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      President Trump: Unhappy, Unleashed and Unpredictable

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      Pennsylvania man is accused of casting Trump vote for his dead mother.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyTracking Viral MisinformationPennsylvania man is accused of casting Trump vote for his dead mother.Dec. 23, 2020, 2:36 p.m. ETDec. 23, 2020, 2:36 p.m. ETShortly after the November election, the Trump campaign circulated on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as its website, the names of seven dead Americans in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. The dead people were used to cast votes in last month’s election, the campaign claimed, pointing to the incidents as evidence of widespread voter fraud that enabled President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.Local officials have debunked several of the dead-voter claims, and there remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But now, Pennsylvania officials say one of the names held up by the Trump campaign was used to cast a vote in the election.Here’s the catch: Authorities say the fraudulent vote was cast for Mr. Trump.This week, Jack Stollsteimer, the district attorney of Delaware County, accused Bruce Bartman of Marple Township, Pa., of illegally voting in place of his deceased mother in the general election. In addition to his mother, Mr. Bartman registered his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Weihman, who died in 2019, as a voter, according to the district attorney’s office, but is not accused of voting for her. He also cast a ballot under his own name.The Trump campaign circulated claims of voter fraud on its social media accounts. Local officials have debunked several of the claims.“This is the only known case of a ‘dead person’ voting in our county, conspiracy theories notwithstanding,” Mr. Stollsteimer said in a statement. “The prompt prosecution of this case shows that law enforcement will continue to uphold our election laws whenever presented with actual evidence of fraud and that we will continue to investigate every allegation that comes our way.”Samuel Stretton, a lawyer for Mr. Bartman, said: “He’s admitted everything. He’s cooperated.” Mr. Stretton added that he was negotiating a guilty plea, and that Mr. Bartman had no criminal record.“He’s a good man,” Mr. Stretton said. “He did something very stupid under some misguided theory that this was his form of protest.”In an interview with The New York Times in November after the Trump campaign first made its claims, Mr. Bartman said he did not recall seeing a mail-in ballot for his mother. “Oh, no, no, I haven’t gotten anything,” he said. “Occasionally I would get some junk mail for her. But not in several years.”He added that he did not hear of the Trump campaign’s allegation because he did not use social media much and only infrequently logged on to Facebook to see pictures of his grandchildren.Asked whether he knew why a vote for his mother would have been recorded despite her having passed away, he said the state’s governor, Tom Wolf, “doesn’t know anything or what’s going on in the city of Philadelphia, or the surrounding counties in the middle part of the state.”“Some of the stuff that has gone on in Philadelphia is just atrocious,” Mr. Bartman added.Mr. Stretton, his lawyer, said, “He was wrong in saying that, he admits he was wrong, and since he was approached by the detectives, he has cooperated and told the truth.”The claim that a vote was fraudulently cast using Elizabeth Bartman’s name and that it was emblematic of systemic voter fraud helping Mr. Biden spread widely online. On Facebook, articles with the claim from the conservative websites ZeroHedge and The Epoch Times were shared 1,800 times and reached up to 61 million followers, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Biden Assails Trump Over Handling of Russia Hack

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesElectoral College ResultsBiden’s CabinetInaugural DonationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden Assails Trump Over Handling of Russia Hack“This assault happened on Donald Trump’s watch when he wasn’t watching,’’ President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said.“The attacker succeeded in catching the federal government off guard and unprepared,” President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Tuesday at a news conference in Wilmington, Del.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesDec. 22, 2020Updated 9:54 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. accused President Trump on Tuesday of “irrational downplaying” of the widespread hack of the federal government and American industry, saying that the current administration was denying him needed intelligence and warning Russia that he would not allow the intrusion into American systems to “go unanswered” after he takes office.“This assault happened on Donald Trump’s watch when he wasn’t watching,’’ Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Delaware. “It is still his responsibility as president to defend American interests for the next four weeks, but rest assured that even if he does not take it seriously, I will.”The direct critique was a remarkable departure from the usual one-president-at-a-time tradition, in which incoming presidents are careful about not second-guessing the actions of the incumbent. But Mr. Trump’s refusal to recognize Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, and his effort to subvert the results, has clearly poisoned elements of the transition process.In recent days Mr. Biden’s aides have come to realize that the scope of the intrusion — which landed the Russians inside the email system used by top Treasury officials, and won them access to the networks of the Energy, Commerce and Homeland Security Departments and dozens of American companies — could pose a threat in the opening days of the new administration.Mr. Biden acknowledged as much, indirectly, when asked about his statement that he could not ensure government systems could be trusted when he take office.