(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department rebuffed efforts by attorneys for President Joe Biden to omit language critical of his age and memory in a report published last week by special counsel Robert Hur, sources confirmed to ABC News.
Four people familiar with the matter authenticated a series of correspondence first described in a report published on Thursday by the New York Times.
On Feb. 7, Ed Siskel and Bob Bauer — attorneys to the president — wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, complaining that details in the report about the president’s recollections during an interview with investigators “openly, obviously and blatantly violate department policy and practice,” the letters show.
Bradley Weinsheimer, a senior Justice Department official, responded the following day that the “identified language is neither gratuitous nor unduly prejudicial because it is not offered to criticize or demean the President; rather, it is offered to explain Special Counsel Hur’s conclusions about the President’s state of mind in possessing and retaining classified information.”
The special counsel’s 388-page report ultimately included damning characterizations of the president’s mental acuity, calling him an “elderly man with a poor memory,” who could not remember when he finished his term as vice president or when his son, Beau, died.
“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” said Hur’s report. “We would conclude the same even if there was no policy against charging a sitting president.”
This was despite the fact that the special counsel “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report said.
Critics of the president pounced on those proclamations to score political points, calling the special counsel’s findings further evidence that Biden is unfit for office.
Americans overwhelmingly view Biden as being too old to serve another term, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll.
After the release of Hur’s report, Siskel and Bauer responded to Weinsheimer’s letter, “We fundamentally disagree with your assessment that the comments contained in Special Counsel Hur’s report were consistent with Department policy and practice,” they wrote. “They surely were not.”
Biden himself railed against details in the report. Speaking to reporters at the White House the night of its release, Biden said, “I know what the hell I’m doing.”
Hur is scheduled to testify about the report to Congress on March 12, ABC News reported Thursday. It comes after House Republicans requested his testimony earlier this week, in addition to requests for audio recordings and transcripts related to Hur’s probe.
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel David Weiss has indicted an FBI confidential source who provided derogatory information about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden on felony false statement and obstruction charges.
Weiss indicted Alexander Smirnov, 43, on one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record related to statements he made to the FBI on a document known as an FBI Form 1023.
Charging documents released on Thursday show Smirnov was a confidential source for the FBI and allegedly provided “false derogatory information about [President Biden] and [Hunter Biden] … in 2020, after [Biden] became a presidential candidate.”
Smirnov is the same person that Republicans have called “a highly credible FBI source” and have used to claim Joe Biden is corrupt, according to multiple senior congressional sources.
However, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has since released a statement saying, in part, that Smirnov’s charges do not undermine the GOP impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, the FBI source and his claims have repeatedly been raised by Republicans as they push forward with an impeachment inquiry into the president, but now the FBI is calling the source a liar.
The allegations of Biden corruption spilled into public nearly a year ago, when Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, took the extraordinary step of releasing the confidential FBI informant’s unverified claim that, years ago, the Biden family “pushed” a Ukrainian oligarch to pay them $10 million.
The claim — which Democrats and the White House immediately denied — has since been cited by congressional Republicans to justify their impeachment inquiry.
“The impeachable offenses, I think the key thing is in Burisma,” House Judiciary Committee Chairmen Jim Jordan told reporters in December, referring to the bribery claim.
In the wake of Smirnov being charged, Comer said in his statement on Thursday that “to be clear, the impeachment inquiry is not reliant on the FBI’s FD-1023 [that included Smirnov’s allegation].”
The Republican-led probe “is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, revealing that Joe Biden knew of and participated in his family’s business dealings,” Comer maintained. (The president rejects that.)
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell responded to Smirnov’s charges in his own statement, saying, “For months we have warned that Republicans have built their conspiracies about Hunter and his family on lies told by people with political agendas, not facts.”
“We were right and the air is out of their balloon,” Lowell said.
Smirnov allegedly reported to an FBI agent in March 2017 that he had a phone call with the owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and noted Hunter Biden was at the time a member of Burisma’s board.
