Tag: national security

Two Supreme Court cases this week could upend the entire internet | CNN Business

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The Supreme Court is set to hear back-to-back oral arguments this week in two cases that could significantly reshape online speech and content moderation.

The outcome of the oral arguments, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, could determine whether tech platforms and social media companies can be sued for recommending content to their users or for supporting acts of international terrorism by hosting terrorist content. It marks the Court’s first-ever review of a hot-button federal law that largely protects websites from lawsuits over user-generated content.

The closely watched cases, known as Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh, carry significant stakes for the wider internet. An expansion of apps and websites’ legal risk for hosting or promoting content could lead to major changes at sites, including Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube, to name a few.

The litigation has produced some of the most intense rhetoric in years from the tech sector about the potential impact on the internet’s future. US lawmakers, civil society groups and more than two dozen states have also jumped into the debate with filings at the Court.

At the heart of the legal battle is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a nearly 30-year-old federal law that courts have repeatedly said provide broad protections to tech platforms but that has since come under scrutiny alongside growing criticism of Big Tech’s content moderation decisions.

The law has critics on both sides of the aisle. Many Republican officials allege that Section 230 gives social media platforms a license to censor conservative viewpoints. Prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have argued Section 230 prevents tech giants from being held accountable for spreading misinformation and hate speech.

In recent years, some in Congress have pushed for changes to Section 230 that might expose tech platforms to more liability, along with proposals to amend US antitrust rules and other bills aimed at reining in dominant tech platforms. But those efforts have largely stalled, leaving the Supreme Court as the likeliest source of change in the coming months to how the United States regulates digital services.

Rulings in the cases are expected by the end of June.

The case involving Google zeroes in on whether it can be sued because of its subsidiary YouTube’s algorithmic promotion of terrorist videos on its platform.

According to the plaintiffs in the case — the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris — YouTube’s targeted recommendations violated a US antiterrorism law by helping to radicalize viewers and promote ISIS’s worldview.

The allegation seeks to carve out content recommendations so that they do not receive protections under Section 230, potentially exposing tech platforms to more liability for how they run their services.

Google and other tech companies have said that that interpretation of Section 230 would increase the legal risks associated with ranking, sorting and curating online content, a basic feature of the modern internet. Google has claimed that in such a scenario, websites would seek to play it safe by either removing far more content than is necessary, or by giving up on content moderation altogether and allowing even more harmful material on their platforms.

Friend-of-the-court filings by Craigslist, Microsoft, Yelp and others have suggested that the stakes are not limited to algorithms and could also end up affecting virtually anything on the web that might be construed as making a recommendation. That might mean even average internet users who volunteer as moderators on various sites could face legal risks, according to a filing by Reddit and several volunteer Reddit moderators. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and former California Republican Rep. Chris Cox, the original co-authors of Section 230, argued to the Court that Congress’ intent in passing the law was to give websites broad discretion to moderate content as they saw fit.

The Biden administration has also weighed in on the case. In a brief filed in December, it argued that Section 230 does protect Google and YouTube from lawsuits “for failing to remove third-party content, including the content it has recommended.” But, the government’s brief argued, those protections do not extend to Google’s algorithms because they represent the company’s own speech, not that of others.

The second case, Twitter v. Taamneh, will decide whether social media companies can be sued for aiding and abetting a specific act of international terrorism when the platforms have hosted user content that expresses general support for the group behind the violence without referring to the specific terrorist act in question.

The plaintiffs in the case — the family of Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in an ISIS attack in Istanbul in 2017 — have alleged that social media companies including Twitter had knowingly aided ISIS in violation of a US antiterrorism law by allowing some of the group’s content to persist on their platforms despite policies intended to limit that type of content.

Twitter has said that just because ISIS happened to use the company’s platform to promote itself does not constitute Twitter’s “knowing” assistance to the terrorist group, and that in any case the company cannot be held liable under the antiterror law because the content at issue in the case was not specific to the attack that killed Alassaf. The Biden administration, in its brief, has agreed with that view.

Twitter had also previously argued that it was immune from the suit thanks to Section 230.

Other tech platforms such as Meta and Google have argued in the case that if the Court finds the tech companies cannot be sued under US antiterrorism law, at least under these circumstances, it would avoid a debate over Section 230 altogether in both cases, because the claims at issue would be tossed out.

In recent years, however, several Supreme Court justices have shown an active interest in Section 230, and have appeared to invite opportunities to hear cases related to the law. Last year, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch wrote that new state laws, such as Texas’s that would force social media platforms to host content they would rather remove, raise questions of “great importance” about “the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

A number of petitions are currently pending asking the Court to review the Texas law and a similar law passed by Florida. The Court last month delayed a decision on whether to hear those cases, asking instead for the Biden administration to submit its views.

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February 20, 2023
Blinken says US has ‘no doubt’ China was conducting surveillance with balloon | CNN Politics

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made clear that the US has no doubt China was seeking to surveil the US via the balloon that was ultimately shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.

“I can’t say dispositively what the original intent was, but that doesn’t matter because what we saw when it was over the United States was clearly an attempt to surveil very sensitive military sites,” Blinken said on ABC’s “This Week” in an interview taped Saturday.

“The balloon went over many of them. It, in some cases, loitered,” he added. “We took measures to protect that information. We took measures to get information about the balloon. And I think we’ll know more when we … actually get the remains.”

Following the downing of the suspected Chinese spy balloon, the US military downed three subsequent objects that were much smaller and are now believed to have not been tied to any country’s surveillance program, President Joe Biden said last week. Instead, they were likely used for weather or research purposes by private entities.

US officials have said that the Chinese balloon, in contrast, had a payload – or the equipment it was carrying – the size of roughly three buses and was capable of collecting signals intelligence and taking photos. The balloon traveled over sensitive sites in Montana, officials have said, but the administration has said it tracked the balloon’s path and worked to minimize its intelligence collection capabilities.

The US has said that the balloon was part of a large fleet controlled by the Chinese military that has conducted surveillance over at least 40 countries across five continents in recent years.

“There’s absolutely no doubt in our minds about what the balloon, once over the United States, was attempting to do. And no doubt in our minds about this surveillance balloon program that China has, and again, has been used over more than 40 countries around the world,” Blinken told ABC.

On the topic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the top US diplomat said Sunday he has concerns over China’s support of Russia’s military, specifically that Beijing is considering supplying Moscow with “lethal support.”

CNN previously reported that the US has begun seeing “disturbing” trendlines of late in China’s support for Russia’s military, and there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Russia without getting caught, according to US officials familiar with the intelligence.

The officials would not describe in detail what intelligence the US has seen suggesting a recent shift in China’s posture but said US officials have been concerned enough that they shared the intelligence with allies and partners at the Munich Security Conference in Germany over the past several days.

“We’ve been watching this very closely,” Blinken told “Face the Nation” on CBS while in Munich.

“The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship,” Blinken said.

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February 19, 2023
Fox News executives refused to let Trump on-air when he called in during January 6 attack, Dominion says | CNN Politics

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Former President Donald Trump tried to call into Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but the network refused to put him on air, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against the company.

The House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack did not know that Trump had made this call, according to a source familiar with the panel’s work.

The panel sought to piece together a near minute-by-minute account of Trump’s movements, actions and phone calls on that day. His newly revealed call to Fox News shows some of the gaps in the record that still exist, due to roadblocks the committee faced.

“The afternoon of January 6, after the Capitol came under attack, then-President Trump dialed into Lou Dobbs’ show attempting to get on air,” Dominion lawyers wrote in their legal brief.

‘He could easily destroy us’: See Tucker Carlson’s private text about Trump

“But Fox executives vetoed that decision,” Dominion’s filing continued. “Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 was an important event by any measure. President Trump not only was the sitting President, he was the key figure that day.”

