More stories

  • in

    ‘Can you believe this?’: key takeaways from the report on Trump’s attempt to steal the election

    Donald Trump‘Can you believe this?’: key takeaways from the report on Trump’s attempt to steal the electionThe former president and his chief of staff pressed top department of justice deputies to probe allegations of fraud in the 2020 election Sam Levine in New YorkFri 8 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 8 Oct 2021 06.09 EDTA 394-page Senate report released Thursday offers some of the most alarming details to date of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.For weeks after the November election, Trump and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, pressed acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and top Department of Justice deputies to probe fanciful allegations of election fraud, according to the report. Here are six key takeaways from the report:Jeffrey Clark was willing to carry out Trump’s wishes and tried to pressure the acting attorney generalIn a late December phone call with Trump, Rosen was surprised when the president asked if he had ever heard of “a guy named Jeff Clark”. The inquiry seemed odd to Rosen; Clark did not work on matters related to elections, the report says. House Capitol attack panel subpoenas key planners of ‘Stop the Steal’ rallyRead moreRosen would later find out that Clark, a little known justice department lawyer, had already met with Trump, an admission that left him “flabbergasted”, since Clark was his subordinate. On 28 December, Clark emailed Rosen and Richard Donoghue, the principal associate deputy attorney general, with two requests. First, he wanted them to authorize a briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) “on foreign election interference issues”. Clark needed the briefing, according to the report, to assess an allegation that a “Dominion [voting] machine accessed the internet through a smart thermostat with a net connecting trail leading back to China”.Clark also wanted the two top justice department officials to sign on to a letter to lawmakers in Georgia and other states announcing the justice department was probing election irregularities and urging them to convene special legislative sessions to consider alternate slates of electoral college electors. “There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this,” Donoghue wrote back. Rosen, Donoghue, and Clark all had a “heated” meeting that evening in which Rosen and Donoghue made it clear they would not sign.Clark tried to use a potential appointment as acting attorney general as leverage to get top justice department officials to sign his letter.Either on 31 December or 1 January, Clark told Rosen that Trump had inquired whether Clark would be willing to serve as acting attorney general if the president fired Rosen. Clark told Rosen he hadn’t yet decided, but wanted to do more “due diligence”, on election fraud claims. A few days later, he told Rosen and Donoghue that it would make it easier for him to turn down Trump’s offer if Rosen signed his letter. “He raised another thing that he might point to, that he might be able to say no [to the President], is if – that letter, if I reversed my position on the letter, which I was unwilling to do,” Rosen told the senate committee.White House lawyers and other top DoJ officials threatened to resign if Clark was named the acting attorney generalOn 3 January, Clark told Rosen that Trump intended to appoint Clark the acting attorney general that day. That set off a scramble at the justice department, where Clark and Donoghue informed the heads of the department’s various divisions what was happening. They all agreed to resign if Trump followed through.Rosen and Donoghue met with Trump in the Oval Office that evening. “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election,” Trump said to open the meeting, according to Rosen. Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, described Clark’s letter as a “murder-suicide pact” and threatened to resign if Clark was appointed.After a three-hour meeting, Trump ultimately decided not to fire Rosen.The US attorney in Atlanta resigned after Trump threatened to fire himOne casualty of the 3 January meeting was Byung Jin Pak, who was then serving as the US attorney in Atlanta. During the meeting, Trump fumed that Pak had not uncovered evidence of election fraud and accused him of being a “never Trumper”. Trump instructed Donoghue to fire Pak. But Donoghue informed Trump that Pak intended to resign the next day. Cipollone advised Trump not to fire someone who was about to resign and Trump agreed to hold off.There was a problem: Pak intended to stay in his role until inauguration day. That night, Donoghue called Pak and persuaded him to resign early.Trump replaced Pak with Bobby Christine, another federal prosecutor in Georgia, bypassing a Pak deputy who was next in line to succeed him. Donoghue told the Senate panel he believed Trump wanted Christine because he would be more likely to investigate election irregularities.Meadows, the White House chief of staff, played a key role in pressuring the justice department to investigate absurd conspiracy theories about the electionOn 29 December, Meadows asked Rosen to look into a conspiracy theory known as “Italygate” that alleged satellites had flipped Trump votes for Biden. Days later, Meadows sent Rosen a YouTube video purporting to contain evidence to back up the “Italygate” theory. The same day, Meadows asked Rosen to connect with Clark about disproven allegations in Georgia. “Can you believe this?” Rosen wrote to Donoghue. “I am not going to respond.”Meadows also asked Rosen to meet with Rudy Giuliani, then the president’s personal lawyer, a request Rosen rebuffed.Trump pressured the justice department to file a lawsuit in the supreme court seeking to invalidate the election results in six key statesIn late December, Trump asked the justice department to take the highly unusual step of filing an election lawsuit directly in the US Supreme Court. The suit would have asked the court to nullify Biden’s election victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.The solicitor general’s office (OSG) and the office of legal counsel (OLC) prepared memos explaining why the department could not file a lawsuit. “Among other hurdles, OSG explained that DOJ could not file an original supreme court action for the benefit of a political candidate,” the senate report says.A plain-English memo from OLC was more blunt. “[T]here is no legal basis to bring this lawsuit.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsTrump administrationUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

