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Biden administration sanctions Russia for cyberattacks, election interference

Biden administration sanctions Russia for cyberattacks, election interference

President Joe Biden (L) and President Vladimir Putin.

Getty Images

The Biden government on Thursday imposed a series of new sanctions on Moscow for alleged interference in the 2020 elections, a colossal cyberattack against US government and corporate networks, illegal annexation and occupation of Crimea, and human rights violations.

“Today the US Treasury Department (OFAC) took extensive action against 16 companies and 16 people who, on the orders of the leadership of the Russian government, tried to influence the US presidential election in 2020,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.

It also announced sanctions against five people and three organizations related to Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula and human rights violations.

In addition to the extensive sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department, the State Department announced that it would expel ten officials from Russia’s diplomatic mission in the United States.

The sanctions come after President Joe Biden’s call this week with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and as a Russian force near the Ukrainian border.

Washington officially accused Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) – its top spy agency – of being behind the SolarWinds cyberattack published late last year, which Microsoft President Brad Smith called “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.” has been designated.

“The US intelligence community has great confidence in their assessment of the attribution,” the Treasury Department press release said. In the attack, hackers gained access to the software, which was used by thousands of government agencies and companies.

The penalties are also in response to a March report by the U.S. intelligence director that Putin completed authorized attempts to meddle in the 2020 election on behalf of former President Donald Trump.

The Russian government denies all allegations.

Biden also signed an executive order on Thursday that will allow Washington to sanction any sector of Moscow’s economy, greatly expanding the scope of sanctions authorities.

Under this new approval, U.S. financial institutions will be banned from conducting transactions in the primary market for new ruble or non-ruble bonds issued after June 14th.

“Removing US investors from the primary market creates a broader chill effect,” said a senior administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“What you see is that Russia’s borrowing costs are rising, you see that there is capital flight and you see that the currency is weakening at the same time. And you know that this is having an impact on Russia’s growth rate and an impact on Russia’s inflation rate Has.” Official added.

“The president has signed this sweeping new authority to counter the persistent and growing vicious behavior of Russia,” Finance Minister Janet Yellen said in a statement welcoming the move.

“The Treasury Department is using this new authority to impose costs on the Russian government for its unacceptable behavior, including restricting Russia’s ability to fund its activities and targeting Russia’s malicious and disruptive cyber capabilities,” she added.

One of the people named in the new actions is Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian agent with ties to former Trump campaign leader Paul Manafort, who was convicted in the special investigation of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

The FBI is offering $ 250,000 for information leading to the arrest of Kilimnik, who is believed to be in Russia. Moscow prohibits extradition of a Russian citizen to any country.

Another senior administration official who refused to be named said the White House still hopes for a “stable and predictable relationship” with Russia.

“We also want to make it clear that we do not wish to be in an escalation cycle with Russia. We intend that these responses be proportionate and tailored to the specific past activities, pathways and actions that Russia has taken,” he said Officer.

Administrative officials refused to speculate about possible retaliatory measures Moscow would take following the sweeping sanctions.

US-Russia relations deteriorating

Taking a tougher stance on Russia was one of Biden’s foreign policy election promises. The measures announced on Thursday join a number of past measures: the Obama administration’s debt financing restrictions on large Russian companies like Rosneft and the Trump administration’s ban on US companies buying foreign currency government bonds.

“Today’s US sanctions continue the general trend of deterioration in relations since the annexation of Crimea,” Maximilian Hess, head of political risk at London-based consultancy Hawthorn Advisors, told CNBC.

“The bulk” of these sanctions, he said, “is the Russian government’s blocking of US companies from the primary market in ruble-denominated debt.”

Hess noted, however, that this “will not have much of an impact, especially given Russia’s manageable debt burden”.

For Timothy Ash, Senior Emerging Markets Strategist at Bluebay Asset Management, the measures are anything but tough.

“It’s like boys, come on, you’ve got to do better,” Ash wrote in a note following the announcement.

“Sovereign Primary still allows US companies to hold this debt. So US institutions cannot buy Russian government bonds on the primary issue, but can get their Russian bank friends to buy them for them in the primary, give them a fee and them then in the secondary. “

The ruble reduced some of its losses against the greenback on Thursday shortly after the sanction news, trading at 76.3025 against the dollar at 4:00 p.m. local time, compared to 77.0718 just before the details of the sanctions were released.

Build up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border

Ukrainian soldiers work with Russia-backed separatists near Lysychansk, Lugansk region, on their tank near the front line on April 7, 2021.