The network rebuffed Trump because “it would be irresponsible to put him on the air” and “could impact a lot of people in a negative way,” according to Fox Business Network President Lauren Petterson, whose testimony was cited by Dominion in the new filing.

Dobbs’ show on Fox Business – in which he routinely promoted baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election – was canceled a few weeks after the January 6 insurrection.

Fox News and its parent company have denied all wrongdoing and are aggressively fighting Dominion’s defamation lawsuit. In a previous statement, a Fox spokesperson claimed that Dominion “mischaracterized the record” in its court filing and “cherry-picked quotes” that were “stripped of key context.”

The most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives at Fox News privately ridiculed claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel allowing lies about the presidential contest to be promoted on its air, damning messages contained in a Thursday court filing revealed.

Haberman describes ‘striking’ claim that stood out to her from court documents

The messages showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham brutally mocked lies being pushed by Trump’s camp asserting that the election had been rigged.

In one set of messages revealed in the court filing, Carlson texted Ingraham, saying that Sidney Powell, an attorney who was representing the Trump campaign, was “lying” and that he had “caught her” doing so. Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”

Court filings show Fox stars ridiculed Giuliani over 2020 election fraud claims

The messages also revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, did not believe Trump’s election lies and even floated the idea of having Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham appear together in prime time to declare Joe Biden as the rightful winner of the election.

Such an act, Murdoch said, “Would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”

The court filing offered the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden’s favor.

Dominion filed its mammoth lawsuit against Fox News in March 2021, alleging that during the 2020 presidential election the network “recklessly disregarded the truth” and pushed various pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the election technology company because “the lies were good for Fox’s business.”

Fox News has not only vigorously denied Dominion’s claims, it has insisted it is “proud” of its 2020 election coverage.

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February 19, 2023
Uncontacted tribes and an Indian military base. Did a ‘spy’ balloon snoop on the Andaman and Nicobar islands? | CNN

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When a strange white sphere appeared in the skies above the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in January 2022, it swiftly became a talking point in this sleepy Indian Ocean archipelago of 430,000 people.

Hundreds of members of the public spotted the strange object, which looked a little like a full moon, and were eager to speculate on what it was, reported local media. But “high-altitude surveillance balloon” didn’t seem high on many people’s guess list.

Many suggested it was a weather balloon; others, including local news outlet the Andaman Sheekha, thought that made no sense, ruling out the possibility on the grounds of the object’s shape, height, and photographs showing what appeared to be “eight dark panels” hanging from it.

Some did suggest spying might be involved, but that too seemed a strange explanation.

Under the headline, “Unidentified Flying Object over Port Blair city triggers curiosity and rumor,” the Sheekha posed a question: “In this age of ultra advanced satellites, who will use a flying object to spy?”

That question, experts say, has taken on a greater resonance this month, after the United States shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that spent days over American territory, including apparently lingering over nuclear missile silos in Montana.

US intelligence officials say the balloon – which China insists was a civilian weather research vessel – was part of an extensive Chinese surveillance program run from the island province of Hainan that has flown balloons over at least five continents in recent years.

Other governments have also raised concerns. Soon after the balloon was spotted over the US, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said the incident “should not be tolerated by the civilized international community,” adding it had experienced Chinese balloons flying over its territory in September 2021 and again in February 2022.

Japan meanwhile said it “strongly presumed” that three “balloon-shaped flying objects” detected in its airspace between November 2019 and September 2021 were “unmanned reconnaissance” aircraft flown by China.

But India – which administers the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – has remained conspicuously silent, despite questions being raised by the Indian media.

“Mystery balloon hovered over Andaman and Nicobar Islands around tri-service military drill,” reported India Today; “Chinese spy balloons, UFOs trigger paranoia among countries. Should India be worried?” asked Live Mint. “Reports Suggest India Was Targeted by Chinese Balloon Too,” ran a headline in The Wire; “Did a Chinese ‘spy’ balloon snoop on India too?” asked Firstpost.

China, meanwhile, has strongly denied running a balloon surveillance program. It maintains the vessel downed by the US was a weather balloon thrown off course and has also rejected Tokyo’s claims. Beijing said it firmly opposed “the Japanese side’s smear campaign against China” and said Japan should “stop following the US” by engaging in “deliberate speculation.”

“China is a responsible country that strictly abides by international law and respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. (We) hope that all parties will look at it objectively,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in response to a question from CNN about whether the country had ever used balloons to spy on India.

But to many onlookers, the silence from New Delhi on the matter has been as baffling as the balloon-like object was to the readers of the Andaman Sheekha.

“I think (the Indian) government is being silent about it for the simple fact that (it) was unable to do anything about it,” said Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at New Delhi-based think tank Center for Policy Research.

“If it were to say that a spy balloon was found over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which is seen as a great bastion of Indian sovereignty, it would show the government in a very poor light.”

India will come under the international spotlight this year as it hosts two high-level summits – the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – and it is “desperately keen” for them to go well, Singh said.

And with a general election on the horizon in 2024, its leader Narendra Modi will be eager to look tough in the eyes of voters who swept him into power on a ticket of nationalism and a promise of India’s future greatness.

Acknowledging that a UFO – which may or may not have been spying – had floated above an archipelago that hosts a significant Indian military presence would compromise that message.

“Raising this issue of the balloon,” simply wouldn’t be in New Delhi’s interest, Singh concluded. “As a nationalist government, it would completely destroy and demolish its image within the country.”

But Manoj Kewalramani, a fellow of China studies at the Takshashila Institution in India, said silence was simply more New Delhi’s style.

“Historically, India has never spoken about these issues,” he said. “If the US has briefed India on the Chinese spying program, India will very careful about what they reveal, so as to not tarnish that relationship.”

CNN reached out to the Indian government for comment on this article but did not receive a response.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands may seem an unlikely target for international espionage.

The remote, sleepy archipelago at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Aceh, Indonesia, and more than 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) from the Indian capital New Delhi. Only a few dozen of its more than 500 islands are even inhabited.

There is little commerce to speak of beyond fishing villages, and while the sandy beaches and rich biodiversity have made some of the islands popular with tourists, others are so remote they are home to uncontacted tribes.

In 2018, an American missionary, John Allen Chau, is thought to have been killed by the Sentinelese tribe after he arrived on North Sentinel Island, hoping to convert them to Christianity. In 2006, members of the same tribe killed two fishermen poachers whose boat drifted ashore. Two years earlier, one of its members was photographed firing arrows at a helicopter sent to check on their welfare following the Asian tsunami. Protection groups have urged the public to respect their wish to remain uncontacted.

But as obscure and remote as these islands may be, there are reasons they might be of interest to foreign intelligence agencies.

As a major outpost in the Indian Ocean, the islands join the Bay of Bengal with the wider Indo-Pacific, via the Malacca Strait – one of the busiest and most important trade routes in the world.

The location also makes the islands a strategic military asset for India, and they are home to the only integrated tri-service (army, navy, air force) base of the Indian armed forces.

In recent years, New Delhi has poured great effort into enhancing the islands’ prospects as a military base, with Modi in 2019 unveiling a decade-long plan to add more troops, warships and aircraft to its existing fleet.

“The islands are used for military deployment and dominate the area,” said Singh, from the Center for Policy Research. “Various Indian military leaders have described the islands as an ‘unsinkable carrier.’”

In the event of a military clash between China and the US over Taiwan, Singh said, “the US could ask India for support from the islands.”

“India has also been very protective about the islands. Very rarely have they allowed foreign military to exercise on land on these islands,” he added.

