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      Biden and Pence documents reveal US crisis of ‘overclassification’, expert says

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      AnalysisBiden and Pence documents reveal US crisis of ‘overclassification’, expert saysDavid Smith in WashingtonSystem whereby government classifies 50m documents a year threatens national security and democracy, says Jameel Jaffer Donald Trump was caught with classified documents and Democrats were outraged. Joe Biden was caught with classified documents and Republicans were outraged. Mike Pence was caught with classified documents and it became clear that there might be a bigger problem here.America has a crisis of “overclassification”, critics say. Since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington has been overzealous in defining government secrets. Politicians and officials can too easily fall foul of this secrecy-industrial complex but the biggest losers are the American people denied democratic accountability.Pence discovery raises fresh questions over US handling of classified papersRead moreAmong the prominent voices calling for reform is Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York. Previously at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), he fought court battles over landmark post-9/11 cases relating to national security and individual rights.Jaffer makes no excuses for former president Trump, who hoarded about 300 documents with classified markings at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and resisted justice department efforts to retrieve them. He regards the Biden and Pence cases as different because, as far as is known, they inadvertently left classified material at their respective homes in Delaware and Indiana and willingly turned it over to authorities.Jaffer would have expected the former vice-presidents to be more careful but argues that there is a more fundamental point: the failure of a process in which the government classifies about 50m documents every year – at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $18bn – while not declassifying them at anything like the same rate.“The bigger scandal here is not any particular episode involving the mishandling of classified information but rather the classification system itself, which is totally broken in ways that are bad not just for national security but for democracy,” Jaffer, 51, said this week by phone from Brooklyn, New York.“There’s too much information that’s classified. Too many people have access to the classified secrets. A lot of the information is classified for the wrong reasons because its disclosure would embarrass somebody or it would be inconvenient or would subject government officials to scrutiny that they would rather not have.”Special counsel investigations into Trump and Biden are just the tip of the iceberg.This week the National Archives wrote to representatives of living former presidents and vice-presidents requesting that they check their personal papers in case classified documents are still among them. Former officials from all levels of government discover they are in possession of classified material and turn them over to the authorities at least several times a year, the Associated Press reported.Why all the secrecy? One explanation is incentives. Classification can be useful for a government official seeking to conceal incompetence, preserve a bureaucratic monopoly on a particular set of facts or keep a rival government agency in the dark. Conversely there is no penalty for keeping information – however trivial or unnecessary – secret and no mechanism for declassifying in the public interest.One consequence of this runaway effect is that the national security bureaucracy suffers classification overload: when everything is secret, nothing is secret. Jaffer commented: “That has national security implications because it means that it’s harder to keep track of and protect the secrets that really do need to be secret.“It also breeds a kind of cynicism because people see, on the one hand, senior government officials going on about how sensitive these secrets are and, on the other hand, treating the documents in this kind of careless way.”Republicans accuse Biden of hypocrisy over classified documents discoveriesRead moreThere is a double standard, he added, between the way senior officials and junior employees are treated when they mishandle classified material. “That, too, is bad for national security because it demoralises intelligence community employees.”Rapacious classification also takes a toll on democracy. “A lot of the information that the public needs is unjustifiably kept out of the public domain and, as a result, public debate about important issues like foreign policy and war and counter-terrorism policy is impoverished or, even worse, distorted by needless secrecy.”Jaffer discovered this firsthand at the ACLU, which he had joined as a volunteer to advocate for people detained in raids in immigrant communities around New York in the weeks after September 11. Over the next 14 years he worked on cases relating to CIA black sites, the interrogation and torture of prisoners, indefinite detention, the drone campaign and warrantless wiretapping.He added: “The government made bad decisions in secret and, by the time the public learned of those decisions, it was too late to avoid some of the costs.”September 11 was a turning point after decades in which classification principally related to discreet wars overseas or the development of weapons, including nuclear weapons. The reaction to the attacks on New York and Washington changed the character of government secrets and brought them much closer to home.Jaffer commented: “After 9/11, a lot of this had much more direct implications for individual rights including the constitutional rights of Americans. There’s a difference between what is the government doing in south-east Asia and what is it doing here in New York City.“There’s a difference between keeping secret the specifications for a particular weapon and keeping secret the fact that you’re torturing prisoners in overseas black sites or engaged in dragnet surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and emails. Those are different kinds of secrets: they go to government policy, the scope of government power, the meaning of individual rights. The public has a much stronger interest in an informed public debate about those kinds of questions.”If the system is broken, what can be done to fix it? Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama sought to encourage declassification with limited success. Jaffer would like to see an institution outside the executive branch – perhaps the judiciary – given the authority to make national security information public where the public interest outweighs the need for secrecy.“One foundational flaw in our national security system is that public interest balancing never happens. There is nobody who is tasked with considering the possibility that the government might have some interest in keeping something secret but the public interest in disclosure is greater.“There’s no public interest balancing in the context of the Freedom of Information Act. If you sue for national security information and the government says the information is classified, that’s the end of it. The judges don’t then say, well does it really need to be classified? But they should be empowered to do that. That would be an important reform.”The Espionage Act of 1917 is also long overdue a rewrite, according to Jaffer.In the 20th century only one person, Samuel Loring Morison, was convicted under the act for sharing information with the press (he was pardoned by Clinton in 2001). But after September 11, both Democratic and Republican administrations have used it aggressively to target journalists’ sources including Reality Winner, Terry Albury and Chelsea Manning.More recently the government has invoked the Espionage Act to go after a publisher: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose methods Jaffer likens to those of journalists reporting on national issues. “They communicate confidentially with their sources, protect their sources’ identities, solicit classified information, publish government secrets.“Those are the things that Assange is being prosecuted for and that national security journalists engage in all the time – and have to engage in order to do the work we want them to do. That’s why I see the Assange case as such a threat to press freedom.”Jaffer is not an absolutist who wants to put all information in the public domain. But nor does he accept that the leaking of government secrets is an existential threat.Biden claims ‘no regrets’ but classified papers case could come back to bite himRead more“The much bigger problem is not that sensitive things are being disclosed dangerously but rather that important information crucial to the public’s ability to understand government policy, and crucial to the democratic legitimacy of the government’s policies, is being withheld unjustifiably,” he said.“What we need is a bottom-up reform of the entire classification system including the Espionage Act. I don’t think this is a system that is serving us well. The fact that the system is so broken has very significant costs for our society, and it’s bad not just for public debate and for democracy but even for national security too.”TopicsUS national securityJoe BidenMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Biden speaks with Tyre Nichols’s parents ahead of video release – latest updates

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      Joe Biden spoke with the parents of Tyre Nichols, according to the Washington Post.The paper released a brief clip of the conversation, where the president mentions how Nichols’ father is “devastated” by the death of his son, and invokes his own experience of losing a child:🚨President Biden just called Tyre Nichols’ parents. He talked to them for more than 10 minutes.”He actually tattooed my name on his arm,” his mom told Biden.”That’s what you call something special,” Biden replied. We were in the room for the call. Here’s a snippet. pic.twitter.com/0gpfU1wmv6— Emily Davies (@ELaserDavies) January 27, 2023
      Earlier, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said Biden had been briefed on the video of Nichols’ beating that will be released later today, but has not seen it:.@PressSec on Tyre Nichols video expected to be released tonight says @POTUS has “been briefed, but he has not seen the video, nor has anyone at the White House seen the video.”— Allie Raffa (@AllieRaffa) January 27, 2023
      Acclaimed author and anti-racism activist Ibram X Kendi has condemned the beating and death of Tyre Nichols while criticizing police brutality on Friday.In a statement on Twitter, Kendi wrote:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Tyre Nichols should be with us skateboarding and looking up and admiring the sunset. But instead the sadistic scourge of police violence claimed its latest innocent victim.
      “The history of the police is the racist history of violence. Cops of all races have been empowered and socialized to brutalize and terrorize and exploit and sexually assault and harass and lynch people, particularly Black people with near total impunity.