Photo by STR / AFP via Getty Images

Tuesday’s Biden-Putin call, at least the second between the two men since Biden took office in January, comes as the United States and other western countries tire of Russia’s growing military build-up on the border with Ukraine, where there are dozens has amassed thousands of troops and tanks.

“We are now seeing the largest concentration of Russian armed forces on the borders of Ukraine since 2014,” said Foreign Minister Antony Blinken on Tuesday after visiting the NATO headquarters in Brussels. “This is a deep concern not only for Ukraine, but also for the US.”

Regional experts say this move could be an attempt to test Biden’s skills and intimidate Ukraine. The more pessimistic outlook suggests that the goal is to incite Ukraine into renewed conflict.

In a telephone conversation with Putin, Biden emphasized “the unwavering commitment of the United States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” according to a reading by the White House.

Biden suggested holding a summit somewhere outside the US and Russia “to discuss the full range of problems the countries are facing”.

The Kremlin said in a statement later Tuesday that Biden had “suggested considering the possibility of holding a face-to-face summit in the foreseeable future.”

– Natasha Turak from Dubai contributed to this story, and Amanda Macias from Washington, DC

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the description of the Hawthorn Advisors.

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Politics

Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Outcomes

Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results

WASHINGTON – Republicans who vocalized the loudest urge to come to Washington on January 6th to try to undo the loss of President Donald J. Trump, overturn the elections and fuel the grievances that make the deadly one The Capitol Rebellion sparked have profited amply in the aftermath, according to new campaign data.

Senators Josh Hawley from Missouri and Ted Cruz from Texas, who led the challenges to President Biden’s victory in their chamber, raised more than $ 3 million each in the three months following the January 6 attack on the Capitol in campaign donations.

Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who described the rampage as the “1776 moment” and was later exempted from committee duties for advocating bigoted conspiracy theories and advocating political violence, raised $ 3.2 million – more as the solo campaign of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and almost every other member of the house leadership.

An analysis by the New York Times of the recent Federal Election Commission revelations shows how the leaders of the effort to undo Mr Biden’s election victory have benefited from the indignation of their supporters for raising huge sums of campaign money. Far from being punished for promoting the protest that became fatal, they have performed well in a system that often rewards the loudest and most extreme voices and uses insurrection anger to build their political brands . The analysis examined the individual campaign accounts of the legislature, not the joint fundraising committees or the leadership’s political action committees.

“The outrage machine is powerful at generating political input,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican Congressman from Florida.

Shortly after the storming of the Capitol, some prominent corporations and political action committees vowed to end support for the Republicans who had fanned the flames of anger and conspiracy that led to violence. But any financial setback for Corporate America seems to have been dwarfed by a flood of cash from other areas.

North Carolina representative Madison Cawthorn, a freshman who urged his supporters to “gently threaten” Republican lawmakers to get them to question the election results, collected more than $ 1 million. Representative Lauren Boebert from Colorado, who, like Ms. Greene, compared January 6 to the American Revolution, raised nearly $ 750,000.

The amounts reflect an emerging incentive structure in Washington where the biggest provocateurs can convert their notoriety into achievements of small donors who can help them achieve even higher levels of notoriety. It also shows the appetite of a Republican electorate who subscribes to Mr Trump’s false claims of widespread electoral fraud and seeks to reward those who have worked to undermine the outcome of a free and fair election.

Most of the dozen companies that pledged to cut off Republicans who advocated overturning the elections kept that promise and withheld political action committee donations for the last quarter. But that didn’t matter to the loudest voices on Capitol Hill, as a energetic base of pro-Trump donors stood by their side and more than made up for the deficit.

“We’re really seeing small donors emerge in the Republican Party,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “In the past, the Democrats have benefited most from small dollar donations. We see Republicans catch up quickly. “

Legislators have long benefited greatly from divisive reporting, particularly on important events that match the emotions of an angry or fearful electorate. However, the new records illustrate a growing gap between those who raise money through a bombastic profile – often supported by substantial fundraising expenses – and those who have turned their attention to serious political work.

When provocative newbies like Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert, and Mr. Cawthorn took in high dollar numbers, other more conventional members of their class in competitive districts – even those who were praised for their fundraising ability – had lagged significantly.

For example, Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Young Kim of California, both against the election challenges and working on bipartisan bills, each made less than $ 600,000.

Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert, and Mr. Cawthorn raised more money than the top Republicans on the most powerful committees in Congress, such as Funds, Budget, Education and Labor, Foreign Policy and Homeland Security.

In many cases, Republican lawmakers who started the flames of violence on January 6 have since benefited from posing and appealing to their supporters as victims of a political backlash developed by the Washington establishment.