“Of course I can’t,’’ he said. “I don’t know what the state of them is. They’re clearly not safe right now.”Privately, members of his staff have said that while they have received briefings on the subject, they have been bare-bones. And the shutdown of recent cooperation between the transition team and the Defense Department has encompassed the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command — the quasi-civilian and military sides of the nation’s foreign offensive and defensive operations.“There’s still so much we don’t know including the full scale of the breach or the extent of the damage it has caused,’’ Mr. Biden said. He was alluding to the quiet internal warnings that Russia may have been able to place “back doors” in government systems and, in the worst case, manipulate data or sabotage systems.“It was carried out by using sophisticated cybertools, and the attacker succeeded in catching the federal government off guard and unprepared,” Mr. Biden said.Unlike Mr. Trump, he left no doubt he believed that Russia was responsible, noting that both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William P. Barr have said as much publicly, even if Mr. Trump would not. And he said once there was a formal determination of responsibility, a task that could take intelligence agencies weeks, “we will respond and probably respond in kind.”The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 22, 2020, 9:33 p.m. ETTrump demands changes to coronavirus relief bill, calling it a ‘disgrace.’Birx says she will retire after Biden transition.In a shift, Twitter won’t transfer followers of official White House accounts when Biden takes office.That vow is likely to prove easier to issue from the Wilmington stage than it will be to execute from the Situation Room. Mr. Biden’s first encounter with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will be on another topic: The two men will have 16 days to negotiate an extension of up to five years of New Start, the nuclear arms control treaty that expires in early February.That will force Mr. Biden to be striking a deal to prevent one threat — a nuclear arms race — while simultaneously threatening retaliation on a newer type of threat.Moreover, while the United States is awash in digital targets, Russia is a far less connected society, making an “in kind” response more difficult. And it is hardly a state secret that the United States already spies on Russian systems, and has turned off computers at the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-backed disinformation group that was involved in the 2016 election interference. Last year, The New York Times reported that the U.S. had also implanted malware into Russia’s electric power grid — as a warning to Moscow after the discovery that Russia had put malware in the U.S. grid.“Of course the U.S. intelligence community does these every day and twice on Sundays,’’ Dmitri Alperovitch, the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank, and the former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, where he specialized in Russian cyberoperations.Speaking on Deep State Radio, a podcast, he said, “we have all used supply chain attacks, and we can’t say it’s OK for us and not for others.”In fact, the Russians often cite such U.S. operations to argue that American outrage over espionage and even more extensive cyberattacks is manufactured.Mr. Biden said that the United States should be “getting together with our allies to try to set up an international system that will constitute appropriate behavior in cyberspace” and “hold any other country liable for breaking out of those basic rules.”Such efforts are hardly new. Mr. Obama tried a basic agreement with President Xi Jinping of China late in his term, after the Chinese were caught removing 22.5 million security clearance files from the Office of Personnel Management, another hack that went largely undetected for a year. The accord quickly fell apart after Mr. Obama left office.A parallel effort inside the United Nations also quickly frayed. While another one is expected to issue a report in 2021, much of the debate has been hijacked by Russia and China to focus on limiting dissent on the internet and pressing for the “true identity” of everyone online — which would make it easier for them to sniff out dissidents.But the more immediate problem for Mr. Biden may be finding, and securing, vulnerable elements of the software supply chain that Russia exploited when it bored into network management software made by SolarWinds, an Austin, Texas firm, and corrupted its updates with malware. That is one of several ways Russia is believed to have entered such an array of agencies and corporations.Amid the investigation into the Russian hack, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a report based on a two-year, still unfinished review of the risks to the United States of a supply chain attack.The report concluded that supply chain risks “could have far-reaching and potentially devastating impacts,” a bit of an understatement as the government feverishly digs through its systems for evidence of Russian compromise.Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Will Trump Force Principled Conservatives to Start Their Own Party? I Hope So

