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Choose Grants Trump’s Request for Particular Grasp to Assessment Mar-a-Lago Paperwork

Judge Grants Trump’s Request for Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago Documents

A federal judge on Monday intervened in an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of sensitive government records, ordering the appointment of an independent arbitrator to review a trove of materials released last month from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida were confiscated.

In a 24-page ruling, Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida also barred the Justice Department from using the seized materials for “investigative purposes” related to Mr. Trump’s ongoing investigation pending the arbitrator’s work , known as the Special Master, was completed.

The order would effectively bar federal prosecutors from using a key piece of evidence while they continue to investigate whether the former president unlawfully kept national defense documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate or impeded government efforts to get them back.

In her order, issued on the Labor Day holiday, Judge Cannon said she made her decisions “to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity in the exceptional circumstances.” However, their order would not affect a separate review of the documents by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Judge Cannon’s decision gave the Special Master sweeping powers to review materials extracted from Mar-a-Lago, some of which bore markings identifying them as top secret. It allowed anyone eventually appointed to the post to assess the documents not only for those protected by attorney-client privilege, a relatively common measure, but also for those potentially protected by executive privilege, the normally confidential internal Executive branch deliberations protects.

At a hearing on the issue last week, the Justice Department argued that since Mr Trump is a former President and the Department is itself, allowing a special master to conduct an executive privilege review of the seized material would be a radical and legally unfounded move Part of the current executive branch.

But Judge Cannon disagreed with the Justice Department, writing in the order that she was “unconvinced” by the government’s categorical claim that executive privilege did not apply in this context. She added that she felt the department’s position “arguably exaggerated the law” and that it made sense for her to set aside any documents that might be protected by executive privilege if the legal issues in the case are resolved.

“Even if any assertion of executive privilege by plaintiff in this regard ultimately fails, that possibility, even if probable, does not negate a former president’s ability to assert the privilege as a matter of first concern,” she wrote. “Because the eligibility review team did not search for any material that may be subject to executive privileges, further review is required for this additional purpose.”

A Justice Department spokesman did not initially respond to a request for comment, but Department officials last week discussed the possibility of an appeal should the judge rule in Mr Trump’s favour.

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

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Trump’s Authorized Group Scrambles to Discover an Argument

Trump’s Legal Team Scrambles to Find an Argument

On May 25, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to a top Justice Department official, laying out the argument that his client had done nothing illegal by holding onto a trove of government materials when he left the White House.

The letter, from M. Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor, represented Mr. Trump’s initial defense against the investigation into the presence of highly classified documents in unsecured locations at his members-only club and residence, Mar-a-Lago. It amounted to a three-page hodgepodge of contested legal theories, including Mr. Corcoran’s assertion that Mr. Trump possessed a nearly boundless right as president to declassify materials and an argument that one law governing the handling of classified documents does not apply to a president .

Mr. Corcoran asked the Justice Department to present the letter as “exculpatory” information to the grand jury investigating the case.

Government lawyers found it deeply puzzling. They included it in the affidavit submitted to a federal magistrate in Florida in their request for the search warrant they later used to recover even more classified materials at Mar-a-Lago — to demonstrate their willingness to acknowledge Mr. Corcoran’s arguments, a person with knowledge of the decision said.

As the partial release of the search warrant affidavit on Friday, including the May 25 letter, illustrated, Mr. Trump is going into the battle over the documents with a hastily assembled team. The lawyers have offered up a variety of arguments on his behalf that have yet to do much to fend off a Justice Department that has adopted a determined, focused and so far largely successful legal approach.

“He needs a quarterback who’s a real lawyer,” said David I. Schoen, a lawyer who defended Mr. Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial. Mr. Schoen called it “an honor” to represent Mr. Trump, but said it was problematic to keep lawyers “rotating in and out.”

Often tinged with Mr. Trump’s own bombast and sometimes conflating his powers as president with his role as a private citizen, the legal arguments put forth by his team sometimes strike lawyers not involved in the case as more about setting a political narrative than about dealing with the possibility of a federal prosecution.

“There seems to be a huge disconnect between what’s actually happening — a real live court case surrounding a real live investigation — and what they’re actually doing, which is treating it like they’ve treated everything else, recklessly and thoughtlessly,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former US attorney and FBI official, said of Mr. Trump’s approach. “And for an average defendant on an average case, that would be a disaster.”

Mr. Trump’s team had a few small procedural wins. On Saturday, a federal judge in Florida signaled that she was inclined to support Mr. Trump’s request for a special master to review the material seized by the government in the search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8.

It is not clear how much the appointment of a special master would slow or complicate the government’s review of the material. Mr. Trump’s team has suggested that it would be a first step toward challenging the validity of the search warrant; but it also gives the Justice Department, which is expected to respond this week, an opportunity to air new details in public through their legal filings.

Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago Search

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Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago Search

The release on Aug. 26 of a partly redacted affidavit used by the Justice Department to justify its search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence included information that provides greater insight into the ongoing investigation into how he handled documents he took with him from the White House. Here are the key takeaways:

Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago Search

The government tried to retrieve the documents for more than a year. The affidavit showed that the National Archives asked Mr. Trump as early as May 2021 for files that needed to be returned. In January, the agency was able to collect 15 boxes of documents. The affidavit included a letter from May 2022 showing that Trump’s lawyers knew that he might be in possession of classified materials and that the Justice Department was investigating the matter.

Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago Search

The material included highly classified documents. The FBI said it had examined the 15 boxes Mr. Trump had returned to the National Archives in January and that all but one of them contained documents that were marked classified. The markings suggested that some documents could compromise human intelligence sources and that others were related to foreign intercepts collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Takeaways From the Affidavit Used in the Mar-a-Lago Search

Prosecutors are concerned about obstruction and witness intimidation. To obtain the search warrant, the Justice Department had to lay out possible crimes to a judge, and obstruction of justice was among them. In a supporting document, the Justice Department said it had “well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed.”

Some of the Trump lawyers’ efforts have also appeared ineffective or misdirected. Mr. Corcoran, in his May 25 letter, made much of Mr. Trump’s powers to declassify material as president, and cited a specific law on the handling of classified material that he said did not apply to a president. The search warrant, however, said federal agents would be seeking evidence of three potential crimes, none of which relied on the classification status of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago; the law on the handling of classified material cited by Mr. Corcoran in the letter was not among them.

Two lawyers who are working with Mr. Trump on the documents case — Mr. Corcoran and Jim Trusty — have prosecutorial experience with the federal government. But the team was put together quickly.

Mr. Trusty was hired after Mr. Trump saw him on television, people close to the former president have said. Mr. Corcoran came in during the spring, introduced by another Trump adviser during a conference call in which Mr. Corcoran made clear he was willing to take on a case that many of Mr. Trump’s other advisers were seeking to avoid, people briefed on the discussion said.

What we consider before using anonymous sources.
How do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even satisfied with these questions, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Mr. Trump’s allies have reached out to several other lawyers, but have repeatedly been turned down.

Mr. Corcoran in particular has raised eyebrows within the Justice Department for his statements to federal officials during the investigation documents. People briefed on the investigation say officials are uncertain whether Mr. Corcoran was intentionally evasive, or simply unaware of all the material still kept at Mar-a-Lago and found during the Aug. 8 search by the FBI

Mr Corcoran did not respond to a request for comment. Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said only that Mr. Trump and his legal team “continue to assert his rights and expose the Biden administration’s misuse of the Presidential Records Act, which governs all pertinent facts, has been complied with and has no enforcement mechanism.”

Even before Mr. Corcoran joined the team, Mr. Trump’s legal filings in various cases read like campaign rally speeches that he had dictated to his lawyers. The former president has a history of approaching legal proceedings as if they are political conflicts, in which his best defense is the 74 million people who voted for him in the 2020 election.

The closest thing to a legal quarterback in Mr. Trump’s orbit is Boris Epshteyn, a onetime lawyer at the Milbank firm who was a political adviser to Mr. Trump in 2016, ultimately becoming a senior staff member on his inaugural effort and then a strategic adviser on the 2020 campaign.

Mr. Epshteyn has championed Mr. Trump’s claims, dismissed by dozens of courts, that the election was stolen from him, and has risen to a role he has described to colleagues as an “in-house counsel,” helping to assemble Mr. Trump’s current legal team.

Mr. Trump’s advisers continue to insist that he was cooperating before the search in returning the documents. They have also suggested that they were quick to respond to Justice Department concerns, citing what they described as a request in June that a stronger lock be placed on the door leading to the storage area where several boxes of presidential records had been kept.

Yet the unsealed affidavit showed a portion of a letter from a Justice Department lawyer sent to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that did not specify anything about a lock and read less like a request than a warning.

The classified documents taken from the White House “have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location,” the letter read. “Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room ) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”

During the Aug. 8 search, the FBI found additional documents in that area and also on the floor of a closet in Mr. Trump’s office, people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump and a small circle within his group of current advisers maintain that he was entitled to keep documents he took from the White House, or that he had already declassified them, or that they were packed up and moved by the General Services Administration — an assertion flatly denied by that federal agency.

Mr. Trump, people familiar with his thinking say, sees the attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, not as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer, but merely as a political foe and someone with whom he can haggle with about how much anger exists over the situation.

Shortly before Mr. Garland announced that he was seeking to unseal the search warrant, an intermediary for Mr. Trump reached out to a Justice Department official to pass along a message that the former president wanted to negotiate, as if he were still a New York developers.

