House Committee on the Judiciary

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares139 Views

    FBI Director Testifying Before Congress Over Trump Rally Shooting

    by

    The F.B.I. director disclosed that the gunman flew a drone for about 11 minutes, just two hours before the former president was shot during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, disclosed on Wednesday that the gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump appeared to have used a drone to survey the site of the shooting for about 11 minutes in the hours before Mr. Trump took the stage.“It appears that around 3:50 p.m., 4:00, on the day of the shooting, that the shooter was flying the drone around the area,” Mr. Wray said during his testimony, noting that it was “not over the stage, but about 200 yards, give or take, away from that.”The gunfire on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., left Mr. Trump’s ear bloodied, killed a rallygoer who had been sitting in the stands and seriously injured two others.Mr. Wray said the would-be assassin operated the drone about two hours before Mr. Trump spoke at the rally.Secret Service snipers killed the gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, after locating him on a nearby roof. Mr. Crooks was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and had magazines for the rifle and a bulletproof vest in his car. Mr. Wray confirmed that the F.B.I. recovered eight bullet cartridges from the roof where the gunman opened fire.So far, Mr. Wray said, the F.B.I. has not found a motive for the shooting even as the investigation evolves. But the bureau continues to examine the gunman’s electronic devices for additional clues about Mr. Crooks’s mind-set and movements beforehand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      No Bias Found in F.B.I. Report on Catholic Extremists

      by

      Republicans claimed the bureau’s memo was evidence of an anti-conservative strain among F.B.I. ranks, but an internal investigation failed to uncover any “malicious intent.”A memo by the F.B.I. warning of possible threats posed by “radical-traditionalist” Catholics violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent,” according to an internal Justice Department inquiry made public on Thursday.Republicans have seized on the 11-page memo, which was leaked early last year, as a talking point. They have pointed to the document to sharply criticize the bureau and suggested, without evidence, that it was part of a broader campaign by the Biden administration to persecute Catholics and conservatives over their beliefs.The memo was quickly withdrawn after being leaked, and top law enforcement officials have repeatedly distanced themselves from it.The assessment by the Justice Department’s watchdog found that agents in the F.B.I.’s office in Richmond, Va., improperly conflated the religious beliefs of activists with the likelihood they would engage in domestic terrorism, making it appear as if they were being targeted for the faith.But after a 120-day review of the incident ordered by Congress, Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general — drawing from the F.B.I. report and interviews conducted by his own investigators — found no evidence that “anyone ordered or directed” anyone to investigate Catholics because of their religion.A statement from the F.B.I. on Thursday said the inspector general’s review aligned with the bureau’s own accounting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Poised and Precise, Hur Enters Fray Over Special Counsel’s Report on Biden

      by

      Robert K. Hur defended himself in the unhurried, forceful cadence of a veteran prosecutor, delivering his responses in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.The former special counsel Robert K. Hur, denounced by Democrats for his unsparing description of President Biden’s memory lapses, had one of his own during his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee.Representative James R. Comer, a Kentucky Republican, made passing reference to Dana A. Remus, a Democratic lawyer who had served as White House counsel under Mr. Biden from January 2021 to July 2022.Mr. Hur crinkled an eyebrow and corrected him: No, he said, she occupied that post under President Obama.The misstep was an isolated moment in an otherwise poised and precise appearance by Mr. Hur, 51, who was testifying about his report on the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents.Mr. Hur, a Trump-era Justice Department official known among former colleagues for keeping a cool head in high-stress, high-stakes situations, incited a furor after describing the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” A transcript of his five-hour interview with Mr. Biden, released just before his appearance, raised questions about that characterization.Before his work as special counsel, Mr. Hur, a graduate of Stanford Law School who clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, was best known for his 11-month stint as the top aide to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, in 2017 and 2018. It was a time of extraordinary upheaval, when Mr. Rosenstein oversaw the installment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to investigate President Donald J. Trump’s dealings with Russia. Both men lived under the constant threat of being fired by Mr. Trump, who saw the appointment as a personal betrayal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Menendez Indictment Could Undercut G.O.P. Attacks on Justice Department