      “There’s no reforming an inherently violent institution with a pervasively violent history. How many more Black people have to be brutally killed before we realize the obvious? How many more? How many more?”Several groups are organizing rallies across the country tonight as Memphis police prepares to release footage of Tyre Nichols this evening. According to the Instagram accounts of various chapters of the political party PSL, or Party for Socialism and Liberation, rallies titled “Justice for Tyre Nichols” are scheduled in major cities including New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Asheville and Chicago. Meanwhile, the Youth Communist League is scheduled to host a rally in Philadelphia tonight. Other rallies are set to be held in Dallas and Washington DC. The White House has released more details of Joe Biden’s call with the family of Tyre Nichols.“President Biden spoke with Mrs RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, Tyre Nichols’ mother and stepfather, this afternoon to directly express his and Dr Biden’s condolences for Tyre Nichols’ death. During the conversation, the president commended the family’s courage and strength,” a readout of the call said.The Guardian’s Maya Yang is now taking over this blog to cover the latest developments in this story.Former vice-president Mike Pence said he takes “full responsibility” for the secret materials found at his residence, CNN reports:Former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking to a crowd in Miami, says he was not aware classified documents were at his house. But he adds: “Those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence. Mistakes were made. And I take full responsibility.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 27, 2023
      Pence’s disclosure this week that documents dating from his time in the White House under Donald Trump were discovered in his Indiana home came after both Joe Biden and Trump were found to have similar materials in their possession. Attorney general Merrick Garland has appointed two special counsels to handle the investigations of the current and ex-presidents’ documents, but hasn’t done the same for Pence.A network of racial justice activist groups is asking the public not to share footage of Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating at the hands of police, which is scheduled for release at 6 pm eastern time.Here is the message from Movement for Black Lives:Today a video of Tyre Nichols’ murder will be released. Do not share it. Do not traumatize our people further by putting it in front of us. We feel the overwhelming rage and grief without subjecting ourselves to a video of his life being taken.To protect yourself online: ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/EytQUlWvQ0— Movement 4 Black Lives (@Mvmnt4BlkLives) January 27, 2023
      Separately, the Republican National Committee re-elected Ronna McDaniel as its chair, overcoming concerns about her leadership after the party underperformed in last November’s midterm elections.McDaniel’s main challenger was Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer for Donald Trump who handled his challenge to a subpoena from the January 6 committee. Conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell and former congressman Lee Zeldin were also on the ballot, which McDaniel won easily:RNC Chair Election First Ballot Results:167 votes cast. 84 needed to win. Ronna McDaniel – 111Harmeet Dhillon – 51 Mike Lindell – 4Lee Zeldin – 1Ronna McDaniel reelected RNC Chair.Watch LIVE on C-SPAN2 https://t.co/uYWdF9rUK2— CSPAN (@cspan) January 27, 2023
      Joe Biden spoke with the parents of Tyre Nichols, according to the Washington Post.The paper released a brief clip of the conversation, where the president mentions how Nichols’ father is “devastated” by the death of his son, and invokes his own experience of losing a child:🚨President Biden just called Tyre Nichols’ parents. He talked to them for more than 10 minutes.”He actually tattooed my name on his arm,” his mom told Biden.”That’s what you call something special,” Biden replied. We were in the room for the call. Here’s a snippet. pic.twitter.com/0gpfU1wmv6— Emily Davies (@ELaserDavies) January 27, 2023
      Earlier, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said Biden had been briefed on the video of Nichols’ beating that will be released later today, but has not seen it:.@PressSec on Tyre Nichols video expected to be released tonight says @POTUS has “been briefed, but he has not seen the video, nor has anyone at the White House seen the video.”— Allie Raffa (@AllieRaffa) January 27, 2023
      From the Capitol, Punchbowl News reports Nancy Pelosi told journalists she will not be watching the video of the attack on her husband:Nancy Pelosi says “she has absolutely no intention” of watching the attack on Paul Pelosi pic.twitter.com/vG5HMkb3XQ— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) January 27, 2023
      The top Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, reacted to the release of video showing the attack on Paul Pelosi.Jeffries took over from Nancy Pelosi as the party’s leader in Congress’s lower chamber at the start of this year. Here’s what he had to say:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The violent attack on Paul Pelosi was unconscionable and his assailant must be brought to justice. We live in dangerous times of unprecedented extremism and political violence which have no place in our democracy or in the everyday lives of elected officials and their loved ones. The prayers of the Caucus, the Congress and the Country are with Paul, Speaker Emerita Pelosi and their wonderful family. May God watch over Paul in his continued recovery.Hello US live blog readers, we are continuing to follow developments in the news relating to the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis after a fatal encounter with the police – and political reaction to that and related developments in Washington, DC, and elsewhere. Please stick around as we take you into the afternoon and evening, ahead of the release later tonight of police video of what’s described as a brutal police beating of Nichols.Here’s where things stand:
      Tyre Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, said at a press conference in Memphis that ended a little bit ago that she has not been able to bring herself to watch the video of her son’s beating by five police officers earlier this month, following which he died in hospital, but she’s been told it’s “very horrific” and she urged carers not to let children watch it when police release footage tonight.
      FBI director Christopher Wray said he was “appalled” by video of Nichols’s beating at the hands of Memphis police, and that the bureau has opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal incident.
      Footage was released of the brutal hammer attack last year on Paul Pelosi, the husband of California congresswoman and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last October. A right-wing, allegedly politically-motivated intruder broke into their home in San Francisco, with the stated intent of kidnapping Nancy, who was in Washington, DC. Instead he found Paul and attacked him.
      Joe Biden sent condolences to the family of Tyre Nichols in a statement released yesterday, while issuing a vague call for “meaningful reform” of policing, an issue on which he has had mixed success during the first two years of his presidency. The US president appealed for calm at protests that are expected in several cities tonight after the video of Nichols’s beating is released.
      Police body-camera video was released on Friday afternoon of the brutal hammer attack last October on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Democratic congresswomen and then House speaker Nancy Pelosi.The shocking footage shows officers arriving at the front door of the Pelosi residence in San Francisco and knocking loudly on the door.Paul Pelosi opens the door and can be seen with an intruder as the two wrestle over a hammer. Police can be heard asking “What’s going on, man?”, then they tell the suspect to drop the hammer. But he says “Nope”, then manages to grab it and swing it and, just off camera, hits Pelosi in the head.Police charge in to find Pelosi collapsed on the floor, unconscious and struggling to breathe, as they grapple with the suspect, who has fallen on the floor partially on top of Pelosi, then arrest him.Pelosi, 82, suffered a skull fracture and injuries to his hand and arm in the attack, requiring him to undergo surgery. He remained hospitalized for nearly a week as he recovered.The video was released Friday, after a state judge dismissed efforts by the San Francisco district attorney’s office to keep the footage sealed from the public. The suspect in the attack, David Wayne DePape of Canada, faces state and federal criminal charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, among others. DePape has pleaded not guilty to the charges.DePape’s comments to authorities in the wake of the attack indicated that his actions were politically motivated. In court testimony last month, a San Francisco police investigator recounted how DePape claimed there was “evil in Washington” and described his initial plans to kidnap the House speaker.She was in Washington, DC, at the time and swiftly flew back to California to be with her husband.Democrats performed better than expected last November’s midterm elections, but Republicans narrowly won control of the House of Representatives and, after a fraught election earlier this month at the start of the 118th Congress, California congressman Kevin McCarthy took over the speakership.Pelosi had announced after the midterms that she would step down from her leadership role while continuing to represent her district in Washington, and she effectively handed the baton to New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, who became House minority leader in the new congress.Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis explained that the decision to release the video of Tyre Nichols on Friday evening is to reduce the impact it may have on the surrounding communities and schools. “Friday evening will be a good time to try to get people home, try to have our children safe and have a means of being able to manage any type of response,” Davis told NBC. She added that police will be monitoring parts of Memphis and that they have increased their staffing. “We don’t want to overreact. But the reality is, is that there are individuals that may want to exercise their First Amendment right and come out and protest,” she told the outlet. “My son is looking down smiling because, you know, it’s funny, he always said he was going to be famous one day. I didn’t know this was what he meant,” RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols’s mother said.“I‘ve never seen the video. But what I’ve heard is very horrific, very horrific. And any of you who have children, please don’t let them see it,” she added.“To the five police officers that murdered my son, you also disgraced your own families when you did this but … I’m going to pray for you and your families, because at the end of the day, this shouldn’t have happened. This just shouldn’t have happened. We want justice for my son, justice for my son,” she added.“We’re very satisfied with the charges,” said Tyre Nichols’s stepfather, Rodney Wells, referring to the second-degree murder charges against the five officers.“More importantly, we want peace. We do not want any type of uproar, we do not want any type of disturbance. We want peaceful protests. That’s what the family wants, that’s what the community wants,” Wells said ahead of the planned protests across the country later today as the footage of Tyre Nichols gets released.“We want to know, where are the unions? Where does the fraternal order of police unions stand on this? We want to hear…that you condemn the savagery…heinousness…brutality of this attack?” said Antonio Romanucci, one of the attorneys representing the family of Tyre Nichols. Romanucci also called upon Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis to disband the specialized police unit known as the ‘Scorpion’ unit which the five police officers were a part of. “The intent of the Scorpion unit has now been corrupted. It cannot be brought back to center with any sense of morality and dignity, and most importantly, trust in this community. How will the community ever, ever, trust a Scorpion unit?” he said. “Officers have a duty to intervene in crimes being committed, even if it’s intervening with their own officers,” Crump said, calling for legislation to be passed which would require police officers to intervene when they see their colleagues exercising excessive force.“We have never seen swift justice like this,” said Crump, referring to the five officers who have since been charged with murder. “We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for any time any officers, whether they be Black or white, will be held accountable. No longer can you tell us we got to wait six months to a year,” he added. “It is the culture that allows them to think that they can do this to Tyre,” Crump said, saying that it does not matter if the officers were Black, Hispanic or any other ethnicity. “Call out the culture, call out the culture,” he said, as family members of Nichols chanted back. “It is the institutionalized police culture that is on trial today,” he added. More

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      Biden vows to veto Republican plans that threaten economic ‘chaos’ – as it happened

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      “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that,” Biden said, referring to fiscal policies proposed by Republicans.“Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.“I will veto everything they send,” he added.It’s slightly past 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s where things stand:
      Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao has spoken out against former president Donald Trump who has repeatedly issued racist remarks towards her. Chao, who is Asian American, told Politico, “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name…He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” she added.
