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      Analysis: Durham Report Failed to Deliver After Years of Political Hype

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      A dysfunctional investigation led by a Trump-era special counsel illustrates a dilemma about prosecutorial independence and accountability in politically sensitive matters.The limping conclusion to John H. Durham’s four-year investigation of the Russia inquiry underscores a recurring dilemma in American government: how to shield sensitive law enforcement investigations from politics without creating prosecutors who can run amok, never to be held to account.At a time when special counsels are proliferating — there have been four since 2017, two of whom are still at work — the much-hyped investigation by Mr. Durham, a special counsel, into the Russia inquiry ended with a whimper that stood in contrast to the countless hours of political furor that spun off from it.Mr. Durham delivered a report that scolded the F.B.I. but failed to live up to the expectations of supporters of Donald J. Trump that he would uncover a politically motivated “deep state” conspiracy. He charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either.Predictably, the report’s actual content — it contained no major new revelations, and it accused the F.B.I. of “confirmation bias” rather than making a more explosive conclusion of political bias — made scant difference in parts of the political arena. Mr. Trump and many of his loyalists issued statements treating it as vindication of their claims that the Russia inquiry involved far more extravagant wrongdoing.“The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people,” Mr. Trump insisted on social media. “This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so. This totally illegal act had a huge impact on the Election.”Mr. Trump’s comparison was unintentionally striking. Just as his and his supporters’ wild and invented claims of election fraud floundered in court (Fox News also agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement for amplifying lies about Dominion Voting Systems), the political noise surrounding Mr. Durham’s efforts ultimately ran up against reality.In that sense, it was less that Mr. Durham failed to deliver and more that Attorney General William P. Barr set him up to fail the moment he assigned Mr. Durham to find evidence proving Mr. Trump’s claims about the Russia investigation.There were real-world flaws with the Russia investigation, especially how the F.B.I. botched applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. But the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, found those problems, leaving Mr. Durham with depleted hunting grounds.Indeed, credit for Mr. Durham’s only courtroom success, a guilty plea by an F.B.I. lawyer who doctored an email during preparations for a wiretap renewal, belongs to Mr. Horowitz, who uncovered the misconduct.At the same time, Mr. Horowitz kneecapped Mr. Durham’s investigation by finding no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. He also concluded that the basis of the Russia inquiry — an Australian diplomat’s tip related to the release of Democratic emails hacked by Russia — was sufficient to open a full investigation.Before Mr. Horowitz released his December 2019 report, Mr. Durham lobbied him to drop that finding, arguing the F.B.I. should have instead opened a preliminary inquiry. When Mr. Horowitz declined, Mr. Durham issued an extraordinary statement saying he disagreed based on “evidence collected to date” in his inquiry.But even as Mr. Durham’s report questioned whether the F.B.I. should have opened it as a lower-level investigation, he stopped short of stating that opening a full one violated any rule.Mr. Durham also used court filings in those cases to insinuate that the Clinton campaign framed former President Donald J. Trump for collusion.Sophie Park for The New York TimesA remaining rationale for the Durham investigation was that Mr. Horowitz lacked jurisdiction to scrutinize spy agencies. But by the spring of 2020, according to officials familiar with the inquiry, Mr. Durham’s effort to find intelligence abuses in the origins of the Russia investigation had come up empty.Instead of wrapping up, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham shifted to a different rationale, hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for suspicions surrounding myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia.By keeping the investigation going, Mr. Barr initially appeased Mr. Trump, who, as Mr. Barr recounted in his memoir, was angry about the lack of charges as the 2020 election neared.But Mr. Barr’s public statements about Mr. Durham’s investigation also helped foster perceptions that he had found something big. In April 2020, for example, he suggested in a Fox News interview that officials could be prosecuted and said: “The evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here.”Mr. Trump and some of his allies in the news media went further, stoking expectations among his supporters that Mr. Durham would imprison high-level officials. Those include the former directors of the F.B.I. and C.I.A., James B. Comey and John O. Brennan, and Democratic leaders like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr.In fact, Mr. Durham only ever developed charges against two outsiders involved in efforts to scrutinize links between Mr. Trump and Russia, accusing them both of making false statements to the F.B.I. and treating the bureau as a victim, not a perpetrator.While in office, Mr. Barr worked closely with Mr. Durham, regularly meeting with him, sharing Scotch and accompanying him to Europe. When it became clear that Mr. Durham had found no one to charge before the election, Mr. Barr pushed him to draft a potential interim report, prompting Mr. Durham’s No. 2, Nora R. Dannehy, to resign in protest over ethics, The New York Times has reported.Against that backdrop, the first phase of Mr. Durham’s investigation — when he was a U.S. attorney appointed by Mr. Trump, not a special counsel — illustrates why there is a recurring public policy interest in shielding prosecutors pursuing politically sensitive matters from political appointees.But the second phase — after Mr. Barr made him a special counsel, entrenching him to remain under the Biden administration with some independence from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — illustrates how prosecutorial independence itself risks a different kind of dysfunction.The regulations empowered Mr. Garland to block Mr. Durham from an action, but only if it was “so inappropriate or unwarranted under established departmental practices that it should not be pursued” and required him to tell Congress. Mr. Garland gave Mr. Durham free rein, avoiding Republican accusations of a cover-up.Mr. Durham continued for another two and a half years, spending millions of dollars to bring the two demonstrably weak cases involving accusations of false statements; in each instance, a jury of 12 unanimously rejected the charges. One of Mr. Durham’s handpicked prosecutors resigned from his team in protest of the first of those indictments, The Times has reported.But Mr. Durham’s use of his law enforcement powers did achieve something else. He used court filings to insinuate a theory he never found evidence to charge: that the Clinton campaign conspired to frame Mr. Trump for collusion. Those filings provided endless fodder for conservative news media.Even after Mr. Durham’s cases collapsed, some Trump supporters held out hope that his final report would deliver a bombshell. But it largely consisted of recycled material, interlaced with conclusions like Mr. Durham’s accusation that the F.B.I. had displayed a “lack of analytical rigor.”Attorney General William P. Barr bestowed Mr. Durham with special counsel status.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Durham’s own analytical rigor was subject to scrutiny. At one point he wrote that he had found “no evidence” that the F.B.I. ever considered whether Clinton campaign efforts to tie Mr. Trump to Russia might affect its investigation.Yet the same page cited messages by a top F.B.I. official, Peter Strzok, cautioning colleagues about the Steele dossier, a compendium of claims about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia that, it later became clear, were Clinton campaign-funded opposition research. He wrote that it “should be viewed as intended to influence as well as to inform” and whoever commissioned it was “presumed to be connected to the campaign in some way.”As Mr. Horowitz uncovered and criticized, the F.B.I. later cited the Steele dossier in wiretap applications, despite learning a reason to doubt its credibility. But Trump supporters often go further, falsely claiming that the F.B.I. opened the entire Russia investigation based on the dossier.Mr. Durham’s report appeared to nod to that false claim, saying that “information received from politically affiliated persons and entities” in part had “triggered” the inquiry. Yet elsewhere, his report acknowledged that the officials who opened the investigation in July 2016 had not yet seen the dossier, and it was prompted by the Australian diplomat’s tip. He also conceded that there was “no question the F.B.I. had an affirmative obligation to closely examine” that lead.Tom Fitton, a Trump ally and the leader of the conservative group Judicial Watch, expressed disappointment in the Durham investigation in a statement this week, while insisting that there had been a “conspiracy by Obama, Biden, Clinton and their Deep State allies.”“Durham let down the American people with few and failed prosecutions,” Mr. Fitton declared. “Never in American history has so much government corruption faced so little accountability.”But Aitan Goelman, a lawyer for Mr. Strzok, said that while the special counsel accused the F.B.I. of “confirmation bias,” it was Mr. Durham who spent four years trying to find support for a preformed belief about the Russia investigation.“In fact, it is Mr. Durham’s investigation that was politically motivated, a direct consequence of former President Trump’s weaponization of the Department of Justice, an effort that unanimous juries in each of Mr. Durham’s trials soundly rejected,” he said.Adam Goldman More

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      Did China Help Vancouver’s Mayor Win Election?

