Tag: national security

‘Peril to our democracy’: Chilling lines from the judge who sentenced the Oath Keepers’ leader | CNN Politics

CNN
—

Judge Amit Mehta on Thursday handed down an 18-year prison sentence for the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that ended with the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Before announcing the sentence, however, Mehta, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, delivered a chilling address to Rhodes about the impact of his seditious conspiracy crimes on American democracy.

The federal judges in Washington, DC, who work just blocks from the US Capitol, have served as a conscience of democracy since January 6. They have rejected defenses that downplay the seriousness of the Capitol attack, spoken out about future dangers to the peaceful transfer of power and – while they have criticized former President Donald Trump – reminded defendants they are responsible for their actions.

Here are some of the powerful lines from the judge on Thursday:

“I dare say, Mr. Rhodes – and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced – you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.

“I dare say we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another January 6 again? That remains to be seen.”

The judge, refuting claims Rhodes made during a 20-minute rant earlier in the day, added: “You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. That is not why you are here. It is not because of your beliefs. It is not because Joe Biden is the president right now.”

The sentence is the first handed down in over a decade for seditious conspiracy and Mehta said he wanted to explain the offense to the public. He did not mince words.

“A seditious conspiracy, when you take those two concepts and put it together, is among the most serious crimes an American can commit. It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country,” the judge said.

“It is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy.”

“Let me be clear about one thing to you, Mr. Rhodes, and anybody who else that is listening. In this country we don’t paint with a broad brush, and shame on you if you do. Just because somebody supports the former president, it doesn’t mean they are a White supremacist, a White nationalist. It just means they voted for the other guy.”

“What we absolutely cannot have is a group of citizens who – because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be – foment revolution.”

Mehta echoed these warnings later Thursday, when addressing a second Oath Keepers defendant, Kelly Meggs.

“You don’t take to the streets with rifles,” he said. “You don’t hope that the president invokes the insurrection act so you can start a war in the streets… You don’t rush into the US Capitol with the hope to stop the electoral vote count.”

“It is astonishing to me how average Americans somehow transformed into criminals in the weeks before and on January 6,” the judge said.

Mehta said Rhodes, 58, has expressed no remorse and continues to be a threat.

“It would be one thing, Mr. Rhodes, if after January 6 you had looked at what happened that day and said … that was not a good day for our democracy. But you celebrated it, you thought it was a good thing,” the judge said.

“Even as you have been incarcerated you have continued to allude to violence as an acceptable means to address grievances.”

“Nothing has changed, Mr. Rhodes, nothing has changed. And the reality is as you sit here today and as we heard you speak, the moment you are released you will be prepared to take up arms against our government. And not because you are a political prisoner, not because of the 2020 election, because you think this is a valid way to address grievances.”

“American democracy doesn’t work, Mr. Rhodes, if when you think the Constitution has not been complied with it puts you in a bad place, because from what I’m hearing, when you think you are in a bad place, the rest of us are too. We are all the objects of your plans to – and your willingness to – engage in violence.”

Mehta granted a Justice Department request to enhance the potential sentence against Rhodes, ruling that his actions amounted to domestic terrorism.

“He was the one giving the orders,” Mehta said. “He was the one organizing the teams that day. He was the reason they were in fact in Washington, DC. Oath Keepers wouldn’t have been there but for Stewart Rhodes, I don’t think anyone contends otherwise. He was the one who gave the order to go, and they went.”

During the sentencing hearing of Meggs, who was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, the judge again pegged Rhodes as the ringleader.

“It is in part because of Mr. Rhodes, frankly, that Mr. Meggs is sitting here today.”

On Wednesday, several police officers and congressional staffers who were at the Capitol on January 6 testified about their experiences, injuries and the aftermath. Mehta said their bravery and actions are also an important legacy of the attack, as officers put their bodies on the line.

“The other enduring legacy is what we saw yesterday,” the judge said. “It is the heroism of police officers and those working in Congress … to protect democracy as we know it. That is what they are doing.”

Before he was sentenced, Rhodes addressed the court for 20 minutes about the charges against him, repeating falsehoods about 2020 election fraud, claiming he was a political prisoner and expressing his desire to continue fighting.

“It’s not simply a conspiracy theory or a false narrative about fraud. It’s about the Constitution,” Rhodes said, later shouting: “I am not able to drop that under my oath. I am not able to ignore the Constitution.”

