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    Ex-FBI informant agrees to plead guilty to lying about Bidens’ Ukraine ties

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    A former FBI informant accused of falsely claiming that Joe Biden and the president’s son Hunter had accepted bribes has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges, according to court papers.As part of the plea deal with the justice department special counsel, David Weiss, Alexander Smirnov will admit he fabricated the story that became central to a Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.The plea agreement comes just weeks after prosecutors filed new tax-evasion charges against Smirnov. The two sides will recommend a sentence of at least two years behind bars and no more than six years, according to the agreement.David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, attorneys for Smirnov, said they will make their case for a fair sentence in court and declined to comment further.Smirnov was arrested in February on allegations that he falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 or 2016. Smirnov told his handler that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, according to court documents.Prosecutors said Smirnov had had contact with Burisma executives, but it had been routine and actually took place in 2017, after Barack Obama’s presidency and Biden, his vice-president, had left office – when Biden would have had no ability to influence US policy. Prosecutors said Smirnov made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Biden while the latter was a presidential candidate in 2020.Smirnov repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, changed his story about others and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials”, prosecutors said.Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to charges of tax evasion and causing a false FBI record, according to court papers.Smirnov is being prosecuted by the same special counsel who brought federal gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was supposed to have been sentenced this month on his convictions in those cases, until he was pardoned by his father. More

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      FBI director Christopher Wray will resign before Trump takes office

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      The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, announced he was stepping down on Wednesday, after Donald Trump said he would fire him and install the firebrand loyalist Kash Patel in his place.Wray, who Trump himself appointed as director during his first presidency after firing Wray’s predecessor James Comey in 2017, announced his decision to staff at the bureau’s Washington headquarters.“I’ve decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” he said. “This is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”In the emotional remarks, Wray added: “This is not easy for me. I love this place, I love our mission and I love our people.”The news was greeted with elation by Trump, who called it “a great day for America” and said Wray’s departure would end what he has characterised as the “weaponisation” of the US justice system.Trump used a post on his Truth Social network to celebrate Wray’s demise while elaborating on his grievances against a public official he had once extolled.“It will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice,” Trump wrote.“I just don’t know what happened to him. We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans.”He added that, under Wray’s leadership, “the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, and worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me”.“They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.”Wray’s decision means he will depart more than two and a half years before the end of the 10-year term that directors of the bureau are customarily appointed to.By leaving early, Wray may reduce the chances of his name being dragged into what are likely to be highly contentious Senate confirmation hearings surrounding the nomination of Patel. Patel has branded the FBI as part of a “deep state” and pledged to shut its Washington headquarters, dispersing its agents across the US.Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement, praising Wray’s service.“Under Director Wray’s principled leadership, the FBI has worked to fulfill the Justice Department’s mission to keep our country safe, protect civil rights, and uphold the rule of law,” Garland said. “He has led the FBI’s efforts to aggressively confront the broad range of threats facing our country – from nation-state adversaries and foreign and domestic terrorism to violent crime, cybercrime, and financial crime.”Garland also used the moment to restate what he sees as the FBI’s mission at a moment when there are widespread fears of how Patel and Trump may seek to use the bureau.“The Director of the FBI is responsible for protecting the independence of the FBI from inappropriate influence in its criminal investigations. That independence is central to preserving the rule of law and to protecting the freedoms we as Americans hold dear,” he said.Wray originally fell foul of Trump and his supporters after declining to investigate the then president’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election – won by Joe Biden – had been stolen and riddled with voter fraud.He further earned Trump’s ire after, as previously mentioned by Trump himself in an aforementioned post, FBI agents raided his home in Mar-a-Lago in 2022 to retrieve classified documents that he had retained from his time in the White House.Trump claimed that FBI agents had been “locked and loaded” and ready to kill him, even though the raid had been agreed upon with his lawyers in advance and there was time to ensure he would not be present.The president-elect made his displeasure with Wray plain in an interview with NBC last weekend.“He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he has done,” Trump said.It was a far cry from his words of praise at the time of Wray’s appointment, calling him “a man of impeccable credentials”.Trump was also unhappy that the bureau would not confirm that he had been shot in the ear with a bullet after a failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July. Agents cited the need to examine fragments as part of its investigation before saying what had caused Trump’s wound.Wray’s tenure also coincided with FBI investigations into Biden after he, too, was alleged to have improperly kept classified documents at his home in Delaware, as well as into his son Hunter who was subsequently convicted of gun and tax evasion charges.Biden granted his son an unconditional pardon last weekend days before he was due to be sentenced. More

