coast Guard members are not experiencing the safe, empowering workplace they expect and deserve (and) trust in Coast Guard leadership is eroding,” the authors wrote in the roughly 100-page report, noting that they had heard from victims of sexual assault and harassment stretching from the 1960s to the current day who “expressed deep rooted feelings of pain and a loss of trust in the organization.”

    The scathing internal review was launched after CNN exposed a secret criminal investigation, dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, which found that serious misconduct had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials. It wasn’t until CNN started asking questions about Fouled Anchor this spring that Coast Guard leaders rushed to officially brief Congress on the scandal — leading to outrage on both sides of the aisle, multiple government investigations and proposed legislation.

    CNN’s coverage of Fouled Anchor and subsequent reporting revealing that Coast Guard leaders declined to prosecute a retired officer for sexual misconduct “have led people to experience feelings ranging from disappointment to outrage,” the report said.

    “For so many victims, there are even deeper levels of broken trust: in leaders who failed them in preventing and responding to sexual violence; in a military justice system with antiquated legal definitions of rape; in non-existent support programs for those impacted prior to 2000,” it stated. While the report outlined a number of changes made in the last two decades, it also acknowledged that reforms to date have not been enough to prevent assaults and properly support victims.

    The review did not seek to hold past perpetrators or officials involved with the Fouled Anchor cover-up accountable, saying multiple government investigations launched by Congress remained ongoing.

    Instead, it looked to the future and focused on preventing future assaults and other misconduct, describing the report as a “road map aimed at improving” the agency’s culture.

    Along with the report’s findings, the Coast Guard announced a series of actions directed by the agency’s leader, Commandant Linda Fagan, through recommended changes to everything from training and victim support services to strengthening processes for holding perpetrators accountable.

    “This report acknowledges the Coast Guard’s failures and uses them to inform a way ahead, rebuild trust, and set the baseline for organizational growth,” the document states, noting that many of the actions require additional funding and authority to implement.

    Among the reforms are the creation of a mentorship program for victims to help them navigate the aftermath of a sexual assault, the development of a “safe to report” policy so that victims are not penalized for collateral minor misconduct (such as alcohol use at the time of an incident), more secure locks on Coast Guard Academy bedrooms and improved oversight of the school and its cadets – including a new chain of command for the academy head.

    Fagan also directed officials to better keep tabs on the academy’s hallmark “Swab Summer” training program, which is run by upperclassmen at the academy, and to consider strengthening policies that allow the agency to reduce pension payments for those found to have committed misconduct.

    The report was the Coast Guard’s most expansive response to the growing criticism of its handling of misconduct. And while it was being released publicly, and members of Congress had been briefed on its contents earlier, the report was specifically addressed to “U.S. Coast Guard workforce, past and present.”

    “You made it clear that you want and expect our Service to confront this issue and make it better. You want our Service to deliver meaningful change,” the report stated. “Whether you’re a member who has a story to share — or the shipmate standing beside them — this is our time. Let’s get it right.”

    While the Coast Guard is focused on the future, members of Congress are still determined to get answers about past failures as well.

    “This new report still does not hold anyone accountable for past failures—particularly those at the Coast Guard Academy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Coast Guard Academy is located. Murphy and other lawmakers have continued to slam the agency for its failure to be transparent about sexual assault and other misconduct. “It does lay out a modest plan to improve oversight, training, and support for survivors, but a report is nothing more than paper until concrete steps are taken.”

    Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Richard Blumenthal also criticized how, despite calling this effort an “accountability” review, the Coast Guard still failed to hold anyone to task for the mishandling of sexual assault cases. Cantwell reiterated the importance of an independent investigation, saying she is looking forward to seeing the results of the probe currently being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General.

    Earlier this year, CNN reported how former Commandant Karl Schultz and his second-in-command, Vice Commandant Charles Ray, failed to act on plans to share the findings of Fouled Anchor with Congress and the public. Ray resigned from his position at a Coast Guard Academy leadership institute soon after, but no other current or former Coast Guard officials have publicly faced any consequences.

    “Current Coast Guard personnel are being told to trust their leadership, but their leaders aren’t holding predecessors accountable,” K. Denise Rucker Krepp, a former Coast Guard officer and former chief counsel of the Maritime Administration wrote in a recent letter to Congress, describing how she had attended a “community healing” event sponsored by the Coast Guard Academy Alumni Association last month.