Three years later, Smirnov allegedly made false statements in recounting two meetings in 2015 or 2016 in which executives associated with Burisma told him they had hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
According to federal authorities, Smirnov further said the executives paid $5 million each to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden while the latter was in office as vice president, so that Hunter Biden “will take care of all those issues through his dad,” referring to the then-criminal investigation being conducted by the then-Ukrainian prosecutor general into Burisma.
Those events were fabrications, Weiss alleged in his new indictment.
Instead, Smirnov had only contacted the Burisma executives in 2017 after the end of Joe Biden’s time as vice president and after the Ukrainian prosecutor general had already been fired, according to the indictment.
“The indictment alleges that the [Smirnov] transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [President Biden] after expressing bias against [Biden] and his presidential candidacy,” Weiss’ office said in their statement announcing the charges.
Smirnov was again interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, the indictment says, and he allegedly repeated earlier false claims and also changed his story to promote “a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.”
Smirnov was arrested at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Wednesday after arriving to the U.S. from overseas, the Department of Justice said. He was scheduled to make his initial appearance Thursday.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
ABC News’ Justin Fishel and John Parkinson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel David Weiss has charged an FBI confidential source who provided derogatory information about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden to the bureau with felony false statement and obstruction charges.
Weiss charged Alexander Smirnov, 43, with one count of making a false statement and one count of creating a false and fictitious record related to statements he made to the FBI on a document known as an FBI Form 1023.
Charging documents show Smirnov was a confidential source for the FBI and provided “false derogatory information about [President Biden] and [Hunter Biden] … in 2020, after [Biden] became a presidential candidate.”
Smirnov allegedly reported to an FBI agent in March 2017 that he had a phone call with the owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and noted Hunter Biden was at the time a member of Burisma’s board.
Three years later, Smirnov allegedly made false statements in recounting two meetings in 2015 or 2016 in which executives associated with Burisma told him they had hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” He further said the executives paid $5 million each to Hunter Biden and President Biden while Biden was in office as vice president, so that Hunter “will take care of all those issues through his dad,” referring to the then-criminal investigation being conducted by the then-Ukrainian prosecutor general into Burisma.
Those events were fabrications, Weiss alleged in his new indictment. Instead, Smirnov had only contacted the Burisma executives in 2017 after the end of Biden’s time as vice president and after the Ukrainian prosecutor general had already been fired, according to the indictment.
“The indictment alleges that the [Smirnov] transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [President Biden] after expressing bias against [Biden] and his presidential candidacy,” Weiss’ office said in their statement announcing the charges.
Smirnov was again interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, the indictment says, and he repeated earlier false claims and also changed his story to promote “a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.”
Smirnov was arrested at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Wednesday after arriving to the U.S. from overseas, the Department of Justice said. He was schedule to make his initial appearance Thursday.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
(WASHINGTON) — When special counsel Robert Hur’s report on his yearlong investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials was made public last week, it said no charges were warranted because the evidence wasn’t sufficient to support a conviction.
That might have been the end of it as a legal matter but two sentences near the top of his executive summary, the 14-page recap of the massive 388-page document, created an enduring political firestorm.
Seized on by the news media in the immediate scramble to report the news — and by Republicans eager to capitalize — was the sentence: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
And then came Hur’s politically damaging suggestion that, in deciding whether to prosecute, he had considered that Biden would likely present himself to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
A closer look at the rest of the report, though, shows despite Hur’s “willfully retained and disclosed” assertion there were other innocent explanations that couldn’t be ruled out, and language about Biden’s apparent memory lapses didn’t contain much context, leading to questions about their relevance.
Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, told ABC News Hur’s executive summary stands “in tension” with the rest of the report.
“There’s a leap in the executive summary from the evidence, and those kinds of leaps and editorializing are contrary to the most fundamental principles of how prosecutors are supposed to operate when addressing uncharged conduct,” Eisen said, describing the summary as “misleading.”
“Extraordinary care is called for precisely because that can be so damaging,” Eisen added.