      In an address in Springfield, Virginia on Thursday, president Joe Biden hit back against Republican fiscal policies and vowed to not let a national debt default happen. “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that…Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.
      Biden also reaffirmed his administration’s fight against global warming by “finally making sure the biggest corporations just begin to pay a little bit. The days are over where corporations pay zero in federal taxes.”
      San Francisco superior court judge Stephen Murphy has ordered footage of the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be released. In addition to home surveillance footage, Murphy ordered the public release of police body camera footage, 911 audio calls, as well as audio from police interviews with David DePape, the suspect who broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home last October in attempts to kidnap the former speaker.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee in an interview on Thursday morning. “I think we need a change, and I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC outside of DC – why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?,” DeSantis said on the Charlie Kirk Show, referring to the lawyer who is currently the foremost challenger of RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s position.
      The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents check to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records. The request comes amid the ongoing but increasingly surreal scandal tangling up Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.
      Hard right congresswoman and conspiracy-booster Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has “no chance” of being stated-2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential choice, despite aspiring to it, a source tells Guardian US.
      Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s owner, is reportedly ready to allow Trump to post on the platforms his ongoing attacks on the results of the 2020 presidential election, where he lost to Joe Biden but claims he really won. But if Trump posts misinformation about upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential, it will take some unspecified action to restrict his messaging. Meta has reinstated Trump to the platforms after a two-year ban, but he hasn’t posted yet.
      The decision to allow Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram is infuriating many, including some civil rights groups (though not the ACLU) and Democratic politicians. The move has been called dangerous by some.
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up today’s US politics blog. Thank you for following along. We’ll be back on Friday. Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao has spoken out against former president Donald Trump who has repeatedly issued racist remarks towards her. Chao, who is Asian American, told Politico, “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name… Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation.”“He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” she added. Earlier this week, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?” he wrote. “Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China,” he added. Trump has also previously referred to Chao, who is married to Mitch McConnell, as “China’s loving wife.”“We have more work to do but we’re on the right track… I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today…and nothing is beyond our capacity if we work together,” said Biden in his closing remarks. “Unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years,” said Biden since taking office two years ago. “We created nearly 11 million jobs, including 750,000 manufacturing jobs…the unemployment rate is near record lowest for Black and Hispanic workers and the lowest ever recorded for people with disabilities,” he added.“If you don’t think we have a climate crisis, come travel with me around the country,” says Biden, adding, “We have enormous drought, now we have these super storms in the west…folks, there is a thing called global warming and it’s real but we can do something about it.”“Families are going to save more than $1,000 on tax credits on these [energy efficient] vehicles when they purchase one, and energy efficient appliances like refrigerators and washing machines…and we’re paying for all of this by finally making sure the biggest corporations just begin to pay a little bit. The days are over where corporations pay zero in federal taxes,” he added. “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that,” Biden said, referring to fiscal policies proposed by Republicans.“Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.“I will veto everything they send,” he added.“We’re moving in the right direction, now we have to protect those gains…from the MAGA Republicans… This ain’t your father’s Republican party… They want to pass legislation to do the following things…they want to raise your gas prices…cut taxes of your billionaires…and they want to impose a 30% national sales tax on food…clothing…house, cars… They want to eliminate the income tax system,” Biden said. “We’ve achieved a lot…economic growth is up, stronger than experts expected…jobs are the highest in American history and wages are up. In the past six months, inflation has gone down each month,” Biden said in his address at Springfield, Virginia. San Francisco superior court judge Stephen Murphy has ordered footage of the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be released. In addition to home surveillance footage, Murphy ordered the public release of police body camera footage, 911 audio calls, as well as audio from police interviews with David DePape, the suspect who broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home last October in attempts to kidnap the former speaker.Unable to find Nancy Pelosi, the alleged perpetrator instead beat her 82-year old husband with a hammer. Murphy’s decision comes amid calls from numerous news agencies that seek the release of the footage and evidence. “You don’t eliminate the public right of access just because of concerns about conspiracy theories,” said Thomas Burke, a lawyer who represented the Associated Press and other media organizations in their attempt to gain access to the footage, the AP reports. Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee in an interview on Thursday morning. .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I think we need a change, and I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC outside of DC – why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?,” DeSantis said on the Charlie Kirk Show, referring to the lawyer who is currently the foremost challenger of RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s position. He added: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We’ve had three substandard election cycles in a row – ’18, ’20, and ’22 – and I would say of all three of those, ’22 was probably the worst given the political environment of a very unpopular President in Biden.”DeSantis’s comments come amid growing concerns from some RNC members that McDaniel has not done enough to push back against Donald Trump from forming a third political party if he does not secure the Republican presidential nomination during the next election cycle. Hello again, US politics live blog readers. It’s been a lively day in the news from Washington so far and there’ll be more to come. Joe Biden is due to leave the White House shortly en route to a union office in Springfield, Virginia, where he’s scheduled to give a speech at 2.45pm ET on the economy (and what he sees as Republican plans to block his economic agenda).Here’s where things stand:
      The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents check to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records, amid the ongoing but increasingly surreal scandal tangling up Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.
      Hard right congresswoman and conspiracy-booster Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has “no chance” of being stated-2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential choice, despite aspiring to it, a source tells Guardian US.
      Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s owner, is reportedly ready to allow Trump to post on the platforms his ongoing attacks on the results of the 2020 presidential election, where he lost to Joe Biden but claims he really won. But if Trump posts misinformation about upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential, it will take some unspecified action to restrict his messaging. Meta has reinstated Trump to the platforms after a two-year ban, but he hasn’t posted yet.
      The decision to allow Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram is infuriating many, including some civil rights groups (though not the ACLU) and Democratic politicians. The move has been called dangerous by some.