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWill Trump Force Principled Conservatives to Start Their Own Party? I Hope SoAmerican politics will be shaped by the influence of the monarch of Mar-a-Lago.Opinion ColumnistDec. 22, 2020Credit…Samuel Corum for The New York TimesAs the Trump presidency heads into the sunset, kicking and screaming, one of the most important questions that will shape American politics at the local, state and national levels is this: Can Donald Trump maintain his iron grip over the Republican Party when he is out of office?This is what we know for sure: He damn well intends to try and is amassing a pile of cash to do so. And here is what I predict: If Trump keeps delegitimizing Joe Biden’s presidency and demanding loyalty for his extreme behavior, the G.O.P. could fully fracture — splitting between principled Republicans and unprincipled Republicans. Trump then might have done America the greatest favor possible: stimulating the birth of a new principled conservative party.Santa, if you’re listening, that’s what I want for Christmas!Wishful thinking? Maybe. But here’s why it’s not entirely fanciful: If Trump refuses to ever acknowledge Biden’s victory and keeps roasting those Republicans who do — and who “collaborate” with the new administration — something is going to crack.There will be increasing pressure on the principled Republicans — people like Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and the judges, election officials and state legislators who put country before party and refused to buckle under Trump’s demands — to break away and start their own conservative party.If that happens, the unprincipled Trump Republicans — like the 126 House members who joined with the Texas attorney general in a shameful Supreme Court case to nullify Biden’s victory — could have a harder time winning office. That would be a good thing in its own right.More important, even if just a few principled conservatives came together and created a kind of third party in Congress, they could be kingmakers. With the Senate so finely balanced, moderates on each side have significant leverage.We just saw that with the relief bill negotiations, which Trump, on cue, is now threatening to undo. It was the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus — coalesced by the centrist movement No Labels — and an informal bipartisan group of senators that produced the deal from the bottom up.Imagine Biden’s center-left Democrats and principled center-right conservatives working together on fixes for infrastructure, immigration, Obamacare or climate — without Trump around to disrupt any progress.Wishful thinking? Maybe. But one thing I learned covering the Middle East is that there is only one reliable thing about extremists — they don’t know when to stop. So, in the end, they almost always go over the cliff, taking a lot of people with them.Donald Trump is a political extremist. He does not stop at red lights. He does not abide by norms, ethics or the truth. As a result, his huge disinformation campaign against Biden’s election, and his attacks on Republican officeholders and right-wing media that won’t parrot his lies and conspiracy theories, is already fracturing the party at the state level in places like Georgia and Arizona.It’s drawing a sharp distinction between principled Republicans who chose to put their constitutional obligations before Trump’s interests and the unprincipled ones who either are too cowardly to speak up or eagerly hopped into the Trump clown car to secure his blessings for their next election.Think of two recent images. The first is of the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, on Dec. 15 briskly walking past a CNN reporter who was asking him a simple question: Would he acknowledge that Joe Biden was the president-elect? McCarthy was too cowardly or too unprincipled to answer.If you’re a Republican lawmaker, do you really want to spend the next four years running away from CNN every time you’re asked to opine about the latest demented thing Donald Trump has said or done — because you’re afraid that he’ll launch a primary attack against you with his devoted base if you show integrity?The contrasting image is of Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey. It’s Dec. 1 and Ducey is literally signing the papers certifying his state’s election results and officially awarding Biden its 11 electors — ignoring Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in Arizona.Ducey’s cellphone rings, but it is no ordinary ringtone. It is “Hail to the Chief,” a ringtone Ducey installed in July so that he would never miss a call from Trump. But this time Ducey simply takes the phone out of his pocket, silences it, puts it aside and goes on signing the papers.According to a report in The Hill, “Trump later called into a hearing with state Republicans that was happening during the certification” and “tore into Ducey,” declaring, “Arizona will not forget what Ducey just did.” Trump was right, but not in the way he predicted.On Saturday, CNN described the civil war that has broken out in Arizona: “G.O.P. party leaders and elected officials who’ve gone all-in for Trump, backed by right-wing media, have relentlessly attacked those who can’t bring themselves to go along with the lame-duck president’s refusal to concede. To be sure, similar splits exist across the G.O.P. nationwide. But the infighting in Arizona offers a clear picture of why some Republicans fear that if Trump continues stirring up and directing his followers once he’s out of