Kewalramani, from the Takshashila Institution, said China “would want to know what’s happening on the (Andaman and Nicobar) islands.”

However, he also said it remained unclear “whether they would do that through a balloon and whether a balloon could gather enough intel.”

To many commentators, the whole saga is less about what may or may not have been a surveillance balloon, and more about the Modi government’s reticence to engage on issues involving China for fear of sparking a diplomatic crisis ahead of next year’s Indian election.

While there may be some sensitive military secrets to be gleaned from Andaman and Nicobar islands, analysts suggest the real reason for tight lips in New Delhi may be connected to what is happening thousands of miles to the north, along India’s 2,100-mile (3,380-kilometer) disputed border with China.

It’s here in the thin air and freezing temperatures of the Himalayas that troops from the two nuclear-armed neighbors have clashed over the past few years, in what are startling reminders of India and China’s combustible relationship.

Tensions along the de factor border have been simmering for more than 60 years and have spilled over into war before. In 1962 a month-long conflict ended in a Chinese victory and India losing thousands of square miles of territory.

But rarely in recent years have those tensions been as high as they are now. Since a clash involving hand-to-hand fighting in 2020 claimed the lives of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, both sides have deployed thousands of troops to the area, where they remain in what appears to be a semi-permanent stand-off.

Why do India and China spar at the border?

“The whole character of the border changed in 2020. China did something that they had not done before … they came into occupied areas … and refused to withdraw,” said former Lt. Gen. Rakesh Sharma, whose more than 40 years in the Indian army included a stint commanding the Fire and Fury Corps in the Ladakh area of the border.

There are now signs things may be heating up once again, according to Arzan Tarapore, South Asia research scholar at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

A brawl between troops from the two sides in December – what the Indian government characterized as a “physical scuffle” – was “part of the steady drumbeat of China building its military presence, asserting its control over disputed areas, and probing Indian defenses,” Tarapore said.

“It was just one episode in a string of episodes, and India should certainly expect more – and probably bigger – such probes and incursions in the future,” he added.

With the border issue heating up, analysts say Modi faces a difficult diplomatic balancing act.

On one hand, he needs to project a strong image to voters and show he is willing to stand his ground against China’s pressure at the border.

On the other, he must be careful to avoid inflaming the already tense relationship with Beijing by wading into China’s dispute with Washington over the balloon shot down off the US East Coast.

One reading of India’s silence may be that is adopting Theodore Roosevelt’s famous foreign policy maxim of, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

New Delhi recently announced a 13% hike in its annual defense budget to 5.94 trillion rupees ($72.6 billion) – which is expected to fund, among other things, new access roads and fighter jets to be based along the disputed border.

But, as with the UFO in the Andaman and Nicobars, experts say New Delhi sometimes gives the impression that the less said about the border the better.

Kenneth Juster, a former US ambassador to India, told Indian television channel Times Now that New Delhi preferred Washington not to comment on Chinese aggression at the Himalayan border.

“The restraint in mentioning China in any US-India communication or any Quad communication comes from India, which is very concerned about not poking China in the eye,” he said, referring to discussions of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – a strategic US-led group that includes India, Japan and Australia and that Beijing is convinced is aimed at containing China’s rise.

Modi has largely avoided speaking publicly on the border issue, going as far as saying on live television shortly after the deadly 2020 clashes that, “No one has intruded and nor is anyone intruding.”

“He wants the crisis to go away. His reaction is to avoid talking about it,” said Singh, the analyst. “Propaganda and PR have led many Indians to believe that things (at the disputed border) are OK.”

Kewalramani, the China expert, said India simply preferred a lower-key approach in pushing back against Beijing, noting it had cracked down on Chinese businesses, including by banning some Chinese apps.

“While there aren’t huge gestures, it is part of India’s diplomatic culture to avoid aggression,” he said.

The problem with that approach, others warned, was that it risked making India appear weak.

“Considering that a crisis on the border is still ongoing, and continues to haunt India and China, the silence does not bode well for India,” Singh said.

“It emboldens China.”

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February 17, 2023
Mayorkas goes on the offensive as GOP scrutiny builds, says it’s up to Congress to fix immigration system | CNN Politics

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed the finger back at Congress to fix the country’s broken immigration system and maintained that he will not resign from his post in an new interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.

House Republicans, who have been fierce critics of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, have been moving to build a case against Mayorkas as they consider launching rare impeachment proceedings against a Cabinet secretary.

“I’m not going to resign,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which is now streaming on HBOMax and airs Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET on CNN.

“I call upon Congress – as the president has done, as this nation has done – to actually fix an immigration system that has been broken for decades,” he added.

Republican lawmakers have argued that Mayorkas’ claims of having operational control of the border are unfounded and that the record arrests mark a dereliction of duty – two themes that have come up repeatedly in congressional hearings and have been cited as reason to impeach the secretary.

Ahead of potential proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security is bringing on a private law firm to help with potential impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas.

“I don’t have any intention of being uncooperative. I have complete confidence in the integrity of our decision making,” Mayorkas told Wallace.

Over recent weeks, key committee chairman already held two congressional hearings over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border. Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution, held its first border-related hearing.

“These numbers make clear that the Biden administration does not have operational control of the border,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said during a February hearing. “Month after month after month, we have set records for migrants coming into the country and frankly, I think it’s intentional.”

Pressed by Wallace on what it means for the border to be secure and if it means people aren’t illegally crossing the border, Mayorkas said: “Of course not. By that measure, the border has never been secure, right?”

Asked again by what measure the border is secure, he said: “There is not a common definition of that. If one looks at the statutory definition, the literal interpretation of the statutory language, if one person successfully evades law enforcement at the border, then we have breached the security of the border.”

He added: “What our goal is – to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country. And I say that, I say that, because in the prior administration, policies were promulgated, were passed, that did not hew to the values that we hold dear.”

The Biden administration faces unprecedented movement across the Western Hemisphere that has contributed to a surge of migrants at the border, including more people from different countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The US is largely barred from deporting migrants to Cuba and Venezuela, presenting a unique set of challenges for DHS.

“The level of migration that has gripped our hemisphere is extraordinary,” Mayorkas said, stressing that Congress needs to pass reform to fix the immigration system, which Republicans and Democrats agree is broken.

US border authorities encountered migrants more than 2.3 million times along the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million migrants were turned away at the border.

In early January, the Biden administration expanded a humanitarian parole program to include Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans to provide a legal pathway for them to enter the US instead of crossing the border. The administration also made those nationalities eligible for Title 42, meaning they can now be turned away by authorities if they don’t apply for the program.

Since then, there has been a significant decline in migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the US-Mexico border unlawfully, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which attributed the drop to new border measures.

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February 17, 2023
Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien appears before federal grand jury | CNN Politics

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Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien is appearing Thursday before a grand jury in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, where several Trump-related investigations are being conducted.

O’Brien had been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith as part of investigations both into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, CNN previously reported.

CNN spotted two grand juries meeting at the DC federal courthouse on Thursday – one of which has heard testimony related to the documents probe, while the other has been handling the investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to undermine the election results.

It is not clear which grand jury O’Brien is appearing in front of, or whether he is scheduled to testify before both grand juries. O’Brien identified himself to a CNN reporter but did not disclose any other details about his testimony.

O’Brien could have knowledge of how classified documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago because the National Security Council should be involved in handling those documents at the end of a presidency.

According to CNN reporting, O’Brien considered resigning over Trump’s response to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol but ultimately decided not to.

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February 16, 2023
Hong Kong sees more pro-Beijing voices at UN rights review

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HONG KONG — Hong Kong supporters of a tough national security law imposed by China’s ruling Communist Party have set their sights on a United Nations session, drawing concern from rights advocates.