“Pennsylvania didn’t obey its own state’s electoral law, but the establishment didn’t want to hear it. But that’s not what I work for, ”Hawley wrote in a fundraising message in January. “I objected because I wanted to make sure your voice was heard. Now Biden and his woken up mob are coming after me. I need your help.”

Ms. Greene raised funds from a successful attempt to ban her from committees, led by angry Democrats who were outraged by her earlier talk in support of the execution of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and who encouraged her supporters to say “Stop the Steal” on January 6th In the days before and after the unusual vote, she raised $ 150,000 every day, surpassing it every time.

“The DC swamp and fake news media are attacking me because I am not one of them,” was one such call. “I am one of you. And they hate me for it. “

However, Mr. Trump’s polarizing nature also helped some Republicans who held him accountable for his conduct in connection with the January 6th events.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican who voted for the indictment against Mr. Trump, raised $ 1.5 million, and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who founded an organization, raised $ 1.5 million to lead the Republican Party away from allegiance to Mr. Trump. raised more than $ 1.1 million.

“It is obvious that there is a strong market for Trumpism in the Republican base,” said Curbelo. “There is also a strong market for truth-finding and constitutional support.”

Mr. Conant questioned how the increase in fundraising for some candidates was directly related to the Capitol attack. He said the conservative news media had generally “moved on” from reporting.

Instead, he said Republican voters were “very nervous” about the direction of the country under democratic control and ready to support Republicans who they saw as a fight against a liberal agenda.

“It’s worth being high-profile,” said Conant. “It’s further evidence that Milquetoast doesn’t offer a lot of grassroots support in the middle of the road. That doesn’t mean you have to be pro-Trump. It just means that you have to take strong positions and then connect with those supporters. “

But if the Republican Civil War has paid campaign dividends for both sides, individual Democrats involved in prosecuting Mr Trump for the insurrection in his impeachment have not achieved similar success.

With $ 3.2 million in the quarter, Ms. Greene raised more than the sum of all nine impeachment executives – although she received widespread applause in liberal circles for her case against the former president. According to the data, three of the managers have raised less than $ 100,000 each in the past three months.

With money flowing into campaigns, the January 6 attack also resulted in high security spending.

The Federal Election Commission expanded guidelines allowing lawmakers to use campaign submissions to install home security systems in their homes, and Capitol Hill Top Security urged lawmakers to consider upgrading their home security systems to Include panic buttons and key rings.

Campaign filings show that nearly a dozen lawmakers have made payments of $ 20,000 or more to security companies in the past three months, including Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, who voted to convict Mr. Trump; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, who gave a harrowing report on the uprising; and Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California and one of the impeachment executives against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hawley were also some of the biggest security issues.

Lauren Hirsch and Jeanna Smialek contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

Trump marketing campaign chief Paul Manafort worker Kilimnik gave Russia election knowledge

Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort employee Kilimnik gave Russia election data

Konstantin Kilimnik as he appears on an FBI poster.

Source: FBI

A long-time employee of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave Russian intelligence services “sensitive information about election and campaign strategy” during this year’s elections, the US Treasury said on Thursday.

Manafort staffer Konstantin Kilimnik “also tried to further the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election,” the Treasury Department said as the Biden government launched new sanctions against Russia, Kilimnik and others announced.

These sanctions relate in part to alleged efforts by Russia to influence the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort arrives in the U.S. District Court in Washington on June 15, 2018 to be indicted on a third superseded indictment against him by special adviser Robert Mueller for witness manipulation.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

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World News

Indigenous Social gathering, Not on the Poll, Is Nonetheless a Huge Winner in Ecuador Election

Indigenous Party, Not on the Ballot, Is Still a Big Winner in Ecuador Election

TARQUI, Ecuador – Though its candidate was not elected, one big winner in Ecuador’s presidential election on Sunday was clear before the election result was even announced: the nation’s long-marginalized indigenous movement.

The indigenous party and its allies shook the nation in the first round of elections in February, won half of the states, became the second largest presence in Congress and changed the agendas of Sunday’s presidential competition finalists, left-wing Andrés Arauz and conservative Guillermo Lasso.

“Ecuadorian politics will never be the same,” said Farith Simon, an Ecuadorian law professor and columnist. “There is still racism, but there is also an affirmation of the value of indigenous culture, of pride in its national role.”

Early on Sunday evening, the country’s electoral council had not yet announced a winner in the race.