The message Mr. Trump wanted conveyed, according to a person familiar with the exchange, was: “The country is on fire. What can I do to reduce the heat?”

A Justice Department spokesman would not say if the message ever made it up to Mr Garland; but the senior leadership was befuddled by the message, and had no idea what Mr. Trump was trying to accomplish, according to an official.

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Biden condemns Trump’s ‘Massive Lie’ in main voting rights speech in Philadelphia

Biden condemns Trump's 'Big Lie' in major voting rights speech in Philadelphia

President Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered a major speech on voting rights in Philadelphia, slamming his predecessor’s “Big Lie” claim that the 2020 election was stolen. 

“It’s clear, for those who challenge the results or question the integrity of the election, no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny or such high standards. The ‘Big Lie’ is just that: a big lie,” Biden said at the National Constitution Center, just steps away from Independence Hall.

The speech comes as his administration faces growing pressure from civil rights activists and other Democrats to do more to combat attacks on voting rights, an issue that Biden called “the most significant test” of American democracy since the Civil War. 

Biden blasted former President Donald Trump’s claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, a claim that has pushed GOP leaders to enact a flurry of new voting laws in key states, including Florida and Georgia. Critics argue the new laws are discriminatory and restrict access to the ballot. 

The president directly denounced these efforts by GOP-controlled legislatures as a “Jim Crow assault” and compared them to behaviors seen in autocracies around the world. 

“To me, this is simple. This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,” Biden said. “They want the ability to reject the final count and ignore the will of the people if their preferred candidate loses.”

Protecting voting rights

Biden pressed for the passage of federal voting rights legislation during his remarks, saying that the fight to protect voting rights begins with passing the For The People Act.  

“That bill would help end voter suppression in states, get dark money out of politics, give voice to people, create fair district maps and end partisan political gerrymandering,” Biden said. 

He criticized Republicans for opposing the sweeping Democratic voting rights and government ethics bill, which failed to pass in the Senate last month after Republicans deployed the filibuster.

Biden also underscored the importance of passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would “restore and expand voting protections and prevent voter suppression.” He pressured Republican lawmakers to support such Democratic legislation that would protect voting rights. 

“We’ll ask my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote,” Biden said. 

The president criticized the Supreme Court’s “harmful” decisions that weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, noting that the court first gutted a key provision of the act in 2013 and on July 1 it upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting laws that Democrats say violate the act. 

The court has also limited the ability to “prove intentional racial discrimination,” according to a White House memo sent before the speech, making it difficult for advocacy groups and the Department of Justice to combat restrictive voter laws.

Biden called on Congress to repair the “damage done” by passing voting rights legislation.

Preparing for the midterms

Biden warned that the U.S. will “face another test in 2022” during the midterm elections, adding that the nation needs to prepare for voter suppression and election subversion. 

“We have to prepare now. As I said time and again, no matter what, you can never stop the American people from voting. They will decide, and the power must always be with the people. That’s why just like we did in 2020, we have to prepare for 2022,” Biden said. 

As of mid-June, at least 17 states have enacted laws that restrict access to voting, with more being considered, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. 

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a restrictive election bill into law in March after it was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. The law requires voters to provide identification for mail-in ballots and prohibits people from giving food and water to voters waiting in line, punitive steps that critics say could harm turnout in minority communities. 

Biden’s administration has turned to the courts in response. The Department of Justice sued the state of Georgia on June 25, arguing that the election bill infringed on the rights of Black Georgians. 

Passing new legislation in Congress to protect voting rights would likely require a change to filibuster rules, especially as Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in the Senate. But Biden has backed reforming rather than eliminating the filibuster, making the future of new voting laws uncertain. 

Looking beyond Washington

Now, with Democrats’ legislative efforts stalled, the White House is beginning to look outside of Washington for ways to combat the wave of new voting restrictions. 

Biden has had several meetings at the White House with civil rights groups, who pushed the administration to keep fighting for voting rights despite resistance from Republicans. The groups have opposed the Republican-backed voting restrictions, which critics say are aimed at Hispanic, Black and younger voters. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked to lead the administration’s efforts to protect voting rights, also recently announced a new $25 million investment by the Democratic National Committee to expand its program that will help boost voter engagement in the upcoming midterm elections. 

During the first few months of his presidency, Biden also signed an executive order directing agencies to promote voter access. This includes developing better methods of distributing voting information and increasing opportunities to participate in the electoral process, which includes voters with distinct needs, such as service members, people with disabilities and tribal communities, among others.

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Fb Says Trump’s Ban Will Final at Least 2 Years

Facebook Says Trump's Ban Will Last at Least 2 Years

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Friday that Donald J. Trump’s suspension from the service would last at least two years, clarifying a timeline on the ban that the company put in place in January.