      by

      The indictment of the Democratic senator from New Jersey comes at a politically opportune moment for the besieged Justice Department.On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee repeatedly accused Attorney General Merrick B. Garland of singling out former President Donald J. Trump for selective prosecution, slamming him for what they call a “two-tiered system” of justice.Forty-eight hours later, the Justice Department indicted one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate — Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — on bribery charges, making public a trove of evidence, including cash and gold bars stashed at his house.The department’s aggressive pursuit of Mr. Menendez appeared to undercut claims that Mr. Trump is the victim of pervasive political bias that targets leaders on the right while shielding transgressors on the left.The entanglement of electoral politics and law enforcement is becoming the norm, and the prosecution of a top Democrat up for re-election in 2024 has political as well as legal reverberations. And the indictment, brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with limited participation from the Justice Department’s national security division in Washington, comes at a politically opportune moment for the besieged department.“This case really should silence any critic who wrongly suggests that D.O.J. is politicized under Garland,” said Anthony D. Coley, a former spokesman for the department. “This D.O.J. follows the facts — and isn’t influenced by partisan politics, political affiliation or wealth — not anything but facts and law.”Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said recent indictments showed the department was functioning as it should. “The department goes where the facts lead them,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Trump, Hunter Biden, Menendez now. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”But the indictment could cut the other way, playing into the Republican argument, used so effectively by Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign, that Washington is a swamp lorded over by corrupt Democrats. Republican reaction to the news was initially muted, but the Republican National Committee and House Republicans took to social media in an attempt to link Mr. Menendez to President Biden and the Hunter Biden scandal.Rules adopted by Senate Democrats require Mr. Menendez to immediately step aside as chairman of his committee, as he did when he was first indicted in 2015, reclaiming his post when the charges against him were dropped three years later.Mr. Menendez, one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate, is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He is now required to step down from his leadership role.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesIf that buys Democrats some breathing space, it does little to weaken the longer-term political challenges, with President Biden and Senator Charles Schumer, the majority leader, likely to face increasing pressure to urge a defiant Mr. Menendez to voluntarily resign his seat.“Active matter, not going to comment,” said the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked whether the president wanted the senator to quit.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, who would have the power to appoint Mr. Menendez’s successor, called on Mr. Menendez to resign on Friday. His message was soon followed by like-minded calls from political leaders throughout the state.Earlier in the day, several other Democrats made similar statements. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota compared the senator with Representative George Santos, the Long Island Republican indicted in May on 13 charges, including wire fraud. “It’s appalling,” Mr. Phillips told CNN.But Mr. Menendez showed no sign of backing down. Some top Democrats, including Mr. Schumer and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, who is likely to take over his gavel on the committee, released statements urging patience while the judicial process played out.Shortly after the charges were announced, Mr. Menendez issued a blistering one-page-long denial that was not unlike the vehement pushback by Mr. Trump and his supporters in response to his multiple criminal indictments.“For years, forces behind the scenes have repeatedly attempted to silence my voice and dig my political grave,” he wrote. “The excesses of these prosecutors is apparent.”Mr. Trump has not been accused of bribery or pay-to-play corruption. Yet Mr. Menendez’s indictment carries faint echoes of the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified documents at his Florida estate — most notably the inclusion of photographs from the senator’s house that were instantly disseminated on social media.But the charges against Mr. Menendez, whose opposition to the administration’s efforts to thaw relations with Cuba rankled many in the White House, are highly unlikely to influence the Republican strategy of undermining public confidence in the Justice Department under Mr. Garland and federal law enforcement more generally.During the contentious oversight hearing on Wednesday that foreshadowed the looming impeachment inquiry of President Biden, Republicans blasted Mr. Garland, time and again, for slow-walking the investigation into Hunter Biden, the president’s son, while fast-tracking two indictments against Mr. Trump.“There’s one investigation protecting President Biden — there’s another one attacking President Trump,” said Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “The Justice Department’s got both sides of the equation covered.”The hearing, which lasted more than five hours, focused primarily on the department’s five-year investigation of Hunter Biden, and a plea deal negotiated by David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware overseeing the case, that would have spared Mr. Biden prison time on gun and tax charges. That agreement fell apart during a court hearing in July, and the government has indicted Mr. Biden on three felony weapons charges, while continuing its investigation into his lucrative consulting deals with foreign companies.The claim that Mr. Garland has weaponized the Justice Department for political purposes, while thus far unsupported by evidence, is a pillar of Republican messaging. Not only is it a way to rally the party’s base, but it is meant to counter a mountain of witness testimony and documentary evidence against Mr. Trump, who is accused of illegally retaining classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election.“Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” the attorney general said. “I am not the president’s lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.” More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Wanted a Special Counsel Investigation of Hunter Biden. Now Many Oppose It.