In an effort to bring indigenous voters to justice and to be aware of the need to work with the new powerful indigenous bloc in Congress, Mr Arauz and Mr Lasso had revised their messages and postponed competition from the polarizing socialist-conservative soil that politics has been nationally defined for years. Instead, debates arise about the deep-seated inequality of Ecuador and an economic model based on the export of oil and metals extracted from indigenous countries.

Both candidates had promised to take greater environmental protection measures and give indigenous communities a greater say in the extraction of resources. The 66-year-old banker Lasso pledged to improve economic opportunities for indigenous peoples who, despite decades of advances in access to education, health care and jobs, are well below national averages.

The 36-year-old economist Arauz, who was in the lead in the first round of voting, promised to lead Ecuador as a true “plurinational” country in recognition of its 15 indigenous nations. Though largely symbolic, the designation has been sought for decades by the country’s indigenous party, Pachakutik, as a strong recognition of their people’s central place in Ecuador.

Pachakutik’s rise on the national stage has not only drawn the attention of the country’s indigenous minority, but has also raised deeper identity issues for the entire electorate. Although only 8 percent of Ecuadorians identified themselves as indigenous people in the last census, a large proportion of the population is ethnically mixed.

“This is a difficult conversation for us as a nation, but there is no going back,” said Mr Simon.

The man most responsible for political change was environmental activist Yaku Pérez, the Pachakutik presidential candidate in the first round of elections in February.

Pérez, 52, narrowly missed the runoff election, but significantly expanded Pachakutik’s historic single-digit appeal by advocating for women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and efforts to combat climate change. Mr Pérez also supported abortion rights and same-sex marriages, which created tension in his socially conservative indigenous constituency.

“Pérez had a tremendous ability to open up his horizons and discourse to include topics that didn’t exist,” said Alberto Acosta, a former Pachakutik presidential candidate.

The rise of Mr. Pérez is part of a larger generation change in the left movements in Latin America. Driven in part by social media and political protests in the United States, where most Latin American nations have large diasporas, younger left-wing politicians are prioritizing environmental, gender, and minority issues over their mentors’ Marxist doctrine.

In neighboring Peru, 40-year-old Verónika Mendoza was one of the top candidates in Sunday’s presidential election, promising to grant land titles to indigenous communities and to protect the environment. In Bolivia, 34-year-old indigenous leader Eva Copa recently won a mayor’s race in El Alto, a melting pot town known as a bell tower.

This new generation of leaders is moving beyond the traditional left and right gap and questioning their country’s historic reliance on large mining, oil and agribusiness projects for economic growth, said Carwil Bjork-James, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee .

“These are big continental questions that the indigenous movements have been asking for a long time,” said Bjork-James. “To see how these questions are asked politically is a new level.”

Such a framework is short-sighted, say their rivals. South American nations have no choice but to rely on raw material revenues to recover from the pandemic. And only through economic development, it is said, can inequalities be fully addressed.

In Ecuador, Mr Pérez managed to win nearly 20 percent of the vote in February, but his party and its allies rose from nine to 43 congressional seats in the elections and became kingmakers in the country’s broken 137-seat legislature.

The campaign initially focused on the legacy of Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s longest-serving democratic president. He had lifted millions out of poverty during a raw materials boom in the 2000s, but his authoritarian style and the corruption allegations that haunted him had bitterly divided the nation.

Mr Correa, who stepped down in 2017, selected Mr Arauz to represent his leftist movement this year and catapulted the 36-year-old to the top of the polls despite his limited experience and national recognition. Mr Lasso focused his early campaign message on fears that Mr Correa would continue to exert influence.

However, the results of the first round showed that “a large part of the population does not want to be drawn into this conflict between the supporters and opponents of Correa, which reduces the problems of Ecuadorians to a binary vision,” said former candidate Acosta.

Pachakutik’s electoral success this year stems from a wave of national protests in October 2019 when the indigenous movement marched into the capital, Quito, to demand the lifting of a deeply unpopular cut in gasoline subsidies. The protests turned violent, killing at least eight people, but the government withdrew the subsidy cut after 12 days of unrest.

“We have shown the country that the indigenous peoples are looking for a transformation of this dominant system that only serves the wealthiest,” said Diocelinda Iza, a leader of the Kichwa Nation in central Cotopaxi Province.

The life of Mr Pérez, the presidential candidate, embodies the difficulties of the indigenous movement. He was born in a high Andean valley in southern Ecuador to a family of impoverished farmers. His father was Kichwa, his mother Kañari.

His parents worked on the estate of a local landowner with no payment for living on his property, a rural establishment that has changed little since the colonial days.

