Even some Republicans balk as Trump targets US spy chiefs
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
Even after two years, President Donald Trump's assaults on US spy chiefs are shocking coming from a commander in chief.
The President's Twitter barrage over a global threat matrix produced by US intelligence agencies that contradicts with his idiosyncratic worldview is hardly a surprise given his past behavior. His habit of fashioning a truth that fits his personal prejudices and goals over an objective version of reality has been an undercurrent to his political career.
But when that often-successful political method is carried into the realm of national security, it can be deeply destructive.
"Recently he seems to put his political position, things he wants to achieve as political objectives, far above any informed assessment that the intelligence community is providing to him," said Carrie Cordero, a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security, on CNN on Wednesday.
Trump's shot at the clandestine community even has some Republicans, who are often loath to criticize the President, worried.
"I prefer the President would stay off Twitter, particularly with regard to these important national security issues where you've got people who are experts and have the background and are professionals," said Sen John Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
"I think in those cases when it comes to their judgment, take into consideration what they're saying. ... I think we need to trust their judgment."
Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr declined to critique Trump's tweets, but he stood by the covert services.
"I have ultimate faith in the intelligence community," the North Carolina Republican said.
Trump's rejection of intelligence agency assessments that Russia interfered in the 2016 election rocked his ties with his administration's top spies during his first year in office. Often his goal seemed to be to grease his one-man flattery offensive toward President Vladimir Putin, which continues to this day.
His claim to have ended the North Korean nuclear threat with his photo op summit with Kim Jong Un defies CIA reporting, as does his assertion that ISIS is beaten "badly," which he has used to justify his snap demand last month for a troop withdrawal from Syria -- which also played into Moscow's hands.
Now Trump is inventing his own version of the facts to justify his withdrawal from an Obama-era nuclear deal because the deal was "defective at its core."
"The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran," Trump tweeted on Wednesday, a day after damaging testimony by intelligence chiefs on Capitol Hill.
Why dissing American spies matters
It's unprecedented for a president to be so frequently and publicly at war with the intelligence community. The hostilities play directly to the advantage of foreign espionage services in places like Russia, China and Iran.
They create confusion among America's allies over US foreign policy. And the tension hits morale at agencies served by officers who lack high salaries and can sometimes be asked to put their lives on the line.
Trump's Twitter blast at Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel on Wednesday was a characteristic response from a President who hits back hard when he is publicly embarrassed.
But it was also another example of how the President prioritizes his own political goals when they conflict with the judgments of the intelligence community. Trashing the Iran deal was a key part of his 2016 campaign platform, and he had more to gain politically by following through on his promise than in reassessing based on the findings of US experts.
No one can work out why Trump is so solicitous of Putin. Perhaps Robert Mueller's special counsel report will shed light on Trump's mysterious past relationship with a nation that US intelligence officials say sought to help his 2016 campaign.
But his friendship with Putin requires him to continually cast doubt on the intelligence community's belief that there was a widespread election interference effort mounted by Moscow's espionage agencies.
Trump's most notorious dissing of US intelligence came during his summit with Putin in Helsinki last year, in a shocking public display of an American President siding with one of his nation's enemies over his own administration.
No longer the adults in the room
Trump's trolling of US spy agencies, and attempts to confuse the true tale of what happened in the election, provide a constant dividend for Moscow's attempt to sow chaos in the US political system.
But the tactic is not just helpful to Trump because it helps move his own personal political agenda. With his 2016 campaign a two-year target of an investigation first led by the FBI and then handed to Mueller, Trump likes to validate his outsider political crusade by claiming he is a victim of sinister "deep state" warfare centered in the intelligence community. The construct plays into conspiracy-minded sectors of the Trump base and reaffirms his image as a crusader against the elite Washington establishment.
It's ironic that a Republican President should adopt positions so at odds with his party's self-image as the adult in the room on national security.
GOP discomfort with his populist, nationalist attitude on foreign policy has become ever more obvious in recent days.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing an amendment to a Middle East policy bill that would acknowledge "al Qaeda, ISIS and their affiliates in Syria and Afghanistan continue to pose a serious threat to us here at home."
The Kentucky Republican's effort stands as a direct rebuke of Trump's plans to withdraw troops from Syria and developing strategy of halving the US garrison in Afghanistan.
"It would recognize the dangers of a precipitous withdrawal from either conflict and highlight the need for diplomatic engagement and political solutions to the underlying conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan," McConnell said Tuesday.
McConnell was positioning himself as the voice of the traditionally hawkish Republican consensus on foreign policy. Though it could be argued that on the idea of bringing troops home from long foreign wars, the President is more in tune with grass-roots opinion than his critics -- a view backed up by early exchanges in the Democratic White House race.
In another move that risked irking Trump, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa this week signed on to a bill that would require the release of a summary of Mueller's final report to Congress and the public.
Large numbers of Republican House members -- apart from a clutch of die-hard Trump supporters -- backed a bill overwhelmingly passed by the new Democratic-led House that put on record strong support for NATO -- which has been constantly undermined by the President.
But Republican rebellion goes only so far and is usually confined to national security, an area where GOP lawmakers can differ with the President without exacting a personal price among base voters that is too painful.
And it was noticeable that in the government shutdown drama that ended last week, and despite behind-the-scenes frustration among GOP senators, McConnell did not put any measure on the floor that would have undermined Trump's position.
January 31, 2019
Senate rebukes
Senate rebukes Trump on Syria withdrawal plan
Senators voted to move forward on an amendment that warns against pulling troops out of Syria and Afghanistan.
By MARIANNE LEVINE
The Senate issued a rebuke of President Donald Trump Thursday after it agreed to move forward on an amendment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that cautioned against the “precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
In a 68-23 vote, Republicans and Democrats voted in favor of forwarding the amendment, which would be attached to a broader Middle East legislative package.
In December, Trump announced unexpectedly that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. His announcement prompted a bipartisan backlash from lawmakers as well as his own national security team.
"It's not a partisan amendment," McConnell said prior to the vote Thursday. "It's not complicated. There is no poison pill. Just an opportunity for senators to go on the record about what our country should be doing in Syria and Afghanistan."
The Senate will next vote on passage of the amendment.
McConnell's amendment wasn’t the only attempt to admonish the Trump administration on foreign policy in the Senate this week.
In a separate initiative, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) reintroduced a resolution Wednesday to withdraw U.S. support from the Saudi-backed war in Yemen.
The resolution passed the Senate in the previous Congress, 56-41, but was not taken up by the House. It gained momentum following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has been reluctant to implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder.
Senators voted to move forward on an amendment that warns against pulling troops out of Syria and Afghanistan.
By MARIANNE LEVINE
The Senate issued a rebuke of President Donald Trump Thursday after it agreed to move forward on an amendment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that cautioned against the “precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
In a 68-23 vote, Republicans and Democrats voted in favor of forwarding the amendment, which would be attached to a broader Middle East legislative package.
In December, Trump announced unexpectedly that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. His announcement prompted a bipartisan backlash from lawmakers as well as his own national security team.
"It's not a partisan amendment," McConnell said prior to the vote Thursday. "It's not complicated. There is no poison pill. Just an opportunity for senators to go on the record about what our country should be doing in Syria and Afghanistan."
The Senate will next vote on passage of the amendment.
McConnell's amendment wasn’t the only attempt to admonish the Trump administration on foreign policy in the Senate this week.
In a separate initiative, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) reintroduced a resolution Wednesday to withdraw U.S. support from the Saudi-backed war in Yemen.
The resolution passed the Senate in the previous Congress, 56-41, but was not taken up by the House. It gained momentum following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has been reluctant to implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder.
Blame everyone but the Orangutan... Surprising? Not!
Trump blames former Speaker Paul Ryan for not getting border wall funding
By Betsy Klein
President Donald Trump blamed former House Speaker Paul Ryan for not getting funding for the wall, saying in an interview with The Daily Caller that Ryan assured him congressional Republicans would get the money when the President agreed not to veto the omnibus spending bill last year.
"Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, 'Please don't do that, we'll get you the wall.' And I said, 'I hope you mean that, because I don't like this bill,' " Trump told The Daily Caller in an interview Wednesday.
"Paul told me in the strongest of terms that, 'Please sign this and if you sign this we will get you that wall.' Which is desperately needed by our country. Humanitarian crisis, trafficking, drugs, you know, everything -- people, criminals, gangs, so, you know, we need the wall."
But Trump said, "And then he went lame duck," referring to Ryan's decision to retire instead of running for re-election in 2018.
"And once he went lame duck, it was just really an exercise in waving to people, and the power was gone so I was very disappointed. I was very disappointed in Paul because the wall was so desperately needed. And I'll get the wall," he added.
CNN has reached out to Ryan's representatives for comment on the President's remarks.
Ryan was the leader of the House for Trump's first two years in office and worked closely with the President on legislative priorities during that period of unified Republican government.
However, the relationship between Trump and the Wisconsin Republican was rarely tranquil. Ryan had been reluctant to support Trump during the 2016 campaign and cut ties with the future President after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape in October 2016. After Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in November 2016, Ryan embraced Trump and worked with him on Republican legislative priorities.
Still, the two remained at odds on a number of occasions. In his new book, former White House communications aide Cliff Sims describes Trump walking out of a meeting with Ryan on health care policy in the Oval Office. Sims said Trump left the meeting and went to a side room to watch TV instead of listening to Ryan talk about policy details.
Near the end of Ryan's time in office, Trump publicly criticized the then-speaker. When Trump asserted he could use executive action to end birthright citizenship in October, Ryan publicly disagreed with him. That led Trump to say Ryan "knows nothing" about birthright citizenship and should have been focusing on campaigning in the 2018 midterms instead of giving his opinions.
CNN reported in early November that Trump also blamed Ryan for not doing enough fundraising and costing the GOP control of the lower chamber. A source close to the White House told CNN's Jim Acosta on the night of the 2018 midterms that Trump was mad about Ryan about "everything."
By Betsy Klein
President Donald Trump blamed former House Speaker Paul Ryan for not getting funding for the wall, saying in an interview with The Daily Caller that Ryan assured him congressional Republicans would get the money when the President agreed not to veto the omnibus spending bill last year.
"Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, 'Please don't do that, we'll get you the wall.' And I said, 'I hope you mean that, because I don't like this bill,' " Trump told The Daily Caller in an interview Wednesday.
"Paul told me in the strongest of terms that, 'Please sign this and if you sign this we will get you that wall.' Which is desperately needed by our country. Humanitarian crisis, trafficking, drugs, you know, everything -- people, criminals, gangs, so, you know, we need the wall."
But Trump said, "And then he went lame duck," referring to Ryan's decision to retire instead of running for re-election in 2018.
"And once he went lame duck, it was just really an exercise in waving to people, and the power was gone so I was very disappointed. I was very disappointed in Paul because the wall was so desperately needed. And I'll get the wall," he added.
CNN has reached out to Ryan's representatives for comment on the President's remarks.
Ryan was the leader of the House for Trump's first two years in office and worked closely with the President on legislative priorities during that period of unified Republican government.
However, the relationship between Trump and the Wisconsin Republican was rarely tranquil. Ryan had been reluctant to support Trump during the 2016 campaign and cut ties with the future President after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape in October 2016. After Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in November 2016, Ryan embraced Trump and worked with him on Republican legislative priorities.
Still, the two remained at odds on a number of occasions. In his new book, former White House communications aide Cliff Sims describes Trump walking out of a meeting with Ryan on health care policy in the Oval Office. Sims said Trump left the meeting and went to a side room to watch TV instead of listening to Ryan talk about policy details.
Near the end of Ryan's time in office, Trump publicly criticized the then-speaker. When Trump asserted he could use executive action to end birthright citizenship in October, Ryan publicly disagreed with him. That led Trump to say Ryan "knows nothing" about birthright citizenship and should have been focusing on campaigning in the 2018 midterms instead of giving his opinions.
CNN reported in early November that Trump also blamed Ryan for not doing enough fundraising and costing the GOP control of the lower chamber. A source close to the White House told CNN's Jim Acosta on the night of the 2018 midterms that Trump was mad about Ryan about "everything."
Keep children in the best cages?
The problem with Melania Trump's 'Be Best' campaign
By Michael D'Antonio
Melania Trump still wants to help kids. She marked the second anniversary of her husband's administration by tweeting: "Our work in the East wing continues into 2019 with online safety, fighting opioid abuse & supporting the well-being of children everywhere! #BeBest"
After she posted the message, including the reference to her "Be Best" campaign, citizen critics had a field day with replies like "Except for the brown ones at the border" and "keep children in the best cages?"
The internet can be a nasty place, but in this case, the mockery is well-deserved. As national mother figures, first ladies have often championed kids. For any other first lady, awkward phrasing aside, "Be Best" would have been a safe choice. The trouble here is that her husband, the bullying and graceless Donald Trump, is very bad for kids.
The most tragic examples of President Trump's anti-child agenda involve those who turned to America for salvation and were met, instead, by trauma and death. Thousands of asylum-seeking children who traveled to the southern border have been separated from their parents and locked-up in fenced-in enclosures and camps. With experts warning of lifelong consequences, the practice continued. Authorities reported more than 2,700 separations, but recently admitted that thousands more may have been locked away.
No uncertainty attends the deaths of two of the separated children who died while in federal custody. Seven-year-old Jakelin Caal and 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo survived the grueling passage from Guatemala only to die on American soil.
Others have suffered the emotional and physical torment of separation from their parents and incarceration in unacceptable conditions. As the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics said, "These detention centers are bad. They're cold, the lights are on 24/7, there are open toilets, and as a child, if you're not sick you can get sick."
No medical degree was required to understand the hazard the Trump administration embraced as it pursued its cruel and unusual treatment of the asylum-seeking families. Complaints about unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical care were made months before the two children died. But if the administration can't even keep track of the number of children it has detained, why would we expect them be kept safe and healthy?
If the detention center deaths were a predictable consequence of bad policy and inept administration, the continued suffering of a Syrian teen blocked from getting medical care in the US is a case of knowing and intentional cruelty inflicted moment-by-moment. The 16-year-old Syrian girl named Marwa was disfigured when a bomb struck her home.
Syria is on the list of predominantly Muslim countries targeted by Trump's travel ban, so even though Marwa is now in Germany, the administration won't let her get surgery in Boston, according to the Guardian.
Others blocked by the policy include a 7-year-old Somali boy whose father has died and whose mother lives in the US. A Yemeni mother was permitted to visit to say goodbye to her dying child, but only after international celebrities took up her cause. Those who seek waivers without celebrity assistance suffer a 98% rejection rate.
The tragic irony of mercy granted on the basis of celebrity seems a fitting illustration of the Trump era. A president whose own self-constructed celebrity was key to his election could hardly be expected to cast a wary eye on a system that empowers the famous. A far less crass public figure, the first lady should have been given the benefit of the doubt when she announced her "Be Best" campaign for kids, and she received positive press when she visited the border facility in Texas last June. She undercut the effort by wearing a jacket decorated with the weird message "I really don't care, do u?" But she deserved credit for going where her husband had not.
Six month later, Melania Trump's credits have expired and her husband's administration has continued its malign agenda. In an apparent slap at his predecessor, whose own first lady made child nutrition a focus, the administration has decided that it would be okay to take some of the nutrients out of school lunches and replace them with sugar and salt. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says kids threw out too many of the healthy lunches because they didn't like the taste. The new standard will stop the waste. Advocates say Perdue was completely wrong on the facts, but his rules will cut costs and permit food companies to sell more highly-processed and less-perishable stuff to school buyers.
Equally concerning is the data on children and health insurance. In the first year of the Trump administration, the number of children not covered by insurance increased for the first time since 2008. Does anyone think a child can "Be Best" without check-ups or inoculations?
In fact, there are some Americans who do think kids should be spared vaccines, and the President himself has cast doubt on vaccination requirements. This doubt is so lacking in merit, and so readily refuted by science, that it should be a simple thing for the first lady to address with her husband, with whom she lives in the White House. Turn him around on this topic, and next she might persuade him to feed schoolchildren properly and even reunite all the boys and girls separated at the border with their parents. "Being Best" should start in the home.
By Michael D'Antonio
Melania Trump still wants to help kids. She marked the second anniversary of her husband's administration by tweeting: "Our work in the East wing continues into 2019 with online safety, fighting opioid abuse & supporting the well-being of children everywhere! #BeBest"
After she posted the message, including the reference to her "Be Best" campaign, citizen critics had a field day with replies like "Except for the brown ones at the border" and "keep children in the best cages?"