    “Before my first cup of coffee I learned about a woman who was raped shortly after joining the service. She never told her parents about the crime,” she wrote. “While washing my hands in the bathroom, another woman shared that she was raped while attending the Coast Guard Academy in the late 1990s. Another woman shared that she was gang-raped by three students at the school and had spent two-thirds of her life on medication because of the crimes that occurred almost 40 years ago.”

    Next week, more survivors of sexual assault and harassment at the Coast Guard Academy are slated to share their experiences publicly in a Congressional hearing. The hearing, announced just yesterday, is part of an ongoing Senate probe launched in reaction to the Fouled Anchor cover-up.

    Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.

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  • Fulton County district attorney is likely to present her case against Trump to grand jury next week | CNN Politics

    Fulton County district attorney is likely to present her case against Trump to grand jury next week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies has been lining up witnesses to appear before a grand jury in order to craft a narrative around how Trump and his supporters tried to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to spend two days presenting her case before a grand jury next week.

    Willis could seek several indictments as she eyes a sweeping racketeering case that could cast Trump and several of his associates as operating as a criminal enterprise in their endeavors to upend Georgia’s election results.

    If Willis proceeds with racketeering charges, “I think she is going to tell a story,” said Georgia State law professor Clark D. Cunningham. “The story of how one person at the top – the former president – really marshaled an army of people to accomplish his goal which was to stay in power through any means.”

    The witnesses Willis has subpoenaed include former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Georgia Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan and independent journalist George Chidi. All of them previously testified before a special purpose grand jury that was tasked with investigating the Trump case and heard from more than 75 witnesses.

    But Georgia law is unusual in that special purpose grand juries – which have broad investigative powers – are not permitted to issue indictments. When the subpoenaed witnesses appear before the regular grand jury, those grand jurors will hear the witnesses’ testimony for the first time with a narrower purpose at hand: to approve or reject indictments.

    The witnesses that have been summoned to testify speak to various prongs of Willis’ investigation, from conspiracy-laden presentations that Trump’s associates – including former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani – made before Georgia lawmakers in 2020, to the convening of fake electors to try to thwart President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. She can also rely on her internal investigators to present evidence that was previously collected by the special purpose grand jury.

    In a case of this magnitude, “probably the indictment has been drafted and reviewed for months,” Michael J. Moore, former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, told CNN.

    If there’s anything left to be done, Moore said it was likely final tweaks and finishing touches.

    “The indictment, word-for-word, is going to be flyspecked. You’re making sure there are no errors in it,” Moore said. “And you’re making sure you have enough pieces to prove each count.”

    Willis’ office declined to comment.

    Willis launched her investigation into Trump in early 2021, soon after he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and pressured the Republican to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the state of Georgia. At a campaign event Tuesday, Trump continued to insist it was a “perfect phone call.”

    Her investigation has steadily expanded, and Willis has been weighing racketeering charges in the Trump case. RICO – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – is a statute the district attorney has spoken fondly of and used in unorthodox ways to bring charges against teachers as well as musicians in the Atlanta area.

    In 2015, Willis was thrust into the national spotlight as a Fulton County prosecutor when she used Georgia’s racketeering statute to charge teachers, principals and other education officials in an Atlanta Public School cheating scandal.

    After a 7-month trial, Willis secured convictions for 11 of the 12 defendants charged with racketeering and other crimes related to cheating that was believed to date to early 2001, when scores on statewide skills tests began to rise in the 50,000-student school district.

    “The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis told reporters in 2022 at a press conference about a gang-related indictment. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision about someone’s life. And so, RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

    Soon after Willis embarked on her Trump investigation, she retained attorney John Floyd – known for his depth of knowledge in racketeering cases – to assist her office.

    In addition to allowing prosecutors to weave a narrative, Georgia’s racketeering statute allows investigators to pull a broader array of conduct into their indictments, including activities that took place outside of the state of Georgia but may have been part of a broader conspiracy.

    Those convicted of racketeering charges also face steeper penalties, a point of leverage for prosecutors if they are hoping to flip potential co-conspirators or encourage defendants to take plea deals.