The company said Mr. Trump would be eligible for reinstatement in January 2023, when it will then look to experts to decide “whether the risk to public safety has receded,” Facebook said. The company barred the former president from the service after comments he made about the Capitol riots.

“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension,” Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook, wrote in a company blog post, “we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols.”

If reinstated, Mr. Trump will be subject to a set of “rapidly escalating sanctions” if he committed further violations, up to and including the permanent suspension of his account.

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Biden rejects Trump’s strategy to North Korea

Biden rejects Trump's approach to North Korea

U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in hold a joint news conference after a day of meetings at the White House, in Washington, U.S. May 21, 2021.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday rejected his predecessor’s approach to North Korea and said his goal as president was to achieve a “total denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.

Speaking at a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Biden used the example of former President Donald Trump’s high-profile meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to illustrate what he, Biden, would never do.

“If there was a commitment on which we met, then I would meet with [Kim],” said Biden. “And the commitment has to be that there is discussion about his nuclear arsenal.”

“What I would not do is what has been done in the recent past,” the president said. “I would not give him all he’s looking for, international recognition as legitimate, and give him what allowed him to move in a direction of appearing to be more serious about what he wasn’t at all serious about.”

Trump held three high-profile meetings with Kim, one in Singapore in June of 2018, another in Hanoi the following February, and the last one in June of 2019. During their third meeting, Trump took several steps onto North Korean soil, becoming the first American president to do so.

All three meetings between Trump and Kim were ostensibly focused on denuclearization. Yet rather than reduce his stockpile, Kim doubled his country’s arsenal of nuclear weapons during the four years Trump was president.

Biden and Moon pledged to work together to continue the effort to denuclearize North Korea.

As part of this process, Biden announced Friday that Ambassador Sung Kim will serve as the U.S. special envoy for North Korea.

Sung Kim is a career diplomat and a former ambassador to South Korea. He was recently nominated to be the assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Another important topic during Biden and Moon’s meeting on Friday was their countries’ ongoing response to Covid-19.

South Korea is currently experiencing a shortage of coronavirus vaccines. Approximately 7% of South Koreans have received at least one shot of the vaccine, according to data by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

By contrast, more than 48% of Americans have received one shot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the press conference, Moon and Biden announced that the United States would provide 550,000 Korean service members with Covid-19 vaccines.

Biden and Moon’s press conference followed an afternoon of meetings and ceremonies, including the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Honor to a U.S. veteran of the Korean War.

The visit was Biden’s second time as president hosting a foreign leader at the White House. And it offered the president an opportunity to showcase that, in his words, “America is back.”

After four years of Trump’s isolationist approach to foreign policy, Moon welcomed the new tone.

“The world is welcoming America’s return and keeping their hopes high for America’s leadership more than ever before,” Moon said Friday.

But foreign policy is not where Biden has devoted the lion’s share of his attention as president.

Aides to the president say he is chiefly focused on enacting his domestic agenda: two massive proposals, to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and to fund a range of family and social services.

As the past week has shown, however, events on the ground can quickly force any White House to shift its attention overseas.

Most recently, renewed fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza consumed much of the attention of the world during the past 11 days.

Biden said Friday that a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is “the only answer.”

And despite pressure from some Democrats to take a harder line on Israel’s airstrikes, Biden emphasized that nothing in his approach to the longtime U.S. ally has changed.

“There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel. Period.”

He also praised Egypt’s president, Abdel Al-Sisi, for doing what Biden said was a “commendable job” securing the cooperation of Hamas on a cease-fire that began early Friday morning.

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U.S. firms bearing the brunt of Trump’s China tariffs, says Moody’s

U.S. companies bearing the brunt of Trump's China tariffs, says Moody’s

A Chinese and US flag on a booth during the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai, November 6, 2018.

Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images

American companies are bearing most of the cost burden from the increased tariffs introduced at the height of the US-China trade war, Moody’s Investors Service said.

The rating agency said in a report on Monday that US importers absorbed more than 90% of the additional costs resulting from the US 20% tariff on Chinese goods.

This means that US importers will pay around 18.5% more for a Chinese product subject to this 20% tariff, while Chinese exporters will get 1.5% less for the same product, according to the report.

If tariffs persist, pressure on US retailers is likely to increase, resulting in greater passage to consumer prices

Moody’s Investors Service

“Much of the customs charges have been passed on to US importers,” Moody’s said in the report.

“If tariffs stay in place, pressure on US retailers is likely to increase, leading to more swirling through to consumer prices,” the agency added.

During the tenure of former US President Donald Trump, higher trade tariffs came into force. Most of these tariffs have remained and affect more than half of all trade flows between the US and China, Moody’s said.