The internet can be a nasty place, but in this case, the mockery is well-deserved. As national mother figures, first ladies have often championed kids. For any other first lady, awkward phrasing aside, "Be Best" would have been a safe choice. The trouble here is that her husband, the bullying and graceless Donald Trump, is very bad for kids.
The most tragic examples of President Trump's anti-child agenda involve those who turned to America for salvation and were met, instead, by trauma and death. Thousands of asylum-seeking children who traveled to the southern border have been separated from their parents and locked-up in fenced-in enclosures and camps. With experts warning of lifelong consequences, the practice continued. Authorities reported more than 2,700 separations, but recently admitted that thousands more may have been locked away.
No uncertainty attends the deaths of two of the separated children who died while in federal custody. Seven-year-old Jakelin Caal and 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo survived the grueling passage from Guatemala only to die on American soil.
Others have suffered the emotional and physical torment of separation from their parents and incarceration in unacceptable conditions. As the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics said, "These detention centers are bad. They're cold, the lights are on 24/7, there are open toilets, and as a child, if you're not sick you can get sick."
No medical degree was required to understand the hazard the Trump administration embraced as it pursued its cruel and unusual treatment of the asylum-seeking families. Complaints about unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical care were made months before the two children died. But if the administration can't even keep track of the number of children it has detained, why would we expect them be kept safe and healthy?
If the detention center deaths were a predictable consequence of bad policy and inept administration, the continued suffering of a Syrian teen blocked from getting medical care in the US is a case of knowing and intentional cruelty inflicted moment-by-moment. The 16-year-old Syrian girl named Marwa was disfigured when a bomb struck her home.
Syria is on the list of predominantly Muslim countries targeted by Trump's travel ban, so even though Marwa is now in Germany, the administration won't let her get surgery in Boston, according to the Guardian.
Others blocked by the policy include a 7-year-old Somali boy whose father has died and whose mother lives in the US. A Yemeni mother was permitted to visit to say goodbye to her dying child, but only after international celebrities took up her cause. Those who seek waivers without celebrity assistance suffer a 98% rejection rate.
The tragic irony of mercy granted on the basis of celebrity seems a fitting illustration of the Trump era. A president whose own self-constructed celebrity was key to his election could hardly be expected to cast a wary eye on a system that empowers the famous. A far less crass public figure, the first lady should have been given the benefit of the doubt when she announced her "Be Best" campaign for kids, and she received positive press when she visited the border facility in Texas last June. She undercut the effort by wearing a jacket decorated with the weird message "I really don't care, do u?" But she deserved credit for going where her husband had not.
Six month later, Melania Trump's credits have expired and her husband's administration has continued its malign agenda. In an apparent slap at his predecessor, whose own first lady made child nutrition a focus, the administration has decided that it would be okay to take some of the nutrients out of school lunches and replace them with sugar and salt. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says kids threw out too many of the healthy lunches because they didn't like the taste. The new standard will stop the waste. Advocates say Perdue was completely wrong on the facts, but his rules will cut costs and permit food companies to sell more highly-processed and less-perishable stuff to school buyers.
Equally concerning is the data on children and health insurance. In the first year of the Trump administration, the number of children not covered by insurance increased for the first time since 2008. Does anyone think a child can "Be Best" without check-ups or inoculations?
In fact, there are some Americans who do think kids should be spared vaccines, and the President himself has cast doubt on vaccination requirements. This doubt is so lacking in merit, and so readily refuted by science, that it should be a simple thing for the first lady to address with her husband, with whom she lives in the White House. Turn him around on this topic, and next she might persuade him to feed schoolchildren properly and even reunite all the boys and girls separated at the border with their parents. "Being Best" should start in the home.
Crazy and Vicious Feud
Inside the Crazy and Vicious Feud Between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi—and Why It Matters
This face-off between right-wing conspiracy mongers could yield key information about the Trump-Russia scandal.
DAN FRIEDMAN
Roger Stone dedicated his 2017 book about President Donald Trump’s election to three people: Richard Nixon, the late president whose face is tattooed on Stone’s back; Juanita Broaddrick, whose claim that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978 Stone revived during the 2016 campaign; and Jerome Corsi, the right-wing conspiracy theorist whom Stone lauded as “a mentor, colleague, and one of the most effective investigative reporters writing today.” The book references Corsi dozens of times.
Stone has a different take on Corsi today. The self-professed Republican dirty trickster, who pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to Congress and witness tampering, has recently called his former mentor a “pathological liar,” “Judas,” and “Mueller’s minion.” Corsi, meanwhile, says he is happy to testify about his onetime pal.
Their relationship fractured late last year as the men, under scrutiny in Mueller’s Russia probe, offered contradictory accounts of their efforts to get information on WikiLeaks’ plans to publish emails stolen by Russian hackers from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats in 2016. Both are now threatening to sue each other for defamation.
This feud—in which ex-allies famous for spreading false claims denounce each other for defamation—may strike many as heavy on karma and a bizarre sideshow. But the spat does matter for Mueller’s investigation. Though Corsi has provided some information to Mueller, prosectors have accused him of covering up other details of his WikiLeaks-related interactions with Stone. And Stone was indicted for lying to Congress about his dealings with Corsi and how they relate to WikiLeaks. So this sparring match does concern a key part of the Trump-Russia scandal: possible Stone links to WikiLeaks—and whether any of his activity was connected to the Trump campaign.
According to Stone, he and Corsi have been acquainted since 2011. That is when Corsi, an early proponent of the false claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, began talking to Trump, whom Stone has long advised politically, about birtherism, contributing to Trump’s embrace of the issue. Corsi was also a lead orchestrator of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran a discredited but politically effective smear campaign claiming that 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry did not deserve his Vietnam war medals.
In 2016, with Stone acting as an outside adviser to the Trump campaign and Corsi writing for right-wing website World Net Daily, the men worked closely together. In his 2017 book, The Making of the President 2016, Stone cites Corsi’s articles on a number of anti-Clinton issues that Stone hyped during the campaign, including questions about Hillary Clinton’s health and claims that Bill Clinton had an unacknowledged black son. Stone is an accomplished conspiracy theorist in his own right; he once wrote a book claiming that Lyndon B. Johnson masterminded the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In late July 2016, Stone emailed Corsi telling him to “get to” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had just dumped stolen Democratic National Committee emails, to find out what else Assange had planned. Corsi responded on August 2, telling Stone that WikiLeaks had more politically damaging information on Clinton’s campaign and intended to release part of it in October. Corsi also indicated that some of the information would relate to Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. On August 21, Stone tweeted: “Trust me, it will soon [be] the Podesta’s time in the barrel.” That statement seemed prescient when, in October, WikiLeaks began releasing Podesta’s emails—hours after the now-notorious Access Hollywood video emerged.
During the summer of 2016, Stone repeatedly intimated in public that he had inside access to WikiLeaks, saying that he had communicated with Assange. But as investigations into Trump’s Russia ties ramped up in 2017, Stone ran from those claims and insisted he had engaged in no direct interaction with Assange. In testimony to the House intelligence committee and in public accounts, Stone has offered a complicated explanation for the Podesta “in the barrel” tweet, asserting that he had been referring to Podesta’s relationship to his brother Tony, a lobbyist whose clients included Ukraine. Stone said he had based his tweet on research that Corsi had sent him. Stone also maintained that he had merely used Randy Credico, a New York City radio host and comedian, as an informal back channel to Assange during the campaign—a claim that Credico himself has challenged.
Stone and Corsi remained aligned after Trump’s election. Stone helped Corsi land a job at the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars, where Stone was a contributor. Corsi was named Infowars‘ Washington bureau chief, though he lives in New Jersey, receiving a large salary for a journalist: $15,000 a month. At Infowars, Corsi told an associate that he was “working closely” with Stone on the case of Seth Rich, the former Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered in 2016 in Washington, according to an email provided to Mother Jones. Stone and Corsi were working to cast doubt on US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russian intelligence stole the Democratic emails and gave them to WikiLeaks by pushing the unsupported right-wing conspiracy theory that Rich leaked the emails to Assange’s group and was murdered as a result.
The two men’s break came this past November, as Mueller’s team drilled down on Stone’s WikiLeaks contacts, interviewing various associates of the Republican operative. Among them was Corsi, who prosecutors threatened to charge for making false statements about his communications with Stone. Corsi says that he told investigators he had helped Stone concoct a phony explanation for his “time in the barrel” tweet. Corsi asserts he told prosecutors that nine days after Stone’s famous Podesta tweet, Stone had asked him to write a memo on Podesta’s past business dealings. According to Corsi, he told a grand jury that he understood the memo to be “a cover story” to “explain this tweet.”
When Stone appeared before the House intelligence committee in September 2017, he was asked if he had any records about any efforts to interact with WikiLeaks. He said there were no such records, and failed to reveal his emails with Corsi about WikiLeaks. And he did not disclose that he had asked Corsi to connect with WikiLeaks. Essentially, according to the Mueller indictment, Stone concealed from the committee his attempt to use Corsi to reach WikiLeaks. Mueller’s indictment of Stone also intriguingly notes that “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed” to ask Stone to make contact with WikiLeaks. This raises the question of whether Stone’s attempt to use Corsi to contact WikiLeaks was connected to Trump or top campaign officials.
Stone also told the intelligence committee that it was Corsi’s memo that had led to his tweet, claiming that Corsi had communicated the crux of the memo’s content prior to the tweet. But Corsi, who said he received immunity from Mueller for this testimony, presented an account that implicated Stone in perjury.
Stone has called Corsi’s cover-story assertion “categorically false and ludicrous not to mention illogical.” He also says that any false statements he made to Congress were “immaterial and without intent.”
Since Corsi has publicly undercut Stone’s testimony, Stone has attacked him frequently and viciously. On Instagram and Facebook, he has called Corsi a liar and suggested Corsi had a drinking problem. After receiving questions from the Washington Post indicating that Mueller was looking into whether Stone had arranged Corsi’s hiring at Infowars in an effort to buy Corsi’s silence, Infowars published an article denying that its payments to Corsi were intended as hush money and asserted that he had been dismissed from his job in June “because of his generally poor work performance” and other shortcomings. In a statement included in that story, Stone said Corsi “was fired after a drunken meltdown in a Washington DC restaurant” last year.
Following these attacks, Corsi told Mother Jones he might file a defamation suit against Stone and Infowars. “My patience is thin,” he says. “I’m not going to put up with defamation and efforts to hurt my reputation.” (Corsi, who sued the Washington Post last week, also said he may sue Politico, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart over what he claims is inaccurate reporting about him.)
Stone has also suggested he may sue Corsi. “Lies have legal consequences,” Stone wrote on Instagram recently. “Stay tuned!” Stone kept up his attacks even after his January 25 arrest. On Friday night, hours after he was released on bond, Stone called Corsi a “Judas” in an Instagram post. This week, Corsi lobbed another bomb at Stone, asserting in interviews, including an MSNBC appearance on Monday, that on October 7, 2016, as soon as the Access Hollywood video was released, Stone asked him to contact WikiLeaks and get the group to release the Podesta emails to distract from the news of Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women. Corsi told Mother Jones that his phone records show he had three phone calls with Stone that day.
Still, Corsi seems to be holding back in his beef with Stone. Despite implicating Stone in an effort to mislead the intelligence committee and accusing him of defamation, Corsi in interviews with Mother Jones stopped short of calling Stone a liar. “I don’t dispute Roger’s perceptions,” he says. “Roger just has a different perception of things than I have.”
Corsi and Stone do retain a shared interest in one element of the scandal. Both now claim that the information on WikiLeaks’ plans that Corsi gave Stone in August 2016 was based on nothing but Corsi’s intuition. That is, Corsi says he figured out on his own that Assange had received stolen Podesta emails. (His explanation is complicated and based on the claim that he analyzed certain facts about the Democratic National Committee servers, though Podesta’s Gmail account, which was hacked, was not linked to the DNC network.) Corsi insists that he received no guidance from WikiLeaks or from intermediaries who might have known details of the hacked material that Moscow gave the group.
Corsi says that prosecutors “had a hard time accepting” this story, presumably finding it improbable that Corsi merely deduced what turned out to be highly accurate information about WikiLeaks’ plans.
One of the major questions hanging over the Corsi-Stone blow-up is why Stone sought to conceal his WikiLeaks contacts with Corsi, pointing instead to Credico as his back channel. Why cover that up?
What’s clear is there’s more to the story of Corsi and Stone’s still-murky interactions during the 2016 election—and thanks to their feud, the public may end up hearing about it.
This face-off between right-wing conspiracy mongers could yield key information about the Trump-Russia scandal.
DAN FRIEDMAN
Roger Stone dedicated his 2017 book about President Donald Trump’s election to three people: Richard Nixon, the late president whose face is tattooed on Stone’s back; Juanita Broaddrick, whose claim that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978 Stone revived during the 2016 campaign; and Jerome Corsi, the right-wing conspiracy theorist whom Stone lauded as “a mentor, colleague, and one of the most effective investigative reporters writing today.” The book references Corsi dozens of times.
Stone has a different take on Corsi today. The self-professed Republican dirty trickster, who pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to Congress and witness tampering, has recently called his former mentor a “pathological liar,” “Judas,” and “Mueller’s minion.” Corsi, meanwhile, says he is happy to testify about his onetime pal.
Their relationship fractured late last year as the men, under scrutiny in Mueller’s Russia probe, offered contradictory accounts of their efforts to get information on WikiLeaks’ plans to publish emails stolen by Russian hackers from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats in 2016. Both are now threatening to sue each other for defamation.
This feud—in which ex-allies famous for spreading false claims denounce each other for defamation—may strike many as heavy on karma and a bizarre sideshow. But the spat does matter for Mueller’s investigation. Though Corsi has provided some information to Mueller, prosectors have accused him of covering up other details of his WikiLeaks-related interactions with Stone. And Stone was indicted for lying to Congress about his dealings with Corsi and how they relate to WikiLeaks. So this sparring match does concern a key part of the Trump-Russia scandal: possible Stone links to WikiLeaks—and whether any of his activity was connected to the Trump campaign.
According to Stone, he and Corsi have been acquainted since 2011. That is when Corsi, an early proponent of the false claim that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, began talking to Trump, whom Stone has long advised politically, about birtherism, contributing to Trump’s embrace of the issue. Corsi was also a lead orchestrator of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran a discredited but politically effective smear campaign claiming that 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry did not deserve his Vietnam war medals.
In 2016, with Stone acting as an outside adviser to the Trump campaign and Corsi writing for right-wing website World Net Daily, the men worked closely together. In his 2017 book, The Making of the President 2016, Stone cites Corsi’s articles on a number of anti-Clinton issues that Stone hyped during the campaign, including questions about Hillary Clinton’s health and claims that Bill Clinton had an unacknowledged black son. Stone is an accomplished conspiracy theorist in his own right; he once wrote a book claiming that Lyndon B. Johnson masterminded the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In late July 2016, Stone emailed Corsi telling him to “get to” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had just dumped stolen Democratic National Committee emails, to find out what else Assange had planned. Corsi responded on August 2, telling Stone that WikiLeaks had more politically damaging information on Clinton’s campaign and intended to release part of it in October. Corsi also indicated that some of the information would relate to Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. On August 21, Stone tweeted: “Trust me, it will soon [be] the Podesta’s time in the barrel.” That statement seemed prescient when, in October, WikiLeaks began releasing Podesta’s emails—hours after the now-notorious Access Hollywood video emerged.
During the summer of 2016, Stone repeatedly intimated in public that he had inside access to WikiLeaks, saying that he had communicated with Assange. But as investigations into Trump’s Russia ties ramped up in 2017, Stone ran from those claims and insisted he had engaged in no direct interaction with Assange. In testimony to the House intelligence committee and in public accounts, Stone has offered a complicated explanation for the Podesta “in the barrel” tweet, asserting that he had been referring to Podesta’s relationship to his brother Tony, a lobbyist whose clients included Ukraine. Stone said he had based his tweet on research that Corsi had sent him. Stone also maintained that he had merely used Randy Credico, a New York City radio host and comedian, as an informal back channel to Assange during the campaign—a claim that Credico himself has challenged.
Stone and Corsi remained aligned after Trump’s election. Stone helped Corsi land a job at the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars, where Stone was a contributor. Corsi was named Infowars‘ Washington bureau chief, though he lives in New Jersey, receiving a large salary for a journalist: $15,000 a month. At Infowars, Corsi told an associate that he was “working closely” with Stone on the case of Seth Rich, the former Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered in 2016 in Washington, according to an email provided to Mother Jones. Stone and Corsi were working to cast doubt on US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russian intelligence stole the Democratic emails and gave them to WikiLeaks by pushing the unsupported right-wing conspiracy theory that Rich leaked the emails to Assange’s group and was murdered as a result.