The law, which critics say Hong Kong authorities have used to crush dissent following massive 2019 protests, has been a focus at the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ two-day hearing on China that concludes Thursday in Geneva. The committee reviews respect of those rights in nearly all U.N. member states every few years.

Of some 30 reports on Hong Kong submitted for the session, more than half upheld the broadly applied national security law.

None of the organizations — some of which were led by pro-Beijing politicians — that provided positive reports filed a submission in the previous review nine years ago, prompting concern from rights advocates that their participation could sway how the committee views human rights situations on the ground. They worry whether events are being reported accurately, especially after some other local civil society groups have been silenced or forced to disband under the sweeping legislation.

The submission trend is concerning, Amnesty International researcher Kai Ong said, because the information from the reports is key to getting independent and on-the-ground observations on how human rights in Hong Kong are being protected or violated.

“It is worrying for the U.N. mechanism itself,” she said. “But it reflects more broadly the uncertainty that many civil society organizations face because it shows that a lot of their work in many areas can be criminalized by Hong Kong government nowadays.”

Hong Kong returned to China’s rule in 1997 under the promise that the former British colony could retain its own political, social and financial institutions for 50 years.

But after Beijing imposed the law on the former British colony in 2020, the city’s once vibrant civil society shrank drastically. Activists fled abroad or were jailed under the law. Unions and other independent organizations closed down. The United States imposed sanctions on officials it said were to blame for the abuses.

The committee has received “unprecedented amount” of submissions from non-governmental organizations, indicating significant concerns over the human rights situation in China, Hong Kong and Macao, said Michael Windfuhr, the committee’s rapporteur on China.

“We also received information of those who said the national security law was positive, just to reflect this,” Windfuhr said Wednesday as he grilled Hong Kong officials over the implementation of the law.

One of those positive responses came from Kam Man-fung, deputy secretary general at One Country Two Systems Youth Forum, a Hong Kong-based think tank seeking debate and dialoge between young people in the semi-autonomous city and the mainland.

Kam said he was partly motivated by the idea of “telling China’s story well” — a phrase that has been used by Chinese President Xi Jinping to encourage positive depictions of the country.

Hong Kong has become a focus under heightened US-China tensions, which motived him to pay more attention to international affairs, Kam said.

“I just want the world to understand my country and my birthplace more comprehensively,” the pro-Beijing New People’s Party member said. He said his report was entirely self-initiated.

While pro-Beijing groups were vying to get their side of the story heard by the U.N., Amnesty International said in its report that some other local NGOs, which used to participate in the review, “were forced to disband, prosecuted, or deterred from continuing international advocacy work” out of fear of reprisal and violating the national security law.

The Hong Kong government had not given its assurance that NGOs participating in a different U.N. committee’s review in 2022 wouldn’t face any retaliation, said Ong. Some local groups also told Amnesty they did not want to go to the hearing in Geneva in person because they worried about surveillance and being monitored by the Chinese authorities, she said.

On Wednesday, the Chinese delegation said NGOs that provided information to the review would not be retaliated against.

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February 15, 2023
1 dead, 3 injured in shooting at El Paso shopping mall | CNN

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Four people were shot Wednesday evening at the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas, according to police. One person died, said Sgt. Robert Gomez.

“We have one person in custody. We do believe there could be one outstanding. That’s why the extensive search of the mall is being done right now,” Gomez said.

Police did not comment on a possible motive and did not provide details on the conditions of the three victims who were hospitalized.

“It was chaotic. People did flee. They were scared,” said Gomez.

Earlier, police asked people to avoid Cielo Vista Mall after getting reports that shots have been fired in the food court.

“Mall scene is still active please avoid the area. Multiple agencies responding to the area,” EPPD said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.

The mall is adjacent to a Walmart where a mass shooting in 2019 killed 23 and left nearly two dozen more injured.

Robert Gonzalez was in the mall and told CNN he “saw people running to the exit.”

Videos taken by Gonzalez show several mall storefronts closed with their security gates down and police parked outside. He said he was able to make it safely to his car, where he was waiting to leave as he spoke with CNN.

Gonzalez recalled the 2019 mass shooting, saying today’s experience “just brought back bad memories.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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February 15, 2023
Pence says he’s willing to take fight against DOJ subpoena in Trump probe to Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that he is willing to take his fight against a subpoena for his testimony in the Justice Department’s 2020 election subversion investigation all the way to the Supreme Court.

“I am going to fight the Biden DOJ subpoena for me to appear before the grand jury because I believe it’s unconstitutional and unprecedented,” Pence told reporters after making a speech in Iowa.

He said he expects former President Donald Trump to bring his own challenge to the subpoena that will raise executive privilege claims. Pence, however, intends to fight the subpoena under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which shields legislators from certain law enforcement actions targeting conduct related to their legislative duties.

While other witnesses have raised Speech or Debate Clause argument in efforts to resist subpoenas in the DOJ probe and in the other investigations into January 6, 2021, Pence plans to invoke the clause in relation to his role as president of the Senate – which is believed to be untrod legal ground.

In that role, he presided over Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.

“On the day of January 6, I was acting as President of the Senate, presiding over a Joint Session, described in the Constitution itself,” Pence said. “And so, I believe that that Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution actually prohibits the executive branch from compelling me to appear in a court, as the Constitution says, or in any other place. And we’ll stand on that principle and we’ll take that case as far as it needs to go, if need be to the Supreme Court of the United States, because to me, it’s – it’s an issue of the separation of powers.”

He said that over the last “several months,” his team had made it clear to the Justice Department that he believed the Speech or Debate Clause precluded a subpoena for his testimony.

CNN previously reported on Pence’s plans to raise claims under the Speech or Debate Clause.

Pence also noted that he has written and spoken publicly about the events leading up to the January 6 certification vote. But, he said, “if we were to accede to accept a subpoena for appearance before a grand jury or a trial, I believe that would diminish the privileges enjoyed by any future vice president, either Democrat or Republican. I simply will not do that.”

Pence first spoke publicly about his plans to fight the subpoena at an event in Minneapolis earlier Wednesday, saying that his fight was about ” separation of powers” and “defending the prerogatives that I had as president of the Senate.”

“My fight is on the separation of powers. My fight against the DOJ subpoena very simply is on defending the prerogatives that I had as president of the Senate to preside over the Joint Session of Congress on January 6,” Pence told reporters in Minneapolis.

“For me this is a moment where you have to decide where you stand and I stand on the Constitution of the United States,” he added.

Pence is one of several former members of Trump’s inner circle whose testimony federal investigators have sought, as they scrutinize the events leading up to and during the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. That probe, as well as the federal investigation into Trump’s handling of documents from his White House that were found at Mar-a-Lago, have taken a more aggressive tack since special counsel Jack Smith took over both investigations.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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February 15, 2023
Pence to fight subpoena on separation of powers grounds because he was president of Senate | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to fight a recent subpoena from the special counsel based on the grounds that he was president of the Senate at the time and therefore shielded from the order, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Pence is expected to address the subpoena and his response to it during a trip to Iowa on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with his plans.

Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony, the source said. Investigators want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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February 14, 2023
Here is what we know about the unidentified objects shot down over North America | CNN Politics

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CNN
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A high-altitude object was shot down near Lake Huron on Sunday afternoon, marking the fourth time in just over a week that the US military has taken down objects in North American airspace.

On Saturday, an unidentified object was downed over northern Canada, a day after another object had been shot down over Alaska airspace by a US F-22. Last weekend, a Chinese surveillance balloon was taken down by F-22s off the coast of South Carolina.

There’s no indication at this point that the unidentified objects have any connection to China’s surveillance balloon, but it seems that national security officials across the continent remain on edge.

Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said Sunday that the operation to down the object near Lake Huron was carried out by pilots from the US Air Force and the National Guard.

CNN initially reported that the object was shot down over Lake Huron based on what sources said to CNN and a public tweet by Republican Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan.

The object was first detected by the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the US Northern Command over Montana on Saturday night, and fighter aircraft were sent to investigate, a senior administration official told CNN. At the time, those planes did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, which led NORAD and NORTHCOM to believe it was an anomaly.

But on Sunday, defense officials reacquired the radar contact and detected the object flying over Wisconsin and then Michigan. The path of the object and its altitude raised concerns that it could pose a threat to civilian aircraft, but it did not pose a military threat to anyone on the ground, the official said. President Joe Biden ordered the object to be shot down.

Here’s what we know so far:

Prior to the takedown of the object near Lake Huron, a US official said Sunday there had been caution inside the Biden administration on the pilot descriptions of the unidentified objects shot down over Alaska and Canada due to the circumstances in which the objects were viewed.

“These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a National Security Council spokesperson said, referring to the suspected Chinese spy balloon.

Earlier Sunday, Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh also noted the difference between the incidents.

“These objects shot down on Friday and Saturday were objects and did not closely resemble the PRC balloon. When we can recover the debris, we will have more for you,” she said Sunday

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC News on Sunday morning that he was briefed by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and that the object shot down over Canada was likely another balloon – as was the high-altitude object downed over Alaska on Friday.

On Saturday, Canada’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, also made mention of a “balloon” when describing instructions given to the team that worked to take down the object.

The unidentified object that was shot down in Canadian airspace had been tracked since Friday evening, according to a statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

The object was detected by NORAD, and two F-22 fighter jets from Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson, Alaska, were sent up to monitor the object with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard.

Analyst thinks this is why more unidentified objects are being spotted

The object appears to be a “cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down previously, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said at a news conference on Saturday.

“Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object,” Ryder’s statement said.

Eyre said Saturday that “the instructions that were given to the the team was whoever had the first best shot to take out the balloon had to go ahead.”

US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both approved the shoot-down on Saturday, according to a statement from the White House.

“President Biden authorized US fighter aircraft assigned to NORAD to conduct the operation and a US F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory in close coordination with Canadian authorities,” the White House statement said. “The leaders discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin.”

The object was shot down with a AIM-9X missile from a US F-22 – the same missile and aircraft that shot down an unidentified object on Friday, and the Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4.

“The object was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet, had unlawfully entered Canadian airspace and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. The object was shot down approximately 100 miles from the Canada-United States border over Canadian territory in central Yukon,” she said.

Ryder’s statement said that while Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations, the FBI will be “working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

Sunday’s takedown of the unidentified object near Lake Huron marks the fourth such incident in just over week.

On Friday, an unidentified object was shot down by a US F-22 over Alaskan airspace after it had been monitored by the US since Thursday evening.

Pilots gave different accounts of what they observed after coming near the object, a source briefed on the intelligence told CNN; some pilots said it “interfered with their sensors,” but other pilots said they didn’t experience that.

Retired colonel on what he believes ‘high-altitude object’ in Alaska could be

The object was flying at 40,000 feet, which made it a risk to civilian traffic. That set it apart from the Chinese surveillance balloon, which was traveling “well above commercial air traffic,” Ryder said at the time.

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said Friday, after the unidentified object was shot down over his state, that similar objects have been spotted over Alaska in recent weeks, the Alaska Beacon reported.

“There were things that were seen on radar but weren’t explained,” the Senate Armed Services Committee member told the publication.

The Chinese balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday after traveling across the US. Biden administration officials said it posed little intelligence gathering and military risk.

It did, however, pose a risk to people and property on the ground if it were to be shot down, as officials said it was roughly 200 feet tall and the payload weighed more than a couple of thousand pounds.

The US military is still working to recover debris from the balloon on the ocean floor. Ryder said Friday that they have “located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities.”

Notably, the US intelligence community’s method to track China’s fleet of surveillance balloons was only discovered within the last year, six people familiar with the matter told CNN.

The findings have allowed the US to develop a consistent technical method for the first time, which they have used to track the balloons in near-real time across the globe, the sources said.

Earlier Sunday, before the shooting down of the object near Lake Huron, lawmakers on Capitol Hill offered a range of responses to the recent developments.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner told CNN that the Biden administration does appear “somewhat trigger-happy” in how it dealt with objects over the weekend after allowing the first spotted balloon to fly across the country.

“What I think this shows, which is probably more important to our policy discussion here, is that we really have to declare that we’re going to defend our airspace. And then we need to invest,” the Ohio Republican added. “This shows some of the problems and gaps that we have. We need to fill those as soon as possible because we certainly now ascertain there is a threat.”

Turner’s Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence panel, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had “real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows,” before adding, “My guess is that there’s just not a lot of information out there to share.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, said Congress needs to investigate why it took so long for the US to catch on to the Chinese government’s use of spy balloons.

“I do think (Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana) is looking into why it took so long for us, our military, our intelligence, to know about these balloons. That’s something I support. Congress should look at that. That’s the question we have to answer,” he said. “I think our military, our intelligence are doing a great job, present and future. I feel a lot of confidence in what they’re doing. But why, as far back as the Trump administration, did no one know about this?”

Also Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he remains unconvinced by assertions from the intelligence community that he suspected Chinese spy balloon did not seriously damage US national security during its flight across the country.

“They say they mitigated it, but my assessment – and I can’t get into the detail of the intelligence document – is that if it was still transmitting, going over these three very sensitive nuclear sites, I think if you look at the flight pattern of the balloon, it tells a story as to what the Chinese were up to, as they controlled this aircraft throughout the United States,” the Texas Republican told CBS News.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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February 13, 2023
Opinion: Balloons aren’t the only strange objects flying in US airspace | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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Last month, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report about “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” — in plain English, unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

The US military on February 4 shot down a Chinese spy balloon (which Beijing said was a weather balloon), followed by the downing of two unidentified flying objects on Friday and Saturday in US and Canadian airspace, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC were likely also balloons.

Then on Sunday, the US military shot down a fourth flying object, this time over Lake Huron in Michigan.

In the wake of those actions, the report by America’s intelligence community is worth examining since it may shed some light on what is happening here.

January’s UFO report had a striking finding: The number of UFO sightings significantly increased between March 2021 and August 2022, during which time 247 new sightings were reported, mostly by US Navy and Air Force pilots and personnel. That’s almost double the 144 UFO sightings reported in the 17-year period between 2004 to 2021.

The report suggested that the increase may be because there is less “stigma” associated with reporting UFO sightings, now that the Pentagon is actively pushing service personnel to report any “anomalies” seen in the sky.

Indeed, in July, the Pentagon established a new entity, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, to investigate credible sightings of UFOs by the US military and intelligence community.

This is part of a relatively new push by Congress and the Pentagon to make sense of more than 500 credible UFO sightings over the past couple of decades.

The report by the US intelligence community found that a large number of those sightings, 163, were balloons or “balloon-like entities,” while 26 were unmanned aircraft systems, i.e., drones. An unspecified number of sightings were “attributable to sensor irregularities or variances, such as operator or equipment error.”

There were 171 unidentified object sightings, however, for which no explanation was found, and some of those objects “demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.”

The report also noted that UFO sightings “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight.” It added that the sightings could point to “adversary collection activity,” suggesting that UFOs found around sensitive US military installations could be a foreign power spying on them.

There is undoubtedly much more to learn about those 171 UFO sightings, which still have no good explanations. Are they the work of a foreign power probing US air defenses? Are they relatively innocuous, such as errant balloons?