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      in US Politics

      Kash Patel: how Trump’s FBI pick went from public defender to provocateur

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      “A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Donald Trump is reported to have once said of Kash Patel. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”If Trump gets his way, crazy will now be coming to the FBI, the 116-year-old national security and law enforcement agency charged with protecting the US from terrorism, cybercrime and other threats.Last weekend the president-elect said he would nominate Patel as FBI director, the latest in a series of incendiary names plucked from the rightwing media ecosystem. Joy Reid, a host on the liberal MSNBC network, told viewers that he “might be the worst pick in the worst cabinet in US history”.She was far from alone in raising concerns over Patel’s inexperience, extremism and subservience to Trump. The 44-year-old has called for “major, major reform” of the FBI that could include shutting down its headquarters, slashing its intelligence operations, and targeting officials and journalists who leak information. He has praised the QAnon conspiracy-theory movement, stating: “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it.” The Guardian has also learned of fresh questions over the conduct of Patel’s non-profit foundation.His appointment is not yet a done deal. Trump would have to oust the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, whom he appointed in 2017 and who was supposed to remain in the post until 2027. Patel still faces the Senate confirmation process, in which senators would get the chance to examine his origin story, unremarkable legal career and emergence as a bombastic Trump provocateur.Kashyap “Kash” Patel is the son of Indian immigrants. His parents, of Gujarati ancestry, moved to the US in the 1970s after his father, Pramod, fled the oppressive regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Pramod became a financial officer for an aviation company.Patel was born and raised in Garden City, a well-to-do village on Long Island, New York, living in a home that included his father’s eight siblings. In his memoir, he writes of an extended family setting off for Disney World every year in a 15-car convoy and watching the New York Islanders play ice hockey. His official biography on the Pentagon website notes: “Kash is a life-long ice hockey player, coach, and fan.”Raised Hindu, he was one of the few students of colour at Garden City high school. His senior yearbook quotation, taken from the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, was: “Racism is man’s gravest threat – the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason.”Patel’s early exposure to the legal world came through caddying for affluent defence lawyers as they played golf at the local country club. He gained qualifications from the University of Richmond, in Virginia, and the University College London Faculty of Laws in Britain before graduating from Pace University Law School in New York in 2005.But Patel writes in his book: “Dreams of the sky-high salary at the prestige law firms never materialized,” because “nobody would hire me”. Eventually he took a job as a local public defender in Miami-Dade county, Florida, followed by work as a federal public defender in the southern district of Florida.But by then he had become more conservative, he writes, making his choice of career a “strange fit”. He describes his public defender colleagues as “the far left of the left wing”. He was also increasingly suspicious of prosecutors from the justice department, foreshadowing his fierce critique of the so-called deep state.As a lawyer, Patel had a reputation for being good but not great. The New York Times reported: “Mr Patel’s former colleagues remember him for offering himself as a prize in a charity auction of eligible bachelors, for wildly patterned socks and for having his suits custom-made on visits to India.”View image in fullscreenThe paper quoted Patel’s former supervisor Michael Caruso, who led the southern district of Florida office at the time, as saying: “My enduring image of him is with his shoes off and his feet up on the desk, reading the Wall Street Journal.”But in late 2013 Patel found work in Washington as a terrorism prosecutor in the justice department’s national security division. He has asserted that he was the “lead prosecutor” of the perpetrators of the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans; in fact he was not part of the trial team but rather a junior justice department staff member.Patel first came to prominence in Trump’s orbit as an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign.As a staffer on the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, chaired at the time by the Republican congressman Devin Nunes, Patel helped write a four-page report – dubbed the “Nunes memo” – that detailed what it said were errors the justice department had made in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.He made a positive impression on some in the administration. Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, said: “These questions about his qualifications are a dog whistle. The guy has served in several senior positions in the intelligence world.