      by

      Although some G.O.P. lawmakers see the appointment of David C. Weiss as a vindication of their strategy, others criticize the now-scuttled plea deal he struck with Mr. Biden.Congressional Republicans have for months repeatedly written to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland demanding he appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, over his business dealings.Some even demanded that a specific man be named to lead the inquiry: David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney who has long investigated the case.But on Friday, after Mr. Garland elevated Mr. Weiss to special counsel status, Republicans in Congress reacted publicly not with triumph, but with outrage. “David Weiss can’t be trusted and this is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.The reaction was a notable political development, one that underscored both how Mr. Weiss, a Republican, has fallen in conservative circles, and how deeply it has become ingrained in the G.O.P. to oppose the Justice Department at every turn.“The reality is this appointment is meant to distract from, and slow down, our investigations,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and chairman of Ways and Means, one of three congressional committees looking into the Biden family’s finances.But in interviews, away from social media and television appearances, the reaction of many Republicans to Mr. Weiss’s appointment was more nuanced. Privately, some in the G.O.P. were chalking up the development as a victory.The party had worked for years to elevate the Hunter Biden case — which Democrats have long dismissed as a partisan obsession of the right — to a scandal equivalent to those dogging former President Donald J. Trump, who has faced two impeachment trials, two special counsel investigations and three indictments totaling 78 felony counts against him. Those indictments include charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and willfully retaining national defense information after he left office.By contrast, Hunter Biden has thus far been accused of two misdemeanor crimes stemming from his failure to pay taxes on more than $1.5 million in income related to his overseas business deals, and one felony count of illegally possessing a firearm while being a drug user.After leaving his job as a lobbyist while his father was running to become vice president more than a decade ago, Hunter Biden, a Yale-educated lawyer, and partners entered into a series of international business relationships, often with firms seeking influence and access within the United States. Mr. Biden was paid handsomely, even as he descended into drug addiction, and Republicans have accused him and his family of corruption. But they have not produced evidence that any of the overseas money went to President Biden or that the president influenced U.S. policy to benefit his son’s business partners.“This appointment is meant to distract from, and slow down, our investigations,” said Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is looking into the Biden family’s finances.Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEven as they objected to Mr. Weiss, some Republicans said the appointment appeared to be an acknowledgment that the allegations they had made deserved a serious investigation. It promised to keep Hunter Biden’s misdeeds in the news — and in the courts — for longer than Democrats would like as the 2024 presidential election heats up. And it ensured that in the minds of some voters the names Trump and Biden would both be linked to scandal, even if Republicans have not proved any wrongdoing by the current president.In an interview with Newsmax, a top Trump adviser, Jason Miller, appeared to echo both sentiments, and foreshadowed coming attacks.Mr. Miller said the appointment of Mr. Weiss “stinks” and accused the prosecutor of sitting on his hands for years. But, he added, ”I do want to make sure that my Republican brethren” don’t ”lose sight of the big prize here.”He described the appointment of a special counsel as “a direct acknowledgment that Hunter Biden did something wrong,” and he recalled President Biden saying in a 2020 debate with Mr. Trump that he had not done anything wrong.Since Mr. Weiss announced a proposed plea deal in June with Mr. Biden — an agreement that would have allowed him to avoid jail time on tax and gun charges but has since fallen apart — Republicans in Congress have sharply criticized the government, accusing the Justice Department of leniency with the president’s son as they conduct their own investigations in an effort to tie his overseas business dealings to the president. House Republicans have also brought forth two I.R.S. agents who worked on Mr. Weiss’s investigation and claimed there had been political interference.One allegation made by the I.R.S. agents was that Mr. Weiss had sought to bring charges against Hunter Biden in Washington and California but had been rebuffed by prosecutors in those jurisdictions who declined to partner with him. The order appointing Mr. Weiss to special counsel authorizes him to bring charges in any jurisdiction.Alyssa DaCunha, a co-chair of the congressional investigations practice at the law firm WilmerHale, said she believed House Republicans’ investigations and their criticisms of the proposed plea deal had “caught the attention” of the Justice Department.“There’s a real need to make sure that whatever charging decisions are made are very, very well supported and the department can really stand behind them,” Ms. DaCunha said. “It seems like this will extend the life of the investigation, and so there are lots of ways in which this is going to complicate the narrative for Democrats moving forward and give the Republicans lots of leverage.”Some House Republicans close to Mr. Trump acknowledged they were pleased with the announcement of the special counsel. For Mr. Trump, in particular, it provided him with the investigation he has long desired to be able to depict the Biden family as corrupt, even as Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes are significantly less severe than the charges Mr. Trump is facing.Mr. Trump’s statement did not suggest that he viewed the appointment of a special counsel as a bad development, merely that it had come late, something his advisers also argued in private.Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax and gun charges fell apart in court last month.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMike Pence, the former vice president who is now running against Mr. Trump, was among the few well-known Republicans to openly praise Mr. Weiss’s appointment.But other Republicans were worried the development could be used to block their investigations. Mr. Weiss had pledged to testify on Capitol Hill this fall, but those Republicans predicted he could now cite the special counsel investigation to refuse to do so.The announcement also gives President Biden and Mr. Garland some political cover against Republican accusations that Mr. Trump is a victim of a two-tier system of justice, placing the investigation outside the normal workings of the Justice Department. It could also undercut Republican arguments that an impeachment inquiry of the president is necessary.“In the near term, it gives Republicans the ability to say it legitimizes what they’ve been looking into and it helps give more momentum to their different oversight activities,” said Michael Ricci, a former top communications official to two Republican House speakers and a current fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. “But in the longer term, the White House will absolutely use this as an argument against any kind of rush into impeachment.”Several Republicans said their respect for Mr. Weiss had declined after he entered into the plea deal with Hunter Biden.Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who had once called for Mr. Weiss to be made special counsel, said he no longer stands by that belief. “Given the underhanded plea deal negotiated by the U.S. attorney from President Biden’s home state, it’s clear Mr. Weiss isn’t the right person for the job,” Mr. Grassley said.Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, had once called for Mr. Weiss to be made special counsel but said the plea deal changed his mind. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBut Democrat-aligned groups saw something else in the Republicans’ about-face: disingenuousness.“House Republicans’ opposition to Trump appointee David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel is nothing more than another political stunt,” said Kyle Herrig, the director of the Congressional Integrity Project, an advocacy group that defends President Biden from congressional investigations. “After months of calling for this, their dismay makes clear that they will stop at nothing to weaponize Congress to interfere with an ongoing investigation and harm Joe Biden.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      What to Watch for as FBI Director Christopher Wray Testifies Before Congress