Since childhood, Mr Pérez said he remembered the seemingly endless work in the fields, the hunger pangs and the humiliation he felt at school when his mother came to parents’ meetings in traditional skirts.

“I was very ashamed to be local, to come from the field, to be a farmer, to have a father together,” said Pérez in an interview in March. In order to be successful in school, he said: “In the end I made myself white, colonized myself and rejected our identity.”

Mr. Pérez studied at a local university, practiced law and got involved in politics through local associations that defended municipal water rights. He rose to become governor of the Ecuadorian region of Azuay, the fifth most populous in the country, before quitting running for president.

Its story has resonated with other indigenous peoples, many of whom see today’s political endeavors in the context of the five centuries since the colonial conquest of Ecuador.

“We are not campaigning for a person,” said an indigenous leader, Luz Namicela Contento, “but for a political project.”

Jose María León Cabrera reported from Tarqui, Ecuador, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Moscow. Mitra Taj contributed to coverage from Lima, Peru.

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Politics

Georgia’s Election Legislation, and Why Turnout Isn’t Simple to Flip Off

Georgia’s Election Law, and Why Turnout Isn’t Easy to Turn Off

A simple answer is that convenience isn’t as important as is often thought. Almost anyone who cares enough about voting will face the inconvenience of personal voting, whether because the inconvenience is not really that great or because they worry enough to suffer it.

This, of course, requires a degree of convenience: six-hour lines would change the calculation for many voters. Indeed, long lines affect voter turnout. A certain amount of interest is also assumed. Someone might think: there is no way I am waiting in line for half an hour to vote for the dog catcher. Similarly, as the importance of a race declines, the importance of a convenient set-up option is likely to grow.

The implication, however, is that if enough convenient options are available, almost anyone can vote, even if the most preferred option does not exist. That makes the Georgian electoral law’s efforts to stem long lines potentially quite significant. Not only could this mitigate the already limited effect of restricting email reconciliation, but even outweigh it.

Another reason is that convenience voting may not be as convenient for lower turnout voters who essentially decide the overall turnout. Low turnout voters are unlikely to think about how they will vote a month before the election if they have to request a postal vote. Someone to think about it is likely a high turnout voter. Low turnout voters may not know who they will be supporting until election day. And that makes them less likely to use pre-voting options like a no-excuse early vote, which requires them to think about the choice early and often: submit a motion, fill out a ballot, and send it back.

As a result, convenience voting methods tend to reinforce socio-economic biases in favor of voters with high turnout. The methods ensure that every highly interesting voter has many choices without doing quite so much to attract less engaged voters to the election.

A final reason is that electoral restrictions can backfire by annoying and energizing democratic voters. For example, this law’s restrictions on the distribution of water in a line can do more to mobilize democrats than keep them from voting. A recent study even theorized that the Supreme Court’s decision to withdraw elements of the electoral law did not reduce black voter turnout as subsequent efforts to restrict voting were quickly thwarted by efforts to mobilize black voters.

This does not mean that Georgian law or other so-called voter suppression laws have no consequences. Many make voting difficult enough to intimidate or discourage some voters. Many eligible voters are completely disenfranchised, even if only in small numbers. Perhaps the disenfranchisement of a single voter deserves outrage and opposition, especially when the law is passed for dubious or even contrived reasons and the mass disenfranchisement of Jim Crow serves as a historical backdrop.

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Business

Dominion Sues Fox Information, Claiming Defamation in Election Protection

Dominion Sues Fox News, Claiming Defamation in Election Coverage

Fox News and its powerful owner, Rupert Murdoch, face a second major libel suit over the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election, a new front in the growing litigation over media disinformation and its aftermath.

In the recent aftershock of Donald J. Trump’s attempt to undermine President Biden’s victory, Dominion Voting Systems, an electoral technology company at the center of an unsubstantiated pro-Trump conspiracy theory about rigged voting machines, filed a lawsuit on Friday in Fox News has been accused of promoting lies that ruined its reputation and business.

Dominion, who has filed for a lawsuit, is seeking at least $ 1.6 billion in damages. Less than two months ago, another electoral technology company, Smartmatic, filed a $ 2.7 billion lawsuit against Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, naming Fox anchors Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro as defendants.

In a 139-page complaint filed with the Delaware Supreme Court, Dominion depicted Fox as an active participant in spreading false claims that the company changed the number of votes and tampered with its machines to aid Mr. Biden in the election.

