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    I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By Trump’s logic, I’m a terror supporter | Eran Zelnik

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    To Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:Given recent patterns, the FBI might need to take a hard look at my actions over the years. If Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri and other recent Ice detainees are considered threats to national security, then so am I.I have committed the same acts they have committed, including publishing an article that calls the war in Gaza a genocide, participating in a protest against the genocide in Gaza, speaking and protesting in favor of BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions against Israel), participating in a sit-in at UC Davis about 10 years ago, and being vocal in general about the atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza and Palestinians.Let me tell you a little more about myself and all the additional reasons you might want to investigate and perhaps arrest me. I was born in Israel and became a naturalized US citizen through my American mother. Given the administration’s recent challenges to the 14th amendment, which provides birthright citizenship, you might proceed from detaining legal residents to revoking the rights of naturalized citizens. Like other fascist regimes before you, you’ve been testing how much resistance you face in your effort to turn the United States into a fascist country. You start with the most marginalized, sending incarcerated trans women to men’s prisons, Venezuelans accused of gang affiliation to El Salvador, and detaining Arab and Muslim legal residents. But if the past is any indication, your next target might well be children of undocumented immigrants or naturalized citizens. Of course, as every student of fascism well knows, the ultimate goal is to apprehend all the supposed enemies of this administration, regardless of their legal status.Furthermore, I must confess to using academic concepts that have come under scrutiny as antisemitic by the Department of Justice taskforce for antisemitism. As a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, I have come a long way. It took me many years of soul-searching to realize that I was complicit in a settler-colonial occupation force and that my best recourse to make amends for that was to be outspoken about my country’s atrocities. As I tried to better understand the terrible tragedy of Zionism – a nationalist ideology that sought to free Jews from oppression only to end up as oppressors in Palestine – I confess to describing concepts such as apartheid, settler colonialism, ethno-nationalism and more. Perhaps even more disturbing from your perspective, I recently employed such concepts as genocide, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in a book I wrote about early American history.I also confess that in the past I have targeted white supremacist allies of this administration in my community of Chico, California. Clearly employing extralegal militias is part of this administration’s fascist playbook, as Trump already proved during the events of 6 January 2021. For instance, when my house was a target of antisemitic leafleting, I sought the help of a colleague and a local investigative journalist to make this very real form of antisemitism known to authorities. In the process the journalist uncovered troubling information that there is an armed white supremacist in our community who holds deep antisemitic convictions and now knows where I work. Had you really been interested in investigating antisemitism, you might have looked into the whereabouts of that individual. But since you want people like him around so that they can be activated when needed, and since all you really want is to cynically weaponize antisemitism, you might want to arrest me instead. After all, according to your standards, I – a Jew targeted by white supremacists – was all along the biggest threat to Jews in my own community.I have long heard stories about the rise of fascism in Europe from my grandparents, all of whom fled Europe and were refugees from antisemitism. The similarities between the actions of this administration and what my grandparents have lived through are unmistakable. I tell them here so that before you choose to arrest me, you will have one more opportunity to decide whether you will go down in history as aiding and abetting the rise of a fascist regime or as someone who refused to be part of another dark episode in this country’s history. Be forewarned: even if you yourself never directly suffer for your crimes, history will judge you.My dear grandfather, Otto, may his memory be a blessing, escaped Austria by the skin of his teeth when he was only 13 after the Nazi takeover of the country. Having witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938 – the night when local mobs violently rioted against Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses across much of Germany and Austria and arrested 30,000 citizens just for being Jewish – his parents made the decision to flee to Shanghai, the only port that would accept them. Clearly, our current president’s rhetoric regarding enemies of the American nation from within and without, against immigrants, trans people and people deemed un-American in their political commitments (like myself), are eerily reminiscent of the stories my grandfather told me about the scapegoating of Jews.As I consider the memory of dear grandmother Rachel, may her memory be a blessing, who grew up in Poland and survived the Holocaust, including enduring a harrowing year in Auschwitz and the death march to Germany, I cannot shake the sense of another parallel. As Hitler and the Nazi party were consolidating power, they appointed sycophants like yourself and so many others to positions of power in the Nazi administration. The most important criterion for Hitler was not that the people in positions of power were competent or even knowledgeable, but that they would be spineless and loyal to him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the historian Ian Kershaw, this type of leadership, where all bow to the great leader, led to the Holocaust, as the people surrounding Hitler constantly sought to outdo each other in their loyalty to the Führer. Knowing Hitler’s hatred for Jews, they constantly tried to curry favor by suggesting the most radical and far-reaching policy ideas towards Jews. This dynamic, which Kershaw called “working toward the Führer”, ultimately led Hitler and the people surrounding him to decide on the “Final Solution”, the plan to exterminate all the Jews in the world on an industrial scale in death camps. This idea of working toward the leader is upon us today, as we see institutions and even some in the Democratic party bowing before the great leader and his will. Instead of standing up to the administration at every turn, institutions, businesses and politicians across the country prefer to anticipate the administration’s wrath and eliminate any behavior or materials that might come under scrutiny. Meanwhile, Republicans rush to outdo each other in flattering the great leader, as American society seems frozen with fear in face of the rising tides of fascism.So, Kash Patel, do you want to arrest me and help bring about fascism?

