21 February 22
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21 February 22
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Flurry of phone calls by French president leads to ‘in principle agreement’, as US warns war is imminent
The Élysée Palace put out a statement on Sunday evening following last-minute diplomatic efforts by the French president to try to dissuade Russia from invading Ukraine.
“Presidents Biden and Putin have each accepted the principle of such a summit,” the statement said. “Its content will be prepared by secretary of state Blinken and Minister [Sergei] Lavrov during their meeting on Thursday 24 February. It can only be held if Russia does not invade Ukraine.”
The White House confirmed Biden’s readiness to hold a summit, but made clear it was wary about the sincerity of the offer.
“President Biden accepted in principle a meeting with President Putin following that engagement, again, if an invasion hasn’t happened, the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said. “We are always ready for diplomacy. We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war. And currently, Russia appears to be continuing preparations for a full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon.”
There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin or the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Macron spoke twice to Vladimir Putin overnight, for a total of nearly three hours, consulting Joe Biden for 15 minutes in between the two calls. Amid a rising sense of urgency, the second Macron-Putin call was announced well after 2am in Moscow.
The French president said he was seeking to establish a cease-fire in the east of the country, and that the two leaders had agreed to hold discussions in the hope of organising a leaders’ summit to review the future of European security arrangements. But the Kremlin account of the conversation focused on Putin’s allegations of Ukrainian escalation and shelling on the eastern front lines – claims contradicted by reports from the region. It did not respond to an offer of direct talks from Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president.
Moscow rescinded its undertaking to end military exercises in Belarus which were due to conclude on Sunday, and the Belarus defence ministry said the Russian troops would remain there indefinitely. Satellite images showed more and more Russian combat units advance from staging area to within a few kilometres of the Ukrainian border, in many cases concealing themselves in forests. More than 150,000 Russian troops are estimated to be deployed around Ukraine, while substantial naval forces are off its Black Sea coast.
Biden had been planning to travel to Delaware for a family event on Monday, a public holiday in the US, but canceled the trip on Sunday evening following a rare Sunday meeting of the national security council. US news networks cited intelligence assessment saying that Moscow had issued attack orders to commanders on the ground.
The US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, said: “Everything we are seeing suggests that this is dead serious, that we are on the brink of an invasion.”.
He added: “...Until the tanks are actually rolling, and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President (Vladimir) Putin from carrying this forward.”
Earlier, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who also spoke to Macron on Sunday, warned that Russia plans to launch the biggest war in Europe since 1945 by attacking Ukraine in a “bloody and protracted conflict”. He said the west would use “all the pressure we can bring” to “make sure that this venture does not succeed”.
The chink of diplomatic light came after Putin spoke on the phone with Macron, his favoured western interlocutor, on Sunday morning, and the outcome, broadly confirmed by the Kremlin, suggests Putin might be willing to step back from the brink of a full invasion of Ukraine to allow renewed diplomatic discussions. If he is not, he is instead involved in an elaborate deceit of the French.
Under the plan, the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, will meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Thursday to work on the possible summit at the highest level with Russia, Ukraine and allies, the Élysée said.
The two leaders also agreed to resume work on a separate meeting “within the framework of the Normandy format”, meaning the participants will be Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, Macron’s office and the Kremlin said.
Putin and Macron would also work “intensively” to allow the Trilateral Contact Group – which includes Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – to meet “in the next few hours” in an effort to secure a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine where government troops and pro-Russian separatists are facing each other, according to the Elysée statement.
It is too early to say if Macron has pulled off a last-minute diplomatic coup, or if he will have the full support for his initiative from London. So far, most of the French president’s diplomatic moves have been coordinated with the White House.
Gérard Araud, a former French diplomat, defended Macron, saying: “he is today the only western leader actively engaged in finding a peaceful way out of the current crisis. He does know that he may fail, and probably will, but he is right to try, and deserves our support and understanding.”
The Élysée statement said “intense diplomatic work will take place in the coming days”, including several consultations in the French capital, adding that the two leaders also agreed on “the need to favour a diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis and to do everything to achieve one”.
An Élysée official confirmed further talks between the two leaders were scheduled, but said Putin and Macron clearly had “different interpretations” of what was happening in the Donbas region and who was to blame, with the French president arguing that pro-Russian separatists were responsible, and the Russian leader insisting it was Ukrainian forces.
The Élysée official said Macron would be talking “in the next few hours” to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Further calls were likely to be placed to Johnson, the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, and other close partners, the official said.
They added that Putin had reiterated that Russia “intends to withdraw its troops” from Belarus once ongoing exercises were complete. “All this will have to be verified, and that could take some time,” the official said, noting that statements by the Belarus authorities “do not appear to match Putin’s words”.
The Belarusian defence minister said Russia and Belarus were extending military drills that were due to end on Sunday, in a step that further intensifies pressure on Ukraine.
The Kremlin said that in the phone call, Putin had expressed serious concern over the sharp deterioration of the situation on the line of contact in Donbas.
The Russian statement added: “Taking into account the acuteness of the current state of affairs, the presidents considered it expedient to intensify the search for solutions through diplomatic means through the foreign ministries and political advisers to the leaders of the countries participating in the Normandy format. These contacts are designed to help restore the ceasefire and ensure progress in resolving the conflict around Donbas.”
The Kremlin insisted Putin was not withdrawing any of his wider demands, saying he “reiterated the need for the United States and Nato to take Russian demands for security guarantees seriously and respond to them concretely and to the point”. It made no reference to Macron’s proposed leaders’ summit.
The statement added that Putin blamed the escalation in Donbas on the provocations of the Ukrainian security forces, and that he complained of the continuing provision of modern weapons and ammunition to Ukraine by Nato countries, “which is pushing Kyiv towards a military solution to the so-called Donbas problem”.