These falsehoods were relentlessly promoted in public forums, including appearances on Fox programs, by Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

In January, Dominion sued Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on charges of defamation. The company also sued Mike Lindell, the executive director of MyPillow and an ally of Trump’s who was a frequent guest at Fox and other conservative media outlets. Each of these lawsuits seek damages in excess of $ 1 billion.

“The truth matters,” wrote Dominion’s attorneys in Friday’s complaint against Fox. “Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of electoral fraud for its own commercial purposes, seriously injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not result in defamation by a broadcaster, it does nothing. “

In a statement on Friday, Fox said the coverage of the 2020 election “is in the highest tradition of American journalism” and pledged to “vigorously defend this unsubstantiated lawsuit in court.”

Dominion’s filing opened a new phase in the battle against the critics, and Thomas A. Clare, an attorney who represents the company, said Fox’s lawsuit was unlikely to be the final legal action. Susman Godfrey law firm, known for bringing cases to court, recently partnered with Mr. Clare’s law firm to support Dominion’s case.

Fox Corporation has filed a motion to dismiss the Smartmatic lawsuit, arguing that the false claims of election fraud on its channels were part of coverage of a short-lived story of significant public interest.

“A sitting president’s attempt to question the outcome of an election is objectively newsworthy,” Fox wrote in the motion.

The tale that Mr. Trump and his allies made about Dominion was one of the baroque creations of a month-long effort to cast doubt on the 2020 election results and convince Americans that Mr. Biden’s victory was illegitimate.

Founded in 2002, Dominion is one of the largest voting machine manufacturers in the United States. More than two dozen states, including several owned by Mr. Trump, used their equipment over the past year.

Mr. Trump’s allies falsely portrayed Dominion as biased against Mr. Biden, arguing without evidence that it was linked to Hugo Chavez, the long-dead Venezuelan president. Dominion founder John Poulos and other employees received harassing and threatening messages from people who believed the company had undermined the election results, according to the complaint.

Fox News and Fox Business programs were part of the mass media in which supporters of Mr. Trump denounced Dominion. The lawsuit also cites examples of Fox hosts, including Ms. Bartiromo and Mr. Dobbs, being uncritically repeated or vouching for false claims made by Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell.

“Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” wrote Dominion in the lawsuit, adding that the network “gave these fictions a meaning they would otherwise never have achieved.”

Dominion attorneys also cited an unusual argument by Ms. Powell on Friday in a motion filed Monday to dismiss Dominion’s separate lawsuit against her.

In that motion, her lawyers alleged that “no sane person” would accept Ms. Powell’s allegations as facts because the political language is often imprecise. The motion essentially argues that their claims about Dominion’s voting machines were hyperbolic and therefore not defamatory.

Mr. Clare described Ms. Powell’s allegation as “ridiculous,” but said her acknowledgment that her allegations were not factual may prove relevant to Dominion’s lawsuit. “Fox knew these were lies, but they made a conscious choice to pass them on to their huge audience,” Clare said on a call to journalists.

Dominion said it recently lost key contracts with election officials in Georgia and Louisiana, adding that the company now faces “the hatred, scorn and distrust of tens of millions of American voters”.

Defamation battles are a relatively novel tactic in the fight against disinformation, but they have produced some early results.

In February, two days after Smartmatic filed its lawsuit, Fox Business canceled its highest-rated program, Lou Dobbs Tonight. An anchor on Newsmax – a pro-Trump cable channel that received letters from Dominion and Smartmatic warning of imminent legal action – interrupted an interview with Mr Lindell after the MyPillow founder began attacking Dominion.

Combined, Dominion and Smartmatic are seeking at least $ 4.3 billion in damages from Fox. Fox Corporation, which is controlled by Mr. Murdoch, 90) and his older son Lachlan, said it had pretax profits of $ 3 billion on sales of $ 12.3 billion from September 2019 to September 2020 .

As a large media organization, Fox News enjoys solid protection under First Amendment case law, which often protects newspapers and broadcasters from being held liable for claims made by interviewees. If a court found Dominion to be a public figure, its attorneys would have to show that Fox acted with “real malice” and “reckless disregard” for the truth, which is usually a high standard.

“There is concern that putting Fox under liability could lead to the suppression of information about which people have a strong interest,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William and Mary Law School, who referred to the law first Specializes in change.

In its lawsuit on Friday, Dominion argued that Fox had an incentive to spread falsehoods about a rigged election, in part to reassure pro-Trump viewers who were upset about the network’s early projection that Mr. Biden would wear Arizona .

Dominion also claims that Fox and its hosts have benefited from uncritically reiterating these baseless claims. The lawsuit cites a surge in ratings for anchors like Ms. Bartiromo and Mr. Dobbs after the election, noting that Ms. Pirro’s ex-husband, who spoke on the air of a stolen election, later received a pardon from Mr. Trump.

