House speaker Mike Johnson has reportedly declared “no need for public alarm” regarding House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner’s national security warning. “Steady hands are at the wheel, we’re working on it, there’s no need for alarm,” Johnson told media on Wednesday afternoon.
His comments come after Turner issued a statement that Congress had been made aware of a “serious national security threat” and called on Joe Biden to “declassify all information” related to it.
During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said he planned to meet with members of the House intelligence committee on Thursday.
“We scheduled a briefing for the for House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow,” said Sullivan. “I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow.”
Turner’s concerns are reportedly related to Russian military capabilities.
Thanks for following along today, live blog readers. As we close up for the day, here’s a quick summary of today’s developments in U.S. politics – including the fallout from Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment and cryptic warnings about a looming national security threat:
Democrats reacted to the Tuesday vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – the first time in nearly 150 years that a Cabinet secretary has been impeached. “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship,” said Joe Biden, of the impeachment.
The impeachment effort will almost certainly die in the senate, which would require a supermajority vote to impeach following a trial that begins in two weeks. Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called the impeachment a “sham.”
House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner warned in a cryptic statement of a national security threat, calling on Biden to “declassify all information related to this threat”. During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to directly address the nature of the alleged threat and said he had “scheduled a briefing for House members of the Gang of Eight” on Thursday.
The Washington Post reported that the security threat had been identified using surveillance permitted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), a controversial provision that allows the government to surveil non-citizens abroad – but has also led to the surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails. House Republicans are pushing to enact a version of Fisa that does not include a warrant requirement for the FBI – a reform critics of the legislation have long advocated.
A Republican activist charged for his involvement in the fake elector scheme in Michigan testified today that he didn’t knowingly try to unlawfully subvert the results of the 2020 election. He was charged with creating a false public record.
Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement on the topic of the alleged national security threat that the “most urgent national security threat facing the American people right now is the possibility that Congress abandons Ukraine and allows Vladimir Putin’s Russia to win”.
The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh reports on Nato’s secretary general responding to Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about Nato countries:
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has accused Donald Trump of undermining the basis of the transatlantic alliance as he announced that 18 Nato members were expected to beat the target of spending more than 2% of GDP on defence.
It was the second rebuke by the Nato chief to the Republican frontrunner in less than a week, reinforced by a declaration that Germany was among the countries planning to spend over the threshold for the first time in a generation.
“We should not undermine the credibility of Nato’s deterrence,” Stoltenberg said on Wednesday as he responded to comments made by Trump at a campaign rally at the weekend. “Deterrence is in the mind of our adversaries,” he added.
On Saturday, Trump caused outrage in Europe when he said he would “not protect” any Nato member that had failed to meet the 2% target – and added that he would even encourage Russia to continue attacking them.
A day later, Stoltenberg said Trump’s rhetoric “puts American and European soldiers at increased risk”, while on Wednesday, before a meeting of defence ministers, the normally diplomatic secretary general returned to the theme, arguing: “We should leave no room for miscalculation or misunderstanding in Moscow.”
The Washington Post reports that the alleged security threat that House intelligence committee chairman Mike Turner warned about in a cryptic statement today was likely identified using surveillance permitted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), a controversial provision that allows the government to spy on non-citizens living abroad – and has also led to the surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails.
House Republicans are pushing for a new version of the bill that does not include a warrant requirement for the FBI – a key reform critics of the legislation have pushed for.
House speaker Mike Johnson has said there is “no need for public alarm” regarding the unconfirmed national security threat.
In a statement, the chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence, Mark Warner, and the vice-chair of the committee, Marco Rubio, said the committee “has the intelligence” that House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner referred to in a Wednesday statement warning of a national security threat.
According to the statement, the committee “has been rigorously tracking this issue from the start”. The statement warned against “potentially disclosing sources and methods that may be key to preserving a range of options for US action”.
CNN has reported the alleged threat is related to Russian military capabilities.
Nikki Haley blasted Donald Trump for his comments on her husband, who is currently deployed overseas. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly puts Haley’s remarks in context:
Donald Trump is “unhinged” and “diminished”, said Nikki Haley, the former president’s last rival for the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday.