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      Ken Sim, Vancouver’s first mayor of Chinese descent, rejects claims of Chinese interference and says his landslide win was due to his tireless campaigning and more appealing policies.VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Every day when he arrives at his office in City Hall, Mayor Ken Sim stares at a prominent black-and-white photograph of Chinese railway workers toiling on the tracks in British Columbia in 1884.Mr. Sim, the son of Hong Kong immigrants, said the workers’ weathered faces are a daily reminder of the symbolic importance of his election as Vancouver’s first Chinese Canadian mayor, and of just how far Chinese Canadians have come.Six months ago, his historic landslide victory was widely lauded, viewed as the triumph of a politically adroit change-maker whose centrist policies had swept him to power. But since February, the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto has cited classified intelligence reports in describing an effort by Beijing to manipulate Canadian elections, including those in Vancouver, raising questions about whether China played a role in his win.Across Canada, a political storm is raging over the intelligence reports, which have not been made public by Canada’s national intelligence agency but are said to conclude that the government of China and its diplomats wanted to ensure victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in the two most recent federal elections, while encouraging wins for some candidates of Chinese descent.Mr. Sim has been caught in the furor because the reports say China’s former consul general in Vancouver, Tong Xiaoling, sought to groom local Chinese Canadian politicians to do Beijing’s bidding and spoke of mobilizing Chinese voters to support them.While the leaked intelligence has reverberated nationally, with the opposition Conservatives seizing on the reports to accuse Mr. Trudeau of failing to protect Canadian democracy, the debate has caused particular discomfort in Vancouver, where a quarter of the population is of Chinese descent and Mr. Sim had been seen as an immigrant success story. Mr. Sim said that if there had been Chinese or any foreign interference in his election, “I would be mad as hell.” But, he added, Beijing had nothing to do with his being elected mayor.He said his sweeping victory had been hard won, and he suggested that he was being targeted because of his ethnic background.“If I was a Caucasian male, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” the 52-year-old entrepreneur-turned-politician said in an interview from his office, as Van Halen music blasted from a vintage-style phonograph. “I was born here, raised here, and this sends the signal that when you finally get a seat at the table, people are going to tell you, ‘You didn’t get there on your own.’ It’s disgusting.” He added, “Where’s the proof?”Mr. Sim at New Town Bakery in Vancouver’s Chinatown.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesThe authenticity and accuracy of the leaks have not been verified by Canada’s intelligence agency, nor has there been any evidence presented that the aims outlined in the leaks were carried out.But Canada’s intelligence agency has stated unequivocally that China is trying to interfere in Canadian elections, a claim China has denied.Mr. Sim first ran for mayor in 2018 — and narrowly lost, partly because he was perceived by many as a conservative in a suit. During the 2022 campaign, he wore jeans and T-shirts.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesAnalysts said that, while China sought to wield political influence in Vancouver, whatever role it played was unlikely to have swung the vote.Kennedy Stewart, the incumbent mayor and Mr. Sim’s left-wing rival, agreed. “Chinese interference isn’t the primary reason I lost,” he said. “But it may have been a contributing factor.” He received 29 percent of the vote to Mr. Sim’s 51 percent.Mr. Stewart said Ms. Tong, the Chinese consul general, who ended her five-year posting in July 2022, had repeatedly breached diplomatic protocol in the years leading up to the election by denouncing him publicly because of his outspoken support for Taiwan.Mr. Stewart said that in May 2022, about five months before the election, officials from Canada’s national intelligence agency came to City Hall to brief him about the potential threat of Chinese meddling, including the use of smear campaigns by China and its proxies online or on social media.A few months later, in August, a statement attacking Mr. Stewart appeared on the Chinese consulate general’s website, after he expressed support for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan that month. The statement warned Mr. Stewart not to play with fire on the Taiwan issue, saying, “Those who play with fire will burn.”Mr. Sim speaking with paramedics in Vancouver.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesVancouver, a multicultural west coast port city of about 660,000, is among the most picturesque, tolerant cities in Canada, where residents can buy CBD dog treats for their anxious canines at local marijuana shops before biking in Stanley Park.But Vancouver has been convulsed by soaring real estate prices that have made it among the most unaffordable cities in North America. At the same time, a drug overdose crisis is raging in its Downtown Eastside, an area blighted by homelessness, poverty and crime.Mr. Sim promised to help reverse the urban decay by hiring 100 more police officers and 100 mental health nurses.Mr. Sim first ran for mayor in 2018 — and narrowly lost, perceived by many as a conservative in a suit. But in 2022, he wore T-shirts from Lululemon, the famous Vancouver brand, and refashioned himself as a pragmatist.He owns a successful health care company, Nurse Next Door, which provides caregivers in Canada, Australia and the United States.Mr. Sim in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver’s Chinatown.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesIn the 2022 election, Mr. Sim’s public order message appears to have resonated, helping him win by a margin of nearly 22 points.Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, said Mr. Sim, a former investment banker, also outspent his rivals, in some cases by two to one. He said Mr. Sim had wide appeal in a region fed up with “San Francisco housing values and Kansas City wages.”Mr. Yan also stressed that Vancouver’s large, diverse Chinese immigrant community did not vote as a bloc.Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at Simon Fraser University, added that Mr. Stewart was perceived as a weak incumbent. Yet the leaks, Mr. Stewart’s public calls for China’s interference to be investigated, and the national outcry have kept alive concerns about China’s role in the race.Mr. Sim has dismissed suspicions that he is influenced by his cousin Bernard Chan, a politician and businessman who was a top adviser to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s former pro-Beijing chief executive.Jackie Dives for The New York TimesCanada’s national intelligence agency, C.S.I.S., said in an emailed statement that China was trying to influence election outcomes in Canada by exerting pressure on diaspora communities, using covert funding or taking advantage of foreign-language media outlets.Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, observed that Canada was seen by Beijing as a target of influence — and subterfuge — partly because Beijing sought to use Canada as a lever to press the United States to soften its opposition to China.China experts and Canadian intelligence officials said that China’s influence campaigns abroad typically emanated from the United Front Work Department, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party. Among its aims was to undermine federal, provincial or municipal officials who criticized China on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and China’s repression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.In the Vancouver mayoral election, speculation about Chinese interference was also fanned by reports in the Chinese-language media that Mr. Sim’s first cousin is Bernard Chan, a Hong Kong politician and businessman who was a top adviser to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s former pro-Beijing chief executive.Mr. Sim during a news conference.Jackie Dives for The New York Times Mr. Sim said that Mr. Chan did not influence him in any way and that he studiously avoided talking to Mr. Chan about politics. “I don’t choose the political beliefs of anyone that’s related to me,” he said.He said he had purposely underplayed his Chinese roots during the election campaign, wary of using his ethnic background to win votes.Mr. Sim is the youngest son of Hong Kong immigrants who arrived in Vancouver in 1967 with their life savings of $3,200. He said that during his childhood his parents spoke Cantonese at home, but, eager to fit in, he refused his parents’ entreaties to learn the language. He now regrets that decision.The family often struggled to pay rent, and Mr. Sim moved five times from the age of 7 until 12, forcing him to attend five different elementary schools. He remembered at 7 seeing his father fend off a predatory landlord with a bat.“We lived in fear, asking, ‘Where are we going to live?’”On a recent day in Vancouver’s Chinatown, many local residents expressed pride in the election of a Chinese Canadian mayor.But Fred Kwok, chairman of the Chinese Cultural Center, which was targeted in a suspected arson attack the night before, said Mr. Sim’s ethnic background didn’t matter to him.“I don’t care what Ken Sim’s race is,” he said. “I care about security in Chinatown and someone doing something about it. Nobody did a thing the past four years.”Mr. Sim at his desk at City Hall.Jackie Dives for The New York Times More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Marcos at the White House

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      Also, Russian attacks across Ukraine.President Biden greeted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines at the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMarcos at the White HouseThe president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., began a four-day visit to the U.S. with a meeting with President Biden in Washington yesterday. The trip is intended to send a message to China that Marcos plans to deepen his country’s relationship with the U.S.“We are facing new challenges and I couldn’t think of a better partner to have than you,” Biden told Marcos in the Oval Office. Biden added that the U.S. will “continue to support the Philippines’ military modernization.”Marcos’s trip comes days after the U.S. and the Philippines held their largest joint military exercises yet in the South China Sea, aimed at curbing China’s influence. The two countries signed a deal in February to allow the U.S. military to expand its presence in the Philippines. “It is only natural,” Marcos said in the Oval Office, that the Philippines “look to its sole treaty partner in the world to strengthen, to redefine, the relationship that we have and the roles that we play in the face of those rising tensions that we see now around the South China Sea and Asia Pacific.”U.S. outlook: The White House has been focusing on cultivating Marcos, the son of a dictator, as a regional ally since he took office 10 months ago. His predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, was more conciliatory toward China than his predecessors, and, at times, more confrontational with the U.S. Taiwan: The Philippines’ northernmost island is less than 100 miles from the self-governed island. An increased U.S. military presence could allow for a quick troop response in a war with China.China’s position: When the Chinese foreign minister visited the Philippines last month, he had a stern message: It was vital that the government in Manila, the capital, “properly handle issues” related to Taiwan and the South China Sea, and follow through on its earlier commitment not to choose sides.A tank near the front line of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region on Sunday.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesFighting intensifies in UkraineBoth Russia and Ukraine reported escalating attacks in recent days, a sign that fighting was intensifying ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. Russia launched a broad, predawn aerial assault across Ukraine yesterday, its second wide-ranging attack in just four days. Two people were killed and 40 wounded in Russian strikes on the central city of Pavlograd, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address.Ukraine said yesterday that it had launched four strikes on concentrations of Russian troops over the preceding 24 hours. Yesterday, a blast derailed a freight train in Russia, near the border, though a Russian official did not say who was responsible. Over the weekend, a series of explosions also occurred behind Russian lines.Timing: Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said on national television that the military was “reaching the finish line” in counteroffensive preparations.One complicating factor: Mud. It’s been raining for weeks in the region, and the ground is unusually wet. Ukraine’s new advanced weaponry is no match for the black, soupy soil.Alireza Akbari was lured from London to Iran in 2019 by a close friend.Khabar Online News AgencyA British spy in IranHe was a senior official in Iran, a trusted keeper of its defense secrets — and a British spy. A Times investigation shows how information shared by the official, Alireza Akbari, upended the world’s view of Iran’s nuclear program and led to his execution in January.Akbari, who was a senior military commander of the Revolutionary Guards, had open access to Iran’s inner circles of power and advised on key state policies. He also spied for Britain for nearly 16 years, according to Western intelligence officials. Intelligence sources told my colleagues Ronen Bergman and Farnaz Fassihi that Akbari revealed, among other things, the existence of Fordo, a uranium enrichment site hidden near Tehran.The revelations, which Britain shared with Israel and other Western intelligence agencies, shocked even those who closely monitored Iran. Fordo’s discovery proved critical in eliminating any doubt that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons and redrew the West’s military and cyber plans for countering the program. It also proved critical in persuading the world to impose sweeping sanctions against Iran.Details: Akbari was an unlikely spy. He displayed a fanatical allegiance to the ideals of the Islamic Republic and an unwavering support of Iran’s leaders, according to interviews with people who knew him. Other revelations: Iran also said he disclosed the identities of over 100 officials, most significantly Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief nuclear scientist whom Israel assassinated in 2020.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificA photo made available by the Royal Thai Police shows officers escorting the accused woman to a court in Bangkok.Royal Thai Police, via EPA, via ShutterstockThe police in Thailand charged a woman with nine murders. They found her with a bottle of cyanide after the sudden death of a traveling companion.Chris Hipkins, the prime minister of New Zealand, said that the country would “ideally” become independent one day — but that it had no plans to separate from the monarchy, The Guardian reported.Around the WorldProtestors in Marseille yesterday.Clement Mahoudeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn May Day, some 800,000 French workers took to the streets across the country to protest the new pension plan.Paraguay elected Santiago Peña, a conservative economist, as president, resisting Latin America’s recent leftward shift.Thousands of people fleeing the war in Sudan have overwhelmed Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea, in their efforts to get to Saudi Arabia.Other Big StoriesU.S. regulators seized First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. The sale has echoes of the recent banking crisis, but First Republic’s problems seem to be contained.