      by

      Stoked by former President Donald J. Trump, congressional Republicans have been trying to undermine the F.B.I.’s legitimacy with the public.Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, confronted an extraordinary political storm on Wednesday in testifying before Congress, with Republicans who once defended the bureau now denouncing it as a weapon wielded against former President Donald J. Trump and his supporters.Mr. Wray, who is appearing for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee since Republicans won the House, is most likely girding for the worst. The committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, has said it “will examine the politicization” of the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.In his opening statement, Mr. Jordan accused the bureau of a litany of abuses. He urged Democratic lawmakers to join Republicans in blocking the reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program known as Section 702 and raised questions about funding for the bureau’s new headquarters.“I hope they will work with us in the appropriations process to stop the weaponization of the government against the American people and end this double standard that exists now in our justice system,” he said.Anticipating the questioning to come, the top Democrat on the committee, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, described the hearing as “little more than performance art.” He countered that Republicans had initiated an array of “baseless investigations” in a bid to “protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions.”Stoked by the former president, congressional Republicans have adopted an increasingly caustic tone in their criticism of the country’s premier law enforcement agency, trying to damage its legitimacy and to undermine its standing with the public.That criticism was once trained on the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election. It is now focused on other flash points: Mr. Trump’s indictment in an inquiry into his handling of classified documents; the F.B.I.’s role in the search of his estate in Florida in August, as part of that inquiry; unfounded claims of a “two-tiered” system of justice favoring Democrats; and the Justice Department’s plea agreement with President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.So far, Republicans have not provided evidence that the F.B.I. and Mr. Wray are partisan, but they will try to catch him off balance and seed doubt about his motives.Here is what to look for:How will Mr. Wray respond?Mr. Wray infuriated Mr. Trump, who viewed the director’s declaration of independence as disloyalty. But Mr. Wray has previously testified before Congress, steadfastly defending the F.B.I. as nonpartisan and taking fire on Twitter from Mr. Trump, while he was president.Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Wray in 2017 after he fired James B. Comey, who as F.B.I. director had opened the Russia investigation. Since then, Mr. Wray has been under constant pressure from Republicans, who have simultaneously decried lawlessness in cities run by Democrats while attacking the F.B.I.’s role in political investigations.In the past, Mr. Wray has responded to attacks by parsing his words carefully. In his opening statement, he forcibly defended the F.B.I. and declined to discuss open investigations, which is the policy of the Justice Department.“I want to talk about the sheer breadth and impact of the work the F.B.I.’s 38,000 employees are doing, each and every day,” he said, citing the bureau’s work in addressing violent crime, fentanyl trafficking and efforts by China to steal trade secrets. “Because the work the men and women of the F.B.I. do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines.”Republicans are going to war.Mr. Trump and his supporters — as well as a vocal group of former F.B.I. officials who have aligned themselves with Republicans in Congress — believe the government is trying to silence and punish conservatives and see the bureau as a dangerous extension of that effort.Case in point: In January, House Republicans voted to investigate law enforcement, creating the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.Republicans have claimed that the F.B.I. prodded Twitter to discriminate against their party as well as conservative or right-wing protesters at school board meetings and abortion clinics. Those issues have proved to be powerful drivers of voter turnout in the party’s pro-Trump base.The subcommittee is led by Mr. Jordan, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s.Last month, House Republicans on the Oversight Committee moved to hold Mr. Wray in contempt of Congress. But they called off a planned vote days later after the bureau said it would make available a document at the center of their dispute, involving