Tag: whistleblowers

You Won’t Believe How Much Crypto Whistleblowers Made From The CFTC | Bitcoinist.com

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The CFTC has paid a staggering amount of money to crypto whistleblowers for providing sensitive information that led to the successful launch of several enforcement actions.

CFTC Whistleblowers Cash In

This year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) received an influx of tips from informants on illegal dealings in cryptocurrency and environmental fraud.

According to the annual report on the Whistleblower Program, the CFTC has released $16 million in rewards to whistleblowers this year. The agency granted over $15 million to two informants alone who had been actively involved in major enforcement cases, providing crucial information and assistance to the agency.

Collectively, the CFTC has awarded close to $350 million to whistleblowers and has ordered $3 billion worth of enforcement sanctions in cases related to the awards.

In an X (formerly Twitter) post released on October 31, Official Account Commissioner at the CFTC, Christy Goldsmith Romeo stated her optimism on the progress the agency has continuously achieved in executing enforcement actions due to the information provided by whistleblowers this year.

Romeo said that she was well aware of the importance of informants in the agency’s investigation processes. She commemorated the bravery and actions of the informers, stating that whistleblowers were crucial to safeguarding customers.

“Very proud of these offices and their outsized results. As a former IG, I know firsthand how important whistleblowers are. The CFTC could not fully protect customers and markets w/o them,” Romeo stated.

She added, “As a former Inspector General who knows firsthand how important whistleblowers are, I wholeheartedly support whistleblowers and the CFTC’s Whistleblower Program, and am very proud of the Program’s outsized results.”

Total market cap at $1.24 trillion | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on Tradingview.com

CFTC’s Latest Reports On Crypto Scams

The CFTC Commissioner has disclosed that a significant portion of the information provided by whistleblowers this year has revolved around cryptocurrency illegalities.

Romeo commented on the increase in crypto scams, stating that the rapid growth of the crypto industry has attracted reprobate crypto fraudsters and encouraged illegal activities in the digital asset space.

“The majority of the tips received this year involved crypto—an area that continues to have pervasive fraud and other illegality,” Romeo stated.

Over the years the cryptocurrency industry has experienced many forms of fraud and scams including Ponzi schemes, phishing attacks, rug pulls, and more, and the CFTC has been active in its pursuit of illegal operations in the crypto industry.

One of its most recent investigations was focused on Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. The CFTC filed a lawsuit against Binance, accusing the exchange of offering illegal commodities trading products to residents in the United States. Responding to the lawsuit, Binance filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.

The regulator’s commissioner stated that many retail customers are under the jurisdiction of the CFTC, and as such, more severe efforts have been taken by the CFTC Whistleblower Program to protect customers during this period of elevated cryptocurrency scam activities.

Additionally, Romeo commended the CFTC’s Office of Customer Education and Outreach on its efforts towards enlightening customers on crypto scams. She welcomed CFTC’s newly announced initiative, the Environmental Fraud Task Force, and stated that she was looking forward to favorable results from whistleblowers in these areas.

Featured image from CNBC, chart from Tradingview.com

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Scott Matherson

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November 1, 2023
Why was Weiss named special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden? It’s complicated. | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Attorney General Merrick Garland did not provide a robust explanation on Friday for why he needed to give US attorney David Weiss special counsel status for the Hunter Biden probe, or why it was necessary five years after the investigation began.

In a televised statement, Garland only said that Weiss informed him on Tuesday that “his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel.” Garland said he reviewed Weiss’ request, “as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter” and “concluded it is in the public interest” to make him a special counsel.

But the attorney general did not say what those “extraordinary circumstances” were. And Weiss didn’t make any statements on Friday.

The simplest explanation is that the plea talks between Weiss and Hunter Biden over tax and gun charges have collapsed, and the case now appears to be headed to trial. Indeed, it is “extraordinary” for the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch, to go to trial against the son of a siting president. Instead of a speedy resolution with a plea, a trial guarantees there will be months or even years of future litigation.

But no one at the Justice Department has publicly offered this explanation. Friday, Garland never mentioned this major change in the trajectory of the case – from a misdemeanor plea deal to an unprecedented trial with potentially several felony charges.

It’s not clear what else may have changed to trigger the special counsel appointment.

IRS whistleblowers who worked on the case and congressional Republicans have claimed that Weiss needed special counsel powers because, as the US attorney in Delaware, he couldn’t pursue charges in other jurisdictions. The whistleblowers testified that Justice Department officials blocked Weiss from filing felony tax evasion charges in California and Washington, DC.

But as these questions mounted, Weiss and Garland have repeatedly insisted that Weiss always had the powers he needed, even as a US attorney. Weiss said he retained “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.” As recently as July 10, he said he never asked to be appointed as special counsel.

So why elevate him to special counsel now?

This is the third time Garland has appointed a special counsel. In the two past instances, he specifically mentioned that the ongoing investigations involved a presidential candidate and therefore the independence of a special counsel was warranted, for the public interest. (Those probes are separately scrutinizing President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.)

That raises the question of whether the ongoing Hunter Biden probe has moved closer to the president, though there is no public indication that this is the case.

Indeed, the IRS whistleblowers told Congress they wanted to interview Biden family members, after finding financial improprieties in Hunter Biden’s tax records, but were blocked by Justice Department officials. Also, an unverified tip from an FBI informant about supposed bribes paid to Joe and Hunter Biden was passed onto Weiss’ prosecutors, potentially for further inquiry. (Joe Biden says these claims are false.)

Politics is also hanging over the investigation, especially emanating from Capitol Hill.

House Republicans are investigating the claims from the IRS whistleblower and are asking questions about how Hunter Biden nearly walked away with what they call a “sweetheart deal.”