Congress should convene hearings to get to the bottom of this. The public has a right to understand why objects are flying around in American airspace that the Pentagon and the US intelligence community can’t identify.

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February 12, 2023
Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 election fraud claims | CNN Politics

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A research firm commissioned by former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team to prove his electoral fraud claims instead failed to substantiate his theories, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned to look into voting data from six states, according to the Post, and a source told the publication that the campaign team wanted about a dozen claims tested. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings did not match what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never released.

While some anomalies and “unusual data patterns” were found, the Post reported, they wouldn’t have made a difference to President Joe Biden’s victory.

The firm’s findings also refuted some of Trump’s voting conspiracies, including the identities of dead people used to vote and Dominion voting systems used to manipulate the outcome, the paper reported.

The research was conducted in the last weeks of 2020 and before the January 6 US Capitol attack, according to the Post. Two sources told CNN that the House January 6 committee looking into the role Trump played in inciting the insurrection did not know about the firm’s work.
Trump has continued to repeat his election lies as he focuses on his 2024 White House bid.

CNN previously reported that following two years of advice from allies and advisers to stop exhaustively relitigating the 2020 election, his first rally late last month showed an attempted forward-driven message of what he would aim to accomplish with a second term.

The former president has often pushed back on that advice, arguing that his message is strong enough as it is, and one source close to him told CNN his proclivity for focusing on the 2020 election will be tough to break because he still regularly hears from members of his base who believe so-called election integrity is an important talking point as he seeks reelection.

Another adviser said that despite the defeat of several Trump-backed midterm candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump has said he does not believe their losses were tied to their election lies.

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February 11, 2023
Second Trump attorney met with Mar-A-Lago probe grand jury in recent weeks | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Trump attorney Christina Bobb appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in recent weeks in connection with the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, two sources have told CNN.

Bobb’s appearance marks the second Trump lawyer involved with Trump’s handling of government documents to meet with the grand jury recently. CNN reported that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran appeared before the grand jury last month.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Bobb’s appearance.

The disclosure of the testimony by the Trump lawyers comes amid a steady drip of recent moves by special counsel Jack Smith to obtain grand jury testimony from very close contacts of the former president, in many cases about what Trump was told and what he said at the end of his presidency and afterward.

It also comes amid an escalation of activity in Smith’s other Trump probe, looking into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and efforts to impede the transfer of power following the 2020 election.

Smith issued a subpoena in that investigation to former Vice President Mike Pence in recent days, seeking documents and testimony. Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien also received a subpoena, as CNN first reported.

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February 11, 2023
Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden ordered the military to down what it described as a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska earlier in the day.

“The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters when asked about rumors of another suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.

The high-altitude object, Kirby said, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”

He continued, “Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did. And it came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen – but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters. Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

It’s the second time in a little less than a week that US fighter jets have shot down an object flying over American airspace. The Biden administration has faced questions over its handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the nation last week before being shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday/

While the president has stood by how he and his administration handled that balloon, he has faced criticism from Republicans for allowing the suspected spy balloon to float over much of the country before shooting it down.

The new object, Kirby added, was taken down with US Northern Command fighter aircraft “near the Canadian border” on water that is frozen in the Arctic Ocean.

“The general area would be just off the very, very northeastern part of Alaska near the Canadian border,” Kirby said of the location.

The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Kirby told reporters that the US assessed the “object” to be unmanned before it was eventually shot down.

“We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby said.

Kirby also offered some nomenclature guidance on the object, which the US is not referring to as a balloon and has yet to attribute to China or any other entity.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

He added: “We don’t have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object. We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we what believe is frozen water. So a recovery effort will be made and we’re hopeful that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.”

The object was “much, much smaller” than the Chinese suspected spy balloon, Kirby said, comparing it to “roughly the size of a small car.” The balloon downed last Saturday was described by US officials as approximately the size of three buses.

Biden “absolutely was involved in this decision” and ordered it at the recommendation of Pentagon leaders, Kirby said.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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February 10, 2023
Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama | CNN Politics

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CNN
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China’s audacious spy balloon flight across North America has spectacularly backfired by enshrining rare bipartisan unity in Washington.

The coming together of Republicans and Democrats is certain to stiffen future US strategic, economic and military resolve in the Pacific region and further damage buckled relations with Beijing.

The fierce congressional reaction to the balloon and the US government’s disclosure of intelligence about it and China’s balloon espionage program, meanwhile, threatened to further damage the world’s most crucial diplomatic relationship – especially after China hit back by accusing the US of being the world’s most gratuitous spy state.

The unanimity of American anger toward China was exemplified by a House resolution condemning China that passed by a stunning 419-0 margin. It followed a growing realization in Washington, and more broadly across the country, that a long-predicted geopolitical confrontation may now be a reality.

But despite the united political front in Washington, fury is boiling in both parties over the failure to down the balloon before it traversed the continent amid rising questions about the implications of China’s breach of US airspace. Administration officials faced a gauntlet of criticism from lawmakers during a classified briefing on the issue on Thursday. And Republicans stepped up efforts to brand President Joe Biden as weak over the incursion despite his warning to President Xi Jinping in his State of the Union address earlier this week that he would vigorously defend US sovereignty.

This growing discord threatens to so politicize China policy that it will drain any efforts to defuse an escalating Cold War. The Biden administration wants to pursue those efforts despite the tensions caused by the balloon crisis.

There’s also a risk that Republican efforts to leverage the drama for domestic political gain could bust unity over policy toward America’s giant Pacific rival. Such a partisan split would ironically deliver a greater payoff for China’s communist rulers than any information picked up by the balloon over the US.

The unanimous House vote on the incident had not been assured. It required Republican leaders to omit language critical of Biden and followed unusual bipartisan cooperation fostered by Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks. The resolution describes the balloon flight as a brazen violation of US sovereignty. McCaul said the bipartisan nature of the vote was critical and called on everyone to stand together against a “common enemy.”

“We wanted it to be America against China – not internal fighting, because China would see that as a moment of weakness, that we’re divided on party lines, and we didn’t want to project that,” McCaul told CNN.

This strong signal sent to Beijing raises the possibility that the spy balloon mission has demonstrably hurt China’s interests – especially if it results in a bipartisan zeal to increase defense spending, the size of US arms and equipment packages to allow Taiwan to defend against a possible Chinese attack and more resources to US allies.

While there is agreement on the challenge now posed by China, there was mystification and some anger elsewhere in Congress on Thursday, even as officials held classified briefings and the FBI pushed forward on its effort to evaluate intelligence from the remains of the balloon salvaged from the Atlantic after it was shot down on Saturday.

In a Senate hearing, Democrats as well as Republicans, criticized Defense Department officials and questioned why they did not tell Americans more once the balloon was spotted.

“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who could be facing a tough reelection next year. The balloon floated above his state, which hosts US missile installations. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was furious that the Chinese balloon crossed her state. “As an Alaskan, I am so angry,” Murkowski said. “If you’re going to have Russia coming at you, if you’re going to have China coming at you, we know exactly how they come. They come up and they go over Alaska.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he understood why the White House might have kept China’s balloon program classified but added, “We all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified, it has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department.” The White House has previously explained that it waited until the balloon was off the Carolinas to shoot it down based on Pentagon advice that doing so before could endanger lives and property on the ground. Officials also said they took steps to ensure it was not an intelligence threat as it wafted across the country.

But some Republicans are accusing the White House of a cover-up that they think exposes Biden as feckless and unfit to be commander-in-chief as he eyes reelection, despite his strong role in standing up to Russia over Ukraine.

“I think the public, and Congress, would never have known about this if the Billings, Montana, paper hadn’t published a picture that showed the balloon and US assets tracking the balloon. I think their plan was clearly to keep this a secret,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN after a classified briefing.