    Eran Zelnik grew up in Israel and came to the US 15 years ago to complete his PhD in history. He now lives and teaches in Chico, California More

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      FBI director Kash Patel removed as director of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

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      The Trump administration has replaced the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, as the interim head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and installed Dan Driscoll, secretary of the army, in his place, according to two people familiar with the matter.The abrupt change, which was announced to senior ATF officials on Wednesday morning, for the first time placed control of the embattled agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws to the defense department.Patel has been running the FBI and the ATF for months, but it had proved to be overly burdensome, and Driscoll was selected to replace Patel as the interim head, as he was one of the few Senate-confirmed appointees available, one of the people said.The initial move to have the FBI director run the ATF was unusual because the agency has traditionally had its own, separate director. The move to now transfer leadership outside the justice department entirely marks an additional departure.Driscoll is expected to simultaneously run the ATF and continue with his current role. A spokesperson for the justice department did not respond to a request for comment about the long-term implication of the move.Trump’s aides have viewed the ATF and its mission with skepticism and have discussed gutting the ATF or merging it with the Drug Enforcement Administration, another small and underfunded agency that has previously been part of the justice department.The decision to have the army secretary run the ATF could be the precursor to such a move or at least to dramatically reduce its size and scope. In recent weeks, ATF agents have been diverted to help with enforcing Trump’s immigration agenda.It also comes as Pam Bondi, the US attorney general who is under pressure from pro-gun groups, announced plans to eliminate the Biden-era ATF’s “zero tolerance” policy that strips licenses of firearms dealers found to have repeatedly violated federal laws and regulations. More

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      Doge breaks into US Institute of Peace building after White House guts board

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      The Trump administration fired most of the board of the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and sent its new leader into the Washington DC headquarters of the independent organization on Monday, in its latest effort targeting agencies tied to foreign assistance work.The remaining three members of the group’s board – defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and national defense university president Peter Garvin – fired president and CEO, George Moose, on Friday, according to a document obtained by the Associated Press.An executive order that Donald Trump signed last month targeted the organization, which was created by Congress more than 40 years ago, and others for reductions.Current USIP employees said staffers from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” entered the building despite protests that the institute is not part of the executive branch. USIP called the police, whose vehicles were outside the building on Monday evening.USIP is a congressionally funded independent non-profit that works to advance US values in conflict resolution, ending wars and promoting good governance.Moose, said: “DOGE has broken into our building.” Police cars were outside the Washington building on Monday evening.The CEO vowed legal action, saying: “What has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private non-profit.”He said the institute’s headquarters, located across the street from the state department, is not a federal building. Speaking to reporters after leaving the building, Moose noted: “It was very clear that there was a desire on the part of the administration to dismantle a lot of what we call foreign assistance, and we are part of that family.”The Doge workers gained access to the building after several unsuccessful attempts Monday and after having been turned away on Friday, a senior US Institute of Peace official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.It was not immediately clear what the Doge staffers were doing or looking for in the non-profit’s building, which is across the street from the state department in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.White House spokesperson Anna Kelly pointed to USIP’s “noncompliance” with Trump’s order.After that, “11 board members were lawfully removed, and remaining board members appointed Kenneth Jackson acting president,” she said. “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”Jackson had been seen earlier on Monday trying to get into the non-profit’s building.Moose said the organization had been speaking with Doge since last month, trying to explain its independent status. Speaking of Trump, he said: “I can’t imagine how our work could align more perfectly with the goals that he has outlined: keeping us out of foreign wars, resolving conflicts before they drag us into those kinds of conflicts.”Doge has expressed interest in the US Institute of Peace (USIP) for weeks but has been rebuffed by lawyers who argued that the institute’s status protected it from the kind of reorganization that is occurring in other federal agencies.On Friday, Doge members arrived with two FBI agents, who left after the institute’s lawyer told them of USIP’s “private and independent status”, the organization said in a statement.Chief of security Colin O’Brien said police on Monday helped Doge members enter the building and that the private security team for the organization had its contract canceled.The US Institute of Peace says on its website that it is a nonpartisan, independent organization “dedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroad”.The non-profit says it was created by Congress in 1984 as an “independent nonprofit corporation”, and it does not meet US code definitions of “government corporation”, “government-controlled corporation” or “independent establishment”.Also named in the president’s executive order were the US African Development Foundation, a federal agency that invests in African small businesses; the Inter-American Foundation, a federal agency that invests in Latin America and the Caribbean; and the Presidio Trust, which oversees a national park site next to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.The African Development Foundation, which also unsuccessfully tried to keep Doge staff from entering its offices in Washington, went to court, but a federal judge ruled last week that removing most grants and most staff would be legal. The president of the Inter-American Foundation sued on Monday to block her firing in February by the Trump administration. More