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is seeking interviews with nearly a dozen Justice Department officials who were involved in the investigation. He also has sought testimony from Weiss, who previously committed to appearing at a public hearing this fall.

But Weiss’ new role as special counsel, and the implosion of the plea talks, could put all of that on ice. It will be much easier now for the Justice Department to do what it often does – swat away oversight requests because of an ongoing investigation, especially with a trial looming.

Justice Department officials stressed Friday that Weiss will issue a public report as part of his special counsel responsibilities. But that could be years away: Past special counsels, like Robert Mueller and John Durham, only testified on the Hill after their reports were released.

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August 2, 2023
FBI agent contests whistleblower claims in Hunter Biden case, transcript shows | CNN Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023
Texas Attorney General Paxton agrees to $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of abuse of office and bribery | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has agreed to a $3.3 million settlement and an apology as part of a tentative settlement with four whistleblowers who publicly accused Paxton of abuse of office, bribery and other criminal offenses in 2020.

The former high-level aides – who also reported their allegations to the FBI – were fired within a month of their denouncement of Paxton, a Republican. They filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement to their former positions or equivalent positions, as well as reinstatement of lost fringe benefits and seniority rights.

In a filing on Friday, both parties asked the Texas Supreme Court to defer consideration on the case to allow the parties to finalize and fund a settlement agreement.

The filing included the mediated agreement which says that Paxton’s office will pay $3.3 million and that the final settlement will say Paxton accepts that the former aides were acting in a manner they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as “rogue employees.”

Paxton also agreed to remove the 2020 press release from his office’s website in which he described his aides as “rogue.” The press release has already been removed, and the filing says the settlement is contingent on all necessary approvals for funding.

Despite the apology, the formal settlement agreement does not contain an admission of liability or fault by any party.

In a statement on Friday, Paxton acknowledged the settlement, explaining why he agreed to “put this issue to rest” but did not mention the apology portion of the agreement.

“After over two years of litigating with four ex-staffers who accused me in October 2020 of ‘potential’ wrongdoing, I have reached a settlement agreement to put this issue to rest. I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions. This settlement achieves these goals. I look forward to serving the People of Texas for the next four years free from this unfortunate sideshow.”

Lawyers for three of the plaintiffs also issued a statement to CNN, saying: “Our clients have spent more than two years fighting for what is right. We believe the terms of the settlement speak for themselves.”

Former Texas deputy attorneys general James Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, and Ryan Vassar – along with former director of law enforcement David Maxwell – were the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

CNN has previously reported that Paxton is facing an FBI investigation for abuse of office. He is also under indictment for securities fraud in a separate, unrelated case. Paxton has denied all charges and allegations.

The former senior staff members largely stayed out of the limelight after filing the suit, but they broke their silence early last year ahead of the GOP primary, when Paxton was seeking the Republican nomination to be reelected as attorney general. They issued a statement responding to public comments that Paxton had made about the lawsuit during his reelection campaign.

Paxton was reelected as attorney general in November.

This headline has been updated.

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February 10, 2023
Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.

Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.

“When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”

Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.

Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”

The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.

Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”

In various statements since becoming speaker, McCarthy has boasted of how the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House “repealed 87,000 IRS agents” or “repealed funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.”

Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.

CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.

Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.

In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”

Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.

When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.

In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

McCarthy wrote in a New York Post article published on January 12: “While President Joe Biden wants to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on, House Republicans are certainly cooking with gas.” He repeated the claim on Twitter the next morning.

Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.

It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”

Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.

Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”

Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.

Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the same since late 2019.

The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.

McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)

Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.

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January 24, 2023
This former tech worker is helping change laws for people who get laid off | CNN Business

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CNN
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Ifeoma Ozoma’s path as an advocate for tech workers started with a series of tweets one morning in June 2020.

It was a few months after she was pushed out from her job at Pinterest, the image-sharing and social media platform. Across the United States, protests and outrage filled the streets after a White police officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of George Floyd for more than nine minutes, ultimately killing him.

As companies scrambled to express their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, her former employer released a statement.

“We heard directly from our Black employees about the pain and fear they feel every day living in America,” Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann said in the statement. “This is not just a moment in time. With everything we do, we will make it clear that our Black employees matter, Black [Pinterest users] and creators matter, and Black Lives Matter.”

Ozoma, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, said she wasn’t having it. She fired back with a series of tweets accusing the lifestyle company of racism, pay inequity and retaliation.

“I shouldn’t have to share this story in the year of our Lord, 2020 — but here we are,” she tweeted. “I’m an alum of Yale, Google, FB, … etc and recently decided to leave Pinterest, which just declared ‘solidarity with BLM.’ What a joke.”

Ozoma said her tweets broke a nondisclosure agreement she’d signed when she left the company, thrusting her into the spotlight as the latest person to speak up about alleged mistreatment within the male-dominated tech field. While she’d already left her job by then, she risked the reputation she’d built from years of work within the industry, she said.

But instead of shrinking from the challenge, she leaned into it.

“My entire career has been in tech and so I was very aware of the costs of speaking up, but I wasn’t afraid of it. I knew that it was what I had to do,” she said. “Fear is something I haven’t really felt since my mom died from a rare cancer when I was in college. The worst thing that could have happened already did … Pinterest could bankrupt me and make it impossible for me to be hired by any other tech companies, but they couldn’t break me. “

Ozoma told CNN her conflict with Pinterest started after she realized she was getting paid less than half what a White male colleague earned for doing the exact same work.

She said she raised her concerns with her employer and gave the company time to address the issues. But in March 2020, she was let go from her job at Pinterest.

“The purpose wasn’t just, ‘let me vent,’” she said of her flurry of tweets in June 2020. “The purpose was, people need to understand that this is what’s happening. And if it happened to me with the public profile that I had within the company and outside of the company, then it can happen to anyone else.”