“The Godfather of A.I.” left Google and warned of the technology’s risks: “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”A bronze sculpture was erected in Oslo’s harbor to honor Freya, the walrus who was killed there last year.A Morning ReadJessica Chou for The New York TimesMore young men are getting perms. The hairstyle has changed since its 1980s heyday: Instead of ringlets and hair spray, the modern male perm — inspired by K-pop and TikTok — is tender and softer.ARTS AND IDEASKim Kardashian at the Met Gala last year.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesA Met Gala previewCelebrities are lining up to walk the red carpet at the Met Gala in New York. (It is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. in New York, which is 5:30 a.m. in Hong Kong; 7:30 a.m. in Sydney.) The party is usually themed to the annual blockbuster show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. This year’s show, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” pays homage to the imagination and creativity of the longtime designer of Chanel, Fendi and his namesake line. (Lagerfeld died in 2019.)Given the theme, you can expect to see a lot of vintage designer dresses on the runway this year, which could make this the most sustainable Met Gala ever. Vanessa Friedman, our fashion editor, told us that she hoped it would be “a return to more toned-down elegance after years when guests’ clothes have gotten more and more costumey, the better to go more and more viral.”Among the many celebrities attending the celebration, Gala watchers will be on the lookout for one in particular: There’s speculation that Lagerfeld’s white Birman cat (and rumored heir), Choupette, who has her own nanny and Instagram account, may make an appearance.For more: Take our Lagerfeld quiz.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookArmando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Air-fryer sweet potatoes are faster and less oily than their deep-fried counterparts.What to ReadThe first issue of “It Happened Online,” our new newsletter about the internet, looks at the fate of Twitter’s check marks.What to Watch“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” which adapts Judy Blume’s groundbreaking novel about puberty, is a Times critics pick.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Very (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. My colleagues won the top environmental journalism prize in the Fetisov Journalism Awards for coverage of Congo’s peatlands.“The Daily” is on the fight over the U.S. debt ceiling.I always love hearing from you. Please write to me at briefing@nytimes.com with any thoughts. More

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      Just a Few Top Secrets Among Friends

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      Bret Stephens: Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and senator, emailed me a letter he was considering putting in the mail. He gave me permission to share it with our readers, so here you have it:Dear Federal Government,When a 21-year-old National Guardsman gets access to Top Secret briefings, my first conclusion is: You guys left the keys in the car and that’s why it was “stolen.” And when journalists find out who committed the crime before you do, my conclusion is that you folks are overpaid.BobYour thoughts on this latest intelligence debacle and the possibility that the suspect’s motive was to try to impress his little community of teenage gamers?Gail Collins: Yeah, Bret, the bottom line here is the fact that a teenage doofus was able to join the National Guard and quickly work his way up to its cyber-transport system, while apparently spending his spare time with his online pals playing video games, sharing racist memes and revealing government secrets.Bret: It’s enough to make me nostalgic for Alger Hiss.Gail: Teenage doofus is certainly in need of punishment, but he’s really not the main problem here. You think a lot about national security issues — what’s your solution?Bret: We certainly owe the suspect the presumption of innocence. But my first-pass answer is that when everything is a secret, nothing is a secret — in other words, a government that stamps “confidential” or “top secret” on too many documents loses sight of the information that really needs to be kept a secret.This is one area that’s really ripe for bipartisan legislation — a bill that requires the government to declassify more documents more quickly, while building taller and better fences around the information that truly needs to be kept secret.Gail: We really do agree, and to balance that out I’m gonna ask you about the Biden budget soon.Bret: Uh oh.Gail: But first I have to check your presidential prospect temperature. You kinda liked Ron DeSantis and then made a fierce turnaround, which I presume has been nailed in even further by his no-abortions agenda.Bret: It’s awful politics. It’s awful, period.Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy means that many women will not even know they are pregnant before they are unable to obtain an abortion. It makes Mississippi’s 15-week ban look relatively moderate in comparison, which is like praising Khrushchev because he wasn’t as bad as Stalin. And it signals to every independent voter that DeSantis is an anti-abortion extremist who should never be trusted with presidential power.Gail: Down with DeSantis. So what about the new guy, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who would like to be our second Black president? He hasn’t officially announced, but he’s certainly doing that dance.Bret: In theory, he has a lot going for him. He exudes personal authenticity and optimism about America, as well as a sense of aspiration — attractive qualities in any politician. He’s sort of a standard-issue conservative on most policy issues and supports a 20-week national abortion ban, which is middle-of-the-road for most Americans and almost liberal for today’s Republican Party. He has the potential to win over some minority voters who have been trending conservative in recent years, while neutralizing potential Democratic attacks on racial issues.But how he fares with voters outside of his home base remains to be seen. A lot of these presidential aspirants fall apart the moment they come into contact with audiences who ask difficult questions.Gail: Yeah, recent interviews with Scott do seem to suggest there might be a problem there. On CBS, he said he was “100 percent pro-life.” When asked if that meant he supported Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week abortion ban, he replied “That’s not what I said.” Ummm …Bret: But we keep talking about Republicans. Are you still 100 percent convinced Joe Biden is gonna run for re-election? Because … I’m not.Gail: No way I’m going 100 percent. Biden’s current evasiveness could certainly be an attempt to time his big announcement for when everybody’s back from summer vacation and all geared up for presidential politics. Or, sigh, he could just want to string out his current status as long as possible because he knows once he announces he’s not running, he’ll practically disappear from the national political discussion.But I have trouble imagining that he doesn’t dream about knocking Donald Trump off the wall one more time. Why are you so doubtful?Bret: I know Biden is supposed to be following some kind of “Rose Garden strategy” of signing bills while his opponents tear themselves to pieces. But, to me, he just seems tired. I know that 90 is supposed to be the new 60, as you put it last week in your delightful column. I just don’t think that’s true of him. His 80 looks like the old 80 to me. Also, rank-and-file Democrats seem to be about as enthusiastic for his next run as they are for their next colonoscopy.I keep hoping he has the wisdom to know that he should cede the field as a one-term president who accomplished big things for his party rather than risk encountering senility in a second term.Gail: It’s important to stand up for the durability of so many 90-somethings. But age is certainly an issue in a lot of politics these days. I’m