The two men’s break came this past November, as Mueller’s team drilled down on Stone’s WikiLeaks contacts, interviewing various associates of the Republican operative. Among them was Corsi, who prosecutors threatened to charge for making false statements about his communications with Stone. Corsi says that he told investigators he had helped Stone concoct a phony explanation for his “time in the barrel” tweet. Corsi asserts he told prosecutors that nine days after Stone’s famous Podesta tweet, Stone had asked him to write a memo on Podesta’s past business dealings. According to Corsi, he told a grand jury that he understood the memo to be “a cover story” to “explain this tweet.”
When Stone appeared before the House intelligence committee in September 2017, he was asked if he had any records about any efforts to interact with WikiLeaks. He said there were no such records, and failed to reveal his emails with Corsi about WikiLeaks. And he did not disclose that he had asked Corsi to connect with WikiLeaks. Essentially, according to the Mueller indictment, Stone concealed from the committee his attempt to use Corsi to reach WikiLeaks. Mueller’s indictment of Stone also intriguingly notes that “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed” to ask Stone to make contact with WikiLeaks. This raises the question of whether Stone’s attempt to use Corsi to contact WikiLeaks was connected to Trump or top campaign officials.
Stone also told the intelligence committee that it was Corsi’s memo that had led to his tweet, claiming that Corsi had communicated the crux of the memo’s content prior to the tweet. But Corsi, who said he received immunity from Mueller for this testimony, presented an account that implicated Stone in perjury.
Stone has called Corsi’s cover-story assertion “categorically false and ludicrous not to mention illogical.” He also says that any false statements he made to Congress were “immaterial and without intent.”
Since Corsi has publicly undercut Stone’s testimony, Stone has attacked him frequently and viciously. On Instagram and Facebook, he has called Corsi a liar and suggested Corsi had a drinking problem. After receiving questions from the Washington Post indicating that Mueller was looking into whether Stone had arranged Corsi’s hiring at Infowars in an effort to buy Corsi’s silence, Infowars published an article denying that its payments to Corsi were intended as hush money and asserted that he had been dismissed from his job in June “because of his generally poor work performance” and other shortcomings. In a statement included in that story, Stone said Corsi “was fired after a drunken meltdown in a Washington DC restaurant” last year.
Following these attacks, Corsi told Mother Jones he might file a defamation suit against Stone and Infowars. “My patience is thin,” he says. “I’m not going to put up with defamation and efforts to hurt my reputation.” (Corsi, who sued the Washington Post last week, also said he may sue Politico, the Daily Caller, and Breitbart over what he claims is inaccurate reporting about him.)
Stone has also suggested he may sue Corsi. “Lies have legal consequences,” Stone wrote on Instagram recently. “Stay tuned!” Stone kept up his attacks even after his January 25 arrest. On Friday night, hours after he was released on bond, Stone called Corsi a “Judas” in an Instagram post. This week, Corsi lobbed another bomb at Stone, asserting in interviews, including an MSNBC appearance on Monday, that on October 7, 2016, as soon as the Access Hollywood video was released, Stone asked him to contact WikiLeaks and get the group to release the Podesta emails to distract from the news of Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women. Corsi told Mother Jones that his phone records show he had three phone calls with Stone that day.
Still, Corsi seems to be holding back in his beef with Stone. Despite implicating Stone in an effort to mislead the intelligence committee and accusing him of defamation, Corsi in interviews with Mother Jones stopped short of calling Stone a liar. “I don’t dispute Roger’s perceptions,” he says. “Roger just has a different perception of things than I have.”
Corsi and Stone do retain a shared interest in one element of the scandal. Both now claim that the information on WikiLeaks’ plans that Corsi gave Stone in August 2016 was based on nothing but Corsi’s intuition. That is, Corsi says he figured out on his own that Assange had received stolen Podesta emails. (His explanation is complicated and based on the claim that he analyzed certain facts about the Democratic National Committee servers, though Podesta’s Gmail account, which was hacked, was not linked to the DNC network.) Corsi insists that he received no guidance from WikiLeaks or from intermediaries who might have known details of the hacked material that Moscow gave the group.
Corsi says that prosecutors “had a hard time accepting” this story, presumably finding it improbable that Corsi merely deduced what turned out to be highly accurate information about WikiLeaks’ plans.
One of the major questions hanging over the Corsi-Stone blow-up is why Stone sought to conceal his WikiLeaks contacts with Corsi, pointing instead to Credico as his back channel. Why cover that up?
What’s clear is there’s more to the story of Corsi and Stone’s still-murky interactions during the 2016 election—and thanks to their feud, the public may end up hearing about it.
Let's fuck the natives... Again...
During shutdown, U.S. quietly moved ahead with oil leases near sacred land
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. land managers will move forward in March with the sale of oil and gas leases that include land near Chaco Culture National Historical Park and other sites sacred to Native American tribes.
The sale comes as Democratic members of Congress, tribal leaders and environmentalists have criticized the federal Bureau of Land Management for pushing ahead with drilling permit reviews and preparations for energy leases despite the recent partial government shutdown.
With limited staff on duty over the last month, the critics complained that they were locked out of the process because the agency didn't release any information about the sale. They also questioned whether the agency would be able to adequately review the land that's up for bid and whether it would consider protests to the move.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said in an email that he's concerned about the latest attempt to lease potentially culturally significant land in New Mexico without a more comprehensive plan in place.
"It's a mistake that while critical public services were shuttered for 35 days during the government shutdown, BLM still moved forward with this opaque process," Udall said.
Agency spokeswoman Cathy Garber said officials decided to push back the lease sale by a couple of weeks to accommodate a public protest period that was delayed because of the shutdown. The agency quietly confirmed on its website that it would accept comments starting Feb. 11 and that the sale was scheduled for March 28.
Depending on the outcome of the protest period, it's possible for the agency to withdraw the land in question, including nine parcels near Chaco, a world heritage site with massive stone structures, kivas and other features that archaeologists believe offered a religious or ritualistic experience.
In all, more than 50 parcels in New Mexico and Oklahoma will be up for bid.
"We cannot help but protest what appears to be an intentional bias in the favoring of oil and gas development over other interests," former Acoma Pueblo Gov. Kurt Riley said last week during a congressional forum.
Riley and others said the shutdown exacerbated an already tense situation over the expansion of oil and gas development in northwestern New Mexico.
In recent years, land managers have declined oil and gas exploration on land within 10 miles of the park, creating an informal buffer. In early 2018, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke halted a lease sale over cultural concerns after hundreds of people protested.
The battle over energy development around Chaco has been simmering for years. In 2015, government officials visited the region in hopes of brokering a way forward for the tribes and energy companies.
The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs began working together on revamping the resource management plan for the San Juan Basin, which covers a larger portion of northwestern New Mexico and parts of southern Colorado.
The partnership was meant to ensure tribes would be consulted and that scientific and archaeological analysis would be done to guarantee cultural sensitivity.
Udall argued that the repeated pursuit of land near the park and the lack of a final management plan have resulted in "a scattershot, shoot-from-the-hip approach." He called for the upcoming lease sale to be delayed.
Paul Reed with Archaeology Southwest said the informal buffer should be adopted as part of the management plan because scientists have barely scratched the surface when it comes to studying and understanding Chaco.
"Aside from the sites that everyone knows about in Chaco, there are a number of communities that exist within the 10-mile zone that we think need a greater level of protection," he said.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. land managers will move forward in March with the sale of oil and gas leases that include land near Chaco Culture National Historical Park and other sites sacred to Native American tribes.
The sale comes as Democratic members of Congress, tribal leaders and environmentalists have criticized the federal Bureau of Land Management for pushing ahead with drilling permit reviews and preparations for energy leases despite the recent partial government shutdown.
With limited staff on duty over the last month, the critics complained that they were locked out of the process because the agency didn't release any information about the sale. They also questioned whether the agency would be able to adequately review the land that's up for bid and whether it would consider protests to the move.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said in an email that he's concerned about the latest attempt to lease potentially culturally significant land in New Mexico without a more comprehensive plan in place.
"It's a mistake that while critical public services were shuttered for 35 days during the government shutdown, BLM still moved forward with this opaque process," Udall said.
Agency spokeswoman Cathy Garber said officials decided to push back the lease sale by a couple of weeks to accommodate a public protest period that was delayed because of the shutdown. The agency quietly confirmed on its website that it would accept comments starting Feb. 11 and that the sale was scheduled for March 28.
Depending on the outcome of the protest period, it's possible for the agency to withdraw the land in question, including nine parcels near Chaco, a world heritage site with massive stone structures, kivas and other features that archaeologists believe offered a religious or ritualistic experience.
In all, more than 50 parcels in New Mexico and Oklahoma will be up for bid.
"We cannot help but protest what appears to be an intentional bias in the favoring of oil and gas development over other interests," former Acoma Pueblo Gov. Kurt Riley said last week during a congressional forum.
Riley and others said the shutdown exacerbated an already tense situation over the expansion of oil and gas development in northwestern New Mexico.
In recent years, land managers have declined oil and gas exploration on land within 10 miles of the park, creating an informal buffer. In early 2018, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke halted a lease sale over cultural concerns after hundreds of people protested.
The battle over energy development around Chaco has been simmering for years. In 2015, government officials visited the region in hopes of brokering a way forward for the tribes and energy companies.
The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs began working together on revamping the resource management plan for the San Juan Basin, which covers a larger portion of northwestern New Mexico and parts of southern Colorado.
The partnership was meant to ensure tribes would be consulted and that scientific and archaeological analysis would be done to guarantee cultural sensitivity.
Udall argued that the repeated pursuit of land near the park and the lack of a final management plan have resulted in "a scattershot, shoot-from-the-hip approach." He called for the upcoming lease sale to be delayed.
Paul Reed with Archaeology Southwest said the informal buffer should be adopted as part of the management plan because scientists have barely scratched the surface when it comes to studying and understanding Chaco.
"Aside from the sites that everyone knows about in Chaco, there are a number of communities that exist within the 10-mile zone that we think need a greater level of protection," he said.
Russian Russian Russian Russian Russian Russian Collusion....
Pro-Russian Twitter account used non-public material from Mueller's team in effort to discredit Russia probe
By Katelyn Polantz
The Justice Department alleged Wednesday that Russia has continued pushing online disinformation to discredit the American government, after a pro-Russian Twitter account spread confidential information from a criminal case that special counsel Robert Mueller's team brought against a Russian company for social media conspiracy.
The development highlights just how tense the standoff has become between US law enforcement and the Russian operation accused of interfering in the 2016 election.
The situation stems from terabytes of data in the criminal case against Russian company Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a social media effort aimed at swaying American voters in 2016. The Justice Department has been turning over evidence to Concord's US-based legal team, who can review it with a limited number of people as they fight the case.
Prosecutors now allege that some of the information turned over to Concord before trial got out in October -- after a now-suspended Twitter user touted that it had a "Mueller database" and a computer with a Russian IP address published thousands of documents online.
More than a thousand of those documents were part of the case's evidence collection, and were listed online under labels and folders known only to those involved in the case, the prosecutors said.
Other documents published online and mixed in with the real evidence were "junk material," prosecutors said.
"Certain non-sensitive discovery materials in the defense's possession appear to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. political system," the prosecutors wrote Wednesday.
October effort
The pro-Russia Twitter account at the center of Wednesday's filing first reached out to a CNN reporter in a private message in October. Reporters at other news organizations received a similar message.
"We are anonymous hackers. We are like hundreds of others, but we are the one and only who got the Special Counsel Mueller database," the message from @HackingRedstone read. "We got into a Russian lawyer company local net that had permission from ReedSmith (Russian attorneys) to view and download all the files they need from their database through the remove server. You might wonder why we want to share all of this information with you. So, you're just one of the few who can handle it in the right way. You are the one who can tell people the truth!"
While the reporter did not respond to the message, CNN did seek to find out from special counsel and the defense team if they had been hacked.
In late October, @HackingRedstone shared a webpage on Twitter that led to the documents from the criminal case.
Prosecutors didn't say in their filing Wednesday how the documents got online.
The law firm Reed Smith, which represents Concord, said in a statement Wednesday that it was "confident" the firm had not been hacked, nor did its members violate the court order prohibiting the spread of case files.
"We maintain the highest levels of security and protection for all of our systems and their contents," the law firm said. "Reed Smith has never hosted or maintained any of the data at issue here produced by the government in the Concord case on Reed Smith computer systems. A third-party vendor has hosted all such data and has assured us that there has been no breach of the database that maintains the data."
Information lockdown
The evidence shared online was what prosecutors call "non-sensitive" and included information available elsewhere on the internet, like public posts that Concord's conspirators allegedly put on social media sites in 2016.
Yet other evidence, which was not leaked to the public, is so sensitive that sharing it with even a limited number of Russians could expose American national security secrets, prosecutors have argued. The prosecutors especially don't want the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is charged in the case and owned Concord, to have access, according to several court filings.
So far, a federal judge has allowed the Justice Department to keep the information locked down so it can't be shared with others outside the case. The sensitive evidence is kept on computers disconnected from the internet.
But Concord says it needs to share documents in the case with Russians, including Prigozhin, as it prepares for trial and the US-based lawyers translate much of it from Russian.
But the prosecutors have pushed back. "Concord's request to send the sensitive discovery to the Russian Federation unreasonably risks the national security interests of the United States," the prosecutors wrote Wednesday.
Instead, the prosecutors suggest Prigozhin come to the US to face his charges and review the evidence.
Other actors
The Justice Department points out in its filing Wednesday that "individuals and entities" engaging in the disinformation campaign still haven't been charged in the case. In previous court documents, prosecutors have said a federal grand jury continues to work on a matter related to Concord, suggesting that more indictments could come.
The prosecutors use the breadth of the online activity to argue that sensitive materials in the case shouldn't be shared more widely.
The sensitive materials disclose "sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations."
Handing that information to Russians would allow their "country to learn of these techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining US national security interests, including investigations into the conducts of these foreign actors," the filing said.
Concord's 13 alleged co-conspirators, who are all Russian, haven't appeared in US court, and are unlikely to be extradited to the US to face their charges.
If it were Russians who spread the evidence online, they also likely won't be punished, prosecutors said.
By Katelyn Polantz
The Justice Department alleged Wednesday that Russia has continued pushing online disinformation to discredit the American government, after a pro-Russian Twitter account spread confidential information from a criminal case that special counsel Robert Mueller's team brought against a Russian company for social media conspiracy.
The development highlights just how tense the standoff has become between US law enforcement and the Russian operation accused of interfering in the 2016 election.
The situation stems from terabytes of data in the criminal case against Russian company Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a social media effort aimed at swaying American voters in 2016. The Justice Department has been turning over evidence to Concord's US-based legal team, who can review it with a limited number of people as they fight the case.
Prosecutors now allege that some of the information turned over to Concord before trial got out in October -- after a now-suspended Twitter user touted that it had a "Mueller database" and a computer with a Russian IP address published thousands of documents online.
More than a thousand of those documents were part of the case's evidence collection, and were listed online under labels and folders known only to those involved in the case, the prosecutors said.
Other documents published online and mixed in with the real evidence were "junk material," prosecutors said.
"Certain non-sensitive discovery materials in the defense's possession appear to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. political system," the prosecutors wrote Wednesday.
October effort
The pro-Russia Twitter account at the center of Wednesday's filing first reached out to a CNN reporter in a private message in October. Reporters at other news organizations received a similar message.
"We are anonymous hackers. We are like hundreds of others, but we are the one and only who got the Special Counsel Mueller database," the message from @HackingRedstone read. "We got into a Russian lawyer company local net that had permission from ReedSmith (Russian attorneys) to view and download all the files they need from their database through the remove server. You might wonder why we want to share all of this information with you. So, you're just one of the few who can handle it in the right way. You are the one who can tell people the truth!"
While the reporter did not respond to the message, CNN did seek to find out from special counsel and the defense team if they had been hacked.
In late October, @HackingRedstone shared a webpage on Twitter that led to the documents from the criminal case.
Prosecutors didn't say in their filing Wednesday how the documents got online.
The law firm Reed Smith, which represents Concord, said in a statement Wednesday that it was "confident" the firm had not been hacked, nor did its members violate the court order prohibiting the spread of case files.
"We maintain the highest levels of security and protection for all of our systems and their contents," the law firm said. "Reed Smith has never hosted or maintained any of the data at issue here produced by the government in the Concord case on Reed Smith computer systems. A third-party vendor has hosted all such data and has assured us that there has been no breach of the database that maintains the data."