Fox has argued that its coverage of the election should be viewed in its entirety, noting that at least one host, Tucker Carlson, was skeptical of Ms. Powell’s statements. The network has also said that allegations made by the president’s lawyers in an electoral battle were inherently timely.

Freedom of expression experts said Fox was forced to defend its journalism more fully than the particular claims it made about Dominion and Smartmatic.

“Fox had a problem because many of its experts said the very things that prompted Dominion to bring this lawsuit,” prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said in an interview.

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Politics

Louisiana Particular Election Units Up a Democratic Showdown

Louisiana Special Election Sets Up a Democratic Showdown

However, Ms. Peterson’s best applause could also reflect her best chance of prevailing.

“There has never been an African American woman in Washington in the history of Louisiana in the federal delegation,” she said. “When women aren’t at the table, we’re usually on the menu.”

At a moment when black women want to see more of their peers in positions of power – a view that makes up a large part of the democratic base when black women run in high profile elections in places like New York City, Virginia and Ohio this year – this is it Message clearly in response.

“I’m all for women now, we just need a representation,” said Angela Steib, a Donaldsonville resident who attended the meeting.

For his part, Mr. Carter is quick to point out his support from a number of local women leaders, including the Helena Moreno, President of the New Orleans City Council – and to say that he would be more effective in Washington than Ms. Peterson because she acknowledges she is persistent.

“We have a completely different style,” he said.

Philosophically, the two weren’t that far apart in the past. But Ms. Peterson has tried to outstrip Mr. Carter on the left in this race by portraying herself as an insurgent, despite her service as former state chairman and her list of endorsements, which include support from Stacey Abrams and Emily’s List , trumpets, the group that supports women who are for abortion rights.

When asked to describe her political style, she avoided an ideological label and instead called herself “responsive” and “honest”. Mr. Carter said, “I’m center left.”

In a sleepy spring special election, however, the winner can be determined by which of the two top candidates has a stronger organization. Both have long histories in the local office, both have sought this seat in the past and have been financially competitive despite Emily’s ruse given Ms. Peterson third party help that Mr. Carter lacks on the radio waves.

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Politics

Russia and Iran tried to intervene with 2020 election, US intel businesses say

Russia and Iran tried to interfere with 2020 election, US intel agencies say

Russia and Iran were conducting operations to try to meddle in the 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, according to a U.S. intelligence report released Tuesday.

U.S. intelligence also noted that China made no attempt to change the 2020 race outcome, and there is no evidence that foreign actors tried to change the U.S. ballot or voting tables, the report said .

The assessment was released as the Biden administration works to strengthen ties with key US allies to put pressure on Russia and Iran.

“On his first phone call with President Putin, President Biden knew the United States would respond to a series of destabilizing Russian actions,” a White House official said in a statement to NBC News late Tuesday.

These actions include the SolarWinds hack, for which, according to US authorities, Russia is likely to be responsible, as well as the alleged poisoning of the well-known Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.

“You have already seen that we have taken a number of measures to respond to the use of a chemical weapon by Russia in the attempted murder of Alexey Navalny,” the official said. “There will be more soon.”

Tehran and Moscow have previously denied any involvement in an attempt to influence the US elections.

The report said, however, that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “approved influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, and undermining public confidence in the electoral process.” to exacerbate the socio-political divisions in the USA “.

One of Moscow’s key strategies, according to the report, was to use proxies affiliated with Russian intelligence agencies to spread misleading claims and narratives among certain US media and individuals – “including some close to former President Trump and his administration”.

These plans have been put into action by “a number of Russian government organizations,” according to the report.

Iran “meanwhile,” carried out a complex covert campaign of influence to undermine former President Trump’s prospects for re-election – without directly promoting his rivals – in order to undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and to sow division and to exacerbate social tensions in the US, “the report said.

Intelligence experts also noted that China, previously believed to be expanding its US influence efforts, ultimately failed to use any operations to influence the outcome of the Trump-Biden election.

Chinese President Xi Jinping

Fred Dufour | AFP | Getty Images

“China sought stability in its relations with the United States and did not see either election result as favorable enough for China to risk meddling,” the report said.

Beijing “assessed its traditional instruments of influence – especially targeted economic measures and lobbying – as sufficient to achieve its goal of shaping politics between the US and China independently of the winner.”

However, an expert – the National Cyber ​​Intelligence Officer – noted that China “has taken some steps to undermine the re-election of former President Trump”.