US tariffs on Chinese goods averaged 19.3% on a trade-weighted basis in early 2021, while Chinese tariffs on American products were around 20.7%, according to the think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Before the US-China trade war in early 2018, US tariffs on Chinese goods averaged 3.1%, while Chinese tariffs on American goods averaged 8%.

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Violence Shakes Trump’s Boast of ‘New Center East’

Violence Shakes Trump’s Boast of ‘New Middle East’

WASHINGTON – President Donald J. Trump declared in September: “The beginning of a new Middle East.”

In the White House, Trump announced new diplomatic agreements between Israel and two of its Gulf Arab neighbors, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

“After decades of division and conflict,” said Trump, flanked by leaders from the region in a scene that was later repeated in his campaign ads, the Abraham Accords “laid the foundations for a comprehensive peace across the region.”

Eight months later, such peace remains a distant hope, especially for the most famous intractable conflict in the Middle East, that between Israel and the Palestinians. In fiery scenes all too reminiscent of the ancient Middle East, this conflict has entered its bloodiest phase in seven years and again criticizes Trump’s approach as it raises questions about the future of the accords as President Biden grapples with the role of United States facing looks now play in the region.

Mr Trump’s approach has essentially been to circumvent the challenge of easing tensions between Israel and the Palestinians in order to foster closer ties between Israel and some of the Sunni Arab states, largely based on their shared concerns about Iran.

The agreements he was involved in negotiating generally showed that some of Israel’s Arab neighbors showed less interest in helping the Palestinians, giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more leeway to pursue strategies that further exacerbated Israeli-Palestinian tensions .

“It was very difficult for anyone who knows the region to believe that the signing of the Abrahamic Accords would be a breakthrough for peace,” said Zaha Hassan, a visiting scholar for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which focuses on Palestinian issues specialized.

Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the agreements were “based on the idea that the Palestinian question is dead,” and rewarded Netanyahu’s tenacious approach to Israeli settlement activities in support of other expansive territorial claims.

“This was proof of his theory that you can have land and peace,” said Nasr.

Former Trump officials said the hyperbolic former president billed the Abraham Accords, which were later extended to Morocco and Sudan, but they were never seen as a means of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On the contrary, the deal, which expanded trade and normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the four Arab states in whole or in part, instead acted as a reprimand for the Palestinians by showing that their cause no longer defined relations in the region.

Sunni Arab rulers, angry with the Palestinian leadership and tacitly allied with Israel against Shiite Iran for years, moved on.

Jason Greenblatt, who served as Trump’s Middle East Envoy through October 2019, argued that the current spasm of violence in and around Israel “underscores why the Abraham Accords are so important to the region”.

After Palestinian leaders finally rejected a January 2020 Trump peace plan that proposed the creation of a Palestinian state under conditions heavily geared towards Israeli demands, the accords deliberately severed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Israel’s relations with the Arabs World, said Greenblatt.

They “have taken the Palestinians’ veto power to move the region forward,” he added.

Others noted that before agreeing to the agreements, the United Arab Emirates had given Mr. Netanyahu a pledge to halt a possible annexation of parts of the West Bank, which had the potential to spark a major Palestinian uprising. (Trump officials also opposed such annexation, and Mr Netanyahu may still not have enforced it.)

Dennis Ross, a former Middle East peace negotiator who served under three presidents, described the deals as an important step for the region but said the violence in Israel’s cities and Gaza Strip shows how “the Palestinian issue still holds a cloud over the people Israel’s relations can throw “its Arab neighbors.

“The idea that this was ‘Peace in Our Time’ obviously ignored the one existential conflict in the region. It wasn’t between Israel and the Arab states, ”said Ross.

Most analysts say the deals – which Biden government officials say they want to support and even expand to more nations – can survive the current violence. After all, officials involved in drafting the agreement said no one had the illusion that such clashes were a thing of the past.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Updated

May 15, 2021 at 10:43 a.m. ET

But images of Israeli police raids against Arabs in Jerusalem and air strikes that topple skyscrapers in Gaza are clearly causing nuisance.

In a statement last week, the UAE Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” Israel’s proposed evictions in East Jerusalem and a police attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where Israeli officials said Palestinians had been storing stones throwing them at the Israeli police.

Last month, the UAE also denounced “acts of violence by right-wing extremist groups in occupied East Jerusalem” and warned that the region “could slide into new levels of instability in ways that threaten peace”.

Bahrain and other Gulf states have condemned Israel in similar tones. In a statement by the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, on Friday “all parties”, not just Israel, were urged to exercise restraint and pursue a ceasefire.

A former Trump official argued that public pressure from countries like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on Israel after the agreements carried more weight than was the case from newly official diplomatic partners. However, none of the governments involved in the agreements play a major role in efforts to achieve a ceasefire – a responsibility that has historically been assumed by Egypt and Qatar.