“He’s tenacious, he’s hard working, he wants to get to the bottom of a lot of stuff. There’s no question he wants to shake things up. Washington needs to be shaken up and the leadership of the FBI has lost the trust of the American people and it needs to be restored.”Spicer added: “He’s funny, he’s intelligent. I’ve enjoyed hanging out with him. He’s a loyal friend, too: he’s someone who sticks by his friends. I understand why the left is worried about him but he’s someone who can get things done.”In 2019, Patel served on the White House national security council before becoming chief of staff to the then acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller. He denied allegations that he ran a clandestine backchannel to Trump regarding Ukraine.The former attorney general William Barr wrote in his memoir that, when Trump tried to appoint Patel as deputy director of the FBI, Barr told another official that it would only happen “over my dead body”. Gina Haspel, then the director of the CIA, also threatened to resign over the prospect of Patel becoming her deputy there.Patel also played a role in several legal investigations into Trump. In 2022 he appeared before the Washington grand jury investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after receiving immunity for his testimony. He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, telling reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus”.Since Trump left office, Patel has expressed his loyalty through commercial ventures. Records show that he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from consulting for Trump-related entities, including a political action committee and the company that owns Truth Social.He wrote a book called Government Gangsters, part memoir and part screed against the deep state, and children’s books that lionise Trump. The Plot Against the King features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald” while Patel plays a wizard who thwarts her plans.He has also promoted various products marketed to Trump supporters including a dietary supplement that claims to be a Covid-19 vaccine “detoxification system”. He helped produce And Justice for All, a rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner sung by a group of men incarcerated for their role in the Capitol riot.In addition, Patel launched the Kash Foundation, a non-profit organisation that funds defamation lawsuits, offers help to people including families of the January 6 rioters, and peddles merchandise such as branded socks and other clothing with the “K$H” logo.View image in fullscreenThe foundation has drawn scrutiny over its financial practices, the Guardian can disclose. Its tax filings in both 2022 and 2023 reported that it did not compensate its board members, according to the watchdog group Accountable.US. But an updated version of the filings reveal that the organisation paid more than $275,000 to a company owned by its vice-president, Andrew Ollis.A further disclosure, detailing the contractual agreement between the Kash Foundation and Ollis’s company, indicates that Ollis would receive a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars every year. The Kash Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said: “Not known for his subtlety, Kash Patel has sought to make money off the Trump brand in several ways including selling a children’s book on election denialism. This enrichment also appears to extend to his friends and partners. Sadly, this appears to be the same old Trump economic model that only looks out for the lucky few at everyone else’s expense.”Meanwhile Patel has become a regular guest on rightwing podcasts and livestreamed shows hosted by Steve Bannon, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Stew Peters, a conspiracy theorist identified by Right Wing Watch for promoting anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, white nationalism and virulent antisemitism.On Bannon’s War Room podcast last year, Patel vowed: “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”And in an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show in September, Patel declared: “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’. Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops – go be cops.”This resolve to upend the FBI and radically reshape its mission is already causing alarm among the bureau’s agents. Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI who served there for 25 years, said: “I am getting calls from people primarily at headquarters who are saying as soon as Trump won the election, they realised they were in for a destructive period for the institution regardless of who got nominated.“Many people are probably saying, ‘Hey, here’s my résumé, can you help spread the word? I’m looking for a job.’ Now, since Patel has been nominated, more of those calls are coming. There are people who are out there trying to look for other work.”Figliuzzi predicted that, if field agents feel there is political interference in their work, for example in which cases to pursue and which to drop, there will be “tremendous pushback”. He added: “In this age where nominees are remarkably unqualified, that’s not what worries me most. What worries me most is his blind allegiance to Trump and willingness to do anything for him.”Trump, who will be sworn in next month, has teed up a cabinet of disrupters and extremists tainted by scandal. Matt Gaetz, his first choice for attorney general, was forced to withdraw amid allegations of sexual misconduct and replaced by Pam Bondi, an election denier. Pete Hegseth, nominated for defence secretary, is facing a barrage of accusations about womanising, infidelity and heavy drinking.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “In many ways Kash Patel is the most nakedly aggressive appointment because Kash Patel has made it very clear that he has no respect for the institution, that he would use it as an institution of retribution, that he has no other agenda other than personal loyalty to Donald Trump. Trump has appointed as the head of the FBI someone whose agenda is to destroy the FBI.”He added: “There’s a big question mark over whether he is confirmable but it makes it very clear what Trump’s agenda is going to be. He may not get Matt Gaetz, he may not get Kash Patel, he may not get Peter Hegseth, but we have a very clear idea of the direction that he is going. He wants absolute loyalists to himself who are committed to running roughshod over the institutions that they’re being appointed to.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump team agrees to DoJ background checks for nominees