“The United States was grossly unprepared, this administration was grossly unprepared, and frankly I think it was a huge mistake for them not to take down the balloon before it entered the continental United States,” Hawley added.

While the House vote on the resolution condemning China was unanimous, many Republicans used the debate before the resolution passed to lacerate the Biden administration.

“We watched in real time from our backyards and workplaces as a foreign aircraft equipped with spyware navigated over our neighborhoods, our military installations and our vital infrastructure,” said Missouri GOP Rep. Ann Wagner, the vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“The administration again showed the dictatorship in Beijing that they could again be bullied. President Biden’s weakness and indecision sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries like Iran and Russia and North Korea.”

Still, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he came away from the classified briefing more confident in the administration.

“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care,” Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said.

Besides the classified briefings, Biden administration officials divulged new information about the balloon to the public Thursday, some of it gleaned by flybys by U-2 spy planes before it was downed. A senior State Department official said the balloon had been capable of conducting signals intelligence collection – or intelligence gathered by electronic means – and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

Beijing is likely to be irked by more details being made public about its balloon program, as evidenced by comments by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in a briefing Thursday.

“I am not aware of any ‘fleet of balloons,’” Mao said. “That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the US has waged on China. As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community,” she added.

Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Xi’s knowledge, sources familiar with Hill briefings said. But the idea Xi was unaware of balloon “is the working theory and an ongoing intelligence gap,” a source briefed on the matter said.

Intelligence experts in the United States have been perplexed at the political furor stoked by a mere balloon – a comparatively unsophisticated asset that pales in significance compared to multi-pronged Chinese intelligence operations against the United States including economic, cyber and traditional espionage. Indeed, the US mounts a similarly broad collection mission against China, which was exposed when a Chinese jet fighter collided with a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea in 2001.

But the balloon flight, over US territory, has had a symbolic impact greater than that so far generated amid years of building tensions with China, including over Taiwan.

“I would never have imagined that my Saturday afternoon would have been disrupted due to a Chinese spy balloon not – only that floated across most of South Carolina, it floated across the entire continental United States,” said freshman Republican Rep. Russell Fry whose South Carolina district contains coastal areas where the balloon was shot down.

“It does – if you watch it, and you were there on the ground – sound like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie,” he said on the House floor, blasting the Biden administration for negligence and bemoaning an international incident that unfolded off the shores of Myrtle Beach.

In the Senate, the dramatic events of the past week have caused a reassessment of years of US-China policy, which has seen efforts by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations to try to usher China peacefully into the global economy degenerate into a brewing confrontation in the Trump and Biden administrations.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said at a hearing that the Biden administration did not “see another Cold War, but we do ask everyone to play by the same set of rules.”

The problem, however, is that China interprets such US calls as an attempt to thwart what it sees as its rightful rise as a regional and global superpower. Sherman argued that US policy in the 21st century designed to head off confrontation had not failed, but that conditions in China had changed.

“Xi Jinping is not the Xi Jinping of the 1990’s that we all thought we knew,” Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She added that China under Xi was “the only country that wants to change that rules-based order, that can successfully do so and are trying to make that happen.”

“It is true that our way of life, our democracy, our belief in our values, in the rules-based international order is being challenged,” she continued. “And we have to meet that challenge.”

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February 10, 2023
Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

Pence’s attorney Emmet Flood is known as a hawk on executive privilege, and people familiar with the discussions have said Pence was expected to claim at least some limits on providing details of his direct conversations with Trump. Depending on his responses, prosecutors have the option to ask a judge to compel him to answer additional questions and override Trump’s executive privilege claims.

ABC News first reported on the subpoena.

Pence’s office declined to confirm he had been subpoenaed. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to CNN on the matter.

Months of negotiations preceded the subpoena to the former vice president, CNN has reported.

Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony, one person said.

That request occurred before the department appointed Smith to oversee two Trump-related investigations, the January 6-related probe and another into alleged mishandling of classified materials found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

In November, Pence published his memoir that detailed some of his interactions with Trump as the former president sought to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden. Pence and his team knew that the book’s publication would raise the prospect that the Justice Department would likely seek information about those interactions as part of its criminal investigation, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

Pence rebuffed an interview request from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, but allowed top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. The DOJ successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

There are no plans for Trump’s team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence at this time, according to a source familiar with its thinking. But it would still be possible for Trump to attempt to assert executive privilege over some conversations they had, if Pence declines to detail those conversations to the grand jury.

So far, Trump’s team has lost those challenges when Pence’s deputies and two White House counsel’s office attorneys testified, following Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s rulings that they must answer questions they initially refused to because of confidentiality around the presidency.

Howell’s tenure as chief judge of the DC District Court ends in mid-March, meaning a different federal judge, James Boasberg, could be the one to field privilege disputes in the continuing grand jury investigation.

CNN reported earlier Thursday that Smith had also subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien in both of the Trump-related probes, according to a source familiar with the matter. O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary was separately interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the probe into 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, former acting secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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February 10, 2023
US officials disclosed new details about the balloon’s capabilities. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Biden administration officials disclosed new information Thursday about the capabilities of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed the United States last week and what they are learning as the FBI begins analyzing the recovered parts after the balloon was shot down Saturday.

US officials also detailed what they’ve discovered about the broader spying operation they say the Chinese government has undertaken using a fleet of high-altitude surveillance balloons across the globe.

But senior Biden officials faced pointed questions on Capitol Hill from lawmakers in public hearings and classified briefings as Congress is demanding more information about why the balloon wasn’t shot down sooner.

A senior State Department official said Thursday that the balloon “was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations” and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.

“We know the PRC used these balloons for surveillance,” the official said. “High-resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.”

Signals intelligence refers to information that is gathered by electronic means – things like communications and radars.

Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Chinese President Xi Jinping’s knowledge, sources familiar with the briefing said.

The FBI has started its initial stages of evaluating the pieces of the balloon that were recovered and brought to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia for analysis, senior FBI officials said Thursday.

Only evidence that was on the surface of the ocean has been delivered to FBI analysts so far, one official said, which includes the “canopy itself, the wiring, and then a very small amount of electronics.” The official said analysts have not yet seen the “payload,” which is where you would expect to see the “lion’s share” of electronics.

The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

Despite the latest revelations about the capabilities of the spy balloon, the Pentagon has insisted since the vessel was first acknowledged publicly that it does not give China capabilities above and beyond what they already have from spy satellites or other means.

“We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.

Administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday on the balloon, which has prompted criticism from Republicans over allowing it to float across the US before it was shot down off the Atlantic coast.

The officials told lawmakers that the US has assessed that little new intelligence was gleaned by the Chinese balloon operation because the Chinese appeared to stop transmitting information once the US learned of the balloon, in addition to US measures to protect sensitive intelligence from China’s spying operations, according to the sources.

The US also believes what they have recovered from the shot-down balloon is beneficial to US intelligence, the sources said.

Another source familiar with the briefings said officials said the balloon would give the Chinese better photos and signals collection than satellites, as well as a better ability to steer and hover longer over collection targets.

The Biden officials told Congress that it’s still unclear what the motivation was for the flight of the balloon across the US, which prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China. One of the sources said that the US believes senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party including Xi were also unaware, and the US believes the Chinese are still trying to figure out how this happened.

In the classified congressional briefings, the administration officials argued that the US didn’t move earlier to shoot down the balloon in part over fears it could provoke an escalation of military tensions with China or even a military conflict. Biden gave the order to shoot down the balloon whenever the Pentagon felt it was safe to do so, the sources said, so the Pentagon ultimately made the call on when to shoot it down.