      At a press briefing with the US attorney general Merrick Garland earlier, FBI director Christopher Wray warned, amid the scandal of classified documents turning up in the possession of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that people with access to such material should be more “conscious of the rules.”“Obviously I can’t comment on any specific investigation, but we have had, for quite a number of years, any number of mishandling investigations,” Wray told reporters at the briefing that was chiefly called to talk about the Department of Justice seizing a website used by a ransomware outfit.“That is, unfortunately, a regular part of our counterintelligence division, counterintelligence programs work,” Wray added. “And people need to be conscious of the rules for classified information and appropriate handling of it. Those rules are there for a reason,” Wray said.Today FBI Director Christopher Wray weighed in on the classified doc drama, I believe for the first time, saying in part, “people need to be conscious of the rules regarding classified information and appropriate, handling of them…those rules are there for a reason.”— Evan Lambert (@EvanLambertTV) January 26, 2023
      It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at this point. But, again, there is a vast difference between what appears to be a careless oversight by Joe Biden, followed by an infuriating and outrageous information blackout before the public were told, and the case of Trump, who refused to hand over boxes of classified and secret documents to the government after leaving the White House and had to be raided by the FBI last summer.The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents do a sweep or a re-sweep, if they’ve checked before, to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records among their personal records, amid the rumbling scandal, CNN reports. The call comes as Donald Trump is being investigated by a special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) for withholding many boxes of material, including top secret documents, Joe Biden is being investigated by a separate special counsel after it was discovered that there were a few classified documents outstanding from his time as vice president, which he’s handed over, and that Mike Pence had some documents, too.The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent federal agency within the executive branch. The agency sent a letter today to representatives of former presidents and vice presidents from, according to CNN, the last six administrations covered by the Presidential Records Act (PRA).“The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, requests that they check their files to ensure that material thought to be personal does not “inadvertently” contain presidential records that are required by law to be turned over to the Archives,” the cable news channel reports.The report continues: “The Archives sent the letter to representatives for former Presidents Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and former Vice Presidents Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle.Representatives for the four former presidents have all so far told CNN they do not have any classified records in their possession.”Here again, FYI, is the Guardian’s great explainer on the fundamental differences between the Trump and Biden cases.Obama, Dubya, Clinton, Cheney, Gore, Quayle (and president Jimmy Carter, aged 98, who hasn’t been mentioned in this latest sweep), are still alive.NBC News made a splash on Wednesday with a report that said Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to be Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president in 2024.Greene, from Georgia, is a far-right controversialist and conspiracy theorist who was barred from House committees by Democrats but is now suddenly strongly allied with Republican leaders, after supporting Kevin McCarthy through his 15-vote ordeal to be elected speaker.Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist, now a far-right media figure (and accused fraudster), told NBC Greene saw herself “on the short list for Trump’s VP”.An unnamed source “who has advised Greene said her ‘whole vision is to be vice president’.”So the Guardian asked its own anonymous source, a veteran Trumpworld insider, if there was any chance Trump would pick Greene.The source said: “No chance. She might want it but it’s not real.”So there’s that.There’s also this, an interview with Robert Draper of the New York Times about his fascinating book about Republican dysfunction and, in particular, the rise of Marjorie Taylor Greene:‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 Read moreThe Guardian’s David Smith earlier this month ran through some of Trump’s options in the veepstakes, including Taylor Greene. You can read it here. More

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      US National Archives asks ex-presidents to check for classified papers

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      US National Archives asks ex-presidents to check for classified papersEx-presidents and vice-presidents including Obama, Bush, Cheney and Gore receive letters on reviewing their personal records The US National Archives has asked representatives for former presidents and vice-presidents on Thursday to review their personal records for any classified-marked documents in their possession after a series of such discoveries at the homes of Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Mike Pence.The archives sent letters to the presidents and vice-presidents in the previous six administrations that are covered under the Presidential Records Act, which requires materials from their time in the White House to be turned over to the agency when they leave office.“We request that you conduct an assessment of any materials held outside of Nara [National Archives and Records Administration] to determine whether bodies of materials previously assumed to be personal in nature might inadvertently contain Presidential or Vice Presidential records,” the letters said.The requests are understood to have gone to representatives for former presidents including Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as former vice-presidents Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle, according to a source familiar with the matter.The archives did not respond to a request for comment.what we know about classified recordsRepresentatives for the four former presidents have said that they had not retained any classified-marked documents after leaving the White House, though Pence himself also claimed he had returned everything to the government until a recent search of his home found otherwise.The requests, earlier reported by CNN, come after lawyers to Biden and then Pence reported that a search of their private properties turned up classified-marked documents, months after the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August and seized about 100 such documents.The most recent spate of discoveries started with the revelation that Biden’s personal lawyer had found a number of classified-marked documents on 2 November, when he was clearing out his office last November at the University of Pennsylvania Biden Center for Diplomacy in Washington.Some of the documents at the UPenn Biden Center, the Guardian previously reported, included papers marked as classified at the Top Secret/Secret Compartmented Information level that were immediately reported to the National Archives, which in turn alerted the US justice department.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, asked US attorney John Lausch on 14 November to conduct a review of the matter. After the additional papers were found late last year, Lausch recommended on 5 January that Garland appoint a special counsel to take over the inquiry.Garland appointed Robert Hur, a top former Trump justice department official to serve as special counsel in the Biden documents case on 10 January, seeking to insulate the department from possible accusations of political conflicts after he named a special counsel to investigate Trump.The Biden documents case last week prompted close aides to Pence to search the former vice-president’s home in Indiana out of an abundance of caution, where they found a number of classified-marked documents, Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob said in a letter to the National Archives on 18 January.The letter added that the aide who searched the property could not specify anything more about the documents – including the content, dates and classification level, which remain unclear – because he stopped looking as soon as he saw the classified markings.The discovery of classified-marked documents is an embarrassing development for Pence after he confidently told ABC News last year that he had not improperly removed any materials from the White House. “I did not,” Pence said in November last year.Trump – Pence’s former boss – has been under federal investigation for more than a year over whether he wilfully retained national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and whether he obstructed efforts by the justice department to secure their return starting in May last year.Compared with Biden, and now Pence, who moved quickly to return documents to the government, Trump’s resistance to handing over materials at his Florida property led to the justice department turning his case into a criminal investigation.The department has typically pursued cases of mishandled classified documents criminally when they involve a combination of four aggravating factors: wilful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of materials to suggest misconduct, disloyalty to the United States and obstruction.The investigation into Trump touches on at least two of those elements – obstruction, where a person conceals documents with an intent to impede a government agency, and the volume of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.TopicsUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpMike PencenewsReuse this content More

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      Pence discovery raises fresh questions over US handling of classified papers