Some observers have compared the matter to the controversy sparked by then-FBI Director James Comey’s condemnation of Hillary Clinton as “extremely careless” while announcing his decision in the middle of the 2016 election campaign not to recommend charging her for use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Though in this case, Hur as a special counsel was mandated to explain his findings in a report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who vowed to make it public for transparency.
Here is a closer look at what else Hur said in his report.
Retention of documents
Classified materials relating to Biden’s time as vice president and as a senator were found at three locations: Biden’s Delaware home, the Penn Biden Center in Washington and the University of Delaware.
For the documents found at the Penn Biden Center and the University of Delaware, Hur said the evidence suggested they were likely sent and kept there by mistake after being packed by staff.
Those found at Biden’s Delaware home presented the strongest possible criminal case, Hur said. There, investigators found marked classified documents about a troop surge to Afghanistan in 2009 in a damaged box as well as Biden’s handwritten notebooks that Hur said contained classified information.
Even more specific, because Biden was president when the materials were found in his Delaware home, Hur concentrated on a period of time immediately after the Obama administration when investigators believed Biden (then a private citizen) may have stored those materials at a home he was renting in Virginia.
In February 2017, according to tape recordings from the ghostwriter of Biden’s memoir, Biden said he “just found all this classified stuff downstairs” as the two men spoke about a handwritten memo Biden had sent to President Barack Obama over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2009 advising against a troop surge to Afghanistan.
Hur said there was evidence that “supported the inference” that when Biden said that to the ghostwriter “he was referring to the Afghanistan documents.” That’s because, Hur said, other files in the box where the Afghanistan documents were eventually found were dated as being created in the weeks prior to that conversation, making it appear that Biden had recently accessed the box.
But Hur said there was no photographic evidence placing the Afghanistan documents at the Virginia home, and their path from the Obama administration to Biden’s Delaware home remained unclear. Other innocent explanations couldn’t be ruled out, like the possibility the documents were brought to Delaware during the vice presidency and forgotten about.
“While it is natural to assume that Mr. Biden put the Afghanistan documents in the box on purpose and that he knew they were there, there is in fact a shortage of evidence on these points,” the report read. “We do not know why, how, or by whom the documents were placed in the box. We do not know whether or when Mr. Biden carefully reviewed the box’s contents.”
“We find the evidence as a whole insufficient to meet the government’s burden of proving that Mr. Biden willfully retained the Afghanistan documents in the Virginia home in 2017,” he added. “That is, evidence falls short of beyond a reasonable doubt.”
On the issue of Biden’s handwritten notebooks, Hur wrote the “evidence shows convincingly” that Biden knew they contained classified information, pointing to his years in government service and subsequent familiarity with protocols of handling classified material as well as his comments to the ghostwriter to be careful because the entries he was reading aloud may be classified.
But Hur said the evidence wouldn’t “meet the government’s burden at trial.” The special counsel expected Biden’s defense would focus on his understanding his notebooks (which contained notes about official meetings but also personal details, like “gut-wrenching” entries about his son Beau’s death) were his own personal property, as was the case of Ronald Reagan’s diaries, and that “enough evidence supports this defense to establish reasonable doubt.”
Disclosure of classified information
This portion of the report focuses heavily on Biden’s conversations with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, as they worked on his memoir “Promise Me, Dad.”
Hur stated that their investigation found Biden read near-verbatim entries from his notebooks containing classified information to Zwonitzer on three occasions, according to tape recordings and transcripts obtained from Zwonitzer. Two of those times he read notes of a meeting that occurred in the Situation Room in 2015.
The third time, the report said, Biden read an entry recounting a National Security Council meeting that occurred in 2014. During this conversation, Biden warned Zwonitzer some of the information may be classified, but he also stressed he was “not sure.”
“Mr. Biden should have known that by reading his unfiltered notes about classified meetings in the Situation Room, he risked sharing classified information with his ghostwriter,” Hur wrote. “But the evidence does not show that when Mr. Biden shared the specific passages with his ghostwriter, Mr. Biden knew the passages were classified and intended to share classified information.”