“It is the non-Abraham Convention Arabs who will really play a central role in ending this fire,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Israeli-Arab adviser among six state secretaries.

At an event held by the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC last month, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the Biden administration “welcomes and supports” the Abraham Accords and that “Israel’s group of friends will grow even larger” next year. “

But with dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries since then, most of them Palestinians, analysts say the prospect of other Arab nations joining the accords is poor.

“I would say it is very, very unlikely that anyone else will join the deal,” said Nasr. “It will lose a lot of dynamism and energy.”

A nation seen as a potential candidate, Saudi Arabia, has imposed some of the strongest condemnations against Israel in the past few days. A statement by the Saudi Foreign Ministry called on the international community to “hold the Israeli occupation responsible for this escalation and immediately stop its escalation measures, which violate all international norms and laws”.

Some Biden analysts and government officials say the deals were the culmination of a four-year Trump policy that included and empowered Mr. Netanyahu and isolated the Palestinians. Mr Trump’s approach, they said, nearly stifled hopes for the two-state solution pursued by several previous American presidents and tipped the balance of power between official Palestinian leaders and Hamas extremists in Gaza.

Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official, admitted that Israel had clashed with the Palestinians even under democratic governments, which had chosen a more balanced approach to the conflict than Trump’s nakedly pro-Israel stance.

And he said opportunistic rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel after the outbreak of Jewish-Arab violence in Jerusalem were not Trump’s fault.

But Mr Goldenberg argued that the current violence against Internecine in Israel “is at least partially driven by the fact that the Trump administration supports extremist elements in Israel every step of the way,” including the Israeli settlement movement.

In November 2019, for example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo changed longstanding US policy by stating that the US did not view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a violation of international law. (The Biden government intends to reverse this position once a government attorney review is completed.)

“They had David Friedman” – Mr. Trump’s ambassador in Jerusalem – “literally tear down walls of holy places with a sledgehammer and say it was Israeli,” Goldenberg said.

Mr Trump also moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and officially recognized the city as Israel’s capital. This enraged the Palestinians, who had long expected East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state they are building.

“Trump opened the door to Israel to accelerate house demolition and settlement activities,” Ms Hassan said. “And when that happens and you see Israel affecting it, you see the Palestinian resistance.”

Former Trump officials note that expert predictions of a Palestinian outbreak never materialized during Mr Trump’s tenure, particularly after the embassy moved, and suggest that Biden’s friendliness toward the Palestinians – including restoring that of Mr Trump canceled humanitarian aid – Trump – has encouraged them to challenge Israel.

Even some Trump administration officials said Mr Trump and others’ suggestions that the agreements represented peace in the Middle East were exaggerated.

“During my time in the White House, I always urged people not to use that term,” Greenblatt said.

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Biden Discloses A few of Trump’s Secret Drone Strike Guidelines

Biden Discloses Some of Trump's Secret Drone Strike Rules

Such intermittent combat activities have been fueled by the advent of armed drone technology and the propensity of transnational terrorist groups to operate from poorly governed areas or failed states with few or no American troops and no effective local government with a police force , including the tribal region of Pakistan, rural Yemen, and parts of Somalia and Libya.

Drone strikes began under the George W. Bush administration and increased during Barack Obama’s first term, along with political and legal battles over reports of civilian casualties and the deliberate murder of an American citizen suspected of terrorism, Anwar al-Awlaki without trial.

In May 2013, Mr. Obama issued a series of rules regulating such operations and intended to limit their excessive use. It required a high-level review by the authorities to determine whether a terrorist suspect posed a threat to the Americans and “almost certain” that no civilian bystanders would be killed.

In October 2017, Mr Trump replaced Mr Obama’s system with a more relaxed and decentralized system. It allowed local operators to decide whether suspects should be attacked because of their status as members of a terrorist group rather than because of their threat as individuals, and as long as the conditions set out in the general operating principles for the area were met.

Many Obama-era national security officials have returned to the Biden administration with expectations that Mr Trump’s changes will be reversed, at least in part. Still, some military and intelligence professionals have rubbed themselves under Obama’s system and said it was too bureaucratic, according to those familiar with internal considerations.

The Trump administration did not disclose that it had developed a new framework for drone strikes in 2017, although The Times reported its existence and some of its key features at the time. Mr Bossert said that at the time he unsuccessfully pushed for his key parts to be downgraded and made public.

“I suggested releasing relevant parts of the directive from the start,” he said. “My suggestion was not followed. Even so, this debate and our core principles of cherishing innocent life should only ever be open to the light of day, even though they only take the evil. “

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Politics

Might Ron DeSantis Be Trump’s G.O.P. Inheritor? He’s Actually Attempting.