  • in

    Facebook ‘tearing our societies apart’: key excerpts from a whistleblower

    FacebookFacebook ‘tearing our societies apart’: key excerpts from a whistleblower Frances Haugen tells US news show why she decided to reveal inside story about social networking firm Dan Milmo Global technology editorMon 4 Oct 2021 08.33 EDTLast modified on Mon 4 Oct 2021 10.30 EDTFrances Haugen’s interview with the US news programme 60 Minutes contained a litany of damning statements about Facebook. Haugen, a former Facebook employee who had joined the company to help it combat misinformation, told the CBS show the tech firm prioritised profit over safety and was “tearing our societies apart”.Haugen will testify in Washington on Tuesday, as political pressure builds on Facebook. Here are some of the key excerpts from Haugen’s interview.Choosing profit over the public goodHaugen’s most cutting words echoed what is becoming a regular refrain from politicians on both sides of the Atlantic: that Facebook puts profit above the wellbeing of its users and the public. “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.”She also accused Facebook of endangering public safety by reversing changes to its algorithm once the 2020 presidential election was over, allowing misinformation to spread on the platform again. “And as soon as the election was over, they turned them [the safety systems] back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritise growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”Facebook’s approach to safety compared with othersIn a 15-year career as a tech professional, Haugen, 37, has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest but she said Facebook had the worst approach to restricting harmful content. She said: “I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I’d seen before.” Referring to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, she said: “I have a lot of empathy for Mark. And Mark has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side-effects of those choices are that hateful, polarising content gets more distribution and more reach.”Instagram and mental healthThe document leak that had the greatest impact was a series of research slides that showed Facebook’s Instagram app was damaging the mental health and wellbeing of some teenage users, with 30% of teenage girls feeling that it made dissatisfaction with their body worse.She said: “And what’s super tragic is Facebook’s own research says, as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed. And it actually makes them use the app more. And so, they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more. Facebook’s own research says it is not just that Instagram is dangerous for teenagers, that it harms teenagers, it’s that it is distinctly worse than other forms of social media.”Facebook has described the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the slides as a “mischaracterisation” of its research.Why Haugen leaked the documentsHaugen said “person after person” had attempted to tackle Facebook’s problems but had been ground down. “Imagine you know what’s going on inside of Facebook and you know no one on the outside knows. I knew what my future looked like if I continued to stay inside of Facebook, which is person after person after person has tackled this inside of Facebook and ground themselves to the ground.”Having joined the company in 2019, Haugen said she decided to act this year and started copying tens of thousands of documents from Facebook’s internal system, which she believed show that Facebook is not, despite public comments to the contrary, making significant progress in combating online hate and misinformation . “At some point in 2021, I realised, ‘OK, I’m gonna have to do this in a systemic way, and I have to get out enough that no one can question that this is real.’”Facebook and violenceHaugen said the company had contributed to ethnic violence, a reference to Burma. In 2018, following the massacre of Rohingya Muslims by the military, Facebook admitted that its platform had been used to “foment division and incite offline violence” relating to the country. Speaking on 60 Minutes, Haugen said: “When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarising content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.”Facebook and the Washington riotThe 6 January riot, when crowds of rightwing protesters stormed the Capitol, came after Facebook disbanded the Civic Integrity team of which Haugen was a member. The team, which focused on issues linked to elections around the world, was dispersed to other Facebook units following the US presidential election. “They told us: ‘We’re dissolving Civic Integrity.’ Like, they basically said: ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There wasn’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now.’ Fast-forward a couple months, we got the insurrection. And when they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.’”The 2018 algorithm changeFacebook changed the algorithm on its news feed – Facebook’s central feature, which supplies users with a customised feed of content such as friends’ photos and news stories – to prioritise content that increased user engagement. Haugen said this made divisive content more prominent.“One of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimising for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarising – it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.” She added: “Facebook has realised that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money.”Haugen said European political parties contacted Facebook to say that the news feed change was forcing them to take more extreme political positions in order to win users’ attention. Describing polititicians’ concerns, she said: “You are forcing us to take positions that we don’t like, that we know are bad for society. We know if we don’t take those positions, we won’t win in the marketplace of social media.”In a statement to 60 Minutes, Facebook said: “Every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true. If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”TopicsFacebookSocial networkingUS Capitol attackInstagramMental healthSocial mediaYoung peoplenewsReuse this content More