The judge had none of that, and compared Rhodes’ comments to the heroism of police officers and others protecting the Capitol: “We want to talk about keeping oaths? There is nobody more emblematic of keeping their oaths, Mr. Rhodes.”

Source link

April 12, 2021
Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that the ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship | CNN Business

CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source link

April 12, 2021
States accelerate efforts to block Chinese purchases of agricultural land | CNN Politics

Washington
CNN
—

A growing number of states are considering or have passed measures this legislative term to ban “foreign adversaries” and foreign entities – specifically China – from buying farmland.

Proponents of the laws, mostly Republicans but some Democrats as well, have frequently cited concerns about food security and the need to protect military bases and other sensitive installations. But the moves have stoked anxieties among some experts on US-Chinese relations, including those who see echoes of past discriminatory laws in the United States like the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Florida last month joined a list of at least seven other states – including Virginia, North Dakota, Montana and Arkansas – to pass variations of such bills this session, according to the National Agricultural Law Center (NALC), which is tracking the issue and conducts research on agricultural and food law. Similar measures are percolating in more than two dozen states and there’s a bill in Congress that seeks to federalize the issue, the NALC said.

States have previously sought to limit foreign investment, said Micah Brown, a staff attorney at the NALC. What’s new, Brown says, is that some lawmakers are taking aim at specific countries and their governments.

“2023 is really swinging for the fences here, with a majority of states having some kind of proposal, at least one proposal,” Brown told CNN.

Of slightly more than 40 million acres of agricultural held by foreign investors in the United States, China held less than 1% of that land – or 383,935 acres – as of the end of 2021, according to a report from the US Department of Agriculture.

Florida’s law, signed on May 8, prohibits most citizens from “foreign countries of concern” from purchasing land on or within 10 miles of any “military installation or critical infrastructure facility,” including seaports, airports and power plants. It was signed alongside a different bill that bans internet applications like TikTok on Florida government devices, a similar area of focus for state politicians who have concerns about Chinese influence.

The foreign countries of concern that are named include China, Russia, Cuba, North Korea and Iran, along with agencies and governments operating on their behalf. In public remarks, governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis repeatedly called out China.

“Today, Florida makes it very clear: We don’t want the (Chinese Communist Party) in the Sunshine State. We want to maintain this as the ‘Free State of Florida.’ That’s exactly what these bills are doing,” DeSantis said at a bill signing in May.

Following the bill’s passage, a group of Chinese citizens who live and work in Florida, along with a real estate company with primarily Chinese and Chinese-American clients, sued state officials, alleging the law would violate their equal protection and due process guarantees under the US Constitution. CNN has reached out to the governor’s office for comment.

Virginia’s legislation doesn’t name China, though Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has specifically cited the CCP in advocating for the new law. Montana’s applies to “foreign adversaries” as designated by the US Commerce Department, a list that includes China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.

Brown said the 2023 laws are part of a larger “political flashpoint” prompted out of concerns over Chinese companies attempting to build agricultural sites near military bases in North Dakota and Texas. States including Arkansas and Indiana already had laws restricting certain foreign investments prior to this year’s legislative push.

In North Dakota, a US subsidiary of Chinese company Fufeng Group attempted to build a wet corn milling plant in Grand Forks that would have sat near an Air Force base there and thus pose what the Department of the Air Force called a “significant threat to national security.”

The head of Fufeng’s US operation denied the company has a “direct relationship” with the Chinese government in an interview with the Grand Forks Herald last year.

“We’ve got lots of places in North Dakota they could have built that plant without being a security risk, but instead, they chose to buy land right next to an Air Force base,” North Dakota Republican state Rep. Lawrence Klemin, who co-sponsored the state’s bill, told CNN. “We’ve got two Air Force bases in North Dakota, and we’ve got lots of places where we don’t have them, so why didn’t they do that?” Klemin’s bill was signed in April.

Texas is also considering a bill that would bar “hostile nations including China,” in the state from purchasing real property, like agricultural land, as Republican State. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst describes her legislation. The bill initially ignited controversy because it would have barred citizens of China and other adversarial countries from buying land in the state, though the bill was later amended to clarify that it would not apply to lawful permanent residents, US citizens and dual citizens and to include an exception for property considered “residence homestead.”