Information lockdown
The evidence shared online was what prosecutors call "non-sensitive" and included information available elsewhere on the internet, like public posts that Concord's conspirators allegedly put on social media sites in 2016.
Yet other evidence, which was not leaked to the public, is so sensitive that sharing it with even a limited number of Russians could expose American national security secrets, prosecutors have argued. The prosecutors especially don't want the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is charged in the case and owned Concord, to have access, according to several court filings.
So far, a federal judge has allowed the Justice Department to keep the information locked down so it can't be shared with others outside the case. The sensitive evidence is kept on computers disconnected from the internet.
But Concord says it needs to share documents in the case with Russians, including Prigozhin, as it prepares for trial and the US-based lawyers translate much of it from Russian.
But the prosecutors have pushed back. "Concord's request to send the sensitive discovery to the Russian Federation unreasonably risks the national security interests of the United States," the prosecutors wrote Wednesday.
Instead, the prosecutors suggest Prigozhin come to the US to face his charges and review the evidence.
Other actors
The Justice Department points out in its filing Wednesday that "individuals and entities" engaging in the disinformation campaign still haven't been charged in the case. In previous court documents, prosecutors have said a federal grand jury continues to work on a matter related to Concord, suggesting that more indictments could come.
The prosecutors use the breadth of the online activity to argue that sensitive materials in the case shouldn't be shared more widely.
The sensitive materials disclose "sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations."
Handing that information to Russians would allow their "country to learn of these techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining US national security interests, including investigations into the conducts of these foreign actors," the filing said.
Concord's 13 alleged co-conspirators, who are all Russian, haven't appeared in US court, and are unlikely to be extradited to the US to face their charges.
If it were Russians who spread the evidence online, they also likely won't be punished, prosecutors said.
3,000 more US troops.....
Over 3,000 more US troops headed to southern border
By Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr
Over 3,000 additional active duty troops will be deployed to the southern US border to bolster security joining the 2,300 troops already there, several defense officials tell CNN.
The additional forces will allow the Department of Defense to fulfill a Department of Homeland Security request for assistance that acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan approved earlier this month.
President Donald Trump confirmed that additional troops would be sent via a tweet on Thursday.
"More troops being sent to the Southern Border to stop the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large Caravans, into our Country. We have stopped the previous Caravans, and we will stop these also," Trump wrote.
The combined active duty force at the border is expected to be slightly smaller than the mission's peak of 5,900 troops.
The Pentagon had previously said that the new troops would be involved in "mobile surveillance and detection, as well as concertina wire emplacement between ports of entry."
The Department of Homeland Security is "tracking" three caravans en route to the United States, "one of which is over 12,000 people in the latest estimate," Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
Defense officials have told CNN that the new mobile surveillance would include troops manning mobile observation posts and vehicles that would involve the troops radioing Customs and Border Protection personnel to intercept any detected illegal activity.
US Customs and Border Protection "has requested that an additional 150 miles of concertina wire be emplaced no later than March 31," Rood and the Director of Operations for the Joint Staff Vice Adm. Michael Gilday wrote in a joint statement to the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
By the end of November, the military had already placed over 10 miles of wire obstacles in Texas, Arizona and California.
This effort is separate from the White House-led effort to potentially use existing Pentagon funds and personnel to help build new sections of a border wall.
US troops will also continue to provide aviation support to Customs and Border Protection, which has historically involved US military aircraft flying CBP personnel to locations along the border.
The approximately 2,300 active-duty troops currently deployed to the border were originally scheduled to come home on December 15 but their deployment was extended to the end of January at the request of DHS. Officials say that many but likely not all of those troops will now stay until September.
The cost of that deployment was estimated at about $132 million, however that estimate was based on an original end date of January 31.
Additionally, Trump had previously ordered the deployment of National Guard forces to help secure the border. There are about 2,200 National Guardsmen assigned to that mission. That deployment, which also is scheduled to end in September, is estimated to cost $550 million.
The Pentagon has declined to say where the money to pay for the deployments is coming from.
Deploying active-duty troops for border security has been questioned by lawmakers.
"The deployments to the border seem to conflict with the (Defense) Department's stated efforts to rebuild readiness," Rep. Adam Smith, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.
"This deployment to the southern border seems to exacerbate that problem by further disrupting unit training cycles," he added.
By Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr
Over 3,000 additional active duty troops will be deployed to the southern US border to bolster security joining the 2,300 troops already there, several defense officials tell CNN.
The additional forces will allow the Department of Defense to fulfill a Department of Homeland Security request for assistance that acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan approved earlier this month.
President Donald Trump confirmed that additional troops would be sent via a tweet on Thursday.
"More troops being sent to the Southern Border to stop the attempted Invasion of Illegals, through large Caravans, into our Country. We have stopped the previous Caravans, and we will stop these also," Trump wrote.
The combined active duty force at the border is expected to be slightly smaller than the mission's peak of 5,900 troops.
The Pentagon had previously said that the new troops would be involved in "mobile surveillance and detection, as well as concertina wire emplacement between ports of entry."
The Department of Homeland Security is "tracking" three caravans en route to the United States, "one of which is over 12,000 people in the latest estimate," Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
Defense officials have told CNN that the new mobile surveillance would include troops manning mobile observation posts and vehicles that would involve the troops radioing Customs and Border Protection personnel to intercept any detected illegal activity.
US Customs and Border Protection "has requested that an additional 150 miles of concertina wire be emplaced no later than March 31," Rood and the Director of Operations for the Joint Staff Vice Adm. Michael Gilday wrote in a joint statement to the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
By the end of November, the military had already placed over 10 miles of wire obstacles in Texas, Arizona and California.
This effort is separate from the White House-led effort to potentially use existing Pentagon funds and personnel to help build new sections of a border wall.
US troops will also continue to provide aviation support to Customs and Border Protection, which has historically involved US military aircraft flying CBP personnel to locations along the border.
The approximately 2,300 active-duty troops currently deployed to the border were originally scheduled to come home on December 15 but their deployment was extended to the end of January at the request of DHS. Officials say that many but likely not all of those troops will now stay until September.
The cost of that deployment was estimated at about $132 million, however that estimate was based on an original end date of January 31.
Additionally, Trump had previously ordered the deployment of National Guard forces to help secure the border. There are about 2,200 National Guardsmen assigned to that mission. That deployment, which also is scheduled to end in September, is estimated to cost $550 million.
The Pentagon has declined to say where the money to pay for the deployments is coming from.
Deploying active-duty troops for border security has been questioned by lawmakers.
"The deployments to the border seem to conflict with the (Defense) Department's stated efforts to rebuild readiness," Rep. Adam Smith, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.
"This deployment to the southern border seems to exacerbate that problem by further disrupting unit training cycles," he added.
Declaring a national emergency....
The chances of Donald Trump declaring a national emergency at the border just went way up
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
Three very important things happened on Thursday in Washington.
First, President Donald Trump tweeted this at 7:16 a.m.: "Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!"
Second, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this of the congressional committee working to craft a compromise bill too keep the government open: "There's not going to be any wall money in the legislation."
Third, Trump responded with this: "If there's no wall it doesn't work. She's just playing games. If there's no wall it doesn't work."
Which, well, seems like a dead end.
And a pretty definitive one, given that the conference committee on Capitol Hill only began meeting to hash out a compromise (or to see if there was a compromise to be found) this week. It appears to be over before the talks even really began. And with the next possible government shutdown -- on February 15 -- just over two weeks away.
Glass-half-full types will note that Trump says (and tweets) all sorts of things -- things that are often at odds with one another and that he often goes back on by the next day. And they will also point out that while Pelosi's pledge that there would be no money for a wall feels conclusive, some other things she said in the press conference suggested she still believes compromise is possible.
Asked about existing barriers and other non-wall options, Pelosi said this:
"If the President wants to call that a wall, he can call it a wall. He's referencing what we already have, almost 700 miles of wall. So again it's a place where enhanced fencing, Normandy fencing would work. Let them have that discussion."
I suppose Pelosi's comment offers some small path forward. But the reason the government shut down for 35 days previously was because Trump insisted that money must be allocated for a wall and Pelosi (and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) made clear that he wasn't getting $5.7 billion to build a wall along the country's southern border.
Which is, yes, largely a fight over terminology. But that's exactly where we are today on all of this. Right?
Yes, I know Trump has said earlier this month that he didn't care what the wall was called.
"They can name it whatever," Trump said of Democrats on January 11, two weeks to the day from when the last shutdown ended. "They can name it 'Peaches.' This is where I ask the Democrats to come back to Washington and to vote for money for the wall, the barrier, whatever you want to call it, it's OK with me."
Except that about a dozen times since then -- including Thursday morning! -- Trump has said that he thinks the only way to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States is a wall. And he keeps using that word. Not "steel slats." Not "fencing."
"Wall."
Since January 26, the day after the shutdown ended, Trump has sent 16 separate tweets using the word "wall" at least once (and usually more than once.) And for the 18 months he was a candidate for president, Trump said "we will build a wall!" not "we will build a series of steel-slatted fencing and reinforced barriers!"
Words matter. And the word Trump chooses again and again is "wall." Pelosi knows that -- which is why she has been absolutely adamant since late last year that Democrats will not put one dime toward building Trump's wall in any sort of compromise legislation. When Pelosi -- hours after Trump has told his 50+ million Twitter followers that "A WALL is a WALL" -- tells reporters there will be no money in any bill for Trump's wall, she knows it will set Trump off. And that it lowers his willingness to sign onto any sort of compromise that Congress might come up with over the next fortnight.
On our current course -- a battle of words between Trump and Pelosi over the "wall" -- we are headed to another crisis moment on February 15. Which, if you look back at Trump's Twitter feed, it appears he sort of always expected one anyway.
"I wish people would read or listen to my words on the Border Wall," Trump tweeted on the day the shutdown deal came together. "This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it's off to the races!"
By "off to the races," Trump means one of two paths:
1) Another government shutdown
2) He declares a national emergency at the border
Given the political hit Trump took on the recently concluded shutdown -- both in terms of his poll numbers and from elected officials within the GOP -- it's very hard for me to see him triggering a second shutdown in the middle of next week. Which would leave him with only one option: Say that the border represents a national emergency, a declaration that would allow Trump to take from money previously allocated to other departments and use it to fund his border wall.
That move would occasion a legal challenge about Trump's decision to declare an emergency. But that would be a medium-to-long-term problem, as opposed to the short-term problem of another government shutdown. Which, at this point, Trump (and Republicans) would probably take.
Things can change -- of course. But the back-and-forth between Pelosi and Trump on Thursday makes clear that a deal isn't going to be easy to come by. At all.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
Three very important things happened on Thursday in Washington.
First, President Donald Trump tweeted this at 7:16 a.m.: "Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!"
Second, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this of the congressional committee working to craft a compromise bill too keep the government open: "There's not going to be any wall money in the legislation."
Third, Trump responded with this: "If there's no wall it doesn't work. She's just playing games. If there's no wall it doesn't work."
Which, well, seems like a dead end.
And a pretty definitive one, given that the conference committee on Capitol Hill only began meeting to hash out a compromise (or to see if there was a compromise to be found) this week. It appears to be over before the talks even really began. And with the next possible government shutdown -- on February 15 -- just over two weeks away.
Glass-half-full types will note that Trump says (and tweets) all sorts of things -- things that are often at odds with one another and that he often goes back on by the next day. And they will also point out that while Pelosi's pledge that there would be no money for a wall feels conclusive, some other things she said in the press conference suggested she still believes compromise is possible.
Asked about existing barriers and other non-wall options, Pelosi said this:
"If the President wants to call that a wall, he can call it a wall. He's referencing what we already have, almost 700 miles of wall. So again it's a place where enhanced fencing, Normandy fencing would work. Let them have that discussion."
I suppose Pelosi's comment offers some small path forward. But the reason the government shut down for 35 days previously was because Trump insisted that money must be allocated for a wall and Pelosi (and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) made clear that he wasn't getting $5.7 billion to build a wall along the country's southern border.
Which is, yes, largely a fight over terminology. But that's exactly where we are today on all of this. Right?
Yes, I know Trump has said earlier this month that he didn't care what the wall was called.
"They can name it whatever," Trump said of Democrats on January 11, two weeks to the day from when the last shutdown ended. "They can name it 'Peaches.' This is where I ask the Democrats to come back to Washington and to vote for money for the wall, the barrier, whatever you want to call it, it's OK with me."
Except that about a dozen times since then -- including Thursday morning! -- Trump has said that he thinks the only way to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States is a wall. And he keeps using that word. Not "steel slats." Not "fencing."
"Wall."
Since January 26, the day after the shutdown ended, Trump has sent 16 separate tweets using the word "wall" at least once (and usually more than once.) And for the 18 months he was a candidate for president, Trump said "we will build a wall!" not "we will build a series of steel-slatted fencing and reinforced barriers!"
Words matter. And the word Trump chooses again and again is "wall." Pelosi knows that -- which is why she has been absolutely adamant since late last year that Democrats will not put one dime toward building Trump's wall in any sort of compromise legislation. When Pelosi -- hours after Trump has told his 50+ million Twitter followers that "A WALL is a WALL" -- tells reporters there will be no money in any bill for Trump's wall, she knows it will set Trump off. And that it lowers his willingness to sign onto any sort of compromise that Congress might come up with over the next fortnight.
On our current course -- a battle of words between Trump and Pelosi over the "wall" -- we are headed to another crisis moment on February 15. Which, if you look back at Trump's Twitter feed, it appears he sort of always expected one anyway.
"I wish people would read or listen to my words on the Border Wall," Trump tweeted on the day the shutdown deal came together. "This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it's off to the races!"
By "off to the races," Trump means one of two paths:
1) Another government shutdown
2) He declares a national emergency at the border
Given the political hit Trump took on the recently concluded shutdown -- both in terms of his poll numbers and from elected officials within the GOP -- it's very hard for me to see him triggering a second shutdown in the middle of next week. Which would leave him with only one option: Say that the border represents a national emergency, a declaration that would allow Trump to take from money previously allocated to other departments and use it to fund his border wall.
That move would occasion a legal challenge about Trump's decision to declare an emergency. But that would be a medium-to-long-term problem, as opposed to the short-term problem of another government shutdown. Which, at this point, Trump (and Republicans) would probably take.
Things can change -- of course. But the back-and-forth between Pelosi and Trump on Thursday makes clear that a deal isn't going to be easy to come by. At all.
Sadly... President Sadly stupid...
Trump can't bully his intelligence agencies into submission
By Josh Campbell
Anyone who thought President Donald Trump would grow to appreciate the US intelligence community had their hopes dashed on Wednesday morning, after the commander in chief lashed out at America's national security professionals. His latest salvo came after the heads of several intelligence agencies made clear that they would speak truth to power, even if doing so risked upsetting their boss.
"The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive," Trump tweeted one day after the intelligence chiefs testified before the Senate and seemingly contradicted his view on the threats posed by Iran, among others. In a parting shot, he added that perhaps these professionals "should go back to school!"
The issue of Iran was only one of several instances during the hearing in which Trump was publicly contradicted by experts who have spent their professional lives studying critical threats. Despite Trump's claims of progress in denuclearization talks with North Korea, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said it was unlikely the regime would fully denuclearize. And, although the President previously celebrated the defeat of ISIS, Coats insisted the group still commands troops in the Middle East.
Sadly, Trump's attempt to discredit the national security community is merely part of a disturbing pattern. Who can forget his unfounded allegations in March 2017 that the intelligence community illegally wiretapped Trump Tower?
Then there was his stunning display of capitulation in July 2018 when he stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and sided with the Kremlin over the US intelligence community as it related to allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. (He later sought to walk back these comments by claiming he misspoke.)
Trump's true motives in destroying public confidence in the national security sector remain unknown. It's possible he simply responds reflexively to anyone who questions his judgment. Or, perhaps, the reason is much more sinister, and he has been personally compromised, as some commentators have argued. Whatever the rationale behind his effort, his attacks risk undermining the morale and effectiveness of the intelligence professionals charged with keeping this nation safe.
For their part, it was refreshing to see the agency heads conjure the courage to speak the truth, regardless of whether their professional assessments ran counter to the President's. And, rather than needing a remedial lesson in foreign affairs -- as the President proclaimed -- they are the ones who schooled Trump on how the world really works.
Their fortitude, despite the risk of presidential criticism, should assure all Americans that these independent agencies, many who were appointed by Trump -- including DNI Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel -- will not be bullied into shaping their views of the world to fit the political whims of a politician. We've been down that road before.
Indeed, since the Iraq War debacle, which was marked by accusations that the intelligence community was pressured by the White House on the issue of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program, these national security agencies have undergone wholesale change in the manner in which they assess global threats.