  • in

    Capitol attack committee issues fresh subpoenas over pre-riot Trump rally

    US Capitol attackCapitol attack committee issues fresh subpoenas over pre-riot Trump rally Eleven people connected to Women for America First subpoenaed, including Trump 2016 campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson Hugo Lowell in WashingtonWed 29 Sep 2021 18.40 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 19.03 EDTThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Wednesday issued a second tranche of subpoenas to individuals connected to the rally immediately preceding the 6 January riot, where Donald Trump incited his supporters to commit insurrection.The new subpoenas for people involved in the march and rally reflects the select committee’s far-reaching mandate to examine whether the attack on the Capitol was planned in advance, according to a source familiar with the matter.Trump plans to sue to keep White House records on Capitol attack secretRead moreHouse select committee investigators in total subpoenaed 11 individuals connected to the Trump-supporting organization Women for America First that organized the rally at the Ellipse, including its two co-founders, Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie Jane Kremer.“The investigation has revealed credible evidence of your involvement in events within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.The select committee also subpoenaed other individuals linked to Women for America First: Caroline Wren, Cynthia Lee Chafian, Hannah Salem Stone, Justin Caporale, Katrina Pierson, Lyndon Brentnall, Maggie Mulvaney, Megan Powers, and Tim Unes.House select committee investigators are specifically questioning Pierson – a spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – about a 4 January encounter with Trump where the former president asked about a separate event featuring Roger Stone and Ali Alexander.The select committee, in subpoenaing Pierson and investigating an additional event on the day before the Capitol attack organized by Chafian, is examining connections between the rally leaders and Trump, who helped drive attendance by elevating 6 January as a “wild” protest.House select committee investigators said in the subpoenas that they believed the 11 people assisted in organizing the rally in support of Trump and his lies about a stolen 2020 election, which incited his supporters to storm the Capitol in his name.But in a notable addition, the select committee added in the subpoenas that they had been identified as potential witnesses because they communicated with former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – as well as Trump himself.The select committee is expected in the coming weeks to authorize still further subpoenas to Trump officials and other individuals connected to the Capitol attack, which could ultimately number in the hundreds, according to a source familiar with internal deliberations.But it was not immediately clear whether the latest subpoena targets would comply with the orders that compelled them to produce documents by 13 October and appear for depositions in October and November before a select committee that has plainly enraged Trump.The Guardian first reported on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers are planning to sue to block the release of White House records from his presidency to House investigators over executive privilege claims, according to a source familiar with his planning.Trump also expects the four aides subpoenaed in the first tranche of orders last week – Meadows, deputy chief Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and department defense aide Kash Patel – to defy the orders, the source said.The former president’s efforts to resist the select committee on every front by claiming executive privilege faces steep obstacles, in part because the justice department declined to assert protection over prior testimony related to 6 January.But the plan to mount legal challenges could ensure the most sensitive Trump White House records are tied up in court for months, delaying the select committee as it aims to produce a final report before the 2022 midterms to shield it from accusations of partisanship.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More