office, the party may cripple itself at the state and local level.”The story added: “‘Some Republicans have decided to file for divorce from reality, facts be damned,’ said Barrett Marson, a publicist who worked for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s political action committee. … Perhaps most notable in the subsequent salvos was a tweet from the governor’s chief of staff, Daniel Scarpinato, to ‘Freedom Caucus’ chair Rep. Andy Biggs calling him nuts and ending, ‘Enjoy your time as a permanent resident of Crazytown.’”To be sure, calling Ducey a “principled Republican” is a low bar, considering that he had no problem backing Trump all the way until now. Unlike other Trump-friendly Republicans, though, he was ready to draw a constitutional redline he would not cross.But every day that goes by Trump shows us that as his power decreases, he surrounds himself with more and more unprincipled crackpots, who fan his delusions and propose more and more extreme actions, like Michael Flynn’s neofascist suggestion of declaring martial law and rerunning the election in some states Trump lost.Therefore, the stress that Trump creates will surely get only worse after he leaves the White House, when, to stay relevant, he’ll need to say ever more extreme things that keep his base — now fully marinated in his conspiracy theories — energized and ready to attack any principled Republican who deviates from Trump. Also, all those Fox News commentators who prostituted themselves to Trump (and their ratings), helping to make his extreme base even more extreme, can’t stop now. They’ll lose their audience.They’re all extremists who can’t stop, and principled conservatives understand that. Listen to Evan McMullin, the former C.I.A. operations officer and later chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, who resigned in 2016 to run for president as an independent:“Even though Mr. Trump has been defeated, there is still no home for Republicans committed to representative government, truth and the rule of law, nor is one likely to emerge anytime soon,” wrote McMullin in this newspaper. “So what’s next for Republicans who reject their party’s attempts to incinerate the Constitution in the service of one man’s authoritarian power grabs? … The answer is that we must further develop an intellectual and political home, for now, outside of any party. From there, we can continue working with other Americans to defeat Mr. Trump’s heirs, help offer unifying leadership to the country and, if the Republican Party continues on its current path, launch a party to challenge it directly.”Call me mad, but my gut tells me that when Trump is just the monarch of Mar-a-Lago — just spewing venom — some Republicans will say “enough.” Somewhere in there a new party of principled conservatives might just get born.Wishful thinking? Maybe. But what a blessing that would be for America.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Georgia Senate Runoff Targeted by Misinformation 'Superspreaders'

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMisinformation Amplifiers Target Georgia Senate RacesThe conservative social media personalities who spread baseless rumors of election fraud are starting to focus on the races that will decide control of the Senate.Dropping off an absentee ballot for the Georgia Senate runoff in Marietta, Ga.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesSheera Frenkel and Dec. 22, 2020Updated 5:40 p.m. ETTwo weeks ago, the conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk falsely claimed on their Facebook page that people who were not eligible to vote were receiving ballots in Georgia’s special elections next month. Their post was shared more than 300 times.A week later, the right-wing commentator Mark Levin shared a post on his Facebook page falsely suggesting that the Rev. Raphael Warnock, one of the two Democrats running in the Georgia Senate runoffs, once welcomed Fidel Castro to his church. The misleading claim was shared more than 3,000 times.At the same time, a drumbeat of misinformation about the presidential election count in Georgia droned on. Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, and the Hodgetwins, a bodybuilding duo who have turned to pro-Trump political comedy, shared several false stories on their Instagram and Facebook pages that claimed suitcases filled with ballots were pulled out from under tables during the November vote count. Tens of thousands of people shared their posts.As Georgia prepares to hold special elections that will determine which party will control the U.S. Senate, the state has become the focus of a misinformation campaign that is aimed at discrediting the results of the November elections and convincing voters that Democrats are trying to steal the upcoming vote.A small group of “superspreaders” is responsible for the vast majority of that misinformation, according to new research by Avaaz, a global human rights group. Not only are those accounts responsible for most of the misinformation swirling around the vote, they are drowning out accurate reporting by mainstream media outlets on Facebook and Instagram.The research indicates that, despite efforts by social media companies to curtail misinformation, the viral nature of false news continues to take advantage of the algorithms that gin up what people see on those platforms. The algorithms often reward outrage over accuracy, and telling people what they want to hear or what gets them angry can easily overwhelm the truth.Americans are “being drowned in misinformation in Georgia by these superspreaders,” said Fadi Quran, a director at Avaaz.The Avaaz study also calls into question Facebook’s recent decision to roll back a change that elevated news from authoritative outlets over hyperpartisan sources. The change, which the company said was intended to be temporary, had resulted in an increase in Facebook traffic for mainstream news publishers including CNN, NPR and The New York Times, while partisan sites like Breitbart and Occupy Democrats saw their numbers fall.Many of the “superspreaders” have previously been named by researchers as playing central roles in spreading misinformation about voter fraud in the November presidential elections.