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      Donald Trump’s transition team on Tuesday signed an agreement to allow the US justice department to conduct background checks on his nominees and appointees, after a weeks-long delay.The step lets transition aides and future administration staffers of the Republican president-elect obtain security clearances before he is inaugurated on 20 January to access classified information about government programs, an essential step for a smooth transition of power. It also allows those nominees who are up for confirmation by the US Senate to face the background checks lawmakers want before voting on them.Teams of investigators have been standing by to process clearances for Trump aides and advisers.“This agreement with the Department of Justice will ensure President Trump and his team are ready on day one to begin enacting the America-first agenda that an overwhelming majority of our nation supported on election day,” said Susie Wiles, Trump’s designate to be White House chief of staff.The announcement comes a week after the Trump transition team signed an agreement with the Biden White House to allow transition staff to coordinate with the existing federal workforce before taking office.The White House agreement was supposed to have been signed by 1 October, according to the Presidential Transition Act, and the Biden White House had issued both public and private appeals for Trump’s team to sign on.Security clearances are required to access classified information, including on ongoing operations and threats to the nation, and the Biden White House and outside experts have emphasized to Trump’s team the importance of having cleared personnel before inauguration day so they can be fully briefed and ready to run the government.Republican senators have also insisted on FBI background checks for Trump’s nominees before they face confirmation votes, as has been standard practice for decades. Lawmakers have been particularly interested in seeing the findings of reviews into Trump’s designated nominee for defense secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, and former representative Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence.“That’s why it’s so important that we have an FBI background check, a committee review of extensive questions and questionnaires, and a public hearing,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, on Monday.John Thune, the incoming Senate Republican leader, said the Trump team “understands there’s going to have to be a thorough vetting of all these nominees”. More

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      Conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead FBI, faces Senate blowback

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      Donald Trump’s plan to nominate as FBI director the “deep state” conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down the agency’s headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday talk shows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, whom Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.It is already clear that confirming Patel through the US Senate is likely to be less than plain sailing. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, indicated that Patel could face a tough confirmation battle.Rounds pointedly sang the praises of the existing FBI director in an interview with ABC’s This Week. He said that Wray, who still has three more years of his 10-year term to serve, was a “very good man”, adding that he had “no objections about the way that he is doing his job right now”.The senator also emphasised the separation of powers between president and Senate, signaling possible trouble for Patel. Rounds said he gave presidents “the benefit of the doubt”, but also emphasised that “we have a constitutional role to play … that’s the process”.Other Republican senators rallied to Patel’s side. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, told CBS’s Face the Nation that he believed Patel would be confirmed.“Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption of the FBI.”Bill Hagerty, a Republican senator from Tennessee, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he would vote to confirm Patel. “Kash is the best at uncovering what’s happened to the FBI and I look forward to seeing him taking it apart,” he said.Patel is a Trump loyalist who has published children’s books featuring “King Donald”. He has long denigrated the FBI as a pillar of what he calls the “deep state” or the “corrupt ruling class”.In an interview with Shawn Ryan in September, Patel vowed to “shut down” the FBI’s headquarters in Washington DC and reopen the building the following day as a “museum of the deep state”.He has also threatened to use the power of federal law enforcement to go after those he claims are responsible for corrupting the federal government, a list of whom he published in his memoir. Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s current national security adviser, was among that list: Patel called him “one of the corrupt actors of the first order”.Sullivan was asked by ABC’s This Week whether he was worried personally about Patel’s potential leadership of the FBI, given the threats against him. He declined to comment, saying he was wholly focused on keeping the country safe in the remaining 50 days of his term in office.But he did highlight that Biden had kept Wray on as FBI chief, despite having inherited the official from Trump. Sullivan said that Wray served “with distinction, entirely insulated from politics or the partisan preferences of the current sitting president. This is a good, deep bipartisan tradition that President Biden has adhered to.”Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from Maryland, challenged the claim by Trump and Patel that the FBI had been politically weaponised under Biden to go after Republicans. He pointed out on CNN’s State of the Union that over the past four years the FBI had prosecuted the disgraced Democratic senator from New Jersey, Bob Menendez, and the Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar.“I think that’s what they mean when they talk about politicization in the deep state – anybody who doesn’t do the will of Donald Trump,” Raskin said.According to an Axios report on Sunday, Trump had initially planned to appoint Patel as deputy FBI director but changed his mind after his pick to head the agency, the state attorney general of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, failed to impress him. Raising Patel to the number one position makes the move far more politically loaded.Despite the storm he is generating, Trump shows no sign of moderating his leadership choices for his upcoming administration. Over the weekend he tapped Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and a convicted felon whom Trump pardoned in 2020, as US ambassador to France.On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had chosen his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, to be senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Boulos, a Lebanese billionaire, was active in Trump’s presidential campaign as a liaison with Arab American and Muslim leaders.Trump has also picked a county sheriff, Chad Chronister, from Florida to head the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The agency will have a key role in attempting to fulfill Trump’s pledge to staunch the cross-border flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the US, which is already causing diplomatic tensions with Canada and Mexico.Chronister’s father-in-law, Edward DeBartolo, was pardoned by Trump three years ago on a 1998 conviction for involvement in a gambling fraud case. DeBartolo, the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers American football team, was fined $1m and suspended by the NFL for a year. More