troubled right now about Senator Dianne Feinstein, who’s 89 and ailing. The Democrats need her vote to get anything much done in the Senate, particularly on judicial nominations.Bret: She’s a good argument for the point I was making about Biden.Gail: Very different cases — Biden is in great shape at 80; Feinstein is 89 and clearly failing. She’s already announced this year that she’s not running for re-election, but she really ought to step down instantly. A short-term governor-appointed successor could give the Democrats a much-needed vote, at least on some issues. But he or she shouldn’t be one of the possible candidates to succeed her. Maybe somebody who would just cheer us up for a while. How about Brad Pitt?Bret: Well, he’s definitely a Democrat, like most everyone else in Hollywood except Jon Voight. But my money is on Representative Adam Schiff succeeding Feinstein.Gail: Not a bad idea long term, although I’m hoping for another woman.OK, now it’s really time to talk about that Biden budget. Protect Medicare, expand some good programs like family leave and free community college for the poor. Balance it all out with a hike in the minimum income tax for billionaires.Are you surprised to hear that works for me?Bret: Expected nothing less. Basically I look at Biden’s budget not as a serious proposal but as a political ad for Democrats in 2024. In reality I expect we’ll get roughly the same budget as this year, only with much higher defense spending to account for threats from Russia and China.But the proposed tax on billionaires really bothers me, because it’s partially a tax on unrealized gains — that is, money people don’t actually have. If it were to pass, it could eventually apply to lots of people who are very far from being billionaires. It’s just like the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was originally devised in the late 1960s to hit a tiny handful of very rich people who weren’t paying their taxes, but wound up becoming another tax wallop to people of lesser means. I take it you … disagree?Gail: Uh, yeah. The very rich tend to organize their finances around legal tax avoidance. So they hold onto their often rapidly appreciating assets and just borrow against them.Bret: The problem remains that we’re talking about a tax on income that includes much more than income.Gail: It’s certainly important that what’s billed as a tax on the very rich not be applied to the middle class. But the complaints about Biden’s plan really are claims that it won’t just hit billionaires — it’ll make the hundred-millionaires suffer. Not feeling this is a problem.Bret: Fortunately it won’t pass this House or pass muster with this Supreme Court.On another note, Gail, an article in The Wall Street Journal reminds me that this month is the 50th anniversary of the first cellphone call — back when cellphones were the size of a shoe. Today, according to the article, more people have access to cellphones than they do to working toilets — six billion-plus versus around 4.5 billion. Any thoughts on the meaning of this golden anniversary?Gail: Wait, I’m mulling your toilet factoid …Bret: Yeah. Pretty shocking.Gail: OK, moving on. It’s thrilling the way cellphones allow parents to keep track of where their kids are and friends to stay in contact when they’re out of town. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched old movies when the heroine or the hero was in crisis and thought, “Oh, God if you could just call somebody.”But all this good news is connected to the technical and cultural changes that encourages people to communicate without having to take responsibility for what they say. Obviously, there are problems and we’ve got to figure out ways to make it work.Do you have a plan?Bret: We can’t escape the fact that new technologies are almost always both liberating and enslaving, and almost always unavoidable. Cellphones freed us from being attached to a physical location in order to be in touch — while putting us all on call no matter where we were. Smartphones put the world in our back pockets but also addicted us to tiny screens. If, God forbid, ChatGPT ever takes over this conversation, then, well, hmm … the two of us are going to spend a lot more time drinking good wine on your patio. There are worse fates.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. More

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      The Sunday Read: ‘The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets’

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      Adrienne Hurst and Dan Powell and Dan Farrell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn March 2017, an engineer at G.E. Aviation in Cincinnati received a request on LinkedIn. The engineer, Hua, is in his 40s, tall and athletic, with a boyish face that makes him look a decade younger. He moved to the United States from China in 2003 for graduate studies in structural engineering.The LinkedIn request came from Chen Feng, a school official at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in eastern China. Days later, Chen sent him an email inviting him to the university to give a research presentation. Hua arranged to arrive in May, so he could attend a nephew’s wedding and his college reunion at Harbin Institute of Technology. There was one problem, though: Hua knew that G.E. would deny permission to give the talk if he asked, which he was supposed to do. He went to Nanjing, and flew back to the United States after the presentation. He thought that would be the end of the matter.Many scientists and engineers of Chinese origin in the United States are invited to China to give presentations about their fields. Hua couldn’t have known that his trip to Nanjing would prove to be the start of a series of events that would end up giving the U.S. government an unprecedented look inside China’s widespread and tireless campaign of economic espionage targeting the United States, culminating in the first-ever conviction of a Chinese intelligence official on American soil.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on Twitter: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Emma Kehlbeck, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Elena Hecht, Desiree Ibekwe, Tanya Pérez, Marion Lozano, Naomi Noury, Krish Seenivasan, Corey Schreppel, Kate Winslett and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Mike Benoist, Sam Dolnick, Laura Kim, Julia Simon, Lisa Tobin, Blake Wilson and Ryan Wegner. More

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      Book Review: ‘Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,’ by Kerry Howley

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      In “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,” Kerry Howley explores how the erosion of privacy has fueled conspiracy theories and the national security state.BOTTOMS UP AND THE DEVIL LAUGHS: A Journey Through the Deep State, by Kerry HowleyThe people in Kerry Howley’s new book include fabulists, truth tellers, combatants, whistle-blowers. Like many of us, they have left traces of themselves in the digital ether by making a phone call, texting a friend, looking up something online. Certain conveniences have become so frictionless that we reflexively entrust devices with mundane yet intimate secrets: group-chat gossip, numbers of steps taken, dumb selfies.“It is our fate to live in the age of the indelible,” Howley writes in “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs,” her account of the national security state and the people entangled in it. “It’s best to just take another photograph. Keep building up the database. Throw it into the cloud, whatever that is.”Howley is a writer for New York magazine and the author of “Thrown” (2014), a book about mixed martial arts fighters (real) that was narrated by a philosophy student named Kit (not real). As far as I can tell, “Bottoms Up” seems to be narrated by Howley — though who she “really is” and, by extension, who any of us “really are” is something that this book encourages us not to take for granted.The book is riveting and darkly funny and, in all senses of the word, unclassifiable. Howley writes about privacy and its absence; about hiding and leaking and secrets and betrayal. But she also writes about the strange experience of living, and how it gets flattened and codified into data that can be turned into portraits of static, permanent beings — creatures who would be unrecognizable to ourselves.