Two months after Ozoma and another woman of color, Aerica Shimizu Banks, publicly accused Pinterest of racial discrimination, former chief operating officer Francoise Brougher sued the company over gender discrimination and retaliation. Pinterest later agreed to settle the lawsuit for $22.5 million, but did not admit to liability as part of the settlement.

It later said it conducted a thorough investigation on the issues raised and concluded Ozoma and Banks were “treated fairly.”

“We want each and every one of our employees at Pinterest to feel welcomed, valued, and respected,” a Pinterest spokesperson said in June. “We’re committed to advancing our work in inclusion and diversity by taking action at our company and on our platform. In areas where we, as a company, fall short, we must and will do better.”

In a separate statement to CNN late last month, Pinterest said it’s launched various diversity and inclusion measures, including pay transparency tools for employees. The company said it’s also taken steps to monitor employee salaries to ensure equal pay for comparable work.

“We have increased the percentage of women in leadership, added board members who are committed to diversity, and we continue to set goals for increasing diversity at the company,” a Pinterest spokesperson told CNN in an email. “We … are committed to ensuring that every employee feels safe, championed, and empowered to raise any concerns about their work experience.”

After Ozoma began tweeting about her experience at Pinterest, direct messages poured in from people facing similar frustrations at other companies, she said. She knew she had to do something about it.

She emerged as a passionate advocate for tech workers by seeking legal protections for whistleblowers.

Pinterest is based in San Francisco. At the time, California’s law offered some protection to employees who broke non-disclosure agreements to speak out about workplace harassment or discrimination based on sex — but not about racial discrimination, Ozoma said.

Ozoma got busy. She began educating whistleblowers on their options, urged tech companies to rethink their policies on nondisclosure agreements and reached out to lawmakers to seek new legislation that would protect employees speaking out on all forms of discrimination.

In California, she worked with state senator Connie Leyva on a law that prevents nondisclosure agreements from being implemented against people speaking out on any workplace discrimination, including race.

In October last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill — known as the Silenced No More Act — into law.

“California workers should absolutely be able to speak out — if they so wish — when they are a victim of any type of harassment or discrimination in the workplace,” Senator Leyva said at the time. “It is unconscionable that an employer would ever want or seek to silence the voices of survivors that have been subjected to racist, sexist, homophobic or other attacks at work.”

Ozoma’s advocacy work has given whistleblowers a safe space to go for information.

Around the same time Newson signed the measure into law, she launched a Tech Worker Handbook online to provide free resources for employees seeking information on how to speak out on workplace discrimination and harassment.

“So many people reached out when I told my story, and most of them were tech workers or workers within the tech industry,” she said.

She said she’s recruited dozens of experts and tech industry professionals to contribute to the site, saying the goal is not to encourage employees to be whistleblowers, but to provide them with information about options if they choose that path.

“I cannot tell someone who is supporting their kids and their partner on their health insurance … go leave your job so that your kids don’t have health insurance, so that you can feel good about speaking up,” she said.

“It’s such an individual decision. If I had kids at the time who are on my health insurance, I probably wouldn’t have said anything.”

Since the site launched, Ozoma said she has received hundreds of inquiries from employees seeking more details on how to disclose and fight discrimination at work. The 30-year-old mentors activists and other people fighting all over the world against workplace discrimination.

Ozoma now runs a tech policy consulting company, Earthseed, and is the director of tech accountability at the new Center on Race and Digital Justice at the University of California, Los Angeles. This year, Time Magazine named her one of its TIME100 Next, a group of emerging leaders who are shaping the future.

Her new role as an advocate is happening hundreds of miles away from the tech world she left behind.

After leaving Pinterest, Ozoma moved to a farm near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she grows her own vegetables and raises a flock of chickens nicknamed the Golden Girls.

She said she has no plans to go back to Silicon Valley, but will keep fighting for employee rights.

“I’m just working now from a different position on issues that really impact the industry in a way that I feel is additive,” she said.

“I don’t think that there’s anything more fulfilling than being part of the circle of life,” she said, using a metaphor that mirrors her current life on a farm, “whether that’s watching a seed or planting a seed in the ground and watching it grow and create more seeds.”

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December 6, 2022
How a 51-year-old celebrity hacker upended one of the world’s most influential social networks | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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When Peiter Zatko joined Twitter as head of security in late 2020 at the urging of founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey, he was surprised by what he discovered. Twitter, a social network with hundreds of millions of users, “was over a decade behind industry security standards,” he later testified.

Barely a year later, Zatko was agitating for Twitter’s top executives to address what he described as “a ticking bomb of security vulnerabilities” and to provide a full accounting of its shortcomings to its board.

His concerns, raised privately at first and later in a whistleblower disclosure that became public, would upend one of the world’s most influential social networks and raise new questions about its pending acquisition by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. It would also, he later testified, put his career and his family at risk.

In his disclosure filed with various US government agencies in July, Zatko alleged that Twitter

(TWTR) trusted far too many employees with access to sensitive user data, creating a fragile security posture that an outsider could exploit to wreak havoc on the platform. The disclosure also claimed that one or more current Twitter

(TWTR) employees may be working for a foreign intelligence service, potentially threatening user data and US national security, and that Twitter

(TWTR) CEO Parag Agrawal misled the company’s board of directors by discouraging Zatko from providing a full account of Twitter

(TWTR)’s security weaknesses. (Twitter

(TWTR) has criticized Zatko and broadly defended itself against the allegations.)

“Given the real harm to users and national security, I determined it was necessary to take on the personal and professional risk to myself and to my family of becoming a whistleblower,” Zatko, better known as “Mudge” in cybersecurity circles and highly regarded in that community, said during a Senate hearing on his disclosure in September. “I did not make my whistleblower disclosure out of spite or to harm Twitter, far from that, I continue to believe in the mission of the company and root for its success.”