When I served in the FBI alongside CIA, NSA and Department of Defense professionals, those of us charged with protecting the country were constantly sensitized to the reality that modern day intelligence assessments must adhere to strict analytic standards. All assessments must be objective, based on every available source of intelligence and independent of political considerations.
These professional standards appear to run completely counter to the way Trump describes the world. His broad conclusions on threats like ISIS and hostile foreign government actors are anything but objective. They appear to be based on selective pieces of information that help bolster whatever narrative he is attempting to set forth on a given day. And, rather than being free from political considerations, they are inextricably tethered to politics.
It is unfortunate that Trump is not likely to end his assault on the intelligence community anytime soon. Attacking those who disagree with him appears his only play. Nor should we expect him to suddenly shift his decision-making process to one grounded in humility rather than hubris.
However, we can find comfort knowing our national security professionals will continue to toil away without regard to politics as they provide the best possible intelligence available. Trump may not accept their conclusions -- which is his right -- but at least we can rest assured that no amount of stinging criticism from their commander in chief will dissuade them from strictly adhering to what is true.
By Josh Campbell
Anyone who thought President Donald Trump would grow to appreciate the US intelligence community had their hopes dashed on Wednesday morning, after the commander in chief lashed out at America's national security professionals. His latest salvo came after the heads of several intelligence agencies made clear that they would speak truth to power, even if doing so risked upsetting their boss.
"The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive," Trump tweeted one day after the intelligence chiefs testified before the Senate and seemingly contradicted his view on the threats posed by Iran, among others. In a parting shot, he added that perhaps these professionals "should go back to school!"
The issue of Iran was only one of several instances during the hearing in which Trump was publicly contradicted by experts who have spent their professional lives studying critical threats. Despite Trump's claims of progress in denuclearization talks with North Korea, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said it was unlikely the regime would fully denuclearize. And, although the President previously celebrated the defeat of ISIS, Coats insisted the group still commands troops in the Middle East.
Sadly, Trump's attempt to discredit the national security community is merely part of a disturbing pattern. Who can forget his unfounded allegations in March 2017 that the intelligence community illegally wiretapped Trump Tower?
Then there was his stunning display of capitulation in July 2018 when he stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and sided with the Kremlin over the US intelligence community as it related to allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. (He later sought to walk back these comments by claiming he misspoke.)
Trump's true motives in destroying public confidence in the national security sector remain unknown. It's possible he simply responds reflexively to anyone who questions his judgment. Or, perhaps, the reason is much more sinister, and he has been personally compromised, as some commentators have argued. Whatever the rationale behind his effort, his attacks risk undermining the morale and effectiveness of the intelligence professionals charged with keeping this nation safe.
For their part, it was refreshing to see the agency heads conjure the courage to speak the truth, regardless of whether their professional assessments ran counter to the President's. And, rather than needing a remedial lesson in foreign affairs -- as the President proclaimed -- they are the ones who schooled Trump on how the world really works.
Their fortitude, despite the risk of presidential criticism, should assure all Americans that these independent agencies, many who were appointed by Trump -- including DNI Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel -- will not be bullied into shaping their views of the world to fit the political whims of a politician. We've been down that road before.
Indeed, since the Iraq War debacle, which was marked by accusations that the intelligence community was pressured by the White House on the issue of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program, these national security agencies have undergone wholesale change in the manner in which they assess global threats.
When I served in the FBI alongside CIA, NSA and Department of Defense professionals, those of us charged with protecting the country were constantly sensitized to the reality that modern day intelligence assessments must adhere to strict analytic standards. All assessments must be objective, based on every available source of intelligence and independent of political considerations.
These professional standards appear to run completely counter to the way Trump describes the world. His broad conclusions on threats like ISIS and hostile foreign government actors are anything but objective. They appear to be based on selective pieces of information that help bolster whatever narrative he is attempting to set forth on a given day. And, rather than being free from political considerations, they are inextricably tethered to politics.
It is unfortunate that Trump is not likely to end his assault on the intelligence community anytime soon. Attacking those who disagree with him appears his only play. Nor should we expect him to suddenly shift his decision-making process to one grounded in humility rather than hubris.
However, we can find comfort knowing our national security professionals will continue to toil away without regard to politics as they provide the best possible intelligence available. Trump may not accept their conclusions -- which is his right -- but at least we can rest assured that no amount of stinging criticism from their commander in chief will dissuade them from strictly adhering to what is true.
Chinese will sacrifice people so they can steal secrets....
Chinese engineer charged with stealing secret material from Apple
By Sherisse Pham
The FBI is accusing a Chinese national of stealing trade secrets while working for Apple.
It alleges that engineer Jizhong Chen attempted to take key details from Apple's (AAPL) secretive self-driving car project. Chen was arrested and charged last week, just before he was scheduled to fly to China, according to a criminal complaint filed in US district court in California.
Apple said that if the confidential material got out, it would be "enormously damaging" for the company, the complaint said.
It's the second time in about six months that a Chinese national has been charged with stealing secrets from the Apple project, whose existence the company refuses to even acknowledge publicly.
The cases come during heightened tensions between the United States and China over who will control the technologies of the future. This week, the US Justice Department filed sweeping charges against Chinese tech company Huawei, accusing it of trade theft, obstruction of justice and other crimes. Huawei has denied all charges.
Chen first aroused suspicion at Apple when a colleague reported seeing him taking photos of the self-driving car project with a wide-angle lens earlier this month, according to the complaint.
Apple launched an investigation, uncovering more than 2,000 files on Chen's personal computer containing confidential information, the court documents said. Investigators said they also found that Chen had taken photos of sensitive information displayed on his work computer screen, a move that bypassed Apple's monitoring of its networks.
The FBI said the engineer acknowledged that he had also backed up his Apple work computer to a personally owned hard drive, which goes against company policy.
Two photos in particular led to "instant criminal charges" against Chen, according to the complaint. One shows an assembly drawing of a wire harness for a self-driving car, and the other was a diagram showing how sensors interact with other parts of the car to make it drive autonomously.
Chen's lawyer, Daniel Olmos, declined to comment on the case. Chen was released last week after surrendering his passport and posting $100,000 in bail.
According to the complaint, he told Apple that he had downloaded information about the project onto his personal hard drive as an "insurance policy" if he lost his job at the company. Apple later found out that he had applied for two jobs at other companies, including at a Chinese autonomous vehicle firm that competes directly with Apple's project.
Apple spokespeople didn't immediately respond to a request for comment outside of regular business hours.
In July, Chinese engineer Xiaolang Zhang was arrested and charged with stealing trade secrets while working on the Apple self-driving project. Apple's investigation into Zhang began after the engineer said he was leaving to work for Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese electric vehicle startup.
Zhang has pleaded not guilty.
A spokeswoman for Xiaopeng Motors said that no Apple-related information was transferred to the company, and that Zhang has been dismissed.
The race to bring self-driving cars to market is intense.
Uber and Waymo were embroiled in a heated trade secrets lawsuit for years. Waymo, a self-driving car project affiliated with Google (GOOGL), alleged that a former engineer downloaded autonomous vehicle trade secrets and took them to Uber. Waymo eventually accepted a settlement offer from Uber.
Apple has started shifting resources away from developing autonomous cars as its core smartphone business slows. The company is reportedly laying off more than 200 employees involved in the self-driving car project.
By Sherisse Pham
The FBI is accusing a Chinese national of stealing trade secrets while working for Apple.
It alleges that engineer Jizhong Chen attempted to take key details from Apple's (AAPL) secretive self-driving car project. Chen was arrested and charged last week, just before he was scheduled to fly to China, according to a criminal complaint filed in US district court in California.
Apple said that if the confidential material got out, it would be "enormously damaging" for the company, the complaint said.
It's the second time in about six months that a Chinese national has been charged with stealing secrets from the Apple project, whose existence the company refuses to even acknowledge publicly.
The cases come during heightened tensions between the United States and China over who will control the technologies of the future. This week, the US Justice Department filed sweeping charges against Chinese tech company Huawei, accusing it of trade theft, obstruction of justice and other crimes. Huawei has denied all charges.
Chen first aroused suspicion at Apple when a colleague reported seeing him taking photos of the self-driving car project with a wide-angle lens earlier this month, according to the complaint.
Apple launched an investigation, uncovering more than 2,000 files on Chen's personal computer containing confidential information, the court documents said. Investigators said they also found that Chen had taken photos of sensitive information displayed on his work computer screen, a move that bypassed Apple's monitoring of its networks.
The FBI said the engineer acknowledged that he had also backed up his Apple work computer to a personally owned hard drive, which goes against company policy.
Two photos in particular led to "instant criminal charges" against Chen, according to the complaint. One shows an assembly drawing of a wire harness for a self-driving car, and the other was a diagram showing how sensors interact with other parts of the car to make it drive autonomously.
Chen's lawyer, Daniel Olmos, declined to comment on the case. Chen was released last week after surrendering his passport and posting $100,000 in bail.
According to the complaint, he told Apple that he had downloaded information about the project onto his personal hard drive as an "insurance policy" if he lost his job at the company. Apple later found out that he had applied for two jobs at other companies, including at a Chinese autonomous vehicle firm that competes directly with Apple's project.
Apple spokespeople didn't immediately respond to a request for comment outside of regular business hours.
In July, Chinese engineer Xiaolang Zhang was arrested and charged with stealing trade secrets while working on the Apple self-driving project. Apple's investigation into Zhang began after the engineer said he was leaving to work for Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese electric vehicle startup.
Zhang has pleaded not guilty.
A spokeswoman for Xiaopeng Motors said that no Apple-related information was transferred to the company, and that Zhang has been dismissed.
The race to bring self-driving cars to market is intense.
Uber and Waymo were embroiled in a heated trade secrets lawsuit for years. Waymo, a self-driving car project affiliated with Google (GOOGL), alleged that a former engineer downloaded autonomous vehicle trade secrets and took them to Uber. Waymo eventually accepted a settlement offer from Uber.
Apple has started shifting resources away from developing autonomous cars as its core smartphone business slows. The company is reportedly laying off more than 200 employees involved in the self-driving car project.
Constitution says????
Once Again, the Kuwaiti Government Puts Money Right into Trump’s Pocket
Who cares what the Constitution says?
DAVID CORN
It’s not news. But it still worth headlines: President Donald Trump collects money directly from foreign governments. He does this when overseas governments (and foreign corporations and persons) spend money at his hotels. These properties are owned by him through the the Trump Organization. (When he became president, he turned the business over to his kids, but retained ownership.) So if the Saudi Crown Prince hits New York City with his oversized entourage and obtains a block of room’s at a high-end Trump hotel, the money goes straight into the coffers of Trump’s family business. And this is exactly what happened last year. (That particular transaction was substantial enough to be responsible for a 13 percent uptick in the hotel’s business.)
Trump’s fancy hotel in Washington, DC, has been the recipient of revenue from governments, people, and parties with interests before the US government and motive to curry favor with Trump. One such entity: the government of Kuwait. As the below invitation shows, the Gulf State is holding its independence anniversary shindig at the Trump International Hotel next month. This will mark the third year in a row that the Kuwaitis have decided to grace Trump’s hotel with their presence and petro-dollars.
These transactions are arguably violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibit a president from accepting any sort of gift from an overseas source—an anti-bribery measure that the Founding Fathers obviously believed necessary. A lawsuit claiming Trump has violated this part of the Constitution has been working its way through the courts, and oral arguments for the case are scheduled for March. The suit, which was filed by the attorneys general for Maryland and Washington, DC, cites the annual Kuwaiti bash as one of several violations of the emoluments clause.
It seems like Trump and the Kuwaitis don’t mind providing more potential evidence.
Who cares what the Constitution says?
DAVID CORN
It’s not news. But it still worth headlines: President Donald Trump collects money directly from foreign governments. He does this when overseas governments (and foreign corporations and persons) spend money at his hotels. These properties are owned by him through the the Trump Organization. (When he became president, he turned the business over to his kids, but retained ownership.) So if the Saudi Crown Prince hits New York City with his oversized entourage and obtains a block of room’s at a high-end Trump hotel, the money goes straight into the coffers of Trump’s family business. And this is exactly what happened last year. (That particular transaction was substantial enough to be responsible for a 13 percent uptick in the hotel’s business.)
Trump’s fancy hotel in Washington, DC, has been the recipient of revenue from governments, people, and parties with interests before the US government and motive to curry favor with Trump. One such entity: the government of Kuwait. As the below invitation shows, the Gulf State is holding its independence anniversary shindig at the Trump International Hotel next month. This will mark the third year in a row that the Kuwaitis have decided to grace Trump’s hotel with their presence and petro-dollars.
These transactions are arguably violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibit a president from accepting any sort of gift from an overseas source—an anti-bribery measure that the Founding Fathers obviously believed necessary. A lawsuit claiming Trump has violated this part of the Constitution has been working its way through the courts, and oral arguments for the case are scheduled for March. The suit, which was filed by the attorneys general for Maryland and Washington, DC, cites the annual Kuwaiti bash as one of several violations of the emoluments clause.
It seems like Trump and the Kuwaitis don’t mind providing more potential evidence.
Discredit special counsel's Russia probe
Mueller says evidence against Russian firm was used in 'disinformation campaign' apparently to discredit special counsel's Russia probe
Special counsel Robert Mueller claimed Wednesday that evidence in one of his criminal cases related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was recently used in an online disinformation campaign, apparently to discredit Mueller's investigations.
Mueller made that allegation in a court filing in his criminal case pending against Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch who is known as "Putin's chef."
The special counsel charged Concord Management last year with funding a multimillion-dollar social media disinformation campaign to bolster the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Mueller's filing Wednesday objects to Concord's request that the special counsel be compelled to disclose documents he has deemed "sensitive" to the defendant and its employees as it prepares for trial.
Concord wants to be able to send that information to Russia for review by company officers and employees. But Mueller said in his filing that doing so "unreasonably risks the national security interests of the United States."
The special counsel said that Concord should not be given such sensitive material because of alleged misuse in October by an unknown party of "non-sensitive" materials already in Concord's possession as a result of the normal discovery process that litigants use to share information during a court case.
Mueller said that "sensitive" materials identifies individuals and entities that have not been criminally charged, but whom "the government believes are continuing to engage in operations that interfere with lawful U.S. government functions like those activities charged in the indictment."
The special counsel's office said that the online account used to publish the discovery materials was registered by a user with an internet address who resides in Russia. The FBI has found no evidence that U.S. government servers, including ones used by Mueller's office, had been hacked.
But, 'the subsequent investigation has revealed that certain non-sensitive discovery materials in the defense's possession appear to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. political system," Mueller's filing said.
"One or more actors made statements claiming to have a stolen copy of discovery produced by the government in this case."
The special counsel said that, "On October 22, 2018, the newly created Twitter account @HackingRedstone published the following tweet: 'We've got access to the Special Counsel Mueller's probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!'"
The IRA, or Internet Research Agency, is a Russia-based firm whose top officials have been indicted by Mueller on charges of defrauding the U.S. The HackingRedstone account since has been suspended.
Mueller noted that the names and other details on that webpage "significantly match the non-public names and file structure of the materials produced in discovery."
That, "and the fact that over 1,000 files on the webpage match those produced in discovery, establish that the person(s) who created the webpage had access to at least some of the non-sensitive discovery produced by the government in this case," Mueller said in his filing.
And the filing added, "The fact that the webpage contained numerous irrelevant files suggest that the person who created the webpage used their knowledge of the non-sensitive discovery to make it appear as though the irrelevant files contained on the webpage were the sum total evidence of 'IRA and Russian collusion' gathered by law enforcement in this matter in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation."
Mueller is continuing to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, possible collusion by the Trump campaign in that interference, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump himself.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing by himself and by his campaign. He has repeatedly called Mueller's probe a "witch hunt."
Lawyers for Concord Management had no immediate comment.
- Special counsel Robert Mueller claimed Wednesday that evidence in one of his criminal cases related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was recently used in an online disinformation campaign, apparently to discredit Mueller's investigations.
- Mueller made that allegation in a court filing in his criminal case pending against Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is known as "Putin's chef."
- That filing objects to Concord's request that Mueller be compelled to disclose documents he has deemed "sensitive" to the defendant and its employees as it prepares for trial.
Special counsel Robert Mueller claimed Wednesday that evidence in one of his criminal cases related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was recently used in an online disinformation campaign, apparently to discredit Mueller's investigations.
Mueller made that allegation in a court filing in his criminal case pending against Concord Management and Consulting, a Russian company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch who is known as "Putin's chef."