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      Pence discovery raises fresh questions over US handling of classified papersBiden, Trump and Pence cases prompt calls to tighten government procedures as Republican congressman says ‘process is broken’ The discovery of classified documents at the home of former US vice-president Mike Pence, following similar incidents involving Joe Biden and Donald Trump, is bringing new scrutiny to government procedures for handling and securing its most delicate secrets.George Santos admits ‘personal’ loans to campaign were not from personal fundsRead moreThe justice department and FBI are looking into how about a dozen classified-marked papers came to be found last week in an unsecure location at Pence’s Indiana residence, two years after he and Trump left office.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has meanwhile appointed independent special counsels to investigate what is thought to be around a dozen documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and Pennsylvania office, and many thousands of papers seized by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last year.The latest revelations have led to calls from politicians and analysts for a tightening of how classified documents are handled at the conclusion of a presidency, and a demand for more oversight of the federal agency responsible for securing and transporting them during the handover.There are also questions whether the US has a problem with over-classification of materials given the number of documents so far uncovered in the possession of senior current and former elected officials.“Clearly the process is broken,” the Florida Republican congressman Mike Waltz, a member of the House armed services committee, told Fox News.“We’ve got to take a hard look at GSA (General Services Administration) and how they and the intelligence community pack these documents [and] get them to wherever the president or vice-president is going.”Republicans seeking to gain political capital from the discovery of papers at Democrat Biden’s home and office, from his two terms as Obama’s vice-president, were quelled by the revelation that Pence, their own party’s most recent vice-president, also apparently took sensitive papers with him.In both cases, the politicians insisted they were unaware of the existence of the documents and, immediately upon their discovery, their lawyers contacted the National Archives, which in turn alerted the justice department.That contrasts sharply with Trump’s handling of more than 11,000 papers, including hundreds of classified and top secret documents, which he took from the White House in January 2021 and stored in boxes at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.The former president resisted requests that he return the documents, which reportedly included a foreign power’s nuclear and military secrets, to the National Archives, prompting last summer’s FBI raid and, in November, the appointment by Garland of special prosecutor Jack Smith to look into the affair.“Quantitatively and qualitatively there are big differences between Trump’s situation on the one hand, and Biden and Pence on the other,” said Carl Tobias, Williams professor of law at the University of Richmond.“The FBI says Trump had 11,000 documents mostly at Mar-a-Lago, and several hundred classified documents. So far with Biden it’s a tiny number compared to that, maybe 25, and only some were classified, and it seems even smaller with Pence.“Also the behaviour, if you look at Pence and Biden, it may be negligent, or just not careful. There isn’t any notion of intent to do something, which is apparently the case with Trump. Those differences are pretty important.”The episode, nevertheless, is embarrassing for Pence, who insisted: “I did not” when asked by ABC News in November if he had taken classified material from the White House.Political allies have rushed to defend him. New York congresswoman and Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik, the House Republican conference chair, told reporters Pence did nothing wrong, while claiming without evidence that a “weaponized” FBI was engaged in a cover-up to protect Biden.Tobias said the episodes also suggested an issue with how the government decides what should be classified.“Hundreds of thousands of classified documents are generated every year, it’s difficult to keep track of all that and we may have an over-classification problem. Maybe Congress would pass some legislation to try to address that,” he said.“There’s just so many documents that you can’t expect all of them to be tracked. People should be more careful with the documents, but also not classify everything so much that you can’t handle it.”Representatives of three living former presidents, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton, told CNN they handed over all classified documents to the National Archives before leaving the White House, as did the office of the late George HW Bush.Legal analyst Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director, told Fox he was concerned that three current and recent occupants of the White House appeared not to have done so.“These politicians need to understand where this information comes from. They can’t just take it home,” he said.TopicsUS politicsMike PenceJoe BidenDonald TrumpRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Pence documents discovery sparks scrutiny on US classification system – as it happened

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      It started in August when the FBI carried out an unprecedented search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and carted away boxes of what the government revealed were secret materials he should not have left the White House with.It appeared the former president was in serious legal peril, particularly once it emerged that he’d sidestepped efforts by the National Archives to retrieve the materials, and after attorney general Merrick Garland said special counsel Jack Smith would look into the matter.But then, in January, it was revealed Joe Biden had found classified documents from his time as vice president at a former office in Washington DC, and later at his home in Delaware. When it was revealed that the White House discovered this just prior to the November midterm elections but didn’t make the news public, Republicans pounced. Earlier this month, Garland announced the appointment of another special counsel, Robert Hur, to handle the investigation into the Biden case.Then yesterday, news broke that the former vice president under Trump, Mike Pence, also found classified materials in his home in Indiana. That discovery has prompted something of a tonal shift in Washington, with both Democratic and Republican politicians now wondering if there isn’t a larger issue to be addressed with the government’s classification process – or perhaps its procedures for presidential transitions.Joe Biden announced that the United States will send Ukraine its Abrams battle tank, as western allies mobilize to provide Kyiv with the armor it argues is necessary to defend against Russia’s invasion. Back in Washington, lawmakers and experts are reacting to the cascade of classified documents discovered at the properties of former White House occupants, most recently ex-vice president Mike Pence’s home in Indiana.Here’s what else happened today:
      Barack Obama’s office wouldn’t say whether the former president planned to check if he had any classified material in his possession.
      A Georgia district attorney says a decision on prosecuting people involved in Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the state’s 2020 election result is “imminent”.
      House speaker Kevin McCarthy has made good on his promise to boot two Democrats from the intelligence committee, and plans to seek a vote on removing a third from the foreign affairs committee.
      Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao responded to Trump’s repeated racist attacks.
      George Santos’s former roommate went public with the tale of his brief and crowded time living with the admitted liar turned congressman.
      Republican House representative Victoria Spartz had some harsh words for Kevin McCarthy and his quest for remove three Democratic lawmakers from committees:Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) criticizes Speaker Kevin McCarthy for kicking Democrat Reps. Eric Swalwell, Ilhan Omar, and Adam Schiff off House committees:“I want to defend the due process of this institution because we’re becoming like a theater full of actors in the circus.” pic.twitter.com/ZErT2iaBiP— The Recount (@therecount) January 25, 2023
      Spartz’s complaints are not to be taken lightly. The GOP only has a four-vote margin of control in the House. Elaine Chao was Donald Trump’s transportation secretary from the start of his term until her resignation following the January 6 insurrection, but despite her lengthy service, the former president has repeatedly targeted her with racist insults.In a statement to Politico, Chao – who is married to the top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell and also served as labor secretary under George W Bush – made a decision that was unusual for her: she responded to Trump’s attacks.“When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation. He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” Chao said.Politico notes that Chao’s decision to speak out comes in the wake of two mass shootings targeting Asian Americans. In the past, Chao has avoided political bickering, but wound up in Trump’s crosshairs anyway due to his disagreements with McConnell. Trump has made social media posts suggesting that McConnell has inappropriate ties to China because of his wife. Chao was born in Taiwan, and immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old.CNN pounded the pavement of the Capitol to try to figure out what House Republicans make of the news that Mike Pence has joined the ranks of those possessing classified documents they should not have.Prior to the development, the GOP was gearing up to hold Joe Biden’s feet to the fire for keeping secret documents from his time as vice president and senator in two locations. They still plan to do that, but have yet to spell out how they’ll handle the similar conduct from Pence, a Republican former vice president who may run for the White House in 2024:GOP pressing ahead after Pence classified doc newsComer says Biden and Pence to be treated “exact” same way. Jordan sees a difference over how FBI treated Biden vs. TrumpWaltz says House Intel needs to learn “was there any damage” from the records Pence, Trump and Biden had pic.twitter.com/d7mgvtyrjW— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2023
      You know it’s bad when new outlets are willing to publish an interview with your former roommate about what it was like to live with you.But that’s the situation George Santos finds himself in, after telling a whole bunch of lies in his successful quest to be elected to Congress. New York Magazine secured an interview with Yasser Rabello, who recounted a brief stay in a crowded, two-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York that he found through his acquaintance with Santos – who he knew as Anthony Devolder.Even then, Santos was murky about his affairs. From the interview:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}So he was always in the common space. What did he do all day?
      He was home all day on his computer, just browsing the web, probably chatting with people. He said he was a reporter at Globo in Brazil.
      Which was a lie, it seems.
      Then he told me he was a model and that he worked at New York Fashion Week and that he met all the Victoria’s Secret models and would be in Vogue magazine.The $500-a-month apartment started out crammed and grew worse, with Rabello sleeping in one bedroom, Santos’s mother in the other and the future congressman on a couch in the living room, with his sister elsewhere in the apartment. The future congressman’s boyfriend later moved in and slept on a mattress, but the family would often have friends over, too.Rabello recounts how tensions rose as the Santos/Devolder clan at first occasionally offered to share meals with him, before cutting him off, saying it was getting too expensive, and later even hiding bottles of water from him. Matters reached a peak when the family – who did not take the property’s keys with them when they’d go somewhere – grew upset with Rabello when he didn’t answer the door quickly enough:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}None of them carried their own keys, which is stupid. I don’t know who does that. So I wake up one day with my phone next to me ringing. They were yelling at me to let them in. They had been ringing the buzzer for the intercom, but it was broken, so I didn’t hear it. I let them in, and Fatima starts shouting in Portuguese for me to get out of her apartment. So I stopped staying there. But I had one more month on my lease, so I kept going in day by day to get my stuff.
      How did that go?
      I arranged with my friend who has a driver’s license to rent a truck so we could get my Ikea dresser. I arranged with Anthony a time to come. He said, “Okay.” I tried to take my dresser, and a fight started. His mother said, “You’re not gonna take my dresser.” I was like, “Excuse me, how come this is yours? Did you buy it? Do you have the receipt? The neighbors were coming to their doors because of the disturbance. It wasn’t that expensive, so I let it go. Later on, my friend with the truck helped me to write a letter to the property manager explaining that they were putting a lot of roommates in the apartment, which is illegal.
      They were eventually evicted. Where do you think the dresser is now?