Since going public with his concerns, Zatko, who has held numerous posts in the private and public sector, has found himself at the center of renewed scrutiny of Twitter. He testified last month in a Senate committee hearing about his disclosure, and his allegations have caught the attention of various regulators both in the United States and abroad. Meanwhile, his former colleagues received requests for paid interviews from research firms apparently seeking information, and potentially dirt, on Zatko, according to a report last month by the New Yorker.

The disclosure also coincided with, and ultimately became a part of, Musk’s fight to get out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Zatko was deposed by Musk’s team and the billionaire was allowed to add some of Zatko’s allegations to his argument to terminate the deal. Although it now appears Musk wants to go forward with the acquisition, the timing of Zatko’s allegations sparked questions about his motives. (Zatko denies any relationship with Musk and says his decision to go public was unrelated to the deal; Musk’s legal team says it was unaware of the disclosure until it was publicly reported.)

Twitter pushed back on Zatko’s allegations, saying that security and privacy have “long been top company-wide priorities.” Twitter has said his disclosure is “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies,” and said that it paints a “false narrative” of the company. Twitter has also tried to paint Zatko as a disgruntled former employee with an ax to grind against the company.

But some who have worked alongside Zatko over the last three decades paint a picture of him as a principled technologist with a knack for making the complex accessible and an earnest desire to fix problems, as he’s done for much of his career. The decision to blow the whistle, they say, is in keeping with that approach.

“He’s not doing this for fun. It doesn’t get him anything,” said Dave Aitel, a former computer scientist at the National Security Agency and colleague of Zatko’s at cybersecurity consulting firm @stake. “That’s actually what integrity looks like when you have to see it up close.”

As a result of his whistleblower activities, Zatko may be eligible for a monetary award from the US government. John Tye, founder of Whistleblower Aid and Zatko’s lawyer, previously told CNN “the prospect of a reward was not a factor in [Zatko’s] decision.”

Nearly 25 years ago, as a young computer programmer with much longer hair, Zatko told Congress that the internet was woefully insecure. A big part of the issue, Zatko told a Senate panel, was that software and e-commerce companies “want to ignore problems as long as possible. It’s cheaper for them.”

Several years earlier, Zatko had joined the Boston-area hacking collective known as L0pht, according to “The Cult of the Dead Cow,” Washington Post reporter Joseph Menn’s book on how the early hacking scene shaped the cybersecurity industry.

L0pht members broke into computer systems and then worked with companies that made the equipment to fix the problems. While that is now a well-established practice for companies to work with outside researchers to fix software flaws, it was, at the time, seen as provocative and upsetting to software giants.

Zatko “sort of bent the industry to his will,” Dug Song, chief strategy officer at Cisco Security, who has known Zatko since the 1990s, told CNN previously. “L0pht created a model for how to do this in a way that was, frankly, respectable and honorable.”

Cris “Space Rogue” Thomas, another ex-L0pht member who testified alongside Zatko that day, said that L0pht would do everything it could to get companies to collaboratively fix software issues the hacker group found.

Thomas, who, like Zatko, uses his hacker name professionally, told CNN in August that he and Zatko “have had our differences in the past,” adding that he was fired from @stake, the cybersecurity consultancy where Zatko was chief scientist, in 2000. “Feelings were hurt, but that doesn’t change the fact of who [Zatko] is and what he believes in and what he does. So I still think that his moral standards have not really changed … in the 30 years that I’ve known him.”

In the following years, Zatko, now 51, led an influential cybersecurity grantmaking program at the Pentagon, worked at a Google division for developing cutting-edge technology, helped build the cybersecurity team at fintech firm Stripe, and advised US lawmakers and officials on how to plug security holes in the internet.

His career has shown that “there was more to hacking than just one-upping each other, that there was actually a social good and impact that you could have,” said Song.

Twitter hired Zatko in November 2020 to beef up cybersecurity and privacy at the company in the wake of a high-profile hack, allegedly spearheaded by a Florida teenager, in July 2020 that compromised the Twitter accounts of some of the most famous people on the planet, including then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. The senior executive role meant Zatko reported directly to Dorsey, according to the disclosure.

When he was hired to join Twitter, Zatko framed the move in terms of the public good. “I truly believe in the mission of (equitably) serving the public conversation,” he tweeted at the time. “I will do my best!”

But Zatko quickly found that fulfilling that mission at Twitter would be challenging. His disclosure alleges that structural issues and misaligned incentives stood in the way of Twitter addressing many of its biggest issues, including properly protecting user data, addressing foreign manipulation of the platform and ensuring the security of the physical infrastructure supporting the company.

Agrawal — Dorsey’s successor as Twitter chief and a former CTO who had overseen much of the company’s recent technical development — fired Zatko in January after he began raising concerns about the company’s security and privacy practices, including worries that alleged misrepresentations by executives to its board could constitute fraud, the disclosure says. (Twitter maintains an internal investigation determined Zatko’s fraud claims were unfounded and that it fired Zatko for poor performance; Zatko says his firing was retaliation for having spoken up.)

“This is about something that everybody should care about with large companies, which is the honesty and the truthfulness of the data that’s being… publicly represented, the national security implications and whether users can trust their data with these organizations,” Zatko told CNN in August of his decision to file the disclosure.

Now, as he takes on Twitter publicly, Zatko finds himself in the public conversation like never before.

“This wasn’t my first choice,” he previously told CNN. “I exhausted all internal options.”

“But I found that ethically, and with who I am, that I was obligated to follow the law and pursue through legal avenues, lawful disclosure, because [Twitter] is a critically important platform,” Zatko said. “I think it’s important to address some of these challenges. I honestly believe I’m still doing the mission that I was brought in to do.”