Could Ron DeSantis Be Trump’s G.O.P. Heir? He’s Certainly Trying.

“We have too many people in this party who don’t fight back,” he told the gathering, according to the New York Times audio. “You can’t be afraid of the left, you can’t be afraid of the media, and you can’t be afraid of big tech.”

The governor has also taken steps to bolster his political standing in dealing with the pandemic, calling reporters to the State Capitol to blow it up Wednesday with a slideshow titled “FACTS VS. SMEARS ”- a report in CBS News’ 60 Minutes that contained insufficient evidence of a pay-to-play dynamic between Mr DeSantis’s government and the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines to white and wealthy Floridians.

His records of the virus are indeed mixed. By some standards, Florida has had average pandemic performance that is not over yet. However, his decisions helped ensure that hospitals were not overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. He emphasizes that he helped businesses survive and enabled children to go to school.

What his critics can’t forget, however, is how he defied some key public health guidelines. An article approving masks written under his name by his staff in mid-July was never approved for publication by the governor. The restrictions he is now dismissing as ineffective, such as local mask mandates and curfews that experts say actually worked, have, in most cases, been imposed by Democratic mayors he hardly speaks to.

However, given the way people admire or despise him, the nuances seem secondary.

He enrags passionate critics who believe he is acting wisely to look after his own interests. They fear that this approach has helped confuse public health messages, the preference for vaccines for the rich, and the deaths of some 34,000 Floridians. “DeathSantis” is what they call him. (Mr. DeSantis declined repeated interview requests for this article.)

But almost at every turn, Mr. DeSantis has used the criticism as an opportunity to become an avatar for national conservatives who enjoy the governor’s willingness to fight. He can score points that his potential Washington minority Republican rivals, including Rubio and Senator Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor, can’t.

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Politics

‘A Large Complication’: G.O.P. Dances Round Trump’s Lingering Presence

‘A Tremendous Complication’: G.O.P. Dances Around Trump’s Lingering Presence

The first spring donor withdrawal after a political party defeat is usually a moment of reflection and renewal as officials move in a new direction.

But with former President Donald J. Trump determined to hold on to the Republican Party and the party’s grassroots as always, the South Florida Republican National Committee’s top donors gathering this weekend is less of a backward moment and more of a moment Reminder of the ongoing tensions and divisions that haunt the GOP

The same former president who sent the RNC a warning letter last month demanding that it no longer use his resemblance to raise funds will headline the party’s fundraiser on Saturday night.

“An enormous complication” was how Fred Zeidman, a seasoned Republican fundraiser in Texas, described Mr. Trump’s continued presence in the political scene.

The delicate dance between Mr. Trump and the party – after losing the House, Senate and White House on his watch – showed in actual shuttle bus diplomacy on Saturday when the party’s top donors attended one The Four Seasons Resort attended a series of receptions and panels before heading to Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club, to hear Mr. Trump speak.

The former president’s insistence on the party’s leadership “affects every member,” said Zeidman, lawmaker and future-elected officials jockey for a Trump endorsement that was as powerful in a Republican primary as it could be problematic in a general election.

“He has already shown that he wants to have a big say in or control of the party, and he has already shown every sign that he will turn those who did not support him into elementary school,” Zeidman said. “He complicates everything so much.”

About 15 minutes into his Saturday night speech, after putting aside his prepared remarks, Mr Trump reverted to his false claims that his election had been stolen. He was referring to “Zuckerberg” and $ 500 million spent on a “locker” which, he said, marked each vote according to remarks described by a participant. “Biden. Saintly Joe Biden, “he said, adding,” It was a rigged choice. “

Mr Trump praised loyalists like Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio and Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, while whipping his enemies – including Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker; former First Lady Michelle Obama; and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, whom he again accused of failing to undo Mr. Biden’s victory in the state.

He saved much of his vitriol for Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and called him “a stiff” and a “freezing loser,” according to the participant. A “real leader,” he said, would never have accepted the results of this election.

Republicans, Mr. Trump said, according to the participant, “have to get tougher, they have to get meaner, they have to get better people.”

Among other things, Mr. Trump is considering running again in 2024. Although few of his allies believe he will get through, his presence could scare other potential candidates.

“The party is still very much turned around,” said Andrea Catsimatidis, chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party and donor who will be at the retreat. “He was the one who really revived the party when we didn’t win.”

Inevitably, too, is the fact that Mr. Trump has quickly built a political war chest that rivals that of the RNC. An adviser to Mr Trump said he currently has about $ 85 million available, compared to nearly $ 84 million for the RNC

“Send your donation to Save America PAC,” Trump urged supporters last month, not to “RINOS,” the derisive acronym for “Republicans on behalf only”. Mr Trump was just as passionate about punishing Republicans who crossed him, especially those who supported his second impeachment, as he was about the repossession of the House and Senate in 2022.