      I don’t know. Ikea furniture is not sturdy enough for multiple moves. It probably broke a long time ago.Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged to remove Democrat Ilhan Omar from her seat on the foreign affairs committee over allegations she used antisemitic language.At a press conference today, the Minnesota lawmaker hit back McCarthy:Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) rebukes Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s “purely partisan” decision to remove her from House committee assignments:“Not only [is it] a political stunt, but also a blow to the integrity of our democratic institution and a threat to our national security.” pic.twitter.com/AGefau1Eka— The Recount (@therecount) January 25, 2023
      On Tuesday, the House speaker removed two Democratic foes from the intelligence committee, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. McCarthy has the power to do that unilaterally, but to oust Omar from her post on foreign affairs, he’ll need the votes of a majority of the House. It’s unclear if he has enough support, as at least two Republicans oppose the move.The discovery of classified documents at the home of former US vice-president Mike Pence, following similar incidents involving Joe Biden and Donald Trump, is bringing new scrutiny to government procedures for handling and securing its most delicate secrets.The justice department and FBI are looking into how about a dozen classified-marked papers came to be found last week in an unsecure location at Pence’s Indiana residence, two years after he and Trump left office.The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has appointed special counsels to investigate what is thought to be around a dozen documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and Pennsylvania office, and many thousands of papers seized by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last year.The latest revelations have led to calls from politicians and analysts for a tightening of how classified documents are handled at the conclusion of a presidency, and a demand for more oversight of the federal agency responsible for securing and transporting them during the handover.There are also questions whether the US has a problem with over-classification of materials given the number of documents so far uncovered in the possession of senior current and former elected officials.“Clearly the process is broken,” Florida Republican congressman Mike Waltz, a member of the House armed services committee, told Fox News.“We’ve got to take a hard look at GSA (General Services Administration) and how they and the intelligence community pack these documents [and] get them to wherever the president or vice-president is going.”Discovery at Pence’s home brings question: why were classified documents left unsecure?Read moreTwo House Democrats have written to Kevin McCarthy, to demand that the Republican speaker deny George Santos the opportunity to access classified information.Santos is a New York Republican who won election in November but has since come under enormous scrutiny over his largely made-up résumé, his past conduct and his campaign finance filings.Republicans in New York have joined Democrats in calling for Santos to resign. He has said he will not. McCarthy and other Republican leaders have stood by their man – not least because Santos backed McCarthy through 15 votes for speaker and McCarthy must now fill that role with a very slim majority under constant threat from rightwing rebels.In their letter to McCarthy, Joe Morelle and Gregory Meeks, both New York Democrats, write: “It is clear that Congressman George Santos has violated the public’s trust on various occasions and his unfettered access to our nation’s secrets presents a significant risk to the national security of this country. “We urge you to act swiftly to prevent George Santos from abusing his position and endangering our nation.” McCarthy has named Santos to two House committees: small business and science, space and technology.On Wednesday, the speaker told reporters: “If for some way when we go through [the] ethics [committee it is found] that he has broken the law, then we will remove him, but it’s not my role. I believe in the rule of law. A person’s innocent until proven guilty.”Morelle and Meeks said: “The numerous concerning allegations about his behavior over decades put his character into question and suggest he cannot be trusted with confidential and classified information that could threaten the United States’ national security.“As the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, we call on you to limit to the greatest degree possible Congressman George Santos’s ability to access classified materials, including preventing him from attending any confidential or classified briefings for the foreseeable future.”More on Santos:George Santos admits ‘personal’ loans to campaign were not from personal fundsRead moreNBC News made a splash this morning by reporting that Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right bomb thrower from Georgia who has gone from pariah in a Democratic House to power-player in a Republican chamber, wants to be Donald Trump’s presidential running mate in 2024.Caution is advised, not least because in citing “two people who have spoken to the firebrand second-term congresswoman about her ambitions”, NBC quoted by name Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist now a perennially controversial presence in far-right media and accused fraudster.“This is no shrinking violet, she’s ambitious – she’s not shy about that, nor should she be,” Bannon said. “She sees herself on the short list for Trump’s VP … when MTG looks in the mirror she sees a potential president smiling back.”The second source cited, unnamed, said Greene’s “whole vision is to be vice-president” and said she was likely to be on Trump’s shortlist.Greene has become an unlikely but key ally of Kevin McCarthy, the new House speaker, after backing him against a rightwing rebellion that forced him through 15 rounds of voting to secure the position.The New York Times reported that this week that McCarthy said of Greene: “I will never leave that woman. I will always take care of her.”Bannon told NBC Greene was “both strategic and disciplined – she made a power move, knowing it would run up hard against her most ardent crew. She was prepared to take the intense heat/hatred short-term for the long-term goal of being a player.”Greene did not comment. To the Times, she said McCarthy would over the next two years “easily vindicate me and prove I moved the conference to the right during my first two years when I served in the minority with no committees”.Here’s a reminder of some of Greene’s other comments, the sort of thing that got her kicked off committees when Democrats ran the House, and which McCarthy now thinks is no impediment to membership of panels on oversight and homeland security:
      She advocated that Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, be executed.
      She harassed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the prominent New York progressive.
      She harassed David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and gun control activist.
      She was condemned for racist and antisemitic videos made during her campaign.
      She repeatedly flouted public health measures against Covid-19.
      She repeated conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.
      She said Jewish-controlled “space lasers” caused forest fires.
      She expressed sympathy for the QAnon conspiracy theory.
      She landed in the soup over comments about “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police”.
      And so on. Vice-presidential material? In today’s Republican party, it would seem entirely possible. Trump dominates polling so far, with only Ron DeSantis of Florida anywhere close.Robert Draper of the New York Times, author of Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, knows something of “MTG” and her rise. Here’s some further reading:‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 Read moreJoe Biden has announced that the United States will send Ukraine its Abrams battle tank, as western allies agree to provide Kyiv with the armor it argues is necessary to defend against Russia’s assault. Back in Washington, lawmakers and experts are reacting to the cascade of classified document discoveries at the properties of former White House occupants, most recently former vice president Mike Pence’s home in Indiana. Here’s what else has happened today thus far:
      Barack Obama’s office wouldn’t say whether the former president planned to check if he had any classified material in his possession.
      A Georgia district attorney says a decision on prosecuting people involved in Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the state’s 2020 election result is “imminent”.
      House speaker Kevin McCarthy has made good on his promise to boot two Democrats from the intelligence committee, and plans to seek a vote on removing a third from the foreign affairs committee.