Hur also noted there is no classified material in the published memoir.
Biden’s mental acuity
Sprinkled throughout the report are references to Biden’s state of mind.
These are among the most controversial aspects of the report. Hur’s critics call them “gratuitous” while his supporters say they are part of establishing Biden’s intent and whether he acted willfully.
The White House and some legal experts have suggested that language was politically motivated, stating conclusions only a medical professional was qualified to make.
In his executive summary, Hur described Biden’s memory as being “significantly limited” both in his five hours of interview with the special counsel in October 2023 and in his conversations with his ghostwriter in 2017.
Later, Hur wrote that Biden’s memory in the interview was “worse.” According to the special counsel, Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”
The special counsel continued: “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” and “his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”
Biden, choking back emotion, responded to the detail about Beau’s death in his news conference last week.
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden said, telling reporters that his first reaction to the question was that it was none of Hur’s business. It’s not clear, based on Hur’s report, how Beau came up as a topic in their interview.
But at another point in the report, Hur wrote that Biden’s state of mind when it came to his handwritten notebooks was “compelling” and “clear, forceful testimony.”
Biden’s attorneys highlighted the apparent “contrast” in a letter written to Hur ahead of the report’s release.
“The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events,” Richard Sauber and Bob Bauer wrote to Hur.
“You refer to President Biden’s memory on at least nine occasions — a number that is itself gratuitous. But even among those nine instances, your report varies,” they wrote. “It is one thing to observe President Biden’s memory as being ‘significantly limited’ on certain subjects. It is quite another to use the more sweeping and highly prejudicial language employed later in the report. This language is not supported by the facts, nor is it appropriately used by a federal prosecutor in this context.”
Hur and the Justice Department have yet to respond publicly to the criticism.
The context could become clearer, and questions answered, if House Republicans succeed in their demands for transcripts and audio recordings of Biden’s interview.
Hur is set to testify publicly at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on March 12, sources told ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel Robert Hur is scheduled to testify in a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, according to sources familiar with the matter.
It comes after House Republicans requested his testimony earlier this week, in addition to requests for audio recordings and transcripts related to Hur’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified material.
The yearlong probe came to an end with no charges. Hur, in a 388-page report released last week, said he was declining to recommend a prosecution as he found evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information insufficient to bring charges and get a conviction.
But at the same time, Hur painted a dim picture of the president — one that his political opponents immediately seized on — as an elderly man with memory issues.
The White House has forcefully pushed back on many assertions made in the report, including those related to Biden’s mental acuity.
House Republicans have also asked the Department of Justice to release the full transcripts and recordings of Hur’s interviews with Biden.
The House Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees said the documents were needed for their impeachment inquiry into Biden.
In a letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the committee chairs claimed Biden, among other things, “may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings.”
(WASHINGTON) — National security adviser Jake Sullivan was headed to Capitol Hill Thursday to brief House members of the “Gang of 8” congressional leaders on what ABC News first reported, citing sources, was intelligence relating to Russia’s desire to put a nuclear weapon into space to use against satellites.
White House spokesman John Kirby confirmed Thursday that the intelligence is related to what he called “an anti-satellite capability” he said was still being developed by Russia, but declined to answer whether that system would be considered a nuclear weapon or nuclear capable.
“First, this is not an active capability that’s been deployed. And though Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is troubling, there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” Kirby said. “We’re not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth.”
Kirby said Thursday the U.S. has had general knowledge of Russia’s pursuit of such capabilities for “many months, if not a few years” but said only recently has the intelligence community been able to “assess with a higher sense of confidence exactly how Russia continues to pursue it.”
Kirby said the administration is taking the potential threat “very seriously” and is taking steps to inform lawmakers as well as allies around the world.
“Nothing is more important to President Biden and the safety and security of the American people,” Kirby said. “That’s his top priority and it’s going to remain front and center as we continue to determine the next best steps.”