an unverified allegation of bribery against Mr. Biden when he was vice president.Mr. Trump and his supporters have promoted the idea that the Mar-a-Lago search was intended to neutralize his electoral chances.Mr. Trump and his allies have raged at his indictment and the search of Mar-a-Lago in August, when F.B.I. agents descended on his residence and uncovered hundreds of classified documents.The former president and his supporters have said that Mr. Trump declassified the records, meaning there was no misconduct to start, and that the search was an example of an uneven application of justice.But so far no evidence has emerged that the documents were declassified or that the search, which was approved by a federal judge, was improper or politically motivated. In fact, the search unfolded after Mr. Trump repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material.In recent weeks, Steven D’Antuono, the former top F.B.I. agent overseeing the documents case, testified behind closed doors before Mr. Jordan.Asked if “anyone was motivated by animus” in the documents investigation, Mr. D’Antuono said no, according to a transcript of his testimony.Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Wray in 2017 after he fired James B. Comey.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesHunter Biden reached a plea deal. Republicans hate it.Under the deal with the Justice Department, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time and to be sentenced to probation. The department also said it would not prosecute him for buying a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was using drugs.Republicans have assailed the deal, calling it too lenient, even though years of investigation by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney found evidence to charge Mr. Biden only on the narrow tax and gun issues, rather than the wide-ranging international conspiracies peddled by Mr. Trump and his allies.That U.S. attorney, David C. Weiss, who signed off on the agreement, has also come under fire. On Monday, Mr. Weiss rebutted a key element of testimony to Congress by an Internal Revenue Service official who said that Mr. Weiss had complained about being blocked from pursuing more serious charges.Republicans will claim the Durham investigation showed that the F.B.I. was politically motivated in pursuing its Russia inquiry.A final report by John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, looked at the origins of the F.B.I.’s investigation into any ties Mr. Trump’s campaign had with Russia but found no evidence of politically motivated misconduct.Still, Mr. Durham’s report has continued to fuel Republican claims of bias, with some accusing the F.B.I. of making moves motivated by political favoritism.That charge almost immediately resurfaced during Mr. Wray’s hearing. Mr. Durham’s “ lengthy report reluctantly concluded that the F.B.I. quote, failed uphold its mission of strict fidelity to the law,” Representative Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, said shortly after Mr. Wray’s testimony began.Even as Mr. Trump and his loyalists had long insisted that Mr. Durham’s investigation would unearth a “deep state” conspiracy intended to damage him politically, Mr. Durham never charged high-level government officials.Instead, Mr. Durham developed only two peripheral cases involving accusations of making false statements, both of which ended in acquittals, while using his report to cite flaws in the F.B.I.’s early investigative steps that he attributed to confirmation bias.Will Americans trust the F.B.I.?Republicans have claimed the Justice Department is “weaponized” against conservatives, but the allegations that were brought forth by aggrieved former F.B.I. officials have foundered.Instead, Democratic investigators have uncovered that those former F.B.I. officials have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and have received financial support from a top ally of Mr. Trump’s.In a heated exchange, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said the American public trusted the F.B.I. more under J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau’s first director, than under the leadership of Mr. Wray. Mr. Wray countered that the number of F.B.I. applicants had surged in Mr. Gaetz’s home state. Mr. Gaetz said he was “deeply proud” of these people and “they deserve better than you.”Still, the back-and-forth is having an impact. Mr. D’Antuono, in his testimony, rebuffed allegations of political bias and rejected calls to defund the bureau — but expressed concern about the future.“In my opinion,” he said, “the more the American people hear about not trusting the F.B.I., it’s not a good day for this country.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Special Counsel Who Hunted for a Deep-State Conspiracy Presents Muted Findings