      Washington has long been concerned about provoking Russia through its supply of weapons to Ukraine.Joe Biden nodded to that concern as he announced the United States would supply Kyiv with Abrams tanks.“That’s what this is about, helping Ukraine defend and protect Ukrainian land. It is not an offensive threat to Russia. There is no offensive threat to Russia,” the president said.As Biden wrapped up his announcement that the United States would provide Ukraine with Abrams tanks, a reporter asked if Germany had forced him to change his mind.Kyiv has been asking its allies for armor to blunt Russia’s invasion, but Biden had reportedly been hesitant to send the Abrams, arguing their training and logistics needs would make them unsuited for the conflict. Washington viewed Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks as a better option, partially because many of Ukraine’s neighbors had stocks that could be provided to Kyiv with Berlin’s permission. But German chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country would only green-light such transfers if the United States provided armor as well. The two leaders have spoken repeatedly in recent days, and Germany announced it would send some Leopards to Ukraine shortly before Biden made his announcement.“Germany didn’t force me to change (my) mind,” Biden said. “We wanted to make sure we’re all together. That’s what we’re going to do all along, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”Here’s the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino with more details on the Abrams tanks heading to Ukraine, and how the decision fits in with the overall western effort to supply Kyiv’s defenses:The Biden administration has approved sending 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as international reluctance to send tanks to the battlefront against the Russians begins to erode.The news came after Germany confirmed it will make 14 of its Leopard 2A6 tanks available for Ukraine’s war effort, and give partner countries its permission to re-export other battle tanks to aid Kyiv.By agreeing to send the Abrams, the US is able to meet the demand of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for an American commitment but without having to send the tanks immediately.“Today’s announcement shows the United States and Europe continuing to work hand in hand to support Ukraine, united in our common values and our ongoing support to Ukraine, which the President and other leaders, including in the G7 format, have reiterated will continue for as long as it takes,” a senior administration official said.Much of the US aid sent so far in the 11-month-old war has been through a separate program drawing on Pentagon stocks to get weapons more quickly to Ukraine. But even under that program, it would take months to get tanks to Ukraine and to get Ukrainian forces trained on them.Ukraine says heavily armored Western battle tanks would give its troops more mobility and protection ahead of a new Russian offensive that Kyiv expects in the near future. They could also help Ukraine retake some of the territory that has fallen to Russia.US approves sending of 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine Read moreThe United States will provide Ukraine with Abrams tanks, as part of a push by western allies to send Kyiv heavy armor to defeat Russia’s invasion, Joe Biden said in a White House speech.“I’m announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abram tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion,” Biden said. Defense secretary Lloyd Austin “has recommended this step because it will enhance Ukraine’s capacity to defend its territory and achieve strategic objectives.” More

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      Judge concludes hearing on Trump grand jury report without a decision – as it happened

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      At the conclusion of a 90-minute hearing, an Atlanta judge did not rule on whether to release a special grand jury’s report into the campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia.“This is not simple. I think the fact that we had to discuss this for 90 minutes shows that it is somewhat extraordinary,” Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney said. “Partly what’s extraordinary is what’s at issue here, the alleged interference with a presidential election.”“My proposal is that I think about this a little bit and then contact both groups, the district attorney’s office and the intervenors, if I’ve got specific questions for which I’d like more input,” McBurney said, adding that if he does decide to make the report public, he will give notice before doing so. “No one’s going to wake up with the court having disclosed the report on the front page of the newspaper.”Several media organizations had asked McBurney to release the document, which could lay out whether the jurors believe Trump and his allies committed crimes when they unsuccessfully pressured officials in Georgia to prevent Biden from winning the state’s electoral votes in the 2020 election.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who began the investigation, argued against the report’s release, saying, “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released.”She also added that “decision are imminent” on the report’s findings.A judge in Atlanta heard arguments over whether to release a special grand jury’s report into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago, but made no decision. In Washington, lawmakers are digesting news that classified documents turned up at former vice president Mike Pence’s residence in Indiana, as they have at properties linked to Biden and Trump. Will attorney general Merrick Garland appoint yet another special counsel to investigate the matter? Will documents be discovered in the hands of even more former White House occupants? It’s too soon to say, but one thing’s for sure: this story won’t be going away anytime soon.Here’s what else happened today:
      The United States is considering providing tanks to Ukraine, in a bid both to help its defense against Russia and to convince Germany to send its own armor.
      A Senate committee questioned Ticketmaster executives in a hearing announced after the sale of Taylor Swift tickets turned into a fiasco.
      Biden called for an assault weapons ban following another mass shooting in California.
      Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said he backs an effort to look at overhauling the government’s rules around classified material.
      With not one, but three former White House occupants in hot water for having stashes of classified documents that they should not have, some in Washington think it’s time to take a look at how the government manages its secrets.That includes the Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who said he supports a review of the government’s classification system. Here are his brief comments, from CNN:Schumer says he backs Sen. Peters’ look at bipartisan legislation to overhaul federal record-keeping laws. Adds that oversight will be done by special counsels — even as the House is trying to probe Biden’s handling of classified records pic.twitter.com/ykufsTmq1M— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 24, 2023
      There has been much reacting on Capitol Hill to news that Mike Pence had classified documents at his home. Republican lawmakers have generally defended Pence, saying they doubt he did anything wrong. Senator Lindsey Graham is among that group, but he also seemed to indicate that he believed Joe Biden made the same mistake with the secret materials found at his properties:Here’s the video: pic.twitter.com/6QJI5N05aV— Ahtra Elnashar (@AhtraElnashar) January 24, 2023
      Meanwhile, the Senate intelligence committee is planning to meet on Wednesday with director of national intelligence Avril Haines, and Republican senator Marco Rubio said the classified document scandal is sure to come up:Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on Senate Intel, told us that his committee had already planned to meet Wednesday with Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, and they plan to press her about the handling of classified documents.“No way it doesn’t come up”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 24, 2023
      Separately, attorney general Merrick Garland was asked about the affair, including whether he would name a special counsel to investigate the documents at Pence’s house, as he did for those found at Biden and Donald Trump’s properties.His answer was no surprise:AG Merrick Garland says he is “unable to comment” when asked about classified documents found at former VP Mike Pence’s home, if a special counsel will be named, and if a policy change is needed after Biden, Trump, and Pence all had classified materials at their homes. pic.twitter.com/qjHjGAfKc1— The Recount (@therecount) January 24, 2023
      As chair of the House oversight committee, James Comer is a leader of the Republican investigation campaign against the Biden administration – including the president’s possession of classified documents.He has sent demands to multiple government agencies for more details about the documents found in the president’s residence and former office, and who may have had access to them. But when news broke that Republican former vice president Mike Pence also had classified material in his home, Comer released a statement displaying a softer touch. Here’s what he had to say:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Former Vice President Mike Pence reached out today about classified documents found at his home in Indiana. He has agreed to fully cooperate with congressional oversight and any questions we have about the matter. Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people.A judge in Atlanta heard arguments over whether to release a special grand jury’s report into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago, but made no decision. In Washington, lawmakers are digesting news that classified documents turned up at former vice president Mike Pence’s residence in Indiana, as they have at properties linked to Biden and Trump. Will attorney general Merrick Garland appoint yet another special counsel to investigate the matter? Will documents be discovered in the hands of even more former White House occupants? It’s too soon to say, but one thing’s for sure: this story won’t be going away anytime soon.Here’s what else has been going on today:
      The United States is considering providing tanks to Ukraine, in a bid both to help its defense against Russia and to convince Germany to send its own armor.
      A Senate committee questioned Ticketmaster executives in a hearing announced after the sale of Taylor Swift tickets turned into a fiasco.
      Biden called for an assault weapons ban following another mass shooting in California.
      At the conclusion of a 90-minute hearing, an Atlanta judge did not rule on whether to release a special grand jury’s report into the campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia.“This is not simple. I think the fact that we had to discuss this for 90 minutes shows that it is somewhat extraordinary,” Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney said. “Partly what’s extraordinary is what’s at issue here, the alleged interference with a presidential election.”“My proposal is that I think about this a little bit and then contact both groups, the district attorney’s office and the intervenors, if I’ve got specific questions for which I’d like more input,” McBurney said, adding that if he does decide to make the report public, he will give notice before doing so. “No one’s going to wake up with the court having disclosed the report on the front page of the newspaper.”Several media organizations had asked McBurney to release the document, which could lay out whether the jurors believe Trump and his allies committed crimes when they unsuccessfully pressured officials in Georgia to prevent Biden from winning the state’s electoral votes in the 2020 election.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who began the investigation, argued against the report’s release, saying, “We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released.”She also added that “decision are imminent” on the report’s findings.Just two weeks ago, Mike Pence told CBS news he was “confident” no classified materials were taken when he left the White House in January 2021:As documents found in an office used by Pres. Biden are in the spotlight, fmr. VP Mike Pence tells CBS News’ @costareports he remains “confident” his staff ensured no classified materials were taken from his time in the White House and remain in his possession. pic.twitter.com/KntHXWNXTC— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 11, 2023