Several experts on US-China relations with whom CNN spoke warned against knee-jerk responses and called for lawmakers to act on evidence, not suspicion.

“I think there’s a good reason to want to keep control of strategic interests in one’s own country … but these bills about farmland, these bills about just property in general, to me, it’s transparent that they’re rooted in racism and xenophobia again because we’ve seen this before. It really isn’t the first time,” said Nancy Qian, a professor of economics at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who has conducted research on US exclusion laws.

Yan Bennett, the assistant director of the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University, noted that US farmland is appealing for China because the country has food security issues and does not have enough arable land for cultivation.

“When national security is threatened, yes, we need to take action,” Bennett told CNN. “But not every land purchase by a foreign government or a foreign national is a national security threat, so we need to make sure that we distinguish those purchases from those that are actual threats.”

An atmosphere of racism and anti-China sentiment threatens other US interests as well, such as possibly deterring Chinese students from wanting to come to the US and obtain advanced degrees, explained Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center.

“If we’re not careful that we are telling the world’s biggest talent pool that they’re an unwelcomed class or a reviled class here in the United States and that will also have implications for Chinese Americans,” Daly told CNN in February. “Real demonstrable security threats have to be met as such. I’m not saying that the Chinese Communist Party does not have plans and intentions that harm America’s interests – it does, and we need to go after those – but based on evidence.”

In response to efforts in Texas and other states that are considering barring some Chinese citizens from owning US land over national security concerns, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said earlier this year that trade between the two countries is “mutually beneficial.”

“To overstretch the concept of national security and politicize economic, trade and investment issues runs counter to the principles of market economy and international trade rules, which undercuts international confidence in the US market environment,” spokesperson Mao Ning said at a news briefing in February.

Virginia state Sen. Ryan McDougle, a Republican and co-sponsor of his state’s new law, dismissed what he called “ridiculous” concerns about his bill perpetuating racism against Asian-Americans, telling CNN in February it is “focused on a country that has established hostility to the United States.”

In the near future, the Chinese spy balloon incident earlier this year will prompt increased attention to “the challenges that we are seeing from the CCP” – and thus the issue of Chinese farmland purchases in the US, predicted Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Washington Republican. The longtime China critic is sponsoring a bill in Congress that would that would ban the purchase of public or private agricultural land in the US by foreign nationals linked to the Chinese government.

“I think people are waking up to the fact that we need to be more aware of what’s going on and prevent something happening that we don’t want to see,” Newhouse said.

Source link

April 12, 2021
Prosecutors say they plan to bring felony charges against man arrested with weapons in Obama’s DC neighborhood | CNN Politics

Washington
CNN
—

Federal prosecutors on Thursday said they plan to file felony charges against the man who was arrested last week with firearms in former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood and accused of threatening several politicians.

Taylor Taranto, who had an open warrant for his arrest related to charges stemming from his involvement in the US Capitol riot, was arrested last week after claiming on an internet livestream the day before that he had a detonator.

Taranto has been in police custody since his arrest, and during a hearing Thursday to determine whether he’ll continue to be detained pending his trial for the riot charges, federal prosecutors said they plan to add federal felony charges to the case.

The prosecutors did not say when exactly they would bring the additional charges. Taranto is currently only facing four misdemeanor charges related to his conduct on January 6, 2021.

Taranto will continue to remain in custody pending a decision on his detention, federal magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ordered Thursday.

Faruqui said he is currently in contact with pretrial services in Washington state, where Taranto is believed to have lived recently, to see if Taranto could be supervised by a third-party custodian instead of being held in detention. Pretrial services informed the judge it could take up to a week to evaluate the case.

Taranto is set to have another detention hearing next Wednesday.

On Wednesday, prosecutors provided fresh details on Taranto’s online activity before his arrest and threats he made toward prominent politics in recent weeks.

The government said in a detention memo that Taranto made threats against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. Earlier in June, Taranto and several others entered an elementary school near Raskin’s home, with Taranto live-streaming the group “walking around the school, entering the gymnasium, and using a projector to display a film related to January 6,” according to the filing.

Taranto stated that he specifically chose the elementary school due to its proximity to Raskin’s home and that he is targeting Raskin because “he’s one of the guys that hates January 6 people, or more like Trump supporters, and it’s kind of like sending a shockwave through him because I did nothing wrong and he’s probably freaking out and saying s*** like, ‘Well he’s stalking me,’” the filing said.