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October 17, 2022
Wrong place, wrong time: How things went so badly for Twitter’s new CEO so quickly | CNN Business

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When Parag Agrawal took over as Twitter’s CEO last November following co-founder Jack Dorsey’s surprise resignation from the role, he was little known outside the company.

Ten months later, Agrawal has featured prominently in a whistleblower disclosure, been rebuked by name in a Congressional hearing and fielded criticism from the world’s richest man (and his possible future boss) both publicly and privately.

The complications are not letting up. Elon Musk this week proposed following through with the deal to buy Twitter

(TWTR) at the originally agreed upon price of $54.20 per share, according to a Tuesday securities filing. The move could bring to an end the ongoing legal battle over Musk’s attempt to pull out of the $44 billion acquisition deal, which is set to go to trial in two weeks. If Twitter

(TWTR) decides to move forward with the proposal, Agrawal could soon either be out of a job or be working for the billionaire with whom he’s spent months quarreling.

Even for a company accustomed to periods of upheaval, Agrawal’s tenure leading Twitter has been marked by an unusual degree of chaos: a nightmare acquisition battle with Musk; a former executive alleging serious security vulnerabilities; and an economic downturn hitting its core advertising business.

That would be a lot to navigate for even the most seasoned chief executive. But Agrawal, a decade-long veteran of Twitter who previously served as its CTO, had never previously run a company — let alone one of the world’s most important social media platforms.

“I think Parag was elevated because they thought everything would be status quo,” said Bill Klepper, management professor at Columbia Business School. The past year has been anything but that.

Despite the challenges, Agrawal has managed to continue growing the platform’s user base and has launched various new features, including testing the long-awaited edit button. But there are sincere doubts about whether Agrawal will survive another year, whether because Musk buys the company and then removes him, or because the board replaces him if the deal falls through.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers and regulators are suggesting Agrawal could be probed in the wake of the whistleblower allegations, which directly implicate Agrawal, both as CEO and in his previous role at CTO.

“I’m sure when he goes home at night, he says to himself, ‘What the hell did I get myself into?’” said Klepper.

Twitter declined to comment for this story.

From the start, Agrawal had a daunting task. The company’s existing goal was to somehow add 100 million additional daily active users by 2023, a 45% increase from the fourth quarter of 2021, and grow its annual revenue to $7.5 billion, up from just over $5 billion in 2021. At the same time, it was exploring new revenue opportunities, such as its Twitter Blue subscription service and cryptocurrency-related features.

“The challenge for Twitter is that they still have not been able to grow their user base and improve their monetization to the level where their monetization is on par with their influence,” Forte said.

Then came Musk.

In March, after months of quietly amassing Twitter shares, Musk met with Dorsey, although he was no longer Twitter’s CEO, to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing. In the days that followed, Musk met with Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team, including Agrawal; publicly announced that he’d become Twitter’s largest shareholder; and accepted a seat on the company’s board.

Days later, Musk tweeted, “Is Twitter dying?” Agrawal texted Musk later that day to say the tweet was making his life difficult as CEO.

“You are free to tweet ‘is Twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter,” Agrawal said in the text to Musk, revealed in a court filing last week, “but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I’d like you to provide [your] perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how [it’s] hurting our ability to do work … I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now.”

Musk responded tersely: “What did you get done this week?” In two follow-up texts, he rescinded his agreement to join the board, saying, “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time.”

Musk then abandoned the board seat, threatened a hostile takeover and ultimately agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, a significant premium to the company’s share price at the time, only to then attempt to withdraw from the deal months later, citing concerns about the number of bots and spam accounts on the platform. Twitter sued him to complete the deal — and now must decide whether to accept Musk’s proposal to suspend the litigation process and move forward with completing the deal. (Twitter said Tuesday it had received Musk’s letter and intends “to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.”)

Throughout the dispute, Agrawal has had to reassure shareholders, advertisers and employees about an acquisition by a billionaire who has been publicly critical of the platform while also confronting public jabs from someone who could be his new boss.

In May, Musk and Agrawal appeared to openly feud on Twitter over the Tesla CEO’s claims about bots. Agrawal posted a tweet thread attempting to explain the prevalence of false and spam accounts on the platform and the company’s efforts to quantify and address them; Musk responded with a poop emoji.

Twitter — which many legal experts say has the stronger case if the dispute goes to trial — has sought to have a judge force Musk to follow through with the acquisition agreement. In that case, it seems unlikely Musk would keep Agrawal as CEO or that Agrawal would choose to stay.

In a text message exchange with Dorsey in April after the deal was signed, Musk suggested he would be unable to work with Agrawal. “Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does,” Musk said in a text.

If Musk takes over the company and Agrawal is removed, Agrawal could receive a payout worth tens of millions of dollars, including compensation for his stock options.

But even if Musk wins, or the two sides agree on a settlement that allows Musk to get out of the deal, Klepper said Agrawal remaining as CEO could be a longshot. In the event Musk walks, Twitter’s stock could take a hit. The company would also still be facing the same challenges to its business, compounded by attrition amid the uncertainty with Musk.

“They’ve got a lot of stuff to clean up,” he said. “The first thing they’re going to do is bring in a new leadership, someone who has turnaround experience.”

As the legal battle with Musk heated up, Twitter was hit with another blow: Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, the company’s former head of security and a highly regarded figure in the information security world, went public with a whistleblower complaint.

Zatko accused the company of having serious security vulnerabilities that threatened users, investors and US national security. He also alleged that the company is at risk of foreign interference and that its executives, including Agrawal, have misled regulators and the company’s own board.