But he said they had “serious concerns” about a broad declassification of the intelligence as has been requested by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner.
Turner on Wednesday first warned of a “national security threat” related to a “destabilizing foreign military capability.” Turner called on President Biden to declassify all information related to the threat.
The statement appeared to catch the White House off guard. Sullivan told reporters the administration had already scheduled Thursday’s classified briefing before Turner made his announcement.
The Senate members of the “Gang of 8” will be briefed when they are back in session Feb. 25, Kirby said, adding that the administration did not give a “green light” for Turner to make the information public Wednesday but had planned to “share it with the American people” at an “appropriate” point.
Russia, in response, has cast the situation as an attempt by the Biden administration to get lawmakers to pass additional aid to Ukraine that’s stalled in Congress.
“I can’t comment on it in any way,” Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, told reporters on Thursday. “Let’s wait for this briefing by [Jake Sullivan], whether there will be any information. But it is obvious that the White House is trying, by hook or by crook, to encourage Congress to vote on a bill to allocate money, this is obvious. We’ll see what tricks the White House will use.”
Some have criticized Turner for going public in the first place. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., on Thursday requested Speaker Mike Johnson launch an inquiry into Turner’s statement.
“This revelation by the chairman was done with a reckless disregard of the implications and consequences said information would have on geopolitics, domestic and foreign markets, or the well-being and psyche of the American people,” Ogles said in his letter to Johnson.
Turner did not give the speaker’s office a heads-up prior to releasing warning of a “serious national security threat,” a source familiar told ABC News.
Ogles added, “In hindsight, it has become clear that the intent was not to ensure the safety of our homeland and the American people, but rather to ensure additional funding for Ukraine and passage of an unreformed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This act constituted poor judgment at a minimum and a complete breach of trust influenced by the pursuit of a political agenda at a maximum.”
Amid the backlash, Turner contended he “worked in consultation” with the Biden administration on the notification he sent to members of Congress informing them of the intelligence. However, the notification sent to members of Congress is not the same as his statement released to the general public about the threat.
“If there’s a presumption here that somehow the administration gave a green light for this information to get public yesterday, that is false,” Kirby said. “That is not true.”
“We were eventually going to get to a point where we were going to be able to share it with the American people, and we still will, as appropriate,”Kirby continued. “Now’s not that time for us to go into any more detail than this.”
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump’s remarks over the weekend that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that fail to meet defense spending guidelines have raised a lot of questions and drew rebuke from the White House and NATO’s leader.
“You don’t pay your bills, you get no protection. It’s very simple,” he said at a campaign event in Conway, South Carolina.
While multiple Republican senators backed Trump’s remarks, President Joe Biden called Trump’s comments “shocking” and “un-American,” adding that the commitment to NATO is “sacred.”
Trump’s comments put the safety of U.S. troops and their allies at risk, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.
The Republican presidential front-runner’s remarks raised questions about NATO’s guidelines on defense spendings and how much each ally country contributes to NATO’s military efforts.
NATO data show that almost all allies are expected to meet the defense spending guidelines in 2024 — contrary to Trump’s comments.
What is NATO and who are its members?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, is a political and military alliance formed in 1949 in the aftermath of World War II. Started with only 12 members, the alliance expanded to 31 nations and now includes European countries such as Turkey and Iceland, Canada and the U.S.
One of the prominent clauses of NATO’s treaty is Article 5, which deals with collective defense, which says that any attack on a member country is an attack on all of the countries in the alliance, according to its website. Article 5, which is not enforced automatically, but requires agreements from all allies, was invoked only once after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
How does NATO fund its defense?
NATO allies choose to contribute troops and funding to the alliance; how much each country would spend on its defense is voluntary. However, the nations set defense spending standards and guidelines for themselves to ensure the alliance’s military preparedness, according to NATO’s website.
NATO leaders pledged in 2014 to commit at least 2% of their gross domestic product to defense spending, in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and instabilities in the Middle East. The agreement was renewed in 2023, NATO said on its website.