The special counsel charged Concord Management last year with funding a multimillion-dollar social media disinformation campaign to bolster the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
Mueller's filing Wednesday objects to Concord's request that the special counsel be compelled to disclose documents he has deemed "sensitive" to the defendant and its employees as it prepares for trial.
Concord wants to be able to send that information to Russia for review by company officers and employees. But Mueller said in his filing that doing so "unreasonably risks the national security interests of the United States."
The special counsel said that Concord should not be given such sensitive material because of alleged misuse in October by an unknown party of "non-sensitive" materials already in Concord's possession as a result of the normal discovery process that litigants use to share information during a court case.
Mueller said that "sensitive" materials identifies individuals and entities that have not been criminally charged, but whom "the government believes are continuing to engage in operations that interfere with lawful U.S. government functions like those activities charged in the indictment."
The special counsel's office said that the online account used to publish the discovery materials was registered by a user with an internet address who resides in Russia. The FBI has found no evidence that U.S. government servers, including ones used by Mueller's office, had been hacked.
But, 'the subsequent investigation has revealed that certain non-sensitive discovery materials in the defense's possession appear to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. political system," Mueller's filing said.
"One or more actors made statements claiming to have a stolen copy of discovery produced by the government in this case."
The special counsel said that, "On October 22, 2018, the newly created Twitter account @HackingRedstone published the following tweet: 'We've got access to the Special Counsel Mueller's probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!'"
The IRA, or Internet Research Agency, is a Russia-based firm whose top officials have been indicted by Mueller on charges of defrauding the U.S. The HackingRedstone account since has been suspended.
Mueller noted that the names and other details on that webpage "significantly match the non-public names and file structure of the materials produced in discovery."
That, "and the fact that over 1,000 files on the webpage match those produced in discovery, establish that the person(s) who created the webpage had access to at least some of the non-sensitive discovery produced by the government in this case," Mueller said in his filing.
And the filing added, "The fact that the webpage contained numerous irrelevant files suggest that the person who created the webpage used their knowledge of the non-sensitive discovery to make it appear as though the irrelevant files contained on the webpage were the sum total evidence of 'IRA and Russian collusion' gathered by law enforcement in this matter in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation."
Mueller is continuing to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, possible collusion by the Trump campaign in that interference, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump himself.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing by himself and by his campaign. He has repeatedly called Mueller's probe a "witch hunt."
Lawyers for Concord Management had no immediate comment.
Light Echoes
NASA’s NICER Mission Maps ‘Light Echoes’ of New Black Hole
By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Scientists have charted the environment surrounding a stellar-mass black hole that is 10 times the mass of the Sun using NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) payload aboard the International Space Station. NICER detected X-ray light from the recently discovered black hole, called MAXI J1820+070 (J1820 for short), as it consumed material from a companion star. Waves of X-rays formed “light echoes” that reflected off the swirling gas near the black hole and revealed changes in the environment’s size and shape.
“NICER has allowed us to measure light echoes closer to a stellar-mass black hole than ever before,” said Erin Kara, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who presented the findings at the 233rd American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. “Previously, these light echoes off the inner accretion disk were only seen in supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of solar masses and undergo changes slowly. Stellar black holes like J1820 have much lower masses and evolve much faster, so we can see changes play out on human time scales.”
A paper describing the findings, led by Kara, appeared in the Jan. 10 issue of Nature and is available online.
J1820 is located about 10,000 light-years away toward the constellation Leo. The companion star in the system was identified in a survey by ESA’s (European Space Agency) Gaia mission, which allowed researchers to estimate its distance. Astronomers were unaware of the black hole’s presence until March 11, 2018, when an outburst was spotted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI), also aboard the space station. J1820 went from a totally unknown black hole to one of the brightest sources in the X-ray sky over a few days. NICER moved quickly to capture this dramatic transition and continues to follow the fading tail of the eruption.
“NICER was designed to be sensitive enough to study faint, incredibly dense objects called neutron stars,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at Goddard and a co-author of the paper. “We’re pleased at how useful it’s also proven in studying these very X-ray-bright stellar-mass black holes.”
A black hole can siphon gas from a nearby companion star into a ring of material called an accretion disk. Gravitational and magnetic forces heat the disk to millions of degrees, making it hot enough to produce X-rays at the inner parts of the disk, near the black hole. Outbursts occur when an instability in the disk causes a flood of gas to move inward, toward the black hole, like an avalanche. The causes of disk instabilities are poorly understood.
Above the disk is the corona, a region of subatomic particles around 1 billion degrees Celsius (1.8 billion degrees Fahrenheit) that glows in higher-energy X-rays. Many mysteries remain about the origin and evolution of the corona. Some theories suggest the structure could represent an early form of the high-speed particle jets these types of systems often emit.
Astrophysicists want to better understand how the inner edge of the accretion disk and the corona above it change in size and shape as a black hole accretes material from its companion star. If they can understand how and why these changes occur in stellar-mass black holes over a period of weeks, scientists could shed light on how supermassive black holes evolve over millions of years and how they affect the galaxies in which they reside.
One method used to chart those changes is called X-ray reverberation mapping, which uses X-ray reflections in much the same way sonar uses sound waves to map undersea terrain. Some X-rays from the corona travel straight toward us, while others light up the disk and reflect back at different energies and angles.
X-ray reverberation mapping of supermassive black holes has shown that the inner edge of the accretion disk is very close to the event horizon, the point of no return. The corona is also compact, lying closer to the black hole rather than over much of the accretion disk. Previous observations of X-ray echoes from stellar black holes, however, suggested the inner edge of the accretion disk could be quite distant, up to hundreds of times the size of the event horizon. The stellar-mass J1820, however, behaved more like its supermassive cousins.
As they examined NICER’s observations of J1820, Kara’s team saw a decrease in the delay, or lag time, between the initial flare of X-rays coming directly from the corona and the flare’s echo off the disk, indicating that the X-rays traveled shorter and shorter distances before they were reflected. From 10,000 light-years away, they estimated that the corona contracted vertically from roughly 100 to 10 miles — that’s like seeing something the size of a blueberry shrink to something the size of a poppy seed at the distance of Pluto.
“This is the first time that we’ve seen this kind of evidence that it’s the corona shrinking during this particular phase of outburst evolution,” said co-author Jack Steiner, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. “The corona is still pretty mysterious, and we still have a loose understanding of what it is. But we now have evidence that the thing that’s evolving in the system is the structure of the corona itself.”
To confirm the decreased lag time was due to a change in the corona and not the disk, the researchers used a signal called the iron K line created when X-rays from the corona collide with iron atoms in the disk, causing them to fluoresce. Time runs slower in stronger gravitational fields and at higher velocities, as stated in Einstein’s theory of relativity. When the iron atoms closest to the black hole are bombarded by light from the core of the corona, the X-ray wavelengths they emit get stretched because time is moving slower for them than for the observer (in this case, NICER).
Kara’s team discovered that J1820’s stretched iron K line remained constant, which means the inner edge of the disk remained close to the black hole — similar to a supermassive black hole. If the decreased lag time was caused by the inner edge of the disk moving even further inward, then the iron K line would have stretched even more.
These observations give scientists new insights into how material funnels in to the black hole and how energy is released in this process.
“NICER’s observations of J1820 have taught us something new about stellar-mass black holes and about how we might use them as analogs for studying supermassive black holes and their effects on galaxy formation,” said co-author Philip Uttley, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam. “We’ve seen four similar events in NICER’s first year, and it’s remarkable. It feels like we’re on the edge of a huge breakthrough in X-ray astronomy.”
By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Scientists have charted the environment surrounding a stellar-mass black hole that is 10 times the mass of the Sun using NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) payload aboard the International Space Station. NICER detected X-ray light from the recently discovered black hole, called MAXI J1820+070 (J1820 for short), as it consumed material from a companion star. Waves of X-rays formed “light echoes” that reflected off the swirling gas near the black hole and revealed changes in the environment’s size and shape.
“NICER has allowed us to measure light echoes closer to a stellar-mass black hole than ever before,” said Erin Kara, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who presented the findings at the 233rd American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. “Previously, these light echoes off the inner accretion disk were only seen in supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of solar masses and undergo changes slowly. Stellar black holes like J1820 have much lower masses and evolve much faster, so we can see changes play out on human time scales.”
A paper describing the findings, led by Kara, appeared in the Jan. 10 issue of Nature and is available online.
J1820 is located about 10,000 light-years away toward the constellation Leo. The companion star in the system was identified in a survey by ESA’s (European Space Agency) Gaia mission, which allowed researchers to estimate its distance. Astronomers were unaware of the black hole’s presence until March 11, 2018, when an outburst was spotted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI), also aboard the space station. J1820 went from a totally unknown black hole to one of the brightest sources in the X-ray sky over a few days. NICER moved quickly to capture this dramatic transition and continues to follow the fading tail of the eruption.
“NICER was designed to be sensitive enough to study faint, incredibly dense objects called neutron stars,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at Goddard and a co-author of the paper. “We’re pleased at how useful it’s also proven in studying these very X-ray-bright stellar-mass black holes.”
A black hole can siphon gas from a nearby companion star into a ring of material called an accretion disk. Gravitational and magnetic forces heat the disk to millions of degrees, making it hot enough to produce X-rays at the inner parts of the disk, near the black hole. Outbursts occur when an instability in the disk causes a flood of gas to move inward, toward the black hole, like an avalanche. The causes of disk instabilities are poorly understood.
Above the disk is the corona, a region of subatomic particles around 1 billion degrees Celsius (1.8 billion degrees Fahrenheit) that glows in higher-energy X-rays. Many mysteries remain about the origin and evolution of the corona. Some theories suggest the structure could represent an early form of the high-speed particle jets these types of systems often emit.
Astrophysicists want to better understand how the inner edge of the accretion disk and the corona above it change in size and shape as a black hole accretes material from its companion star. If they can understand how and why these changes occur in stellar-mass black holes over a period of weeks, scientists could shed light on how supermassive black holes evolve over millions of years and how they affect the galaxies in which they reside.
One method used to chart those changes is called X-ray reverberation mapping, which uses X-ray reflections in much the same way sonar uses sound waves to map undersea terrain. Some X-rays from the corona travel straight toward us, while others light up the disk and reflect back at different energies and angles.
X-ray reverberation mapping of supermassive black holes has shown that the inner edge of the accretion disk is very close to the event horizon, the point of no return. The corona is also compact, lying closer to the black hole rather than over much of the accretion disk. Previous observations of X-ray echoes from stellar black holes, however, suggested the inner edge of the accretion disk could be quite distant, up to hundreds of times the size of the event horizon. The stellar-mass J1820, however, behaved more like its supermassive cousins.
As they examined NICER’s observations of J1820, Kara’s team saw a decrease in the delay, or lag time, between the initial flare of X-rays coming directly from the corona and the flare’s echo off the disk, indicating that the X-rays traveled shorter and shorter distances before they were reflected. From 10,000 light-years away, they estimated that the corona contracted vertically from roughly 100 to 10 miles — that’s like seeing something the size of a blueberry shrink to something the size of a poppy seed at the distance of Pluto.
“This is the first time that we’ve seen this kind of evidence that it’s the corona shrinking during this particular phase of outburst evolution,” said co-author Jack Steiner, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. “The corona is still pretty mysterious, and we still have a loose understanding of what it is. But we now have evidence that the thing that’s evolving in the system is the structure of the corona itself.”
To confirm the decreased lag time was due to a change in the corona and not the disk, the researchers used a signal called the iron K line created when X-rays from the corona collide with iron atoms in the disk, causing them to fluoresce. Time runs slower in stronger gravitational fields and at higher velocities, as stated in Einstein’s theory of relativity. When the iron atoms closest to the black hole are bombarded by light from the core of the corona, the X-ray wavelengths they emit get stretched because time is moving slower for them than for the observer (in this case, NICER).
Kara’s team discovered that J1820’s stretched iron K line remained constant, which means the inner edge of the disk remained close to the black hole — similar to a supermassive black hole. If the decreased lag time was caused by the inner edge of the disk moving even further inward, then the iron K line would have stretched even more.
These observations give scientists new insights into how material funnels in to the black hole and how energy is released in this process.
“NICER’s observations of J1820 have taught us something new about stellar-mass black holes and about how we might use them as analogs for studying supermassive black holes and their effects on galaxy formation,” said co-author Philip Uttley, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam. “We’ve seen four similar events in NICER’s first year, and it’s remarkable. It feels like we’re on the edge of a huge breakthrough in X-ray astronomy.”
Sharpless 308: Star Bubble
Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue. SH2-308 is also known as The Dolphin Nebula.
Huge Cavity....
Huge Cavity in Antarctic Glacier Signals Rapid Decay
A gigantic cavity — two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall — growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change.
Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It's big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years.
"We have suspected for years that Thwaites was not tightly attached to the bedrock beneath it," said Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Rignot is a co-author of the new study, which was published today in Science Advances. "Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the detail," he said.
The cavity was revealed by ice-penetrating radar in NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne campaign beginning in 2010 that studies connections between the polar regions and the global climate. The researchers also used data from a constellation of Italian and German spaceborne synthetic aperture radars. These very high-resolution data can be processed by a technique called radar interferometry to reveal how the ground surface below has moved between images.
"[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," said the study's lead author, Pietro Milillo of JPL. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster."
Numerical models of ice sheets use a fixed shape to represent a cavity under the ice, rather than allowing the cavity to change and grow. The new discovery implies that this limitation most likely causes those models to underestimate how fast Thwaites is losing ice.
About the size of Florida, Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for approximately 4 percent of global sea level rise. It holds enough ice to raise the world ocean a little over 2 feet (65 centimeters) and backstops neighboring glaciers that would raise sea levels an additional 8 feet (2.4 meters) if all the ice were lost.
Thwaites is one of the hardest places to reach on Earth, but it is about to become better known than ever before. The U.S. National Science Foundation and British National Environmental Research Council are mounting a five-year field project to answer the most critical questions about its processes and features. The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration will begin its field experiments in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2019-20.
How Scientists Measure Ice Loss
There's no way to monitor Antarctic glaciers from ground level over the long term. Instead, scientists use satellite or airborne instrument data to observe features that change as a glacier melts, such as its flow speed and surface height.
Another changing feature is a glacier's grounding line — the place near the edge of the continent where it lifts off its bed and starts to float on seawater. Many Antarctic glaciers extend for miles beyond their grounding lines, floating out over the open ocean.
Just as a grounded boat can float again when the weight of its cargo is removed, a glacier that loses ice weight can float over land where it used to stick. When this happens, the grounding line retreats inland. That exposes more of a glacier's underside to sea water, increasing the likelihood its melt rate will accelerate.
An Irregular Retreat
For Thwaites, "We are discovering different mechanisms of retreat," Millilo said. Different processes at various parts of the 100-mile-long (160-kilometer-long) front of the glacier are putting the rates of grounding-line retreat and of ice loss out of sync.
The huge cavity is under the main trunk of the glacier on its western side — the side farther from the West Antarctic Peninsula. In this region, as the tide rises and falls, the grounding line retreats and advances across a zone of about 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 kilometers). The glacier has been coming unstuck from a ridge in the bedrock at a steady rate of about 0.4 to 0.5 miles (0.6 to 0.8 kilometers) a year since 1992. Despite this stable rate of grounding-line retreat, the melt rate on this side of the glacier is extremely high.
"On the eastern side of the glacier, the grounding-line retreat proceeds through small channels, maybe a kilometer wide, like fingers reaching beneath the glacier to melt it from below," Milillo said. In that region, the rate of grounding-line retreat doubled from about 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometers) a year from 1992 to 2011 to 0.8 miles (1.2 kilometers) a year from 2011 to 2017. Even with this accelerating retreat, however, melt rates on this side of the glacier are lower than on the western side.
These results highlight that ice-ocean interactions are more complex than previously understood.
Milillo hopes the new results will be useful for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration researchers as they prepare for their fieldwork. "Such data is essential for field parties to focus on areas where the action is, because the grounding line is retreating rapidly with complex spatial patterns," he said.
"Understanding the details of how the ocean melts away this glacier is essential to project its impact on sea level rise in the coming decades," Rignot said.
The paper by Milillo and his co-authors in the journal Science Advances is titled "Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica." Co-authors were from the University of California, Irvine; the German Aerospace Center in Munich, Germany; and the University Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France.
A gigantic cavity — two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall — growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change.
Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It's big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years.
"We have suspected for years that Thwaites was not tightly attached to the bedrock beneath it," said Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Rignot is a co-author of the new study, which was published today in Science Advances. "Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the detail," he said.