The first months of a new CEO’s tenure are typically spent meeting with various parts of the company and discussing strategy with their board, Klepper said. But according to internal documents included in Zatko’s whistleblower disclosure, in December and January, Agrawal was also fielding concerns from Zatko that the new CEO and other executives had presented false information about the company’s security posture to the board, in what Zatko alleged could amount to fraud. In January, the Twitter board’s audit committee launched an investigation into Zatko’s worries.

Twitter says that the investigation concluded Zatko’s allegations were unfounded and that he was fired for poor performance; Zatko maintains he was fired in retaliation for speaking up. Twitter has said the whistleblower disclosure paints a “false narrative” of the company that is “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”

Still, the whistleblower’s claims have placed an even greater spotlight on the company and Agrawal. Earlier this month, leading members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Agrawal a letter seeking information, and requested responses by Sept. 26. It’s not clear whether Twitter has responded to the letter.

During a Senate hearing with Zatko, Sen. Chuck Grassley blasted Agrawal for not accepting an invitation to testify alongside the whistleblower. Twitter declined to make Agrawal available amid its concerns that his testimony could jeopardize the company’s ongoing litigation with Musk, according to Grassley.

Grassley didn’t stop there. If Zatko’s claims turn out to be accurate, he said, “I don’t see how Mr. Agrawal can maintain his position at Twitter.”

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October 4, 2022
Why the ‘Godfather of AI’ decided he had to ‘blow the whistle’ on the technology | CNN Business

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Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the “Godfather of AI,” decided he had to “blow the whistle” on the technology he helped develop after worrying about how smart it was becoming, he told CNN on Tuesday.

“I’m just a scientist who suddenly realized that these things are getting smarter than us,” Hinton told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview on Tuesday. “I want to sort of blow the whistle and say we should worry seriously about how we stop these things getting control over us.”

Hinton’s pioneering work on neural networks shaped artificial intelligence systems powering many of today’s products. On Monday, he made headlines for leaving his role at Google, where he had worked for a decade, in order to speak openly about his growing concerns around the technology.

In an interview Monday with the New York Times, which was first to report his move, Hinton said he was concerned about AI’s potential to eliminate jobs and create a world where many will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” He also pointed to the stunning pace of advancement, far beyond what he and others had anticipated.

“If it gets to be much smarter than us, it will be very good at manipulation because it will have learned that from us, and there are very few examples of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing,” Hinton told Tapper on Tuesday.

“It knows how to program so it’ll figure out ways of getting around restrictions we put on it. It’ll figure out ways of manipulating people to do what it wants.”

Hinton is not the only tech leader to speak out with concerns over AI. A number of members of the community signed a letter in March calling for artificial intelligence labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

The letter, published by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit backed by Elon Musk, came just two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, an even more powerful version of the technology that powers the viral chatbot ChatGPT. In early tests and a company demo, GPT-4 was used to draft lawsuits, pass standardized exams and build a working website from a hand-drawn sketch.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who was one of the signatories on the letter, appeared on “CNN This Morning” on Tuesday, echoing concerns about its potential to spread misinformation.

“Tricking is going to be a lot easier for those who want to trick you,” Wozniak told CNN. “We’re not really making any changes in that regard – we’re just assuming that the laws we have will take care of it.”

Wozniak also said “some type” of regulation is probably needed.

Hinton, for his part, told CNN he did not sign the petition. “I don’t think we can stop the progress,” he said. “I didn’t sign the petition saying we should stop working on AI because if people in America stop, people in China wouldn’t.”

But he confessed to not having a clear answer for what to do instead.

“It’s not clear to me that we can solve this problem,” Hinton told Tapper. “I believe we should put a big effort into thinking about ways to solve the problem. I don’t have a solution at present.”

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April 12, 2021
Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

Birth date: June 14, 1946

Birth place: New York, New York

Birth name: Donald John Trump

Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer

Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump

Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)

Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977

Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968

As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.

He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.

For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.

1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.

1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.

1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.

1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.

1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.

1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.

1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.

1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.

February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.

January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.

November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.

February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.

March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”

July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.

July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.

July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.

September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.

October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.

November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.

November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.

December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.

January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.

January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.

January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.

January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.

February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.

May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.

May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.

May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.

May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.

July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.

August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.

August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.

September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.

September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.

December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.

December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.

January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”

January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.

March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.

March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.

March 23, 2018 – The White House announces that it is adopting a policy, first proposed by Trump via tweet in July 2017, banning most transgender individuals from serving in the military.

April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.

April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.

May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.

May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

May 31, 2018 – The Trump administration announces it is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.

June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.

June 14, 2018 – The New York attorney general sues the Trump Foundation, alleging that the nonprofit run by Trump and his three eldest children violated state and federal charity law.

June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.

July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”

August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.

October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.

December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.

January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”

January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.

February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.

February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.

March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.

March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.

April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.

May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.

June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.

June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.

June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.

June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.

June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.

July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.

July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.

August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.

September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.

September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.

September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.

September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.

September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.

October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.

October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.

October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.

October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.

November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.

November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.

November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.

December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.

December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.

December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.

January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.

January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.

January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.

February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.

May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.

July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.

November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.

November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.

December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.

January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.

January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.

February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.

May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.

June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.

July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.

February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.

May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.

August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.

August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.

September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.

December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.

February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.

March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.

May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

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April 12, 2021
Whistleblowers say IRS recommended far more charges, including felonies, against Hunter Biden | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Two whistleblowers told Congress that IRS investigators recommended charging Hunter Biden with attempted tax evasion and other felonies, which are far more serious crimes than what the president’s son has agreed to plead guilty to, according to transcripts of their private interviews with lawmakers.