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      Trump loyalist Kash Patel in contention to be named FBI director

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      Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.Vance revealed that he and Trump had been interviewing finalists for FBI director in a post responding to criticism he received for missing a Senate vote last night that confirmed one of Joe Biden’s nominees for the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.“When this 11th circuit vote happened, I was meeting President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI director,” Vance wrote.Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.Patel has made inroads with Trump by repeatedly demonstrating his loyalty over several years and articulating plans to restructure the FBI, including by dismantling the firewall between the White House and the bureau.During the criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents, for instance, Patel refused to testify against Trump before a federal grand jury in Washington and asserted his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.Patel ultimately testified only after he was forced to, when the then chief US district judge Beryl Howell allowed the justice department to confer limited immunity from prosecution to him to overcome his fifth amendment claim.But Patel also has multiple detractors among other Trump advisers who came from the presidential campaign and carry outsize influence. That group is said to prefer former House intelligence committee chair Mike Rogers, who left Congress in 2015.Rogers is generally seen as a more establishment pick who has experience dealing with intelligence agencies, one of his allies said. But Trump has also suggested to advisers he is less interested in Rogers than Patel, the person said.Still, Trump has increasingly paid little attention to whether a nominee is likely to be confirmed by the Senate, evidenced by his move to pick Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Pete Hegseth for defense secretary despite both being dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct.Patel rose to notoriety in 2018 when he served as an aide to Devin Nunes, who was the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, and became involved in attempts by the White House to discredit the Russia investigation.He then went to work for the Trump administration in 2019 on the national security council, before becoming chief of staff to the defense secretary in the final months of the presidency.In 2020, when Trump weighed firing the then CIA director Gina Haspel, he floated Patel as a potential replacement. Patel was also briefly considered to become the deputy FBI director in the waning months of the presidency but was talked out of the appointment. More

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      Racist and anti-LGBTQ+ texts target Americans across US, including teens

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      Racist text messages targeting Black people across the US just hours after Donald Trump won a second presidency have now expanded to the Hispanic communities – and homophobic versions have been aimed at LGBTQ+ people, the FBI said on Friday.Authorities say they are investigating the messages – which now include emails – and that they have not received reports of violent acts stemming from the hateful messages.The recipients of the messages include high school students being told that they have been “selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp”, the FBI said in a statement.After the 5 November US presidential election saw Trump returned to the White House, Black Americans reported receiving racist text messages telling them they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to the “nearest plantation”.Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey and Nevada, and in Washington DC and elsewhere, reported receiving the messages. The messages were sent to Black adults and students.Some of the texts were signed “a Trump supporter”. Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said the campaign “has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages”.The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) condemned the messages, saying that they “represent an alarming increase in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist groups across the country, who now feel emboldened to spread hate and stoke the flames of fear”.“The unfortunate reality of electing a president who historically has embraced, and at times encouraged hate, is unfolding before our eyes,” the NAACP president and chief executive officer, Derrick Johnson, said in a statement last week.The FBI said it is contact with the US justice department and other federal authorities on the racist and homophobic messages. More