    Willis’ team has forged ahead with plans to make charging announcements in the coming weeks, even as special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four federal counts related to his efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.

    A hefty chunk of the conduct in the indictment was related to efforts to flip the election results in Georgia. Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case.

    The former president’s legal team believes he is likely to face his fourth indictment in the coming days, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

    At a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Trump complained about the cases stacking up against him, adding, “I probably have another one.”

    He also railed against the Fulton County district attorney’s case.

    “I challenge the election in Georgia – which I have every right to do, which I was right about frankly – and they want to indict me because I challenge the election,” Trump told the crowd, even though his efforts to challenge the election results in court failed and no evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever emerged.

    Still, the biggest risk Willis runs at the moment may be in public perception if she moves ahead with a Trump indictment, said Moore, the former US attorney.

    “It starts to look like she’s just piling on because the same things that are in her indictment are also in the federal indictment,” Moore predicted, though he has not been privy to drafts of Willis’ potential indictments. “I’m not sure she’s got anything new to talk about.”

    At an event last week at Atlanta Technical College, Willis told reporters she had reviewed the special counsel’s federal indictment against Trump for election interference but said it would not affect her plans in Georgia.

    Asked what she would say to critics who question the purpose of her case in the wake of the federal indictment, Willis said, “That I took an oath. And that oath requires that I follow the law. And if someone broke the law in Fulton County, Georgia, that I have a duty to prosecute and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

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  • House Oversight Committee launches investigation into Coast Guard after CNN report | CNN Politics

    House Oversight Committee launches investigation into Coast Guard after CNN report | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation into the US Coast Guard’s “mishandling of serious misconduct” — including sexual assault, racism and hazing — after CNN exposed that its leaders concealed reports documenting those problems from its workforce, the public and Congress.

    The inquiry is the latest in a string of government probes announced in the wake of CNN’s reporting, which revealed the existence of a yearslong investigation that found rapes and other sexual abuse at the Coast Guard Academy had been ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials. Dubbed “Operation Fouled Anchor,” the internal probe was kept confidential by Coast Guard leaders for years until CNN started making inquiries into the report earlier this year.

    Last week, CNN exposed that Coast Guard leaders suppressed yet another report, this time a “Culture of Respect” review from April 2015, that documented racial and gender discrimination and assault across the service.

    In a letter sent Friday to the Coast Guard’s leader, Commandant Linda Fagan, House lawmakers lambasted the agency, saying that the Coast Guard “may have obstructed the ability of Congress to carry out constitutionally mandated oversight authority and legislation to address these issues,” “prevented actionable change within the agency” and “likely put more people at risk.”

    “[The Coast Guard] only notified Congress about Operation Fouled Anchor and its April 2015 Report when existence of these reports was going to be in the press,” wrote committee Chairman Rep. James Comer and Rep. Glenn Grothman, chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. “The Committee has serious concerns that congressional committees would not have been notified of these reports, and the serious allegations contained within them, if it had not been for the threat of public reporting.”

    The announcement comes on the heels of the Coast Guard’s own acknowledgment of past failures in a rare and highly critical internal report issued this week that also orders a series of changes to how the agency handles sexual assault. A number of congressional lawmakers and assault survivors were not satisfied, however, saying the agency still needs to hold past perpetrators and the leaders who covered up their dangerous and criminal behavior accountable – rather than only looking to the future.

    The committee requested a litany of documents and information “to assist the Committee in investigating these reports, the withholding of information from Congress, and the inaction of senior leadership to combat misconduct,” including a list of Coast Guard officials involved in the handling of sexual misconduct cases from the time of Fouled Anchor to present.

    CNN’s reporting showed that, over the years, alleged perpetrators weren’t being held accountable for misconduct. Many of the problems documented in the Coast Guard’s reports continue to plague the agency, according to interviews with current and former service members.

    Meanwhile, a probe by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General remains ongoing, as does a Senate inquiry – with a hearing scheduled next week where multiple whistleblowers and survivors of sexual assault and harassment will testify.

    Do you have information or a story to share about the Coast Guard past or present? Email melanie.hicken@cnn.com and Blake.Ellis@cnn.com.

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