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      Trump’s January 6 pardon doesn’t cover FBI murder plot conviction, judge rules

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      A man pardoned by Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection who also was convicted of plotting to kill federal agents investigating him is still legally liable for the plot, a judge ruled on Monday.Edward Kelley was pardoned by Trump for his role in the US Capitol riot, but he remained in prison on separate charges. The Tennessee man had developed a “kill list” of FBI agents who had investigated him for the Capitol attack.On his first day in office, Trump issued pardons and commutations to more than 1,500 people convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection, including militia members. But other rioters had separate charges that the courts and the justice department are working through.In Kelley’s case, the justice department argued he was not pardoned by Trump for the plotting charges. In Monday’s ruling, the US district judge Thomas Varlan deniedKelley’s motion to dismiss the charges, saying the case “involved separate offense conduct that was physically, temporally, and otherwise unrelated to defendant’s conduct in the D.C. Case and/or events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021”.The plotting charges stemmed from “entirely independent criminal conduct in Tennessee, in late 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol”, Varlan wrote.Prosecutors allege Kelley – who was the fourth rioter to enter the Capitol on January 6 and was carrying a gun – was developing a plan to murder law enforcement agents. They produced recordings of his planning activity, including Kelley giving instructions to “start it”, “attack”, and “take out their office”.“Every hit has to hurt,” he allegedly says in one recording.A cooperating defendant testified against Kelley and said he and Kelley were planning to attack the FBI field office in Knoxville with car bombs and drones, and were strategizing over how to assassinate FBI employees at their homes or in public places.While most participants in the events of January 6 who were in prison have been released, some are still inside because of other charges, both related and unrelated to the Capitol riot. It is not yet clear what will happen to some rioters who were charged with gun crimes during searches of their homes when authorities were serving January 6 warrants. More

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      While our eyes are on the welfare state’s destruction, Trump is building a police state | Judith Levine