“Facebook has gotten a lot of pressure over claims that they are censoring the right or conservatives, but what the data shows is that they may be favoring these actors,” Mr. Quran said. “These accounts regularly spread misinformation. The question is: Why doesn’t Facebook demote their reach per their policies?”Other misinformation spreaders included Eric Trump, the president’s son, and Sebastian Gorka, the president’s former deputy assistant. President Trump also continued his barrage of misinformation about Georgia’s elections, according to the research by Avaaz.The Hodgetwins, a bodybuilding duo who have turned to pro-Trump political comedy, wrongly claimed there was evidence proving wrongdoing in Georgia’s elections.The top 20 Facebook and Instagram accounts spreading false claims aimed at swaying voters in Georgia accounted for more interactions than mainstream media outlets. Using CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned research tool, Avaaz examined social media posts between Nov. 8, when most news outlets called the election for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Friday. They found that the top 20 “superspreaders” averaged 5,500 interactions on their Facebook posts, while the 20 largest news outlets averaged 4,100 interactions per post.These users saw more people interacting with their posts, despite having fewer followers on Facebook than the mainstream news outlets. Combined, the news outlets had more than 208 million followers, while the top “superspreaders” had 85 million followers.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 22, 2020, 6:42 p.m. ETNew Labor Department rule would let employers distribute tips more widely.France reopens border with Britain to trucks, requiring rapid Covid-19 tests for drivers.Covid comments get a tech C.E.O. in hot water, again.Mr. Quran said the numbers showed how Facebook’s algorithms favored the sensational, and often false, posts.A Facebook spokesman, Kevin McAlister, said the company was still cracking down on misinformation, despite the recent rollback.“We’re taking every opportunity to connect people to reliable information about the election,” Mr. McAlister said. He said the company was also “deploying the teams and technology we used in the general elections to fight voter suppression, misinformation and interference in the Georgia runoff elections.”None of the top misinformation spreaders responded to requests for comment.Their claims ran the gamut from insults — that the Democratic Senate candidates, Mr. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, are corrupt — to the often-repeated false claim that voting machines that run on software from the company Dominion Voting Systems flipped votes from President Trump to Mr. Biden.Mr. Quran said the accounts also appeared to be “professionalized” in how they spread misinformation.“We see them regularly testing new narratives to see where they can hit a certain nerve, and then acting on it,” he said. Misinformation that successfully targeted Latino voters during the November presidential election, for example, was also being repurposed for Georgia, he said.One claim, that Mr. Warnock, a pastor in an Atlanta church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, “celebrated Fidel Castro and welcomed him to his church” was not accurate. The claim refers to Mr. Castro’s appearance at a New York City church where Mr. Warnock was a pastor 25 years ago, and there is no evidence that Mr. Warnock was involved in arranging the visit. There is also no evidence that he welcomed Mr. Castro.It was a variation of claims that circulated in Florida during the presidential election that linked Democratic candidates to the Communist Party in Cuba. Some of those claims have also been translated into Spanish to target the more than 300,000 voters with Latino backgrounds in Georgia, Mr. Quran said.Voters in Georgia are also being targeted with misleading information by new media start-ups. A conservative local news network, Star News group, which already runs news sites in Tennessee, Virginia and Minnesota, announced in November that it was opening a venture called the Georgia Star News, according to the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America. Since then, the website has published misleading news about the presidential election and the coming runoff election, according to an assessment by NewsGuard, a start-up that examines false stories. The Georgia Star News said in a response that NewsGuard’s assessment included “subjective, nonspecific generalizations that lack any meaningful context” and that it “rejected their assessment as baseless”A Dec. 5 headline promised a “bombshell” story, reprinting an allegation that an audit of election results in a Georgia county revealed that Dominion voting machines flipped ballots from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.The article was shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle data, reaching up to 650,000 people on the social network.Kevin Roose contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More