“Taranto further comments, ‘I didn’t tell anyone where he lives ‘cause I want him all to myself,’ and ‘That was Piney Branch Elementary School in Maryland…right next to where Rep. Raskin and his wife live,’” the memo said.

On June 28, according to prosecutors, Taranto made “ominous comments” on video referencing McCarthy, saying: “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”

After seeing those “threatening comments,” law enforcement tried to locate Taranto but weren’t successful, prosecutors said.

The following day, on June 29, “former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama on the social media platform Truth Social,” prosecutors wrote in their memo. “Taranto used his own Truth Social account to re-post the address. On Telegram, Taranto then stated, ‘We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.’”

“Shortly thereafter, Taranto again began live-streaming from his van on his YouTube channel. This time, Taranto was driving through the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington D.C.,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Taranto parked his van and began walking around the neighborhood and that because of the “restricted nature of the residential area where Taranto was walking, United States Secret Service uniformed officers began monitoring Taranto almost immediately as soon as he began walking around and filming.”

Secret Service agents approached Taranto, prompting him to flee, according to the filing, but he was apprehended and arrested.

The government told the judge that among the items found in Taranto’s van were a “Smith and Wesson M&P Shield” and a “Ceska 9mm CZ Scorpion E3.” They also found “hundreds of rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition, a steering wheel lock, and a machete,” as well as signs, a mattress and other indications Taranto was living in the van.

This story has been updated with additional details Thursday.

Source link

April 12, 2021
Fox News’ defamation battle isn’t stopping Trump’s election lies | CNN Politics

CNN
—

The defamation clash between Fox News and a small election services firm, due to go to trial this week, represents the most significant moment yet in which those who disseminated former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen must answer for conduct that is still poisoning American democracy.

Dominion Voting Systems alleges the conservative network promulgated the ex-president’s conspiracy theories, including about its voting machines, to avoid alienating its viewers and for the good of its bottom line.

The trial had been scheduled to open Monday but the judge announced Sunday evening it’d be delayed until Tuesday. The reason was not immediately clear. But The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, reported that Fox had made a late push to settle the dispute out of court, citing people familiar with the matter.

The drama expected to play out in a Delaware courtroom represents an extraordinary moment in modern American history because it could show how truth has been tarnished as a political currency and highlight a right-wing business model that depends on spinning an alternative reality. And yet, it remains unclear whether Trump – the primary author of the corrosive conspiracies that the 2020 election was fraudulent – will end up paying a significant personal or political price.

The idea that Trump’s claims – echoed by his aides and allies on Fox and sometimes by the channel’s personalities – had any merit will not even make it to first base in the trial. In one remarkable development during pre-trial hearings, presiding Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that jurors did not even need to decide one key issue: whether Fox’s claims about Dominion were true.

“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Davis wrote, in a ruling last month that significantly narrowed the network’s avenues to mount a defense.

The epic case now turns on an attempt by Dominion to prove the legal standard for defamation that Fox must have known (or strongly suspected) it was lying about the issues at hand at the time and that it acted with “actual malice.”

Though he vigorously denies breaking any laws, the former president appears to face the possibility of indictment in probes into his attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory by a district attorney in Georgia and by special counsel Jack Smith into his conduct in the lead-up to the US Capitol insurrection. And the many layers of Trump’s democracy-damaging behavior were catalogued in interviews and public testimony taken by a House select committee when Democrats controlled the chamber last year.

But the falsehood of a corrupt election still forms the bedrock of Trump’s 2024 campaign to win back the White House. Millions of Trump’s supporters have bought into the idea that he was illegally ejected from office on the premise that he really won in 2020.

It’s also questionable whether viewers of conservative media will hear much about the trial and get sufficient information that might convince them to change their minds about 2020.

Trump’s insistence that the election was stained by fraud is giving some senior Republicans nightmares as they try to rebound from his loss in 2020 and work through their disappointment at the lack of a “red wave” in the last year’s midterms, despite winning the House.

As Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp put it on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, the ex-president is forcing his party to keep looking in the rearview mirror and hampering its effort to look to the future.