The IRS whistleblowers said the recommendation called for Hunter Biden to be charged with tax evasion and filing a false tax return – both felonies – for 2014, 2018 and 2019. The IRS also recommended that prosecutors charge him with failing to pay taxes on time, a misdemeanor, for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to the transcripts, which were released Thursday by House Republicans.

It appears that this 11-count charging recommendation also had the backing of some Justice Department prosecutors, but not from more senior attorneys, according to documents that the whistleblowers provided to House investigators.

In a deal with prosecutors announced earlier this week, Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to just two tax misdemeanors.

The allegations come from Gary Shapley, a 14-year IRS veteran, who oversaw parts of the Hunter Biden criminal probe, and an unnamed IRS agent who was on the case nearly from its inception. Shapley approached Congress this year with information that he claimed showed political interference in the investigation. He and the entire IRS team were later removed from the probe.

“I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation,” Shapley told lawmakers.

David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney in Delaware who oversaw the Hunter Biden criminal probe, eventually reached a plea deal where the president’s son will plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes on time. The plea agreement will also resolve a separate felony gun charge, if Hunter Biden abides by certain court-imposed conditions for a period of time.

Hunter Biden isn’t pleading guilty to any felonies, and he wasn’t charged with any tax felonies. CNN reported that prosecutors are expected to recommend no jail time. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Delaware on July 26.

It isn’t uncommon for there to be internal disagreements among investigators over which charges to file against the target of an investigation, much like the disagreements that the IRS whistleblowers described. CNN reported last year that some FBI and IRS investigators were at odds with other Justice Department officials over the strength of the case, and that there were discussions over which types of charges were appropriate and whether further investigation was needed.

Sources familiar with the criminal probe told CNN in April that prosecutors were still actively weighing a felony tax charge against Hunter Biden. And it is common for prosecutors to strike deals with defendants where they plead guilty to a small subset of the possible charges they could’ve faced.

The Justice Department probe into Hunter Biden was opened in November 2018, and was codenamed “Sportsman.” According to Shapley’s testimony, federal investigators knew as early as June 2021 that there were potential venue-related issues with charging Hunter Biden in Delaware. Under federal law, charges must be brought in the jurisdiction where the alleged crimes occurred.

If the potential charges couldn’t be brought in Delaware, then Weiss would need help from his fellow US attorneys. He looked to Washington, DC, where some of Hunter Biden’s tax returns were prepared, and the Central District of California, which includes the Los Angeles area where Hunter Biden lives.

But Shapley told the committee that the US attorneys in both districts wouldn’t seek an indictment.

A second whistleblower, an IRS case agent who also testified to the committee but hasn’t been publicly identified, also told lawmakers that this is what happened. He agreed that Weiss was “was told no” when he tried to get the cooperation of the US attorneys in in DC and Los Angeles, who are Biden appointees.

Hunter Biden’s eventual plea agreement was filed in Weiss’ jurisdiction, in Delaware.

Shapley contends in his interview that Attorney General Merrick Garland was not truthful when he told Congress that Weiss had full authority on the investigation.

Shapley recounted a meeting on October 7, 2022, where, according to Shapley’s notes memorializing the meeting, Weiss said, “He is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden. This undermines what Weiss and Garland have publicly said about Weiss’ independence on the matter.

Shapley also testified to committee investigators that it was during this October 2022 meeting that he learned for the first time that Weiss had requested to be named as a special counsel, but was denied.

In testimony to Congress in March, Garland said Weiss was advised “he is not to be denied anything he needs.”

Regarding the claims of political interference with the Hunter Biden criminal probe, Weiss told House Republicans in a recent letter that Garland granted him “ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges.”

After the transcripts were released Thursday, spokespeople for the US attorney’s offices in DC and Los Angeles issued near-identical statements reiterating that Weiss “was given full authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction he deemed appropriate.” The Justice Department echoed those comments in a statement saying Weiss “needs no further approval” to bring charges wherever he wants.

The whistleblowers also allege that at multiple key junctures, investigators were thwarted in their efforts because prosecutors were concerned about interfering in the 2020 presidential election.

In 2020, IRS investigators sought to conduct search warrants and take other overt steps. But according to Shapley, several weeks before the election, in September 2020, a Justice Department prosecutor questioned the optics of searching Hunter Biden’s residence and Joe Biden’s guest home.

Later that year, other planned searches were delayed because then-President Donald Trump was refusing to concede and was continuing to contest the results.

Republicans have slammed the plea agreement Hunter Biden struck as a “sweetheart deal,” and said it amounted to “a slap on the wrist.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith said earlier Thursday that the transcripts reveal “credible whistleblower testimony alleging misconduct and abuse” at the Justice Department that “resulted in preferential treatment for the president’s son.”

The Missouri Republican highlighted the whistleblowers’ allegations that the Justice Department “overstepped” in their efforts to intervene in the Hunter Biden criminal probe.

“The testimony … details a lack of US attorney independence, recurring unjustified delays, unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation, a lack of transparency across the investigation and prosecution teams, and bullying and threats from the defense counsel,” Smith said.

Democrats on the committee said the transcripts were “a premature and incomplete record” of what happened with the Hunter Biden probe and accused the GOP of a “stunning abuse of power.”

Hunter Biden’s lawyer pushed back in a statement Friday against the whistleblowers claims, saying it was “preposterous and deeply irresponsible” to suggest that federal investigators “cut my client any slack” during their “extensive” five-year probe.

“A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be,” attorney Chris Clark said. “It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document.”

Shapley, the IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower, told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document Shapley gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.

The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.

Shapley told House investigators that a Justice Department attorney insisted that the FBI not ask directly about Joe Biden when doing interviews. But the FBI did manage to ask one key witness about Joe Biden, and Shapley said the witness told investigators that some suggestions of the president’s involvement were overstated.