“To mock my husband, Michael and I can handle that,” the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador told NBC News’s Today, referring to comments by Trump about Michael Haley, a national guard officer deployed in Djibouti.
“But you mock one member of the military, you mock all members of the military … Before, when he did it, it was during the 2016 election, and everybody thought, ‘Oh, did he have a slip? What did that mean?’ The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016. He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.”
In the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked John McCain, an Arizona senator and former nominee for president who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Having avoided the draft for that war, Trump was expected to pay a heavy political price but did not, going on to attract controversy in office for allegedly deriding those who serve.
House speaker Mike Johnson has reportedly declared “no need for public alarm” regarding House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner’s national security warning. “Steady hands are at the wheel, we’re working on it, there’s no need for alarm,” Johnson told media on Wednesday afternoon.
His comments come after Turner issued a statement that Congress had been made aware of a “serious national security threat” and called on Joe Biden to “declassify all information” related to it.
During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said he planned to meet with members of the House intelligence committee on Thursday.
“We scheduled a briefing for the for House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow,” said Sullivan. “I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow.”
Turner’s concerns are reportedly related to Russian military capabilities.
A Michigan Republican accused of participating in a fake elector plot after the 2020 presidential election testified on Wednesday that he did not know how the electoral process worked and never intended to make a false public record, the Associated Press reports.
“We were told this was an appropriate process,” James Renner, 77, said during a preliminary hearing for a half-dozen other electors who face forgery and other charges.
People who falsely posed as electors in a six-state scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election have been criminally charged in Georgia and Nevada. In Wisconsin, false electors agreed to a settlement in a civil case in December.
“You have a majority of Americans who believe that we need to protect our democracy,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in response to a question about recent polling showing about 18% of Americans believe in the conspiracy theory that Taylor Swift is part of a plot by Democrats to deliver the 2024 presidential election to Joe Biden. That poll also found people who believe the Taylor Swift theory are also more likely to doubt the validity of the 2020 presidential election.
The United States expects Israel to meet its commitment to allow a shipment of flour to be moved into Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
Sullivan was responding to a question about an Axios report on Tuesday that said the Israeli government was blocking a US-funded flour shipment to Gaza.
Jake Sullivan has finished taking questions from the media and has left the west wing now. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will now take the briefing onto more domestic matters in US political news.
Meanwhile, Axios wrote:
Israeli ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is blocking a U.S.-funded flour shipment to Gaza because its recipient is the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), two Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios.
U.S. officials said this is a violation of a commitment Benjamin Netanyahu personally made to President Biden several weeks ago and another reason the U.S. leader is frustrated with the Israeli prime minister.
CNN reports the national security threat that Congressman Mike Turner called on Joe Biden to declassify is related to a “highly concerning and destabilizing” Russian military capability.
During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to comment on the specifics of the threat.
“We scheduled a briefing for the for House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow,” said Sullivan. “I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan was asked at the White House press briefing about efforts to secure a “temporary pause” in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and how that might work.
There are international talks under way in Egypt about a ceasefire in Gaza and a deal with Hamas to return hostages it took during its attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which provoked a crushing Israeli military response in Gaza. Our colleague Bethan McKernan reports that mediators are struggling to make progress in the face of a threatened Israeli offensive on Rafah, the Palestinian territory’s last place of relative safety.
Sullivan described that a plan could “start with the temporary pause … The idea is that we have multiple phases as part of the hostage deal and we move from phase 1 to the next and we can extend the pause [in fighting] as more hostages come out.”
He added: “What we would like to see is that Hamas is ultimately defeated, that peace and security come to Gaza, and then we work towards a longer term, two-state solution, with Gaza’s security guaranteed.”
Our colleague Léonie Chao-Fong wrote this explainer piece over the weekend about the latest US push for a solution in the Middle East that would result in Israel and Palestine coexisting in peace. You can read it here.
In a statement, Republican congressman Mike Turner, who chairs the House intelligence committee, warned that Congress had been alerted to a “serious national security threat” and called on Biden to “declassify all information related to this threat”. During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to directly address the nature of the alleged threat and said that he had plans to meet with congressional intelligence lawmakers tomorrow.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