“With endless information comes the ability to take information from its context, to tell stories perfectly matched to the intentions of the teller, freed from the complex texture of reality,” Howley writes. Countering that slide toward bland propaganda, “Bottoms Up” returns information to its context, capturing as much as possible the texture of reality, showing us how bewildering it often is.She reintroduces us to figures like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and John Walker Lindh. We revisit the case of John Kiriakou, the ex-C.I.A. officer who disclosed on television that the American government had waterboarded (that is, tortured) a detainee. Kiriakou would become the first C.I.A. officer convicted of a leak. He later took a job at the Russian propaganda outfit Sputnik Radio.Kerry Howley, the author of “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs.” Jordan GeigerBut at the center of this book is Reality Winner (“her real name, let’s move past it now”), who was 9 years old on 9/11. What happened to Winner is the point on which a number of the book’s themes converge. She joined the Air Force at 18, becoming a linguist who spoke Dari and Pashto. She later worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency. In 2017 she was arrested for mailing five printed pages of classified information to The Intercept that detailed Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections.Howley got to know Winner and her family, depicting a young woman who “took ideas in their fullness, ignorant of their social context, and therefore radically open to argument.” Winner worked as a translator for the drone program while teaching yoga and worrying about global warming. “She was not on a team,” Howley writes. The book suggests it was this — the fact that nothing Winner did was easily amenable to the narrative of a particular side — that eventually did her in.Winner sent the classified information to The Intercept because she visited the site for news; she knew that some of its journalists were skeptical about the allegation of Russian meddling, and she wanted to show them evidence of the meddling. Howley explains, step-by-step, how The Intercept bungled the handling of those five pages, neglecting to consult its own first-rate digital security experts, eventually showing the document — creases and watermarks intact, betraying the source — to the N.S.A. for verification. “It would prove extremely unfortunate for Reality that the audience who might be most interested in and moved by her case was largely captured by a publication embarrassed by it,” Howley notes.It would also prove extremely unfortunate for Reality that the American government used her work for the American government against her. “It had taught her obscure languages,” Howley writes, “knowledge of which it now implied was dangerous.” A note Winner had made about wanting to “burn the White House down” was taken as proof of malevolent intent, omitting the “ha, ha” that followed it. (Winner later wondered if she would have fared better with an “lol jk.”) She was sentenced to 63 months — “the longest sentence ever handed down for an Espionage Act conviction.” The government assembled the fragments from Winner’s life and projected a story into the absences, essentially creating what Howley elsewhere calls a “fantasy built on solid ground.”This warped kind of world-building bears more than a passing resemblance to what conspiracy theorists do. So it’s fitting that the title “Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs” comes from a 2014 viral video of a Christian woman at a conference who presents a (remarkably polished and assured) case that Monster Energy drinks are a vehicle for Satan. From there it’s just a short crawl to QAnon’s elaborate nightmares about Satan-worshiping pedophiles.The arc of Howley’s extraordinary book feels both startling and inevitable; of course a journey through the deep state would send her down the rabbit hole. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a congresswoman from Georgia, said in 2017. How’s that for the banality of evil? As Howley puts it, “True believers speak of Satanism with the bored fluency of someone selling condos.”But it’s not as if QAnon has had to make up its nonsense out of whole cloth. Its propagation also relies on the not uncommon impulse to worry for one’s children. It was only toward the end of the book that I noticed how children were a recurrent presence — Howley’s, her friend’s, those of a camera assistant in Baghdad killed by an American strike.Howley learned she was pregnant while reporting the book. “I despaired many times, in the writing, about my ability to protect the thing I was growing,” she says. She was immersed in a world “that had forgotten what it was like to construct a self in the dark.” We become ourselves by shedding our past selves — but now those discarded selves are recorded somewhere, potentially living longer than we do. In her acknowledgments, Howley ends with a note to her children that could serve as a blessing for us all: “May you be only as remembered as you wish.”BOTTOMS UP AND THE DEVIL LAUGHS: A Journey Through the Deep State | By Kerry Howley | 233 pp. | Alfred A. Knopf | $28 More

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      Meta Manager Was Hacked With Spyware and Wiretapped in Greece

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      Artemis Seaford, a dual U.S.-Greek national, was targeted with a cyberespionage tool while also under a wiretap by the Greek spy agency in a case that shows the spread of illicit snooping in Europe.A U.S. and Greek national who worked on Meta’s security and trust team while based in Greece was placed under a yearlong wiretap by the Greek national intelligence service and hacked with a powerful cyberespionage tool, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and officials with knowledge of the case.The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology, the use of which has been the subject of a widening scandal in Greece. It demonstrates that the illicit use of spyware is spreading beyond use by authoritarian governments against opposition figures and journalists, and has begun to creep into European democracies, even ensnaring a foreign national working for a major global corporation.The simultaneous tapping of the target’s phone by the national intelligence service and the way she was hacked indicate that the spy service and whoever implanted the spyware, known as Predator, were working hand in hand.The latest case comes as elections approach in Greece, which has been rocked by a mounting wiretapping and illegal spyware scandal since last year, raising accusations that the government has abused the powers of its spy agency for illicit purposes.The Predator spyware that infected the device is marketed by an Athens-based company and has been exported from Greece with the government’s blessing, in possible breach of European Union laws that consider such products potential weapons, The New York Times found in December.The Greek government has denied using Predator and has legislated against the use of spyware, which it has called “illegal.”“The Greek authorities and security services have at no time acquired or used the Predator surveillance software. To suggest otherwise is wrong,” Giannis Oikonomou, the government spokesman, said in an email. “The alleged use of this software by nongovernmental parties is under ongoing judicial investigation.”“Greece was among the first countries in Europe that passed legislation banning the sale, use and possession of malware in December 2022, which has the most severe legal consequences and strict penalties for individuals and legal entities involved in such an offense,” Mr. Oikonoumou continued. “The same legislation includes provisions on restructuring of the National Intelligence Service, additional safeguards for legal surveillance and modernizing procedures on confidentiality of communications.”European Union lawmakers have launched their own investigation.Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece has come under pressure to explain how and why Predator was sold from Greece and used in Greece, supposedly without the government’s knowledge, against members of his own government, opposition politicians and journalists.Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece, center, during a parliamentary debate in January. He has been under pressure to explain how and why Predator spyware was sold from Greece and used in Greece.Petros Giannakouris/Associated PressHe has insisted that the Greek government had nothing to do with the cyber-surveillance tool, but that opaque actors may have used it behind the authorities’ backs.The latest case centers on Artemis Seaford, a Harvard and Stanford Law graduate, who worked from 2020 to the end of 2022 as a Trust and Security manager at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, while living in Greece.In her role at Meta, Ms. Seaford worked on policy questions relating to cybersecurity and she also maintained working relations with Greek as well as other European officials.After she saw her name on a leaked list of spyware targets in the Greek news media last November, she took her phone to The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the world’s foremost forensics experts on spyware.The lab report, which was reviewed by The New York Times, found that Ms. Seaford’s mobile phone had been hacked with the Predator spyware in September 2021 for at least two months.“This does not preclude the possibility of other infections, or of an infection period extending beyond 2021-11-16,” the forensic report by Citizen Lab said.Ms. Seaford on Friday filed a lawsuit in Athens against anyone found responsible for the hack. The suit compels prosecutors to open an investigation.Ms. Seaford also filed a request with the Greek Authority for the Protection of the Privacy of Telecommunications, an independent constitutional watchdog, asking them to determine whether the Greek national intelligence service, known as the EYP, had wiretapped her phone..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Two people with direct knowledge of the case said that Ms. Seaford had in fact been wiretapped by the Greek spy service from August 2021, the month before the spyware hack, and for several months into 2022.They spoke on condition of anonymity because it is illegal for them to publicly comment on EYP operations.It could take a minimum of three years for Ms. Seaford to be informed of the spy agency wiretap under Greek laws that the government has twice changed since a flurry of wiretapping cases have come to light.Ms. Seaford is now is the fourth known person to file suit in Greece involving the spyware, after an investigative reporter and two opposition politicians.In the first case, an investigative reporter, Thanasis Koukakis, in 2020 similarly asked the constitutional watchdog authority to inform him whether he had also been placed under a wiretap.Thanasis Koukakis, an investigative journalist, has taken the Greek government to the European Court of Human Rights over a change in Greece’s surveillance law. Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBefore Mr. Koukakis could get a formal answer, the government quickly passed a law in 2021 that drastically curbs citizens’ rights to be informed if they had been under surveillance by the national intelligence service. Mr. Koukakis has taken the Greek government to the European Court of Human Rights over the change in the law.The Greek government has since come under pressure to restore some recourse for citizens to learn about being wiretapped and seek redress if their surveillance had been abusive.Under a law passed last year, a citizen who has been targeted by the spy agency can now be informed — but only if they ask, and subject to the approval of a committee, and no earlier than three years after the end of the wiretap.It is under those new conditions that Ms. Seaford’s surveillance by the Greek national intelligence service may one day be officially confirmed.“Targets of abusive surveillance should have the right to know what happened to them and have means of redress just like every other crime,” Ms. Seaford said in an interview.She maintains that there is no reasonable explanation for her being targeted. Wiretapping in Greece is permitted only for national security reasons or serious criminal investigations.More than a year after her surveillance by the Greek intelligence service and the illegal spyware infection of her mobile device, no charges have been brought against her, and she has not been asked to cooperate with the authorities on any investigation.“In my case, I do not know why I was targeted, but I cannot see any reasonable national security concerns behind it,” Ms. Seaford said. Meta and the U.S. embassy in Athens declined to comment.Ms. Seaford’s targeting by the Greek spy agency and some elements of her case were earlier reported by the Greek newspaper Documento.In Ms. Seaford’s case, it appears that information gleaned from the wiretap may have assisted the ruse used to implant the spyware, according to the timeline established by the forensic analysis and submitted to the Greek prosecutor.Demonstrators in Athens last year protesting revelations of the phone tapping of a political leader and journalists by the Greek National Intelligence Service. The scandal has become an issue in coming elections.Orestis Panagiotou/EPA, via ShutterstockIn September 2021, Ms. Seaford booked an appointment for a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine through the official Greek government vaccination platform.She got an automated SMS with her appointment details on Sept. 17, just after midnight. Five hours later, at 05:31 a.m., documents show, she received another SMS asking her to confirm the appointment by clicking on a link.This was the infected link that put Predator in her phone. The details for the vaccination appointment in the infected text message were correct, indicating that someone had reviewed the authentic earlier confirmation and drafted the infected message accordingly.The sender also appeared to be the state vaccine agency, while the infected URL mimicked that of the vaccination platform.Ms. Seaford, who has been reluctant to get dragged into Greek party politics, where the surveillance scandal has become a point of bitter debate, said the question of spyware and surveillance abuse should be a nonpartisan issue.“My hope is that my case and others like mine will not just be instrumentalized, shut down to avoid political cost for some, or, conversely, elevated for the political gain of others,” she said. More

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      Claims of Chinese Election Meddling Put Trudeau on Defensive