      by

      John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, criticized the F.B.I. during a six-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel who for four years pursued a politically fraught investigation into the Russia inquiry, told lawmakers on Wednesday that F.B.I. officials had exhibited confirmation bias — even as he defended his work against Democratic accusations that he became a partisan tool.In a nearly six-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Durham rarely offered new information, repeatedly saying he did not want to go beyond his report. That approach echoed an appearance in 2019 before the same committee by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.The hearing may be the final — official, at least — chapter in the complex saga of the Russia investigation and former President Donald J. Trump’s repeated efforts to reframe it as a deep-state plot, which has been a source of turbulence in American political life for more than six years. Mr. Durham retired after completing his report last month, and Senate Democrats have not invited him to testify.For years, Mr. Trump and his allies stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would find a conspiracy lurking in the origins of the Russia investigation and would prosecute high-level officials. But Mr. Durham developed only two peripheral cases, both of which ended in acquittals, while citing flaws in the F.B.I.’s early investigative steps he attributed to confirmation bias.“There were identified, documented, significant failures of a highly sensitive, unique investigation that was undertaken by the F.B.I.,” Mr. Durham said. “The investigation clearly reveals that decisions that were made were made in one direction. If there was something that was inconsistent with the notion that Trump was involved in a well-coordinated conspiracy with the Russians, that information was largely discarded or ignored.”The hearing was largely a predicable display of partisanship, with each party trading claims about the merits of the underlying investigation into Russia’s attempt to manipulate the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor. Mr. Mueller documented myriad links between Russia and Trump campaign officials, but did not charge any Trump associate with a criminal conspiracy with Russia.Republicans railed against the Russia investigation as unjustified and portrayed it as politically motivated and corrupt, focusing on flawed wiretap applications and text messages in which F.B.I. officials expressed animus toward Mr. Trump.Democrats defended it as legitimate and necessary by turning to the substance of Mr. Mueller’s work. Not only did he indict numerous Russians — and win convictions of multiple Trump associates on other crimes — but he also uncovered how the Trump campaign’s chairman had shared internal polling and strategy with a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant the government says is a Russian intelligence agent, among other things.For large portions of the hearing, Mr. Durham served as a foil for both purposes, as lawmakers on each side asked questions intended to affirm whatever facts or claims they wanted to emphasize.President Donald J. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr and their allies in Congress stoked expectations that Mr. Durham would find a “deep state” conspiracy.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMuch of his own critique of the investigation was familiar territory. The most factually grounded portions — especially errors and omissions in a set of wiretap applications that relied in part on claims in the so-called Steele dossier, a dubious compendium of what turned out to be opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign — echoed a December 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Mr. Durham repeated those findings, but offered no concrete new suggestions for reforms.Other parts were more ephemeral. After Mr. Durham’s initial effort to find intelligence abuses at the heart of the Russia investigation came up empty, he shifted to hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign. He used court filings and his report to insinuate that the campaign set out to defraud the F.B.I. and frame Mr. Trump, although he never charged any such conspiracy. Some Republicans, however, treated that idea as established fact.“What role did the Clinton campaign play in this hoax?” asked Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, adding, “Exactly what was the ‘Clinton Plan?’”But some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters expressed disappointment that Mr. Durham did not live up to the grander expectations that he would put high-level officials in prison and prove a deep-state conspiracy.For example, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, insisted that suspicions about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia emerged because of an operation by Western intelligence agencies — a conspiracy theory that Mr. Durham set out to prove but failed to find evidence to support. Mr. Gaetz said Mr. Durham had let the country down, and compared the special counsel’s inquiry to the Washington Generals, the basketball team whose job is to lose in exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters.“When you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder,” Mr. Gaetz said.Mr. Durham replied that Mr. Gaetz’s comments were “offensive.”Representative Matt Gaetz suggested that Mr. Durham was part of a cover-up.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesBut while most of the Republicans on the committee gave Mr. Durham a warmer welcome, he did not always say things that supported their position. Mr. Durham called Mr. Mueller a “patriot” and did not contradict any of his findings. He said that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election — and characterized that intelligence operation as a “significant threat.”Pushed by Representative Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, to go beyond his report’s conclusion that F.B.I. agents had acted with “confirmation bias” and accuse them in his testimony of having taken steps motivated by political favoritism, Mr. Durham demurred, saying that “it’s difficult to get into somebody else’s head.”And he said that the F.B.I. had “an affirmative duty” to open some kind of investigation into the allegation that served as the Russia investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat said that a Trump campaign adviser had made a comment suggesting that the campaign had advance knowledge that Russia would anonymously dump out hacked Democratic emails.Still, he also testified that “in my view,” that information did not amount to “a legitimate basis to open as a full investigation” and that the bureau ought to have opened it as a lower-tier inquiry, like an “assessment” or a “preliminary” investigation. That went slightly beyond his report, which had argued that opening the inquiry at a lower level would have been better.The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, concluded in 2019 that the same information was a sufficient basis to open a “full” counterintelligence inquiry.Throughout the hearing, Democrats pressed Mr. Durham to acknowledge or explain certain findings from a New York Times article in January examining how his inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes.Mr. Durham rarely offered new information, repeatedly saying he did not want to go beyond his report. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThey asked him, for example, why his longtime deputy, Nora R. Dannehy, resigned from his team in September 2020. The Times reported that she did so in protest after disputes over prosecutorial ethics, including the drafting of a potential interim report before the 2020 election.Mr. Durham spoke highly of Ms. Dannehy but declined to say why she had resigned. He called the Times article “unsourced” but did not deny its findings, adding, “To the extent The New York Times wrote an article suggesting certain things, it is what it is.”Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, asked Mr. Durham whether it was true, as the Times also reported, that when he and Attorney General William P. Barr traveled to Italy to pursue a certain pro-Trump conspiracy theory, Italian officials denied it but passed on a tip about unrelated financial crimes linked to Mr. Trump.Mr. Barr decided the allegation, whose details remain unclear, was too serious to ignore but had Mr. Durham control an investigation into it, and he filed no charges, The Times reported.“The question’s outside the scope of what I think I’m authorized to talk about — it’s not part of the report,” Mr. Durham replied, but added: “I can tell you this. That investigative steps were taken, grand jury subpoenas were issued and it came to nothing.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election

      by

      A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved.They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.A House subcommittee was created to scrutinize what Republicans have charged is a government effort to silence conservatives. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes. The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social medial companies.The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, is among the defendants named in a lawsuit filed by America First Legal, a conservative group. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressIf the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.Mr. Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”Stephen Miller, a former adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, leads America First Legal. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesThe researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Judge Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 election to identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.In May, Mr. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesman, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.Twitter, under Mr. Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including the Gateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      House G.O.P., Divided Over Immigration, Advances Border Crackdown Plan