The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

The House briefing Thursday morning was tense, the sources said, with several Republicans railing against the administration, including GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said that the Pentagon made the president – whom she noted she doesn’t like – look weak by their actions.

In response, the briefers tried to lay out a detailed timeline of the actions, the sources said.

“The Pentagon was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”

After the briefing, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said it was wrong for the Biden administration to wait to shoot down the balloon.

“They should have never let it into our sovereignty, they should have taken it another time,” McCarthy told CNN.

But Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told CNN he believes the US made right decision to wait before shooting it down.

“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

Senators pushed defense officials at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday over the military’s assessment of the Chinese surveillance, with Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana telling officials that he did not know how they could unequivocally say it was not a military threat.

“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before and because I am telling you that that this ain’t the last time. We’ve [seen] brief incursions, now we’ve seen a long incursion, what happens next?,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

“We don’t understand because quite frankly, we have been briefed in his committee over and over and over again, about the risks that China poses, both economically and militarily,” he said. “China tends to push the envelope all the time until a line is set down.”“

Pentagon officials said at the hearing that the Defense Department was not concerned about the balloon gathering intelligence over Alaska as it was not near sensitive sites.

The balloon first crossed into US airspace over Alaska on January 28, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, said during the hearing. When the balloon was spotted, it was not determined to have “hostile intent,” Sims said, and officials did not believe it would impact aviation routes or present a significant intelligence gathering ability. That changed when the balloon began drifting over the lower 48 states, but while it was over Alaska, officials determined it was not over critical infrastructure.

The House on Thursday passed a symbolic resolution condemning China’s surveillance balloon with a vote of 419 to zero.

The FBI investigation into recovered balloon is the first of its kind in the bureau’s history, senior FBI officials familiar with the operation said Thursday as they described the initial stages and what’s been recovered so far.

The officials said that this is the first time the FBI has investigated a spy balloon of this nature and assisted with the processing of such a scene. The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered so far, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.

It’s not yet clear where the balloon’s parts were manufactured, the officials said, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. Because analysts have yet to look at the bulk of the equipment on the balloon, the officials said that there has not been a determination as to everything the device was capable of doing and its specific intent.

Of the small portion they have examined, analysts have not identified any sort of explosive or “offensive material” that would pose a danger to the American public.

The FBI was alerted to the balloon on February 1, the officials said, because the intelligence community had determined that the balloon had an electronic element to it. By late Sunday – the day after the balloon was shot down – agents had arrived at the scene, and the first pieces of recovered evidence arrived at the FBI lab in Quantico on Monday.

There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source declined to provide detail on what specific parts of the balloon contained English writing.

Bloomberg News first reported that components of the balloon had English writing on them.

The State Department official said the balloon was part of a Chinese fleet developed to conduct surveillance operations” with a manufacturer tied to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the official added.

The official suggested that the US is eyeing sanctions for the presence of the balloon in US airspace – which US officials have repeatedly called a violation of US sovereignty and international law – noting the US “will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into US airspace.”

A recovery operation to secure debris from the balloon is ongoing with analysis continuing at an FBI laboratory in Virginia, but the officials’ remarks suggest the US has already established the balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology.

However, the US has said it has been able to prevent the balloon from intercepting US communications.

“The high-altitude balloons’ equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons. It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications. It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the official added.

“We could track the exact path of the balloon and ensure no activities or sensitive unencrypted comms would be conducted in its vicinity,” a senior administration official said this week. “The US military took immediate steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information, mitigating any intelligence value to the PRC.”

President Joe Biden suggested Wednesday that bilateral relations with China had not been affected by the balloon fallout, but China reacted angrily to the shootdown, refusing a call with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a high-stakes trip to Beijing on Friday. New sanctions in response to the balloon would likely further inflame tensions.

“We know these balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations. These kinds of activities are often undertaken at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” the senior State Department official added.

China “has overflown these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents,” the State Department official said, noting that “the Biden Administration is reaching out to countries directly about the scope of this program and answer any questions.”

The official said that based on China’s “messaging and public comments, it’s clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and still have no plausible explanation – and have found themselves on their heels.”

“As we saw with the second balloon over Central and South America that they just acknowledged, they also have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries,” the official said. “The PRC’s program will only continue to be exposed, making it harder for the PRC to use this program.”

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February 9, 2023
North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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North Korean government-backed hackers have conducted ransomware attacks on health care providers and other key sectors in the US and South Korea and used the proceeds to fund further cyberattacks on government agencies in Washington and Seoul, US and South Korean officials warned Thursday.

Some of those follow-on hacks have specifically targeted Pentagon networks and US defense contractors, according to the advisory from US and South Korean intelligence and security agencies.

It’s the latest in a drumbeat of warnings from US officials that North Korea is adopting cybercriminal tactics to fund dictator Kim Jong Un’s ambitions, including the regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The statement from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, US National Security Agency, South Korean National Intelligence Service and others does not mention Kim’s weapons programs, but US officials have previously warned that a portion of the money Pyongyang steals through hacking can go to weapons development.

North Korea’s use of stolen cryptocurrency to fund its weapons programs is part of the regular set of intelligence products presented to President Joe Biden, a senior administration official told CNN this week.

“They need money, so they’re going to keep being creative,” the official said. “I don’t think the North Koreans are ever going to stop looking for illicit ways to glean funds because it’s an authoritarian regime … under heavy sanctions.”

The news comes as North Korea displayed nearly a dozen advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles at a nighttime military parade on Wednesday.

The new US-South Korea advisory did not identify hospitals that the North Korean hackers had allegedly victimized. The Justice Department has previously accused Pyongyang-backed hackers of hitting a medical center in Kansas in 2021, encrypting computer systems the facility relied on to operate key equipment, and another medical provider in Colorado.

The advisory follows a similar warning from US agencies in July that North Korean hackers had used ransomware to disrupt services at health organizations for “prolonged periods.”

In the statement released Thursday, US and South Korean officials accused North Korean hackers of taking pains to try to hide their identities – even posing as a notorious Russian ransomware gang. The North Koreans are also emulating non-state criminals in dumping online the private data of victims who do not pay, officials said.

The hackers have used a popular software used in small and medium-sized hospitals in South Korea to spread their malicious code with the aim of locking up computers, according to the advisory.

In addition to hacking, suspected North Koreans have posed as other nationalities to apply for work at IT firms and send money back to Pyongyang, US agencies have publicly warned. A CNN investigation found at least one cryptocurrency entrepreneur who unwittingly paid a North Korean tech worker tens of thousands of dollars.

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February 9, 2023
First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter.

O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

CNN has reached out to O’Brien for comment.

O’Brien considered resigning from his post over Trump’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021, but ultimately decided to remain in the job, CNN previously reported. The National Security Council should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at end of the Trump presidency, and O’Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago.

Separately, Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the ongoing special counsel investigation related to 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

Wolf declined to comment on his recent interview with federal investigators, which was first reported by Bloomberg. A spokesman for Smith also declined to comment.

The interview comes after Wolf’s former deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, testified last month before a federal grand jury as part of Smith’s election interference probe. When Cuccinelli was asked at the time whether privilege claims arose, he said: “They did, and I didn’t say anything.”

O’Brien, Wolf and Cuccinelli were previously interviewed by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.

For the time being, Smith has not sought testimony from a handful of other potentially relevant Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller or former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, two other sources tell CNN.

In the days after the January 6 attack, Wolf urged Trump and all elected officials to condemn the violence on Capitol Hill, calling what transpired “tragic and sickening.”

“While I have consistently condemned political violence on both sides of the aisle, specifically violence directed at law enforcement, we now see some supporters of the President using violence as a means to achieve political ends,” Wolf said at the time. “This is unacceptable.”

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February 9, 2023