One core argument in court will likely be trying to show that Fox believed that telling the audience inconvenient truths was bad for business – a factor that drove right-wing media in 2020 and still holds true today. Proof of this can be seen in the way the Republican Party remains unwilling to anger its base voters two years on. While many top party leaders have signaled they want to move on from Trump, the only part of the GOP that has power in Washington – the House Republican majority – has made repeated efforts to shield Trump from accountability over the 2020 election and to distort what actually happened on January 6, 2021.

But the court proceeding against Fox – like the constitutional process that assured a transfer of power between Trump and Biden, albeit one marred by violence – shows that the country’s instruments of accountability remain intact, despite Trump’s efforts.

Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, deny wrongdoing. They’ve argued that their conspiracy theory-filled broadcasts after the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment and that a loss in the case would be a devastating blow to press freedoms.

But the run-up to the trial has been a catalog of embarrassments and reversals for both the network and the broader premise that there is anything to Trump’s false claims.

The judge, for instance, observed last week in pre-trial hearings that there were well established and accepted limits on First Amendment rights.

“To go up there and say, ‘What Fox did was protected by the First Amendment,’ it’s half the story. It’s protected by the First Amendment if you can’t demonstrate actual malice,” he said.

Texts and emails between Fox personalities and managers, and depositions released by Dominion, suggest that privately, some at the channel dismissed Trump’s claims but amplified them amid growing fears that telling the truth might force viewers to turn elsewhere.

For example, Murdoch emailed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott telling her that rival conservative network Newsmax needed to be “watched.” In another message, Fox anchor Tucker Carlson told his colleague Laura Ingraham, “Our viewers are good people and they believe [the election fraud claims].”

Fox has accused Dominion of cherry picking damaging quotes and texts ahead of the trial. But the evidence that has emerged suggests that Fox’s desire to cater to the beliefs of its viewers, even with untrue information, is closely allied to Trump’s own approach and reflects the way in which the Republican Party has been loath to antagonize the ex-president’s supporters.

From the opening hours of his presidency, Trump made clear he would create an alternative vision of reality that his supporters could embrace and that would help him subvert the rules and conventions of the presidency. The angry exhortations by Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, in January 2017 that his boss had attracted the biggest inauguration crowd in history seemed at the time bizarre and absurd. But in retrospect, they were the first sign of a daily effort to destroy truth for Trump’s political benefit, which eventually morphed into lies about a stolen election that convinced many of the ex-president’s supporters. The culmination of all this was the mob attack by his supporters on Congress on January 6, 2021, during the certification of Biden’s victory.

The idea that the Fox defamation trial might actually play a role in purging lies about the 2020 election seems far-fetched because the power of his falsehoods has survived many previous collisions with the truth. Although multiple courts in multiple states threw out Trump’s cases alleging election fraud after the 2020 election, the idea that the election was stolen still undermined faith in American democracy among his supporters. Only 29% of Republicans in a CNN/SSRS poll published in July 2022 had confidence that US elections truly represent the will of the people.

This is, perhaps, not surprising. Because when he was in office, Trump made no secret of his strategy, telling the world in a moment of candor how he operated.

“Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” he said in a directive to his supporters at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City in 2018. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Five years on, Trump is still at it.

“We won in 2016. We won by much more in 2020 but it was rigged,” Trump said in the first big rally of his campaign in Waco, Texas, at the end of March.

The fact that Trump continues to spread such falsehoods – and that many in the Republican Party remain unwilling to challenge him – irks some party leaders who watched as Trump’s handpicked candidates, who touted his election lies as the price of his endorsement, flamed out in swing states in last year’s midterm elections.

Georgia’s Kemp warned, for example, that constantly bringing up 2020 would create another political disaster for his party.

“I think any candidate, to be able to win, is to talk about what we’re for, focus on the future, not look in the rearview mirror,” Kemp told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

“If you look in the rearview mirror too long while you’re driving, you’re going to look up, and you’re going to be running into somebody, and that’s not going to be good.”

Yet the fact that Trump, according to many polls, remains the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024 and is still wildly popular with conservative grassroots voters suggests that it will take far more than a courtroom display to restore the truth about 2020.

And the GOP will likely be looking in the rearview mirror for some time to come.

Source link

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

CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Source link

April 12, 2021
The US immigration story extends well beyond the border | CNN Politics
A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
—

There is a tendency to view the different elements of the immigration landscape in isolation.
Texas is being sued by the US Department of Justice for acting on its own to put obstructions along the border.

New York and other cities complain they are overwhelmed by buses of migrants being sent from the border.