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      Last week, the federal human resources department sent out a seven-page memo ordering agencies to submit detailed plans on how they will work with the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to slash their payrolls. To do this, they were to eliminate whole job categories – except one. Untouchable were positions “necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities”.While we’ve had our eyes on the wrecking ball–Doge pulverizing social services, environmental protection and scientific research, we’ve hardly taken notice of what is being constructed. In the footprint of the already shabby, now half-demolished US welfare state, the Trump administration is building a police state.In spite of Doge’s cuts to the FBI, the agency’s director, Kash Patel, is gearing up to turn the agency – whose job has always been to spy on US citizens, including enemies of the state as identified by the government in power – into Donald Trump’s personal secret police. At the state level, lawmakers are compiling their own enemies lists and filing bills to reward those who snitch on abortion seekers, transgender people, undocumented immigrants and school librarians suspected of harboring the wrong books.The Republican House budget includes $300bn in new funding for defense and border control. Among the Senate budget committee’s announced priorities are finishing the border wall, increasing the number of immigrant detention “beds”, hiring more border patrol agents, and investing in state and local law enforcement to assist in “immigration enforcement and removal efforts”. While no figures are provided in the attached budget, the Senate budget committee assures Americans that any new spending will be offset by reductions.Some of those reductions involve firing immigration judges and cutting federal supports to local police. Clearly, the right hand doesn’t know what the other right hand is doing. Still, cuts are not always cuts. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has instructed senior staff to shave 8% off the department’s $850bn annual expenditures. Programs addressing the climate crisis and “excessive bureaucracy” are high on the list, of course. But, as the Intercept points out, savings will be repurposed for the president’s pet projects. For instance: the Iron Dome, an enormously complex, costly – and, critics say, unfeasible, unnecessary and even futile – space-based missile-defense and “warfighting” system that has been a fantasy of tech-drunk Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan. In keeping with Trumpian décor and his “golden age of America”, the Iron Dome has recently been rechristened the Golden Dome.The Golden Dome might also be a symbol of what a state devoted to protecting itself from enemies real and imagined offers corporate America. Because as the civil service shrinks, private industry – particularly the overlapping defense and tech sectors – will fill in the blanks. Project 2025, which is essentially being cut and pasted into Trump’s executive orders, calls on the administration to “strengthen the defense industrial base”, stockpile ammunition and “modernize” the nukes, while streamlining procurement from private contractors and involving them in decisions about what to produce. With Tesla and SpaceX contracts worth $38bn and of course, control of Doge, Elon Musk is already at the table. SpaceX practically owns Nasa’s rocket launch and space travel programs, freaking out engineers familiar with its bargain-basement manufacturing practices – and failures. Next up: artificial intelligence to replace human expertise.Trump’s war on immigrants also promises a windfall. During his first term, and Joe Biden’s as well, the creation and operation of a “smart” border wall – comprising mobile towers, autonomous drones, thermal imaging, biometric data collection and artificial intelligence – funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to Silicon Valley and Wall Street. A 2022 report by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on border militarization and corporate outsourcing called border security a “for-profit industry”, which perpetuates itself by lobbying for ever more draconian crackdowns on migrants.Those profits are about to explode. “The border security market is projected to reach $34.4 billion by 2029, from $26.8 billion in 2024,” with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics the biggest beneficiaries, according to the market research firm MarketsandMarkets.Private prison companies – the two largest contractors are GEO Group and CoreCivic – anticipate unprecedented revenues too. Implementation of the Laken Riley Act, which mandates locking up undocumented people charged not just with violent crimes but with offenses as trivial as shoplifting, will require a huge buildout of detention facilities; Project 2025 recommends 100,000 available beds daily. Flying deportees to their home countries could generate $40m to $50m of business, according to GEO’s executive chairperson. “We believe the scale of the opportunity before our company is unlike any we’ve previously experienced,” crowed the chief executive officer, J David Donahue, on the company’s quarterly earnings call.The removal of millions of migrants will necessitate more than software, planes and prisons. It will need personnel. And wouldn’t you know it, an enterprising group of military contractors including the CEO of Blackwater has submitted a proposal to the Trump administration to deputize a mercenary border patrol of 10,000 private citizens. The plan also recommends payments to bounty hunters. Estimated cost: $25bn.These surveillance technologies and tactics are not targeted solely at foreign and extraterrestrial invaders, however. Government drones kept watch over the Black Lives Matter protests of 2017; at a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza at New York University, a student called my attention to a police drone circling above. In 2021 SpaceX signed a $1.8bn contract with the Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office for a network of low-orbiting spy satellites called Starshield. “A US government database of objects in orbit shows several SpaceX missions having deployed satellites that neither the company nor the government have ever acknowledged” but were identified by experts as Starshield prototypes, Reuters reported. It is unclear whether the network will be used for military or domestic spying, but its reach is vast. Said one Reuters source: “No one can hide.”The transformation of the US government is not just a matter of replacing an accountable civil service with self-interested private contractors. “It seems like they are using [Doge] to reshape the purpose of the government rather than execute it more efficiently,” Max Stier, president of the non-partisan Partnership for Public Service, told the Washington Post.That purpose, Trump tells us, is public safety from threats without and within. But a capitalist police state redefines public safety. Safety does not include housing or food security, disease prevention or disaster relief. The state protects companies, not workers, consumers or the environment. The “public” in “public safety” also attains new meaning: it embraces only native-born practitioners of the state religion, political loyalists and favored profiteers.As this inner circle shrinks, the outside expands. There are citizens and what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “margizens”, those who live in a country but do not benefit from its rights or protections. Not only are the margizens denied safety; they are deemed dangerous. To keep the nation “proud and prosperous and free”, as Trump described his America, the state will need to humiliate, impoverish, pursue, imprison and punish almost everyone.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist and the author of five books. Her Substack is Poli Psy More

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      Trump names conservative podcaster Dan Bongino as FBI deputy director