      by

      Republicans are eyeing a vote next month on legislation that would reinstate Trump-era policies, after feuding that led leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday pushed ahead with a sweeping immigration crackdown that would codify several stringent border policies imposed by the Trump administration, after months of internal feuding that led G.O.P. leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.The House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees in recent days approved their pieces of the plan, which has little chance of being considered in the Democratic-led Senate but sets up a pivotal test of whether Republican leaders can deliver on their campaign promise to clamp down on record migrant inflows.For Republicans, who have repeatedly attacked President Biden on his immigration policies and embarked on an effort to impeach his homeland security secretary, the measure is a chance to lay out an alternative vision on an issue that galvanizes its right-wing base.The legislation, now expected on the floor next month, would direct the Biden administration to resume constructing the border wall that was former President Donald J. Trump’s signature project. It would also mandate that employers check workers’ legal status through an electronic system known as E-Verify and reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, forcing asylum applicants to wait in detention facilities or outside the United States before their claims are heard.The plan “will force the administration to enforce the law, secure the border, and reduce illegal immigration once again,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, said during the panel’s debate on Wednesday.Democrats have derided the package as misguided and draconian, accusing Republicans of seeking to invigorate their core supporters in advance of the 2024 election by reviving some of Mr. Trump’s most severe border policies. They made vocal objections to provisions that would ban the use of the phone-based app known as “C.B.P. One” to streamline processing migrants at ports of entry, expedite the deportation of unaccompanied minors, and criminalize visa overstays of more than 10 days.Republicans “want to appeal to their extreme MAGA friends more than they want progress,” Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said Wednesday, calling the Republican legislation a “profoundly immoral” piece of legislation that would “sow chaos at the border.”Still, the package represents a compromise of sorts between hard-right Republicans and more mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers, including a mostly Latino group from border states that balked at proposals that threatened to gut the nation’s asylum system.The party’s immigration plan — which top Republicans had hoped to pass as one of their first bills of their new House majority — has been stalled for months. A faction led by Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, has raised concerns about the asylum changes, threatening to withhold votes that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, cannot afford to lose given his slim majority.Over the last week, G.O.P. leaders have quietly made a series of concessions to win over the skeptics. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee agreed to drop a provision that would have effectively stopped the intake of asylum seekers if the government failed to detain or deport all migrants seeking to enter the country without permission. But the measure still contains a number of new asylum restrictions.“It’s in a good spot,” Mr. Gonzales said of the legislation on Thursday, saying that the changes made to the asylum provision had satisfied his concerns. “As long as nobody does any funny business — you’ve got to watch it till the very end.”G.O.P. leaders predicted on Thursday that they would be able to draw a majority for the legislation when it comes to the House in mid-May, a timeline selected to coincide with the expected expiration of a Covid-era policy allowing officials to swiftly expel migrants at the border. The termination of the program, known as Title 42, is expected to inspire a new surge of attempted border crossings and supercharge the already bitter partisan debate over immigration policy.But it was unclear whether Republicans who had objected to the E-Verify requirement would be on board.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky withheld his support for the Judiciary Committee’s bill because of the work authorization mandate, arguing that people “shouldn’t have to go through an E-Verify database to exercise your basic human right to trade labor for sustenance.”Such databases “always get turned against us, and they’re never used for the purpose they were intended for,” added Mr. Massie, a conservative libertarian.Representative Dan Newhouse, a Republican farmer in Washington State, has expressed concern that the E-Verify mandate could create labor shocks in the agricultural sector, which relies heavily on undocumented immigrant labor. Though the legislation delays the requirement for farmers for three years, Mr. Newhouse has argued that any such change should be paired with legislation creating more legal pathways for people to work in the United States.With the expected floor vote just weeks away, G.O.P. leaders have been treading carefully, even making last-minute concessions to Democrats in hopes of bolstering support for the legislation.During the wee hours on Thursday morning, as the Homeland Security Committee debated its bill, Republicans pared back language barring nongovernmental organizations that assist undocumented migrants from receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security. They did so after Democrats pointed out the broadly phrased prohibition could deprive legal migrants and U.S. citizens of critical services as well.Their changes did not go far enough to satisfy Democrats, who unanimously opposed the package on the Judiciary and the Homeland Security panels — and are expected to oppose the combined border security package en masse on the House floor.They have also argued that any measure to enhance border security or enforcement must be paired with expanded legal pathways for immigrants to enter the United States. More