The cavity was revealed by ice-penetrating radar in NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne campaign beginning in 2010 that studies connections between the polar regions and the global climate. The researchers also used data from a constellation of Italian and German spaceborne synthetic aperture radars. These very high-resolution data can be processed by a technique called radar interferometry to reveal how the ground surface below has moved between images.
"[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," said the study's lead author, Pietro Milillo of JPL. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster."
Numerical models of ice sheets use a fixed shape to represent a cavity under the ice, rather than allowing the cavity to change and grow. The new discovery implies that this limitation most likely causes those models to underestimate how fast Thwaites is losing ice.
About the size of Florida, Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for approximately 4 percent of global sea level rise. It holds enough ice to raise the world ocean a little over 2 feet (65 centimeters) and backstops neighboring glaciers that would raise sea levels an additional 8 feet (2.4 meters) if all the ice were lost.
Thwaites is one of the hardest places to reach on Earth, but it is about to become better known than ever before. The U.S. National Science Foundation and British National Environmental Research Council are mounting a five-year field project to answer the most critical questions about its processes and features. The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration will begin its field experiments in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2019-20.
How Scientists Measure Ice Loss
There's no way to monitor Antarctic glaciers from ground level over the long term. Instead, scientists use satellite or airborne instrument data to observe features that change as a glacier melts, such as its flow speed and surface height.
Another changing feature is a glacier's grounding line — the place near the edge of the continent where it lifts off its bed and starts to float on seawater. Many Antarctic glaciers extend for miles beyond their grounding lines, floating out over the open ocean.
Just as a grounded boat can float again when the weight of its cargo is removed, a glacier that loses ice weight can float over land where it used to stick. When this happens, the grounding line retreats inland. That exposes more of a glacier's underside to sea water, increasing the likelihood its melt rate will accelerate.
An Irregular Retreat
For Thwaites, "We are discovering different mechanisms of retreat," Millilo said. Different processes at various parts of the 100-mile-long (160-kilometer-long) front of the glacier are putting the rates of grounding-line retreat and of ice loss out of sync.
The huge cavity is under the main trunk of the glacier on its western side — the side farther from the West Antarctic Peninsula. In this region, as the tide rises and falls, the grounding line retreats and advances across a zone of about 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 kilometers). The glacier has been coming unstuck from a ridge in the bedrock at a steady rate of about 0.4 to 0.5 miles (0.6 to 0.8 kilometers) a year since 1992. Despite this stable rate of grounding-line retreat, the melt rate on this side of the glacier is extremely high.
"On the eastern side of the glacier, the grounding-line retreat proceeds through small channels, maybe a kilometer wide, like fingers reaching beneath the glacier to melt it from below," Milillo said. In that region, the rate of grounding-line retreat doubled from about 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometers) a year from 1992 to 2011 to 0.8 miles (1.2 kilometers) a year from 2011 to 2017. Even with this accelerating retreat, however, melt rates on this side of the glacier are lower than on the western side.
These results highlight that ice-ocean interactions are more complex than previously understood.
Milillo hopes the new results will be useful for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration researchers as they prepare for their fieldwork. "Such data is essential for field parties to focus on areas where the action is, because the grounding line is retreating rapidly with complex spatial patterns," he said.
"Understanding the details of how the ocean melts away this glacier is essential to project its impact on sea level rise in the coming decades," Rignot said.
The paper by Milillo and his co-authors in the journal Science Advances is titled "Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica." Co-authors were from the University of California, Irvine; the German Aerospace Center in Munich, Germany; and the University Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France.
Estate tax on richest Americans
Sanders to propose dramatic expansion in estate tax on richest Americans
Jeff Stein
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will unveil a plan Thursday to dramatically expand the federal estate tax on the wealthy, including a new 77 percent rate on billionaires' estates, as leading Democratic politicians push new taxes on the richest Americans to combat inequality.
Sanders's bill, the "For the 99.8% Act," would tax the estates of the 0.2 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million, while the rest of the country "would not see their taxes go up by one penny under this plan," according to aides to the Vermont senator, who is considering a 2020 presidential bid.
Three top Republican senators this week released a plan to outright abolish the estate tax, which the GOP already significantly weakened with their 2017 tax law to only apply to those passing on more than $11 million (or $22 million for couples). Sanders's plan would restore the 77 percent top estate tax rate that was in place in the U.S. from 1941 to 1976, tax estates worth more than $3.5 million, and create several new estate tax brackets, including a 55 percent rate on estates worth more than $50 million.
"It is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent of our population. . . . This is not only insane, it tells us the degree to which the billionaire class controls the Republican Party," said Sanders, who introduced the plan with the support of Thomas Piketty, a well-known French economist on wealth consolidation. "Our bill does what the American people want us to be doing and that is to demand that the very wealthiest families in this country start paying their fair share of taxes."
The plan would raise $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires, but over an unknown period of time because it would take effect only once they die, according to Sanders's staff. Over the next decade, the tax would raise $315 billion, policy aides said.
The senator's push comes the week after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has already announced her bid for the White House, released an "Ultra Millionaire" tax that would levy a 2 percent annual tax on those with more than $50 million, as well as a 3 percent annual tax on those with more than $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also recently floated a 70 percent marginal tax rate on those making more than $10 million.
Sanders supports both of those ideas, and in 2017 pitched a wealth tax on those with assets over $21 million as part of a suite of financing options for his "Medicare-for-all" health-care plan, according to aides for the senator. As a candidate in the 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders also called for a surcharge on estates worth more than $1 billion, a top marginal rate over 60 percent, and a tax on certain Wall Street transactions.
Conservative opposition to increasing the estate tax is likely to be intense, as Republicans have characterized the provision as a "death tax" that unfairly punishes Americans, including farmers, for wealth accrued over the work of a lifetime.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and John Thune, R-S.D., released legislation to permanently repeal the federal estate tax, with Thune arguing that it "threatens families' agricultural legacies and makes it difficult and costly to pass these businesses down to future generations."
But significantly higher taxes on the rich have been increasingly embraced by Democrats with national aspirations amid a raft of polling suggesting that the public supports such measures, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.
"A lot of the conventional wisdom says, 'Stay away from tax increases,' but it's actually quite popular," Lake said.
Part of what's changing is that fewer Americans now fear that they will be targeted by taxes designed to hit the ultrawealthy, Lake said. "Even in the last six months, you're seeing a shift," she said.
Estate taxes on large fortunes could be part of that swing. They once brought in revenue that accounted for more than 5 percent of the federal budget, but have been whittled down since then over time and now account for less than 1 percent of federal revenue, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Before the 2017 GOP tax law, an individual could pass on as much as $5.45 million without paying the estate tax, which would then take a cut of up to 40 percent from wealth above that threshold. The law doubled that minimum, exempting all estates worth less than $11.2 million. A couple can now pass on $20 million, tax-free.
In 2018, after the GOP tax law, only 5,000 taxpayers were expected to file estate tax returns, according to projections by the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, an organization of estate attorneys, based on Internal Revenue Service data. About 1,700 families are expected to actually pay the tax annually, said Howard Gleckman, a tax expert with the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Sanders's plan would reverse the decades-long decline in estate taxes. It would levy a 45 percent estate tax on those with $3.5 million to $10 million; a 50 percent tax on those with $10 million to $50 million; a 55 percent tax on those with $50 million to $1 billion; and a 77 percent tax on those with more than $1 billion.
The legislation also aims to crack down on loopholes that allow fortunes to be passed down with lower taxes, including by preventing wealthy families from avoiding certain taxes through annuity trusts. To prevent the new tax from hitting farmers, the Sanders plan would also allow farmers to reduce the value of their farms by $3 million - up from $1.1 million under current law.
The law would dramatically affect how much taxes the wealthiest Americans pay when they die. Under current law, Jeff Bezos would pay $52 billion in estate tax upon his death, while Bill Gates would pay $38 billion, according to estimates by Sanders's staff, based on Forbes's wealth data. The GOP proposal would take both of their payments down to $0, while Sanders's would raise them to $101 billion and $74 billion, respectively, according to the estimates by Sanders's staff.
(Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
The federal estate tax was initially enacted in 1916, under President Woodrow Wilson. It applied to families with more than $50,000, or more than $1 million in today's dollars.
Sanders's aides said the tax is designed to help reverse the skyrocketing share of the national wealth controlled by the richest Americans. As of 2017, the top 1 percent owned about 40 percent of the country's wealth, higher than any share since 1962, according to economist Edward N. Wolff.
"One century ago, the U.S. invented steeply progressive estate and income taxes in order to maintain the egalitarian and democratic legacy of the country. Today's U.S. is becoming even more unequal than pre-World War I Europe," said Piketty, the French economist, in a statement. "The way out is stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs and a more progressive tax system. Sen. Sanders' estate tax bill, including a 77 percent tax rate on estate values above $1 billion, is an important step in this direction."
Jeff Stein
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will unveil a plan Thursday to dramatically expand the federal estate tax on the wealthy, including a new 77 percent rate on billionaires' estates, as leading Democratic politicians push new taxes on the richest Americans to combat inequality.
Sanders's bill, the "For the 99.8% Act," would tax the estates of the 0.2 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million, while the rest of the country "would not see their taxes go up by one penny under this plan," according to aides to the Vermont senator, who is considering a 2020 presidential bid.
Three top Republican senators this week released a plan to outright abolish the estate tax, which the GOP already significantly weakened with their 2017 tax law to only apply to those passing on more than $11 million (or $22 million for couples). Sanders's plan would restore the 77 percent top estate tax rate that was in place in the U.S. from 1941 to 1976, tax estates worth more than $3.5 million, and create several new estate tax brackets, including a 55 percent rate on estates worth more than $50 million.
"It is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent of our population. . . . This is not only insane, it tells us the degree to which the billionaire class controls the Republican Party," said Sanders, who introduced the plan with the support of Thomas Piketty, a well-known French economist on wealth consolidation. "Our bill does what the American people want us to be doing and that is to demand that the very wealthiest families in this country start paying their fair share of taxes."
The plan would raise $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires, but over an unknown period of time because it would take effect only once they die, according to Sanders's staff. Over the next decade, the tax would raise $315 billion, policy aides said.
The senator's push comes the week after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has already announced her bid for the White House, released an "Ultra Millionaire" tax that would levy a 2 percent annual tax on those with more than $50 million, as well as a 3 percent annual tax on those with more than $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also recently floated a 70 percent marginal tax rate on those making more than $10 million.
Sanders supports both of those ideas, and in 2017 pitched a wealth tax on those with assets over $21 million as part of a suite of financing options for his "Medicare-for-all" health-care plan, according to aides for the senator. As a candidate in the 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders also called for a surcharge on estates worth more than $1 billion, a top marginal rate over 60 percent, and a tax on certain Wall Street transactions.
Conservative opposition to increasing the estate tax is likely to be intense, as Republicans have characterized the provision as a "death tax" that unfairly punishes Americans, including farmers, for wealth accrued over the work of a lifetime.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and John Thune, R-S.D., released legislation to permanently repeal the federal estate tax, with Thune arguing that it "threatens families' agricultural legacies and makes it difficult and costly to pass these businesses down to future generations."
But significantly higher taxes on the rich have been increasingly embraced by Democrats with national aspirations amid a raft of polling suggesting that the public supports such measures, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.
"A lot of the conventional wisdom says, 'Stay away from tax increases,' but it's actually quite popular," Lake said.
Part of what's changing is that fewer Americans now fear that they will be targeted by taxes designed to hit the ultrawealthy, Lake said. "Even in the last six months, you're seeing a shift," she said.
Estate taxes on large fortunes could be part of that swing. They once brought in revenue that accounted for more than 5 percent of the federal budget, but have been whittled down since then over time and now account for less than 1 percent of federal revenue, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Before the 2017 GOP tax law, an individual could pass on as much as $5.45 million without paying the estate tax, which would then take a cut of up to 40 percent from wealth above that threshold. The law doubled that minimum, exempting all estates worth less than $11.2 million. A couple can now pass on $20 million, tax-free.
In 2018, after the GOP tax law, only 5,000 taxpayers were expected to file estate tax returns, according to projections by the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, an organization of estate attorneys, based on Internal Revenue Service data. About 1,700 families are expected to actually pay the tax annually, said Howard Gleckman, a tax expert with the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
Sanders's plan would reverse the decades-long decline in estate taxes. It would levy a 45 percent estate tax on those with $3.5 million to $10 million; a 50 percent tax on those with $10 million to $50 million; a 55 percent tax on those with $50 million to $1 billion; and a 77 percent tax on those with more than $1 billion.
The legislation also aims to crack down on loopholes that allow fortunes to be passed down with lower taxes, including by preventing wealthy families from avoiding certain taxes through annuity trusts. To prevent the new tax from hitting farmers, the Sanders plan would also allow farmers to reduce the value of their farms by $3 million - up from $1.1 million under current law.
The law would dramatically affect how much taxes the wealthiest Americans pay when they die. Under current law, Jeff Bezos would pay $52 billion in estate tax upon his death, while Bill Gates would pay $38 billion, according to estimates by Sanders's staff, based on Forbes's wealth data. The GOP proposal would take both of their payments down to $0, while Sanders's would raise them to $101 billion and $74 billion, respectively, according to the estimates by Sanders's staff.
(Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
The federal estate tax was initially enacted in 1916, under President Woodrow Wilson. It applied to families with more than $50,000, or more than $1 million in today's dollars.
Sanders's aides said the tax is designed to help reverse the skyrocketing share of the national wealth controlled by the richest Americans. As of 2017, the top 1 percent owned about 40 percent of the country's wealth, higher than any share since 1962, according to economist Edward N. Wolff.
"One century ago, the U.S. invented steeply progressive estate and income taxes in order to maintain the egalitarian and democratic legacy of the country. Today's U.S. is becoming even more unequal than pre-World War I Europe," said Piketty, the French economist, in a statement. "The way out is stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs and a more progressive tax system. Sen. Sanders' estate tax bill, including a 77 percent tax rate on estate values above $1 billion, is an important step in this direction."
Chairman threatens Nielsen
House chairman threatens Nielsen with subpoena if she doesn't testify
By ANDREW DESIDERIO
A key Democratic House chairman is threatening to issue a subpoena to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen if she doesn’t appear before the House Homeland Security panel before the end of February.
“I hope she sees the value in talking to the committee of jurisdiction for her agency,” Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said. “But if it comes to the fact that we can’t get [her testimony] any other way, it would not be a problem for me to do it.”
Thompson’s subpoena threat comes a day after he sent a strongly worded letter to Nielsen, calling her refusal to testify before the panel on Feb. 6 “unreasonable,” “unacceptable” and “outrageous.”
Thompson wants to question Nielsen on migrant family separations and other border- and immigration-related issues.
Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Nielsen, called Thompson’s letter misleading and said the department proposed alternative dates for a hearing, which Thompson had initially scheduled for next week.
On Wednesday, Thompson said one of the dates Nielsen proposed was during a congressional recess. Adam Comis, the committee’s communications director, said that Nielsen and her staff “were officially aware of our intentions to have her come testify before the Committee since Jan. 4.”
Nielsen and Thompson were supposed to meet this week, but, according to Comis, Nielsen “never confirmed the meeting.” Thompson told reporters that he has not communicated with Nielsen since “August or September of last year.”
“I think not having any communication with the secretary is not where we should be,” Thompson said. “She’s the head of the agency. Members of Congress need to hear from her.”
Nielsen isn’t the only Cabinet secretary to resist congressional testimony since the House flipped to Democratic control.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has refused to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the Trump administration’s controversial family-separation policy, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has sidestepped the House Ways and Means Committee, according to Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.).
By ANDREW DESIDERIO
A key Democratic House chairman is threatening to issue a subpoena to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen if she doesn’t appear before the House Homeland Security panel before the end of February.
“I hope she sees the value in talking to the committee of jurisdiction for her agency,” Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said. “But if it comes to the fact that we can’t get [her testimony] any other way, it would not be a problem for me to do it.”
Thompson’s subpoena threat comes a day after he sent a strongly worded letter to Nielsen, calling her refusal to testify before the panel on Feb. 6 “unreasonable,” “unacceptable” and “outrageous.”
Thompson wants to question Nielsen on migrant family separations and other border- and immigration-related issues.
Tyler Houlton, a spokesman for Nielsen, called Thompson’s letter misleading and said the department proposed alternative dates for a hearing, which Thompson had initially scheduled for next week.
On Wednesday, Thompson said one of the dates Nielsen proposed was during a congressional recess. Adam Comis, the committee’s communications director, said that Nielsen and her staff “were officially aware of our intentions to have her come testify before the Committee since Jan. 4.”
Nielsen and Thompson were supposed to meet this week, but, according to Comis, Nielsen “never confirmed the meeting.” Thompson told reporters that he has not communicated with Nielsen since “August or September of last year.”