An email sent among business partners of Hunter Biden said an equity stake should be held “for the big guy,” an apparent reference to Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time. But one of the associates told the FBI that it was probably just “wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting” that Joe Biden would get involved if he did not run for president in 2016.

Joe Biden has repeatedly denied having any involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings, where he made millions of dollars from China, Ukraine and other countries. House Republicans have used their oversight probes to look for evidence that Joe Biden was actually involved.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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April 12, 2021
Garland denies claims of meddling in Hunter Biden probe, as White House says president uninvolved in son’s business dealings | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday rejected claims the Justice Department interfered in the Hunter Biden probe as the White House insisted President Joe Biden wasn’t involved in his son’s business dealings.

In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the probe alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department. The whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son, that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states and that Garland denied a request from Weiss to be named as a special counsel.

Hunter Biden has since agreed to plead guilty next month to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge. His attorney, Chris Clark, on Friday said “any suggestion the investigation was not thorough, or cut corners, or cut my client any slack, is preposterous and deeply irresponsible.”

When pushed on the allegations during a news conference Friday, Garland said that Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

“I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said.

Garland rejected any claim that he would not appoint Weiss as a special counsel, stating that “Mr. Weiss never made that request to me.”

“Mr. Weiss had, in fact, more authority than a special counsel would have,” Garland added. “He had and has complete authority, as I said, to bring a case anywhere he wants in his discretion.”

Additionally, Garland said he would “support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying” about the allegations raised by the whistleblowers “when he deems it appropriate.”

Later Friday, the White House wouldn’t say whether Biden was present in July 2017 when Hunter Biden is alleged to have texted a Chinese business partner, claiming he was sitting with his father, and using that claim as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

The questions referred to a portion of the testimony in which a IRS supervisor-turned-whistleblower told House lawmakers that Justice Department prosecutors denied requests to look into messages allegedly from Hunter Biden where he used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him.

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to a document the whistleblower gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.

The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

The second, unnamed IRS whistleblower also testified to lawmakers about this alleged WhatsApp message, saying prosecutors questioned whether they could be sure Hunter Biden was telling the truth that his father was actually in the room in the messages. The unnamed whistleblower testified that they did not know whether the FBI investigated the message.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pressed repeatedly on the issue, referred questions to the White House Counsel’s Office, insisting the matter had been addressed.

Ian Sams, a spokesman for the counsel’s office, said in an email that Joe Biden hadn’t been in business with his son. He did not specifically provide information about Joe Biden’s whereabouts when Hunter texted the Chinese businessman on July 30, 2017.

“As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son,” he wrote. “As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved.”

Asked whether Joe Biden had been involved in coercive business dealings by his son, Jean-Pierre said: “I appreciate the question. I believe my colleague at the White House counsel has answered this question already, has dealt with this, has made it very clear. I just don’t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared.”

In a statement Friday, Hunter Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark suggested the messages were written at a time when the president’s son was suffering from addiction.

“The DOJ investigation covered a period which was a time of turmoil and addiction for my client. Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family,” the statement read.

President Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business arrangements.

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

This story and its headline have been updated with additional developments on Friday.

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April 12, 2021
McCarthy floats potential impeachment inquiry into Garland over IRS whistleblower claims | CNN Politics

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy is floating the possibility that the House could open an impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Merrick Garland over Internal Revenue Service whistleblower allegations that Justice Department leadership improperly interfered in the Hunter Biden probe, which Garland has denied.

“If it comes true what the IRS whistleblower is saying, we’re going to start impeachment inquiries on the attorney general,” McCarthy said Monday on Fox News.

In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department.

McCarthy said on Fox News that the IRS agents who came forward “watched the abuse of power in how Hunter Biden was treated.”

The allegation that the DOJ has been politicized against conservatives has been central to how House Republicans approach their congressional investigations, though there is scant evidence backing up most of their claims.

Garland rejected those claim during a Friday news conference.

“Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department … by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike,” Garland said. “This constitutes an attack on an instutiton that is essential to American democracy … nothing could be further from the truth.”

Regarding the Hunter Biden probe, the whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son and that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states.

Garland said Friday that Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

“I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said.

Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge, the Justice Department said Tuesday in court filings.

As part of the plea agreement, the Justice Department has agreed to recommend a sentence of probation for the two counts of failing to pay taxes in a timely matter for the years 2017 and 2018, according to sources. Hunter Biden owed at least $100,000 in federal taxes for 2017, and at least $100,000 in 2018, but did not pay what was due to the IRS by the deadlines.

A judge will have the final say on any sentence.

Garland said Friday he would “support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying” about the allegations raised by the whistleblowers “when he deems it appropriate.”

McCarthy said on Fox News Monday, “We have requested by July 6, Weiss to come in and answer these questions because the IRS whistleblowers took copious notes.”

The federal prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation sent a letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan in early June saying that he had “ultimate authority” over the probe.

Weiss, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, makes clear in a letter obtained by CNN that he was granted this authority, cutting against Republican claims that Garland and the DOJ are “weaponized” against conservatives and politicizing the Hunter Biden case.

“I want to make clear that, as the attorney general has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations” Weiss wrote to Jordan on June 7.

In response, Jordan has asked Weiss to explain and provide further information about the letter stating he had “ultimate authority” over the probe.

Jordan asked in a letter to Weiss why he was the one to respond to Congress on June 7, when the initial letter from Jordan about alleged retaliation against the IRS whistleblowers was addressed to Garland. “Who instructed you to sign and send your June 7 letter to the committee?,” Jordan asked.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer pushed back in a statement on Friday against the whistleblowers’ claims, saying it was “preposterous and deeply irresponsible” to suggest that federal investigators “cut my client any slack” during their “extensive” five-year probe.

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April 12, 2021