For party officials, the goal is to keep the energy that led Mr. Trump to success in the Republican tent while the former president does not fully allow it to dominate it. Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairperson who endorsed Mr. Trump for a second term, has vowed to remain neutral in a potential elementary school for 2024 should Mr. Trump run again.

“It’s a difficult balancing act,” said Bill Palatucci, a Republican national commissioner from New Jersey who was critical of Mr. Trump.

“The president certainly has supporters,” said Palatucci, “but he has also more than offended many people with his behavior since the November elections, which culminated in his help in sparking the January 6 uprising.”

Some donors are hoping to get past Mr. Trump quickly, but they are also focusing on the current resident of the Oval Office.

“It’s very important that the Republican Party take Donald Trump as far back in time as possible,” said William Oberndorf, a California investor who gave millions to GOP candidates but said he would now only give Republican lawmakers who voted to indict mr. Trump card.

“However, unless Joe Biden ensures that key laws are supported by both parties, he will have more responsibility than any group of Republican donors ever to resurrect the political future and destiny of Mr Trump,” he added.

Among the donors, the battle for favor and funding goes beyond Mr. Trump and the RNC

A separate but overlapping meeting for Republican contributors was held on Thursday and Friday at Mr. Trump’s private club: an “investor meeting” of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), a nonprofit organization. Mark Meadows, who served as Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, is now a senior advisor to the group, and Caroline Wren, who used to raise funds for the former president, is raising funds for it.

Donors are being recruited for a dizzying array of Trump-related projects, including Mr Pence’s group and new businesses started by Ben Carson, former housing secretary of Mr Trump. Stephen Miller, his former White House adviser; and Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016, is also said to be involved in efforts to launch a Trump-focused super PAC.

Mr Trump, who continues to speak privately about a future campaign of his own in 2024, spoke for more than an hour Thursday with donors from the Meadows-affiliated group, also in his private club.

“All Republican roads lead to Mar-a-Lago,” said Jason Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump. “Trump is still the straw that moves the news cycle. His influence will be central to every speech and action this week. “

Those who have traveled there to meet Mr. Trump in the past few months include Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary and candidate for governor of Arkansas; Senator Rick Scott of Florida, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and Representative Kevin McCarthy, California Republican and minority leader of the House.

In a suit and a red Make America Great Again hat, Mr. Trump came to his club this weekend for a fundraiser for Ms. Sanders.

The RNC had originally planned that its entire retreat should take place near Palm Beach, but organizers moved the final events to Mr. Trump’s resort on Saturday night, meaning the party will once again be able to use the former president’s private club his room will pay.

During Mr. Trump’s tenure at the White House, his political campaign, the RNC and his allies spent millions of dollars on Trump businesses, including his Washington hotel near the White House and a resort in Miami that has another one another pro-Trump group held a conference this week.

Party officials claimed donors and a number of party activists are happier to be in Trump-branded houses than anywhere else.

Still, the Trump branding of official Republican events had alienated the former Republican establishment.

“This is all about the Trump Circle of the Grift,” said former Virginia Representative Barbara Comstock, who is close to another high-profile Republican – and a frequent target of Mr. Trump – who was also particularly absent: Representative Liz Cheney from Wyoming.

Ms. Comstock said the distance Republicans are wise to “form their own coalitions” and “not get drawn into Trumpism, which has limited and short-term appeal as demographics in this country are dying”.

Henry Barbour, an influential Mississippi RNC member, said the party has been in a transition phase since the loss of Mr. Trump.

“If you lose the White House it’s going to take a bit of healing, and I think the first quarter has hopefully put us on a better path,” said Barbour. Mr Trump, he said, was “a great force in the party, but the party is bigger than any candidate, including Donald Trump”.

With Mr Trump’s priorities differing from those of other party leaders, the tension remains palpable. Friday is the Super PAC for Senate Republicans voted with mr. McConnell announced his support for Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who enraged Mr. Trump by voting to indict him. (Some Trump 2020 advisors work for Kelly Tshibaka, Ms. Murkowski’s Republican challenger.)

Last month, Mr. McConnell privately bragged about the Super-PAC’s fundraiser in a meeting with Senate Republicans, boasting that he had raised more money than Mr. Trump’s Super-PAC in 2020. He even handed out a card to order to clarify the point: In three cycles: almost 1 billion US dollars, ”says the card. Among them were Mr. Trump’s Super PAC stats: “Trump: $ 148 + Million” based on America First group.

But the Republican small donor base is still very much in love with Mr. Trump.

“He will still be the most important figure in the party in November 2022,” predicted Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and former chairman of the American Conservative Union. “Everyone has a shelf life and Donald Trump has lost a bit of his shelf life.”

“It could be two years,” added Cardenas. “It could be 10.”