      CBS News reports Mike Pence discovered he had classified documents after an aide found the materials “in recent weeks”:SCOOP: Lawyer and longtime Pence aide Matt Morgan, based in Indiana, found the docs after reviewing them at Pence’s direction in recent weeks, per 2 people familiar @CBSNews— Robert Costa (@costareports) January 24, 2023
      Politico has obtained more details of the classified documents discovered at Mike Pence’s residence in Indiana.According to a letter from Pence’s attorney Greg Jacobs to the National Archives, the FBI sent agents to the former vice president’s home on the night of 19 January to collect classified documents found in his safe. Pence wasn’t in town at that time – he was in Washington DC for the anti-abortion March for Life. Jacobs also said he would turn over four boxes containing “copies of Administration papers” to the Archives on 23 January for them to review for secret material:NEWS: DOJ sent FBI agents to retrieve a “small number” of classified documents from Mike Pence’s Indiana residence last week, while Pence was in DC at the March for Life.Read the Jan. 18 + 22 letters from PENCE to NARA here: https://t.co/I1zCvXdn05https://t.co/VK2YCMYPuf pic.twitter.com/hVbxLrwGUu— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 24, 2023
      Back in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis told the court she does not want the special grand jury’s report released.“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it is not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” Willis said in arguments before judge Robert McBurney.Willis is expected to use the report to decide whether to bring charges against Donald Trump’s allies or perhaps the former president himself over the attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia. She told McBurney that “decisions are imminent.”A lawyer for former vice-president Mike Pence found classified documents at his residence in Indiana, CNN reports.The discovery at Pence’s Carmel, Indiana, home comes as the justice department investigates government secrets found at Joe Biden’s former office in Washington DC and residence in Delaware, as well as Donald Trump’s possession of similar material at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Attorney general Merrick Garland has appointed special counsels to handle both men’s cases.Citing multiple sources, CNN reports that the attorney for Pence, who served as Trump’s vice-president from 2017 to 2021, gave the documents found at his residence to the FBI.Judge Robert McBurney has convened the Fulton county superior court hearing that will decide whether to release the report of the special grand jury that investigated Trump’s election meddling campaign in Georgia.Follow this blog for the latest, or you can watch the live feed embedded above.Republican senator Lindsey Graham was one of the witnesses called by the special grand jury investigating the election meddling effort in Georgia.Georgia’s top election official Brad Raffensperger said that shortly after the 2020 election, the South Carolina lawmaker called him to ask if it was possible to throw out absentee ballots. Graham waged an unsuccessful court battle to avoid testifying before the special grand jury, before finally appearing in November.CNN reports he does not have much to say about the potential release of the panel’s report:Asked Lindsey Graham — who testified in this case — about the possibility the judge could release report from special grand jury probing Trump effort to overturn election. “Whatever the judge does will be fine,” he said. https://t.co/EE9qOc2Hz7— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 24, 2023 More

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      Biden urges Congress to reinstate assault weapons ban after latest shooting – live

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      A familiar cycle occurs after American mass shootings, and by all appearances, it’s happening again after the twin massacres in California.It goes something like this: multiple people are killed by a gunman, as happened in California’s Monterey Park on Saturday and Half Moon Bay on Monday. Joe Biden calls for new restrictions on gun ownership, arguing they could have prevented the killer from getting their hands on a weapon. He’s backed by most, if not all Democrats in Congress, but rejected by most, if not all, Republicans. The demand goes nowhere.The one exception to that came after last year’s shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, when Democrats managed to win enough Republican votes to get a package of modest gun control measures through Congress. But the legislation was not the ban on assault weapons Biden called on Congress pass, a demand he repeated in the months since, as mass shootings continued. With Republicans now controlling the House of Representatives, it seems even less likely such a measure will get approved.The Senate judiciary committee has begun a hearing on the live event ticketing industry, after Ticketmaster last year bungled sales of tickets to megastar Taylor Swfit’s latest tour.“The issues within America’s ticketing industry were made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s new tour, but these problems are not new,” Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar said in a statement last week announcing the hearing. “For too long, consumers have faced high fees, long waits, and website failures, and Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company faces inadequate pressure to innovate and improve.”“American consumers deserve the benefit of competition in every market, from grocery chains to concert venues,” her Republican counterpart senator Mike Lee said.When ticket’s for Swift’s first tour in five years went on sale in November, Ticketmaster’s website crashed, leaving customers for “presale” tickets stranded in line and forcing the cancellation of its public sale. The justice department is reportedly investigating the company in an inquiry that started before the problems with the Swift tour. Ticketmaster meanwhile spent nearly $1.3m on lobbying in 2021, targeting the justice department and Congress’s efforts to regulate its business.You can watch the hearing live here.Donald Trump’s foe today – and potentially for many months to come – is an Atlanta prosecutor with a history of taking on organized crime, the Guardian’s Carlisa N. Johnson reports:An Atlanta prosecutor appears ready to use the same Georgia statute to prosecute Donald Trump that she used last year to charge dozens of gang members and well-known rappers who allegedly conspired to commit violent crime.Fani Willis was elected Fulton county district attorney just days before the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. But as she celebrated her promotion, Trump and his allies set in motion a flurry of unfounded claims of voter fraud in Georgia, the state long hailed as a Republican stronghold for local and national elections.Willis assumed office on 1 January 2021, becoming the first Black woman in the position. The next day, according to reports, Trump called rad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, urging him to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes he needed to secure a victory and overturn the election results.The following month, Willis launched an investigation into Trump’s interference in the state’s general election. Now, in a hearing on Tuesday, the special purpose grand jury and the presiding judge will decide whether to release to the public the final report and findings of the grand jury that was seated to investigate Trump and his allies.Could Trump be charged for racketeering? A Georgia prosecutor thinks soRead moreToday may be a big day for Donald Trump, and not in a good way, the Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports:A judge in Atlanta will hear legal arguments today to determine if he should make public a Georgia grand jury’s report into whether former president Donald Trump committed criminal offences when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.Before the special purpose grand jury was dissolved two weeks ago after months of hearings, its members recommended releasing its findings while the Fulton county district attorney who launched the investigation, Fani Willis, decides whether to press charges against Trump.Legal scholars have said they believe Trump is “at substantial risk of prosecution” in Georgia over his attempts to strong-arm officials into fixing the election in his favour when it looked as if the state might decide the outcome of the presidential election. At least 18 other people have been told they also potentially face prosecution, including Trump’s close ally and lawyer, the former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.The Fulton county superior court judge who oversaw the grand jury, Robert McBurney, will hear from Willis but not lawyers for Trump, who said on Monday that they will not participate in the hearing. They said that Willis had not sought to interview the former president for the investigation.“Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” the lawyers said in a statement.Trump and allies face legal jeopardy in Georgia over 2020 election interferenceRead moreWhile mass shootings such as those that occurred over the past days in California may generate headlines and calls for action, the Guardian’s Oliver Holmes reports gun violence is distressingly common in the United States:Two horrific killings separated by just a few days have shaken California, but such nightmarish mass shootings cannot be considered abnormal in the US. With a week still left in January, this year there have already been 39 mass shootings across the country, five of them in California.Reports from the Gun Violence Archive, a not-for-profit research group, show the predictability of American mass shootings. Nearly 70 people have been shot dead in them so far in 2023, according to their data – which classifies a mass shooting as any armed attack in which at least four people are injured or killed, not including the perpetrator.Broadened out to include all deaths from gun violence, not including suicides, 1,214 people have been killed before the end of the first month of this year, including 120 children. That is likely to increase to tens of thousands by the end of 2023 – the figure for 2022 is 20,200.In comparison, the latest data from the UK showed that in the course of an entire year ending in March 2022, 31 people were killed by firearms. The UK’s population is 67 million to the US’s 333 million.‘Tragedy upon tragedy’: why 39 US mass shootings already this year is just the startRead moreA familiar cycle occurs after American mass shootings, and by all appearances, it’s happening again after the twin massacres in California.It goes something like this: multiple people are killed by a gunman, as happened in California’s Monterey Park on Saturday and Half Moon Bay on Monday. Joe Biden calls for new restrictions on gun ownership, arguing they could have prevented the killer from getting their hands on a weapon. He’s backed by most, if not all Democrats in Congress, but rejected by most, if not all, Republicans. The demand goes nowhere.The one exception to that came after last year’s shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, when Democrats managed to win enough Republican votes to get a package of modest gun control measures through Congress. But the legislation was not the ban on assault weapons Biden called on Congress pass, a demand he repeated in the months since, as mass shootings continued. With Republicans now controlling the House of Representatives, it seems even less likely such a measure will get approved.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden has called for Congress to again pass a ban on assault weapons, after seven people were killed in a mass shooting on Monday on the outskirts of the California town of Half Moon Bay. That was just days after a separate shooter killed 11 people in Monterey Park, a suburb of Los Angeles. Congress passed an assault weapons ban in 1994 that expired 10 years later, and Biden has repeatedly called for renewing it, including after the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas last year. But many Republicans in Congress oppose such a measure, and just as in the aftermath of previous mass shootings, it seems unlikely to pass.Here’s what we can expect to happen today:
      A judge in Atlanta will at 12 pm eastern time convene a hearing to determine whether a special grand jury’s report into Donald Trump’s campaign to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 election outcome will be made public, upping the legal stakes for the former president.
      Biden will hold a White House meeting with Democratic congressional leaders at 3 pm, and a reception for new lawmakers at 5:20 pm.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre will brief reporters at 1:30 pm, who will likely ask her questions abut the Biden classified document scandal that she will not answer. More