These assessments, each made with “high confidence”, were published in a declassified report released by the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence Service. The investigation was conducted by the Department of Justice and Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The report also found that, unlike the previous presidential cycle, there was no evidence of foreign actors attempting to change voter registration, ballot papers, or voting in the 2020 US election.

“We estimate that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate electoral processes on a large scale without doing so by gathering information about the actors themselves, by monitoring the physical and cybersecurity of electoral systems across the country or by Audits after the elections will be determined, “wrote the authors of the intelligence report.

In a statement, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Stressed that the report shows that Russia remains the greatest threat to the US elections.

While China and Iran have also “taken specific steps related to US elections,” Schiff said, they are “on a far less significant or systematic level than those taken by Russia.”

“We have to be clear and straightforward to the American people that different countries have different intentions and capabilities and do not threaten our free and fair elections equally,” said Schiff.

Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, D-Va., Said while the U.S. has stepped up its defenses against foreign interference, “The problem of foreign actors trying to influence American voters is not going away and, given the current partisan differences in this country, it could find fertile ground on which to grow in the future.”

In addition to Iran and Russia, the investigation found that Cuba, Venezuela and Lebanese Hezbollah also worked to influence the elections, albeit on a smaller scale.

The unclassified rating released on Tuesday builds on the analysis the intelligence services provided to policy makers throughout the 2020 election cycle.

Categories
Politics

Putin pushed Biden misinformation to Trump allies throughout election

Putin pushed Biden misinformation to Trump allies during election

Russian President Vladimir Putin will chair a meeting with members of the government in Moscow on February 5, 2020.

Aleksey Nikolskyi | Sputnik | Kremlin | Reuters

Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, approved intelligence services to promote misinformation about President Joe Biden through the U.S. media and people close to then-President Donald Trump in an effort to increase Trump’s election chances, a U.S. intelligence report said Tuesday.

Specifically, the report said that Putin was “in control of the activities of Adriy Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who played a prominent role in Russia’s electoral influence”.

Derkach, who has ties to Russian intelligence, is known to have met with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney who spent months making discredited allegations against Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The results are the second “key verdict” in the released National Intelligence Council report on “Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Election”.

That section states: “We evaluate that Russian President Putin authorized and conducted a number of Russian government organizations to influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party to ex-President Trump support to undermine public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbate socio-political divisions in the US. “

“Unlike in 2016, we have not seen any sustained Russian cyber efforts to gain access to the electoral infrastructure. We have great confidence in our assessment. Russian state and electoral representatives, who all serve the interests of the Kremlin, have the US -Influences the public in a consistent manner, “the report said.

“A key element of Moscow’s strategy in this electoral cycle has been the use of officials associated with Russian intelligence to spread narratives of influence – including misleading or unfounded allegations against President Biden – on US media organizations, US officials and prominent US individuals, including some related parties, transferring former President Trump and his administration. “

This is the latest news. Check for updates again.

Categories
Business

Laws geared toward transgender individuals is an election technique, journalist says

Legislation aimed at transgender people is an election strategy, journalist says

The Republican Party is turning to old tactics to build a new coalition after losing control of the Senate and Presidency in the 2020 elections.

Politico’s national political correspondent Gabby Orr said Friday the GOP’s strategy to pass laws banning transgender female athletes from women’s sports teams was motivated by its goal of overcoming election failures and recovering local voters.

“My sources, who are going behind the scenes on this issue and who want Republicans to talk about it, think this could be something that resonates … not just with non-ideological voters – when labeled a justice issue – but also with the socially conservative grassroots voters that the Republican Party has to bring out, “Orr said.

Mississippi is poised to become the first state against transgender people this year after its legislature passed a law banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports in schools and universities. Republican Governor Tate Reeves tweeted Thursday night that he would sign the bill.

Orr warned, however, that the strategy could “absolutely” shut down moderates.

“We’ve seen some of the loudest voices talking about it in the GOP are Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia Congressman) and Ted Cruz (Senator from Texas). So they’re not exactly popular politicians with moderate voters, let alone suburbanites Women, “Orr told CNBC’s” The News with Shepard Smith. “” There is a risk that the GOP will backfire at a time when we really saw the country’s trend in support of anti-discrimination laws, including Republicans. ” “

Orr cited a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute that found that 61% of Republicans were in favor of non-discrimination protection for LGBTQ Americans in 2020. That was five percentage points more than in 2019.

Idaho passed a law last year banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports, but one federal district suspended the law and it wasn’t enacted. At least 26 states have introduced similar bills across the country.