These are not funds that countries would pay to NATO, but contributions to their own military budgets. The alliance doesn’t have its own army and its military protections are insured by member countries, according to NATO’s website.
In addition, the countries agree to dedicate 20% of the defense budget to equipment expenses, including research and development, to keep up with modernization in the military field, according to the funding section on NATO’s website.
Which NATO countries meet those guidelines?
Only 11 of the 31 nations were predicted to spend more than 2% of their GDP on defense in 2023, according to NATO estimates published in July. Almost a decade ago, only three countries met that mark.
Even more NATO countries are estimated to meet the 2% threshold in 2024. All European allies are expected to spend 2% of the GDP in 2024 for the first time ever, Stoltenberg said.
Ahead of a Thursday meeting between NATO defense ministers, Stoltenberg released the latest spending numbers, which he called an “unprecedented rise.”
“We are making real progress: European Allies are spending more,” he said in the release. “However, some Allies still have a ways to go.”
In addition to reaching the 2% threshold, all the NATO countries spent more than 20% of their estimated 2023 defense budgets on equipment, meeting that guideline from the 2014 agreement.
How much does the U.S. contribute to NATO’s defense?
The U.S. was estimated to spend 3.49% of its GDP in 2023 on defense, which is roughly $860 million. Poland comes in first with 3.9% — more than $29 million. The only other country estimated to pass the 3% mark was Greece, with more than $7 million.
The U.S. allocates almost twice as much of its GDP — $860 million — as European allies and Canada do together — roughly $404 million. The U.S. contribution makes up two thirds of the total NATO defense expenditures. This has been the case since the alliance was founded. U.S. defense spending also saw a major increase after the 9/11 attacks.
The other top contributors are Germany and the United Kingdom, with each making up more than 5% of total NATO defense spending. While the U.K has allocated more than 2% of its GDP in the last two decades to military spendings, Germany falls below the 2%.
(WASHINGTON) — New reporting about intelligence related to Russia wanting to put a nuclear weapon into space, possibly to use against satellites, raises key questions about the country’s intentions and the potential ramifications of an orbital detonation.
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 — signed by Russia, the U.S. and numerous other countries — technically still bans putting any weapons of mass destruction in outer space, including nuclear arms.
One question appears to be what Russia might be considering deploying that falls short of that ban.
At the same time, Russia has broken from other nuclear agreements: Russian President Vladimir Putin said early last year that the country was suspending its participation in the New START treaty, first signed in 2010 and extended in 2021, which implements caps on the number of nuclear weapons deployed by Russia and the U.S. and inspections of nuclear sites.
Russia, along with the U.S. and China, has also used missiles to destroy its own satellites before. The U.S. did so in 2008, with a ship-based interceptor missile, and Russia did it in 2021 to take out an aging satellite.
Space experts warn against using missiles to take out satellites because it creates voluminous debris in space that could hurt other key vessels like weather satellites and satellites powering communication networks.
But there’s another worry: Could a nuclear effect be triggered to paralyze a constellation of satellites, such as communications satellites?
“These systemic threats … merit further consideration,” notes one assessment from the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, which warned of digital vulnerabilities as well: “Cyberattacks against a constellation’s control systems or nuclear detonations in space could disable many satellites at once.”
The CSIS assessment noted, too, that a “growing density of space debris” was “an additional cause for concern, and one that is increasingly difficult to mitigate.”
Both the White House and lawmakers on Wednesday sought to allay public concerns about the intelligence regarding Russia — which first became public after House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner warned of a “national security threat” related to a “destabilizing foreign military capability.”
“We are going to work together to address this matter, as we do all sensitive matters that are classified,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.
“But we just want to assure everyone steady hands are at the wheel,” he said.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a Get Out The Vote campaign rally held at the North Charleston in Charleston, S.C. on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump reacted to Russian President Vladimir Putin saying he prefers President Joe Biden over Trump because Biden is “more experienced” and “more predictable,” is a “great compliment.”
“President Putin of Russia has just given me a great compliment, actually,” Trump said at a campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday.