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      Dan Bongino, a former US Secret Service agent who has written bestselling books, run unsuccessfully for office and gained fame as a conservative pundit with TV shows and a popular podcast, has been chosen to serve as the FBI’s deputy director.President Donald Trump announced the appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”. He called the announcement “great news for law enforcement and American justice”.The selection places two staunch Trump allies atop the nation’s principal federal law enforcement agency at a time when Democrats are concerned that the president could seek to target his adversaries. Bongino would serve under Kash Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director at the White House on Friday and who has signalled his intent to reshape the bureau, including by relocating hundreds of employees from its Washington headquarters and placing greater emphasis on the FBI’s traditional crime-fighting duties.Patel has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Trump’s political opponents.The deputy director serves as the FBI’s second-in-command and is traditionally a career agent responsible for the bureau’s day-to-day law enforcement operations.Bongino, 49, served on the presidential details for then-presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, before becoming a popular rightwing figure. He became one of the leading personalities in the Maga political movement to spread false information about the 2020 election.For a few years following Rush Limbaugh’s death in 2021, he was chosen for a radio show on the same time slot of the famous commentator.Bongino worked for the New York police department from 1997 through 1999, before joining the Secret Service. He began doing commentary on Fox News more than a decade ago, and had a Saturday night show with the network from 2021 to 2023. He is now a host of the Dan Bongino Show, one of the most popular podcasts, according to Spotify.Bongino ran for a US Senate seat in Maryland in 2012 and for congressional seats in 2014 and 2016 in Maryland and Florida, after moving in 2015. He lost all three races.During an interview last year, Bongino asked Trump to commit to forming a commission to reform the Secret Service, calling it a “failed” agency and criticizing it for the two assassination attempts last year.“That guy should have been nowhere near you,” Bongino said about the man who authorities say camped outside Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, before he was spotted with a rifle. More

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      US Senate narrowly confirms Kash Patel as next FBI director

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      The US Senate has confirmed Kash Patel as the next FBI director, handing oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to an official who has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Donald Trump’s political opponents.Patel was narrowly confirmed on Thursday in a 51-49 vote, a reflection of the polarizing nature of his nomination and what Democrats see as his unwillingness to keep the bureau independent from partisan politics or resist politically charged requests from the president.Notably, at his confirmation hearing, Patel refused to commit that he would not use his position to investigate officials he portrayed as Trump’s adversaries in his book, and affirmed that he believed the FBI was answerable to the justice department and, ultimately, the White House.Patel’s responses suggest that his arrival at FBI headquarters will usher in a new chapter for the bureau as a result of his adherence to Trump’s vision of a unitary executive, where the president directs every agency, and willingness to prioritize the administration’s policy agenda.That objective to implement the Trump administration’s mandate has already taken hold at the justice department, which oversees the bureau and last week forced through the dismissal of corruption charges against Eric Adams, the New York mayor, in order to get his help to deport undocumented immigrants.The greatest challenge for recent FBI directors has been the delicate balance of retaining Trump’s confidence while resisting pressure to make public pronouncements or open criminal investigations that are politically motivated or that personally benefit the president.Patel is unlikely to have difficulties, such is his ideological alignment with Trump on a range of issues including the need to pursue retribution against any perceived enemies like former special counsel Jack Smith and others who investigated him during his first term.The new leadership at the FBI also comes as questions about the far-reaching nature of his loyalty to Trump remain unresolved. At his confirmation hearing, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee tried in vain to elicit answers about his role as a witness in the criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.During the investigation, Patel was subpoenaed to testify about whether the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified under a “standing declassification order”, as he had represented in various public comments at the time.The Guardian reported at the time that Patel initially declined to appear, citing his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. He later testified after the chief US district judge in Washington authorized Patel to have limited immunity from prosecution, which forced his testimony.That loyalty, to resist federal prosecutors, endeared him to Trump and is understood to have played a factor in him ultimately getting tapped for the FBI director position after Trump struggled for weeks to decide who he wanted at the bureau, a person familiar with the matter said.Patel ultimately clarified, in something of a partial admission under close questioning from senator Cory Booker, that although he witnessed Trump issue a declassification order for some documents, he did not actually know whether they applied to the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.Democrats have unanimously considered Patel’s track record in the first Trump administration, his incendiary remarks criticizing the bureau he was nominated to lead and more generally his role in the classified documents case to be disqualifying.When Trump tapped Patel last year, Democrats largely believed it would lead to a backlash that would sink his nomination. No resistance ever materialized, in part because Patel was less controversial than some of Trump’s other nominees, such as Pete Hegseth for defense secretary.Patel was formerly a public defender in Florida before joining the justice department in 2014 as a line prosecutor in the national security division.In 2017, Patel became a top Republican aide on the House intelligence committee, where he authored a politically charged memo accusing the FBI and the justice department of abusing surveillance powers to spy on a Trump adviser. The memo was criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found errors with aspects of the surveillance.His efforts impressed Trump, who brought him into the administration and quickly elevated him to national security and defense roles. By the end of Trump’s first term, he was the chief of staff to defense secretary Chris Miller and briefly considered for CIA director.While John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Trump, found a catalog of mistakes by prosecutors in the Russia investigation, he found no evidence that officials had been motivated by political animus and brought no charges – contrary to claims by Trump and Patel. More

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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