“I think not having any communication with the secretary is not where we should be,” Thompson said. “She’s the head of the agency. Members of Congress need to hear from her.”
Nielsen isn’t the only Cabinet secretary to resist congressional testimony since the House flipped to Democratic control.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has refused to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the Trump administration’s controversial family-separation policy, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has sidestepped the House Ways and Means Committee, according to Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.).
Our Economic System
Ocasio-Cortez is Right: Our Economic System Needs Major Changes
I’m a moderate Democrat, and I don’t always agree with AOC’s politics. But she’s giving voice to millions of Americans who work hard but get left behind.
By HAROLD FORD JR.
American capitalism is the envy of the world. It has allocated capital and opportunity in a way that has produced the miracles of modern technology, including breathtaking medical breakthroughs, and put the country on a glide path to energy independence. Our currency is the world’s safe harbor, and U.S. assets are the most sought after by global investors.
But 19 years into the 21st century, the benefits of American capitalism are under intense scrutiny—and understandably so. Income and wealth inequality rival that of the 1920s. The median net worth of the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households is roughly 24,000 times greater than that of the bottom 25 percent; a gap approximately 18 times the size it was in 1992. Ten years into an economic recovery after the Great Recession, median household incomes are stagnant, while median costs have risen significantly. For too many families, basic health care coverage has become prohibitively expensive, and thousands have been forced to declare bankruptcy when confronted with the crushing costs of a serious illness. The average savings of an American at retirement age is just $12,000.
I have always been a pro-growth Democrat. When I was in Congress, I favored cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and supported strategic investments in infrastructure, scientific research and development, and public education. Since leaving Congress, I’ve worked for two powerful investment banking firms. Like President John F. Kennedy, I’ve long operated from the belief that a rising tide of strong economic growth lifts all boats and strengthens our nation long term.
And while I still believe that, I believe we can’t keep pretending that the strain of American capitalism we’ve clung to for decades hasn’t had serious—and sometimes negative—outcomes for many millions of Americans.
When the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent; when the richest nation in the world still does not have universal early-childhood education; when an opioid epidemic killed more people last year than all the U.S. troops killed in the Vietnam War, driven largely by a pervasive economic despair that has enveloped large swaths of our country; and when we continually underinvest in our public education system and thereby undermine the most important lifeline to economic opportunity, it’s time to abandon the comforts of our traditional orthodoxies.
It’s time for all of us—especially those of us who have long supported pro-growth policies—to ask: How do we modernize the American economic compact to produce growth in a way that provides more equity and fairness to the tens of millions of Americans left behind?
Now, while I don’t always agree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term congresswoman from New York, I applaud that she’s giving voice to the primary grievance of the millions of Americans who want major and lasting changes to a system they don’t see working for them: the idea that ultrawealthy and well-connected elites control too much of the wealth generated in this economy. She lives among her constituents, whose lives are being upended by our changing economy and who can’t seem to get ahead no matter how hard they work, and she knows that new ideas are imperative to address these economic times.
We should not dismiss her ideas cavalierly or attack her by calling her a radical, as some are doing. Instead, her ideas—raising the marginal tax rate on the ultrawealthy, enacting "Medicare for all," investing serious resources in public education, reforming campaign finance laws, and so on—merit serious discussion. They should be accepted or rejected not based on whether you like Ocasio-Cortez but on whether they would actually work.
Eric Foner, the Columbia University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, reminds us that American history is replete with ideas initially dismissed as radical but which were ultimately accepted because they were right, proved to work and made our nation safer and stronger. Social Security, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights laws, Medicare and Medicaid—all started out as radical ideas but are now seen as fundamental responsibilities of government, ones that we cannot imagine our society functioning without.
This shouldn’t be a tactical exercise, where people stubbornly advocate for one policy over another and lose sight of the bigger stakes at hand; it requires a new vision, new—and sometimes radical—ideas, and it demands a sober and honest conversation about the best ways to build robust and enduring growth that will improve the lives of Americans who’ve been left behind.
Luckily, I think there’s a real opportunity for that conversation to happen in the near future. We’re one month into 2019, and the 2020 presidential campaign is in full swing. We’ve seen the splashy announcement videos and soaring speeches by candidates, the TV hits on cable news and Stephen Colbert's show, the typical trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, and so on. What we have not yet seen—but which I hope and expect that we will—is a wellspring of new ideas and a candid, clear-eyed, rigorous debate about them.
I believe in capitalism. And I still believe it is the most powerful engine in the world for creating opportunity for working people. But I also believe that the old ways we approached the economy don’t work, and as facts and trends change, so must we.
That has been the genius of America since our founding: Confronted by a crisis—be it economic calamity, injustice or war—we have transformed ourselves, fended off the diminishment of our country and built an America that gets close to living up to its potential.
We are at that familiar place again. The future of capitalism depends on whether we can unite our country around a new and fairer way to distribute opportunity and wealth—a new economic compact. How exactly do we do that? Let the discussion begin.
I’m a moderate Democrat, and I don’t always agree with AOC’s politics. But she’s giving voice to millions of Americans who work hard but get left behind.
By HAROLD FORD JR.
American capitalism is the envy of the world. It has allocated capital and opportunity in a way that has produced the miracles of modern technology, including breathtaking medical breakthroughs, and put the country on a glide path to energy independence. Our currency is the world’s safe harbor, and U.S. assets are the most sought after by global investors.
But 19 years into the 21st century, the benefits of American capitalism are under intense scrutiny—and understandably so. Income and wealth inequality rival that of the 1920s. The median net worth of the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households is roughly 24,000 times greater than that of the bottom 25 percent; a gap approximately 18 times the size it was in 1992. Ten years into an economic recovery after the Great Recession, median household incomes are stagnant, while median costs have risen significantly. For too many families, basic health care coverage has become prohibitively expensive, and thousands have been forced to declare bankruptcy when confronted with the crushing costs of a serious illness. The average savings of an American at retirement age is just $12,000.
I have always been a pro-growth Democrat. When I was in Congress, I favored cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and supported strategic investments in infrastructure, scientific research and development, and public education. Since leaving Congress, I’ve worked for two powerful investment banking firms. Like President John F. Kennedy, I’ve long operated from the belief that a rising tide of strong economic growth lifts all boats and strengthens our nation long term.
And while I still believe that, I believe we can’t keep pretending that the strain of American capitalism we’ve clung to for decades hasn’t had serious—and sometimes negative—outcomes for many millions of Americans.
When the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent; when the richest nation in the world still does not have universal early-childhood education; when an opioid epidemic killed more people last year than all the U.S. troops killed in the Vietnam War, driven largely by a pervasive economic despair that has enveloped large swaths of our country; and when we continually underinvest in our public education system and thereby undermine the most important lifeline to economic opportunity, it’s time to abandon the comforts of our traditional orthodoxies.
It’s time for all of us—especially those of us who have long supported pro-growth policies—to ask: How do we modernize the American economic compact to produce growth in a way that provides more equity and fairness to the tens of millions of Americans left behind?
Now, while I don’t always agree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term congresswoman from New York, I applaud that she’s giving voice to the primary grievance of the millions of Americans who want major and lasting changes to a system they don’t see working for them: the idea that ultrawealthy and well-connected elites control too much of the wealth generated in this economy. She lives among her constituents, whose lives are being upended by our changing economy and who can’t seem to get ahead no matter how hard they work, and she knows that new ideas are imperative to address these economic times.
We should not dismiss her ideas cavalierly or attack her by calling her a radical, as some are doing. Instead, her ideas—raising the marginal tax rate on the ultrawealthy, enacting "Medicare for all," investing serious resources in public education, reforming campaign finance laws, and so on—merit serious discussion. They should be accepted or rejected not based on whether you like Ocasio-Cortez but on whether they would actually work.
Eric Foner, the Columbia University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, reminds us that American history is replete with ideas initially dismissed as radical but which were ultimately accepted because they were right, proved to work and made our nation safer and stronger. Social Security, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights laws, Medicare and Medicaid—all started out as radical ideas but are now seen as fundamental responsibilities of government, ones that we cannot imagine our society functioning without.
This shouldn’t be a tactical exercise, where people stubbornly advocate for one policy over another and lose sight of the bigger stakes at hand; it requires a new vision, new—and sometimes radical—ideas, and it demands a sober and honest conversation about the best ways to build robust and enduring growth that will improve the lives of Americans who’ve been left behind.
Luckily, I think there’s a real opportunity for that conversation to happen in the near future. We’re one month into 2019, and the 2020 presidential campaign is in full swing. We’ve seen the splashy announcement videos and soaring speeches by candidates, the TV hits on cable news and Stephen Colbert's show, the typical trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, and so on. What we have not yet seen—but which I hope and expect that we will—is a wellspring of new ideas and a candid, clear-eyed, rigorous debate about them.
I believe in capitalism. And I still believe it is the most powerful engine in the world for creating opportunity for working people. But I also believe that the old ways we approached the economy don’t work, and as facts and trends change, so must we.
That has been the genius of America since our founding: Confronted by a crisis—be it economic calamity, injustice or war—we have transformed ourselves, fended off the diminishment of our country and built an America that gets close to living up to its potential.
We are at that familiar place again. The future of capitalism depends on whether we can unite our country around a new and fairer way to distribute opportunity and wealth—a new economic compact. How exactly do we do that? Let the discussion begin.
Right About Medicare for All
Kamala Harris Was Right About Medicare for All (And That’s Why It Won’t Work)
By RICH LOWRY
Sen. Kamala Harris committed a most unusual gaffe at her CNN town hall the other night — not by misspeaking about one of her central policy proposals, but describing it accurately.
Asked on Monday night if the “Medicare for all” plan that she’s co-sponsoring with Sen. Bernie Sanders eliminates private health insurance, she said that it most certainly does. Citing insurance company paperwork and delays, she declared, “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
She met with approbation from the friendly audience in Des Moines, Iowa, but the reaction elsewhere was swift and negative.
“As the furor grew,” CNN reported the next day, “a Harris adviser on Tuesday signaled that the candidate would also be open to the more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the industry, being floated by other congressional Democrats.”
This was a leading Democrat wobbling on one of her top priorities 72 hours into her campaign, which has been praised for its early acumen and professionalism. It is sure to be the first of many unpleasant encounters between the new Democratic agenda and political reality, and is a sign of how perilous and unrealistic a proposition Medicare for all is.
Democrats are now moving from the hot-house phase of jockeying for the nomination, when all they had to do was get on board the party’s new orthodoxy defined by Bernie Sanders, to defending these ideas in high-profile forums, in the context of possibly signing them into law as president of the United States.
The Harris flap shows that insufficient thought has been given to how these proposals will strike the ears of people not already favorably disposed to them. It’s one thing for the Vermont socialist to favor eliminating private health insurance; no one has ever believed that he is very likely to become president. It’s another for Harris, deemed a possible front-runner, to say it.
Her position is jaw-droppingly radical. It flips the script of the (dishonest) Obama pledge so essential to passing Obamacare: “If you like your health plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
That was a very 2009 sentiment. Ten years later, Harris indeed wants to take away your health plan, not in a stealthy operation, not as an unfortunate byproduct of the rest of her plan, but as a defining plank of her agenda.
It is true that she is on other so-called Medicare for all plans. But they aren’t nearly as far-reaching. They wouldn’t achieve universal coverage, and should be more properly considered Medicaid or Medicare for More People plans. One would have states allow people buy into Medicaid. Another would give employers and more individuals access to Medicare.
If you are really going to get everyone into Medicare, as advertised, it requires going the Sanders route.
This makes clear that true Medicare for all is a more far-reaching and disruptive idea than Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s signature proposal of a wealth tax. The affected population isn’t a limited group of highly affluent people. It is half the population, roughly 180 million people who aren’t eager for the government to swoop in and nullify their current health care arrangements.
They may not like the current system, but they like their own health care — about three-quarters tell Gallup that they rate their own health care as excellent or good. This is why the relatively minor interruption of private plans as part of the rollout of Obamacare was so radioactive.
How is a President Harris going to overcome this kind of resistance absent Depression-era Democratic supermajorities in Congress? Not to mention pay for a program that might well cost $30 trillion over 10 years and beat back fierce opposition from key players like the insurance industry (which would be literally fighting for its life), Big Pharma and hospitals?
She obviously won’t. Medicare for all is a wish and a talking point rather than a realistic policy. When her aides say she is willing to accept another “path” to Medicare for all, what they mean is that Harris is willing to accept something short of Medicare for all and its nuking of the private insurance system. When they tell reporters that a huge tax cut for the middle class is her top priority, what they mean is that Medicare for all won’t happen because she doesn’t want to contemplate paying for it.
There is always something to be said for shifting the Overton window on policy. But it’s better if that is done by think tanks and gadflies rather than plausible presidential candidates, who aren’t even trying to hold down the left of the party.
If it’s uncomfortable for Kamala Harris to defend eliminating private health insurance now, imagine what it will be like when the entire apparatus of the Republican Party — including the president’s Twitter feed — is aimed at her in a general election.
By RICH LOWRY
Sen. Kamala Harris committed a most unusual gaffe at her CNN town hall the other night — not by misspeaking about one of her central policy proposals, but describing it accurately.
Asked on Monday night if the “Medicare for all” plan that she’s co-sponsoring with Sen. Bernie Sanders eliminates private health insurance, she said that it most certainly does. Citing insurance company paperwork and delays, she declared, “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
She met with approbation from the friendly audience in Des Moines, Iowa, but the reaction elsewhere was swift and negative.
“As the furor grew,” CNN reported the next day, “a Harris adviser on Tuesday signaled that the candidate would also be open to the more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the industry, being floated by other congressional Democrats.”
This was a leading Democrat wobbling on one of her top priorities 72 hours into her campaign, which has been praised for its early acumen and professionalism. It is sure to be the first of many unpleasant encounters between the new Democratic agenda and political reality, and is a sign of how perilous and unrealistic a proposition Medicare for all is.
Democrats are now moving from the hot-house phase of jockeying for the nomination, when all they had to do was get on board the party’s new orthodoxy defined by Bernie Sanders, to defending these ideas in high-profile forums, in the context of possibly signing them into law as president of the United States.
The Harris flap shows that insufficient thought has been given to how these proposals will strike the ears of people not already favorably disposed to them. It’s one thing for the Vermont socialist to favor eliminating private health insurance; no one has ever believed that he is very likely to become president. It’s another for Harris, deemed a possible front-runner, to say it.
Her position is jaw-droppingly radical. It flips the script of the (dishonest) Obama pledge so essential to passing Obamacare: “If you like your health plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
That was a very 2009 sentiment. Ten years later, Harris indeed wants to take away your health plan, not in a stealthy operation, not as an unfortunate byproduct of the rest of her plan, but as a defining plank of her agenda.
It is true that she is on other so-called Medicare for all plans. But they aren’t nearly as far-reaching. They wouldn’t achieve universal coverage, and should be more properly considered Medicaid or Medicare for More People plans. One would have states allow people buy into Medicaid. Another would give employers and more individuals access to Medicare.
If you are really going to get everyone into Medicare, as advertised, it requires going the Sanders route.
This makes clear that true Medicare for all is a more far-reaching and disruptive idea than Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s signature proposal of a wealth tax. The affected population isn’t a limited group of highly affluent people. It is half the population, roughly 180 million people who aren’t eager for the government to swoop in and nullify their current health care arrangements.
They may not like the current system, but they like their own health care — about three-quarters tell Gallup that they rate their own health care as excellent or good. This is why the relatively minor interruption of private plans as part of the rollout of Obamacare was so radioactive.
How is a President Harris going to overcome this kind of resistance absent Depression-era Democratic supermajorities in Congress? Not to mention pay for a program that might well cost $30 trillion over 10 years and beat back fierce opposition from key players like the insurance industry (which would be literally fighting for its life), Big Pharma and hospitals?
She obviously won’t. Medicare for all is a wish and a talking point rather than a realistic policy. When her aides say she is willing to accept another “path” to Medicare for all, what they mean is that Harris is willing to accept something short of Medicare for all and its nuking of the private insurance system. When they tell reporters that a huge tax cut for the middle class is her top priority, what they mean is that Medicare for all won’t happen because she doesn’t want to contemplate paying for it.
There is always something to be said for shifting the Overton window on policy. But it’s better if that is done by think tanks and gadflies rather than plausible presidential candidates, who aren’t even trying to hold down the left of the party.
If it’s uncomfortable for Kamala Harris to defend eliminating private health insurance now, imagine what it will be like when the entire apparatus of the Republican Party — including the president’s Twitter feed — is aimed at her in a general election.
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