“He just said that he would much rather have Joe Biden as president than Trump,” he continued. “Now that’s a compliment. A lot of people said, ‘Oh, gee, that’s too bad.’ No, no, that’s a good thing. And of course, he would say that.”
The latest Trump comment comes on the heels of him recently saying at a previous rally in South Carolina that he’d “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to foreign allies of the United States that don’t pay their “fair share” of defense funding — receiving backlash from some critics.
Trump’s latest comment was in response to Putin’s comments during an interview with a correspondent of Russian state television, in which he reportedly said he believes Biden getting reelected would be a better choice for Russia’s interest — though he added he will work with any U.S. leader.
At the North Charleston rally, Trump said it’s a given Putin would prefer Biden’s victory because he himself put a break on Russia’s interest while he was president, especially on the construction of Nord Stream 2, a controversial German-Russian pipeline, which would have carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.
“I stopped Nord Stream 2, and [Biden] approved it right after I left, so Putin is not a fan of mine actually,” Trump said, referring to his role as president in halting the construction of the pipeline by imposing sanctions on it, and Biden’s subsequent waiver of sanctions on the pipeline, which critics believed would give Russia an energy dominance over Europe.
“He doesn’t want to have me. He wants Biden because he’s going to be given everything he wants, including Ukraine,” Trump claimed of Putin and Biden’s relationship. “He’s gonna have his dream of getting Ukraine because of Biden … The only president in the last five that hasn’t given Russia anything is a president known as Donald J. Trump.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly touted a good relationship with Putin, calling him “smart” and claiming if he had gotten reelected, the ongoing Ukraine-Russian war would not have happened.
But Trump has also recently taken some heat for suggesting he’d “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies that don’t contribute their ”fair share” for NATO — a comment Trump’s allies say was a joke.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, Will you protect us?’” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina over the weekend. “I said, you didn’t pay, you’re delinquent … No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”
At his rally in North Charleston on Wednesday, Trump doubled down on the idea of not protecting NATO allies that don’t pay their “fair share” but didn’t go as far as to say he’d “encourage” Russia to attack them.
“One of the heads of the country stood up and said, does that mean that if we don’t pay the bills, that you’re not going to protect us? I said, ‘That’s exactly what it means.’ I’m not going to protect you,” Trump said.
In response to Trump’s doubling down on his NATO comments at the North Charleston rally, South Carolina, the Biden-Harris campaign said he gave Putin the best Valentine’s Day present: permissions to “mow down” American allies.
“Donald Trump just gave Vladimir Putin the best possible Valentine’s Day present: his pinky-promise to give Putin the green light to mow down our allies in Europe if he’s elected president,” the campaign said.
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel Jack Smith filed a brief Wednesday urging the Supreme Court to deny former President Donald Trump’s request to stay his federal election subversion case from moving forward as Trump appeals his claim that he should be immune from prosecution.
In the filing, Smith requested if the Supreme Court does intend to hear Trump’s appeal that they grant the review now and go into an expedited briefing schedule that would have them issue their ruling during this term.
“The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy. A President’s alleged criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transfer of power to his successor should be the last place to recognize a novel form of absolute immunity from federal criminal law,” Smith’s team said in the filing.
“Applicant seeks a stay to prevent proceedings in the district court from moving towards trial, which the district court had scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024, before applicant’s interlocutory appeal necessitated postponement of that date. Applicant cannot show, as he must to merit a stay, a fair prospect of success in this Court,” the filing continued.
The Supreme Court had asked for the special counsel to file his response by the afternoon of Feb. 20.
After that filing, Trump’s legal team will get a chance to file a reply, after which the court can act on Trump’s request at any time, at its discretion.
Trump pleaded not guilty to charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in August and is seeking the dismissal of the case on the grounds that he has “absolute immunity” from prosecution for actions taken while serving in the nation’s highest office.
Last week, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, clearing the way for Trump to seek to appeal the issue to the Supreme Court.