In the absence of action by Congress, court decisions are setting US border policy.
But the elements are all interrelated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without comprehensive reform, the federal government is left to implementing a patchwork of policies and then playing defense when lawsuits are filed against them, often resulting in policy whiplash.
Source link
April 12, 2021
Why Israel’s instability matters to the US | CNN Politics

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

CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

Read updates from throughout Monday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source link

April 12, 2021
Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

Washington
CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story has been updated with additional information.

Source link

April 12, 2021
FBI warrantless searches of Americans’ data plummet in 2022, intel report says | CNN Politics

CNN
—

The number of warrantless FBI searches of Americans’ electronic data under a controversial intelligence program that aims to identify foreign threats dropped sharply from millions of searches in 2021 to over 100,000 last year, US intelligence agencies said in a report Friday.

It is welcome news for US intelligence and security agencies that are lobbying Congress to renew the program, known as Section 702, which is set to expire later this year. Some Republicans in Congress, including allies of former President Donald Trump, have balked at renewing the program while using their criticism of it in broader political attacks on the FBI.

The drop in FBI searches last year was due in part to stronger safeguards that the agency has put on analysts’ ability to search a database of foreign intelligence collected by US spy agencies, according to the report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The FBI conducted about 3 million warrantless searches of Americans’ data in 2021, more than half of which related to a Russian hacking campaign against critical US infrastructure, according to ODNI. (The tallies in the ODNI report are the number of times FBI personnel searched for certain data, not the number of Americans who had their data searched.)

The program is a 2008 revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows US spy agencies to collect the phone calls, emails and text messages of foreign targets overseas from US telecommunications providers without a warrant – even if it means sweeping up the communications of Americans in touch with those foreign targets. Analysts at multiple intelligence agencies can then search databases for leads related to foreign intelligence missions.

US national security officials say the program is essential for thwarting terror plots and investigating malicious cyber activity. A significant portion of the intelligence that ends up in President Joe Biden’s daily intelligence brief comes from Section 702 authorities, according to US officials.

But civil liberties groups have complained that the program infringes on Americans’ privacy. And even advocates of Section 702 in Congress have expressed concern at how it’s been implemented.

In March, Republican Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois accused the FBI of searching Section 702 data for his name multiple times in what he called an “egregious” violation of his privacy. Still, LaHood has said he wants Section 702 to be reauthorized with “reforms and safeguards.”

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Friday that the new ODNI report “provides strong evidence that the reforms already put in place, particularly at FBI, are having the intended effects.”

Source link

April 12, 2021
Pentagon increases security screenings following leak of classified documents | CNN Politics

CNN
—

The Pentagon has increased its security screenings following a massive leak of classified documents allegedly by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard that exposed sensitive information online, according to a Defense Department spokeswoman.

The Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) conducts routine screenings of employees coming in or out of the Pentagon for classified information, but the number and frequency of these screenings have increased after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of procedures around the handling of sensitive and classified material last month.

“The Pentagon Force Protection Agency routinely screens employees entering and exiting the Pentagon for prohibited items and to ensure classified information is protected and handled in accordance with current security requirements,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough said in a statement. “PFPA has increased these security screenings and measures in response to the immediate review of information security procedures directed by Secretary of Defense Austin on April 17, 2023.”

In that memo last month, Austin wrote, “It is therefore essential to carefully examine the sufficiency of, and compliance with, all security policies and procedures.”

NBC News first reported on the increased screenings.

Austin also directed the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security to work with the department’s chief information officer and director of administration and management to conduct a 45-day review of Defense Department security programs, policies and procedures. That review should be concluded in the coming days.

The review came after a massive leak of classified documents. Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who had access to highly sensitive information, has been accused of posting the trove of documents.

Teixeira, a junior enlisted Guardsman, was arrested in April after he allegedly posted the classified information on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers. He was charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials, and unauthorized transmission of national defense information.

A judge decided this month that he would remain behind bars until his trial. He has not yet entered a formal plea.

Teixeira was serving as a cyber systems journeyman with the Massachusetts Air National Guard at the time of the alleged leak. Documents released this month showed that Teixeira’s enlisted leaders in his unit were aware of three separate occasions when he was discovered viewing classified intelligence unrelated to his job. It’s unclear what actions, if any, were taken against him.

Source link

April 12, 2021