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      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is battling critics and leaked intelligence reports that opponents say show he ignored warnings of Chinese interference in past elections.OTTAWA — The leaked intelligence reports have set off a political firestorm. They describe plans by the government of China and its diplomats in Canada to ensure that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party took power in the last two elections, raising troubling questions about the integrity of Canada’s democracy.But as two prominent Canadian news organizations have published a series of leaks over the past month, Mr. Trudeau has refused calls to launch a public inquiry into the matter, angering political opponents and leading to accusations that he is covering up foreign attempts to undermine his country’s elections.The news reports do not present any evidence that the Chinese carried out any of their plans for meddling or changing election outcomes. And an independent review released this month as part of Canada’s routine monitoring of election interference upheld the integrity of the 2019 and 2021 votes.Even so, the leaks pose a risk for Mr. Trudeau of appearing weak in the face of potential Chinese aggression and indecisive as a leader acting to preserve election integrity. His political opponents have accused him of being disloyal to Canada.As the intelligence leaks have flowed, Mr. Trudeau has shifted from trying to dismiss them and refusing to discuss them because of secrecy laws, to announcing a series of closed-door reviews related to election integrity.Still, he continues to rebuff repeated calls for a public inquiry — which would include not just an independent investigation, but public hearings — arguing that other inquiries are more appropriate. He said he would only establish a public inquiry if one of his other reviews concludes it’s necessary.“Canada has some of the best and most robust elections in the world,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters. “All Canadians can have total confidence that the outcomes of the 2019 and 2021 elections were determined by Canadians, and Canadians alone, at the voting booth.”The Liberals have accused Conservatives of undermining the public’s confidence in Canada’s electoral system by falsely claiming that the government ignored warnings of potential Chinese interference. Liberals have also accused Conservatives of using the leaks to fan fear and suspicion of Chinese-Canadian elected officials, in an effort to discredit them and undermine their participation in electoral politics.The political attacks on Mr. Trudeau have been spearheaded by the leader of the Conservative Party, which says it is raising legitimate threats to Canadian democracy. “He’s covered it up, even encouraged it to continue,” said the leader, Pierre Poilievre, who suggested that “the prime minister is acting against Canada’s interest and in favor of a foreign dictatorship’s interests.”Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, suggested that Mr. Trudeau was “acting against Canada’s interest.”Blair Gable/ReutersCurrent and past inquiries about recent elections are not transparent and, in some cases, they lack independence from the Liberals, Mr. Poilievre said. “He wants closed and controlled and we want an open and independent inquiry to make sure it never happens again,” Mr. Poilievre said in the House of Commons.Heightened scrutiny of China’s efforts to subvert Canada’s political process — and corresponding pressure on Mr. Trudeau — started in mid-February after the publication of an article in the Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper.According to the newspaper, its reporters had seen unspecified secret and top secret reports from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, commonly called CSIS, that described the intentions of Chinese officials to manipulate the last two elections. The goal, according to the paper’s description of the leaks, was to prevent a win by the Conservative Party, which the Chinese viewed as excessively hard line toward China.A Chinese consular official boasted to her superiors that she had engineered the defeat of two Conservative candidates in 2021, the Globe and Mail reported, though the newspaper provided no evidence to support her claim.The Globe and Mail’s articles and reports on Global News, a broadcaster based-in Canada, said the leaks described orders given to Chinese diplomats based in Canada and, according to the news reports, involved 11 of Canada’s 338 electoral districts.The leaks to both news organizations described illegal cash payments to Liberals and illegal hiring by Chinese officials or their agents in Canada of international students from China, who were reportedly then presented to Liberal campaigns as volunteers. Mr. Trudeau and other Liberals have characterized the reports as “inaccurate.”Some of the supposed plans would have been difficult to execute within Canada’s electoral system, analysts said, because Canada limits and tightly controls campaign spending and fund-raising.“It does come across as a highly unsophisticated understanding of Canadian politics,” said Lori Turnbull, an associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.An independent review released this month upheld the integrity of the votes in 2019 and 2021.Cole Burston/BloombergAside from originating with the intelligence service, little has been revealed about the exact nature of most of the documents leaked to the two news outlets and it is unclear if the reporters saw them in their entirety. The sources for the information contained in the intelligence reports haves also not been revealed.“It’s not necessarily evidence that a crime took place,” said Stephanie Carvin, a professor of national security studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, and a former Canadian government intelligence analyst. “We frankly don’t know. The way I feel about this issue is that it’s a puzzle. There’s a thousand pieces that the service has and we’re seeing 10 of them.”Even so, Conservatives have been able to push Mr. Trudeau into a corner, while casting doubt on the allegiance of certain Chinese-Canadian elected officials in the Liberal Party, such as Michael Chan, a former Liberal cabinet minister in Ontario’s provincial government.Global News reported last month that CSIS said that at Beijing’s request, Mr. Chan arranged to replace a Liberal member of Parliament from Toronto with a different candidate.Mr. Chan called that report nonsense because he’s never had the authority to orchestrate such a thing. “I don’t know where the heck CSIS gets this information,” he said. Mr. Chan and other Chinese-Canadian officials have been subject to increased scrutiny and what he says are false, racially motivated accusations that he was under the influence of officials in the Chinese consulate in Toronto.He has asked Mr. Trudeau to open an inquiry into “racial profiling” of the Chinese community by the intelligence service. “The informant who informed them just got it wrong, completely wrong,” he said.Michael Chan, a former Liberal cabinet minister in Ontario’s provincial government, has asked Mr. Trudeau to investigate “racial profiling” by CSIS.Galit Rodan/The Canadian Press via, The Associated PressMr. Trudeau initially responded to allegations of Chinese interference in elections by urging the public to wait for the release of a routine review that Canada uses to monitor foreign interference in elections.That report, made public on March 2, concluded that while China, Russia and Iran tried to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 elections, they had no effect on their results. But that did not quell the calls from opposition parties for a public inquiry.Mr. Trudeau recently announced several moves to examine foreign interference. And he committed to holding a public inquiry if it is recommended by a special reviewer who will make recommendations on preventing election subversion.“We all agree that upholding confidence in our democratic process in our elections in our institutions, is of utmost importance,” Mr. Trudeau said. “This is not and should never be a partisan issue.”On Friday, the Globe and Mail published an essay it said was written by its source, who was only described as “a national security official.” The newspaper’s source said that he or she acted because after years of what he or she saw as serious escalation of the threat from foreign interference in votes, “it had become increasingly clear that no serious action was being considered.”The writer lamented that the political debate sparked by the leaks has been “marked by ugliness and division,” and added that he or she does not believe that any foreign power has “dictated the present composition of our federal government.”David J. Bercuson, the director emeritus of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary in Alberta, said he believes that Mr. Trudeau will eventually have to allow a public inquiry.Mr. Trudeau, Professor Bercuson, has yet to “do anything to resolve the growing mistrust.”Mr. Trudeau has committed to holding a public inquiry if it is recommended by a special reviewer.Carlos Osorio/Reuters More