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      Trump and Musk-fueled falsehoods and threats backdrop US election

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      Americans went to the polls on Tuesday against a backdrop of misinformation – much of it suspected of originating in Russia – as the FBI warned of fake videos and non-credible threats of terrorism aimed at disrupting the US presidential election and discouraging voting.These tensions were stoked by Donald Trump supporters, and the former US president himself. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s most vocal surrogate, tweeted a video of support that appeared to reference the far-right QAnon ideology.The video, showing footage of the January 6 insurrection and featuring Van Halen’s song Jump as a soundtrack, came after an earlier social media post from the entrepreneur that repeated elements of the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy from the 2016 presidential election.“The hammer of justice is coming,” read that earlier post.The flood of untruths was fed by Trump on Tuesday as he falsely claimed he had a “big lead” in opinion polls while casting doubt on the reliability of voting machines. Having already baselessly claimed that there was Democratic “cheating” in Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee said it was “an outrage” that it took so long to count votes in swing states.The former president also took liberties with the truth in an early election day video on his Truth Social platform. In an apparent reference to transgender boxers, the video featured Trump complaining that “men could beat up women and win medals” – a supposed example of how American values had collapsed under Joe Biden’s presidency, which the Republican has tied to his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.The disinformation and false statements from the Trump campaign came as voting in one key battleground state, Georgia, already faced disruption following what appeared to fake bomb threats against at least two polling stations.The threats were made against polling stations at Etris Community Center and Gullatt elementary school in Union City, on the outskirts of Atlanta, according to Fulton county police. Union City’s population is nearly 90% Black, according to the US Census Bureau, fuelling suspicions that the threats were aimed at disrupting a cohort expected to mainly vote for Harris.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, told journalists that the “non-credible” threats came from Russia.“We identified the source, and it was from Russia,” he said, saying he believed that the source had been a Russian troll farm.“They’re up to mischief, it seems, and they don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election,” he added. “Anything that can get us to fight amongst ourselves – they can count that as a victory.”The bomb threats followed a warning from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] on Monday that Russia, Iran and China were involved in efforts at election disruption but that Russia was “the most active threat”.“Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences, judging from information available to the IC [intelligence community],” an ODNI statement said.“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials. We anticipate Russian actors will release additional manufactured content with these themes through election day and in the days and weeks after polls close.”In line with that statement, the FBI on Tuesday dismissed a video – made to look like a news clip and purporting to emanate from the bureau – advising Americans to “vote remotely” due to a “high terror threat” at poling stations.“This video is not authentic and does not accurately represent the current threat posture or polling location safety,” the bureau said.It also disavowed a separate video falsely depicting a political rigging voting among prison inmates.In a statement, the FBI said there were “two instances of its name and insignia being misused in promoting false narratives surrounding the election,” USA Today reported.The second video features a fake FBI press release alleging that officials at five prisons in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona rigged voting among inmates and conspired with a political party. “This video is also not authentic, and its contents are false,” the FBI said.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Chinese hackers collected audio from a Trump campaign adviser’s calls – report

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      Chinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio from the phone calls of US political figures, including an unnamed campaign adviser of Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported Sunday.Various media outlets reported on Friday that the Trump campaign was made aware last week that the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate JD Vance were among a number of people inside and outside of government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems.The FBI and the US cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency confirmed they were investigating unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by people associated with China, though they did not not name the Trump campaign in the statement.Reuters later reported that Chinese hackers also targeted phones used by people affiliated with the campaign of Kamala Harris.The Post now reports that the hackers were able to access audio from a phone call from a Trump campaign adviser, as well as unencrypted communications such as text messages of the individual.Trump’s campaign and the FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Trump campaign was hacked earlier this year. The US justice department charged three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps with the hack, accusing them of trying to disrupt the 5 November election.Verizon said on Friday it was aware of a sophisticated attempt to target US telecoms and gather intelligence and is working with law enforcement.Congress is also investigating and earlier this month US lawmakers asked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to answer questions about reports Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers.The Chinese embassy in Washington DC said last week it was unaware of the specific situation but said China opposes and combats cyberattacks and cyber thefts in all forms. More