Members of the Azov Battalion take part in a march in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 14, 2020. (photo: STR/Getty Images)
Top foreign policymaker Sen. Bob Menendez couldn’t say whether his bill would monitor where U.S.-funded arms end up.
Last month, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., introduced legislation to give Ukraine $500 million for arms purchases and impose what he’s called the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia if it invades. The bill mandates a number of reports on U.S. defense equipment transfers and Russian intelligence threats as well as the expansion of American news propaganda. But it makes no mention of reports to oversee whether U.S weapons go to white supremacists like the Azov Battalion, a unit in the Ukrainian National Guard with ties to the country’s far-right, ultranationalist National Corps party and Azov movement. Last year, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to label the Azov Battalion a foreign terrorist organization, saying it “uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda.”
The issue was not on Menendez’s radar Wednesday. “That’s a level of detail I’m not sure [about],” he told The Intercept when asked if his bill includes monitoring provisions. By Friday morning, bipartisan talks for a joint sanctions and weapons bill had broken down, frustrating members of Congress who seek to assert themselves into the foreign policymaking process narrowing the White House’s diplomatic tool set if Russia invades. Menendez, whose bill remains on the table, told reporters Wednesday that his door is still open to Republicans to come up with legislation together. Meanwhile, Ukraine has already received tons of ammunition and weapons from the U.S.
Menendez is the Democrats’ most powerful foreign policymaker in the Senate, and his stance appears to reflect the dominant mood in Washington. Russia issued a statement Thursday saying that the U.S. has not provided security guarantees in response to a draft treaty, and the U.S. alleged that Russia lied about withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border. Menendez’s pursuit of mandatory sanctions on Russia and weapons funding for Ukraine is in line with the foreign policy establishment’s hawkish posture.
And Menendez isn’t the only member of Congress who appears unconcerned that U.S.-funded weapons could fall into the wrong hands. “I’m not considering any of that right now,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe and regional security cooperation.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, told The Intercept that the U.S. “should certainly monitor and scrutinize the way those arms or weapons are used.” However, “our main goal is to aid the Ukrainians in their defense.”
Past reporting shows that the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient procedures in place to track where its arms are going and prevent them from ending up with extremists. What’s known as the “Leahy vetting” process is supposed to certify whether foreign forces have committed “gross human rights violations” before greenlighting U.S. government support. But that proved ineffective in making sure that neo-Nazis in the Azov Battalion weren’t receiving U.S. training, the Daily Beast reported in 2015.
Congress has also passed measures, signed into law repeatedly since 2018, forbidding funds from going to arms and training for the Azov Battalion. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a defense bill that included an amendment sponsored by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., to vet forces receiving U.S. military assistance for violent ideologies, “including those that are white identity terrorist, anti-semitic, or islamophobic.” But when the bill reached the Senate, Tlaib’s amendment was stripped from the final version during negotiations. Meanwhile, Ukrainian-American researcher Oleksiy Kuzmenko reported in September that officers belonging to an informal right-wing group called Military Order Centuria, which has ties to the international Azov movement, have trained at a Western-backed military institution.
Menendez and Shaheen appeared unaware of past failures to enforce the law against funding the Azov Battalion.
“I think that any of our arms sales always have conditions, or even our arms transfers have conditions, and so I’m sure the [Defense Department] would have conditions to make sure that they are headed to Ukrainian armed forces, not to others,” Menendez said.
“But there’s always a risk if you have an invasion and others take over, there’s always a risk that anywhere in the world that arms can be used by someone else,” he added, despite evidence that neo-Nazis already exist in the Ukrainian military.
Shaheen, for her part, said that she’s not considering provisions to keep an eye on arms because “the administration has already approved weapons to Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, as Senate Democrats and Republicans debate a strategy toward Eastern Europe moving forward, Ukraine has already received from Lithuania Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the small, lightweight weapons that the U.S. famously armed the mujahideen with during the 1980s war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom along with several elected officials, met with the media at Del Mar Fairgrounds on Friday, Feb. 18, 2022, in Del Mar, Calif., where he backed state legislation that would allow for private citizens to enforce the state's ban on assault weapons. (photo: Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune/AP)
At a news conference in the coastal town of Del Mar, north of San Diego, Newsom said he thought the Texas law was wrong and the Supreme Court’s decision in December to let it stay in effect while it’s appealed was “absurd” and “outrageous.”
“But they opened up the door. They set the tone, tenor, the rules. And either we can be on the defense complaining about it or we can play by those rules. We are going to play by those rules,” Newsom said. He later added: “We’ll see how principled the U.S. Supreme Court is.”
The unique Texas law, approved last year, bans all abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. The law does not let the government enforce it. Instead, private citizens can sue abortion providers or anyone who “aids and abets” the procedure.
The theory is that because the government can't enforce the law, then abortion advocates can't sue the state to block it. That makes it much harder to challenge in court.
A bill in the California Legislature unveiled Friday would do the same thing. But instead of abortion providers, it would let people sue gun-makers and others who sell, make or distribute assault-style guns in the state.
California has banned the sale and manufacture of many assault-style guns for decades. But last year, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez overturned that law, ruling it was unconstitutional while comparing an AR-15 rifle to a Swiss Army knife as “good for both home and battle.” The ruling incensed Newsom and he vowed to fight back.
California's proposed legislation is exactly what gun rights groups feared would happen if the Supreme Court allowed the Texas law to stay in effect. That's why the Firearms Policy Coalition opposed that law at the high court. The group said Friday it would go to court if necessary to block the California proposal.
The restrictions, the group said, are “really just modern-day Jim Crow laws designed to suppress the exercise of human rights the tyrants who run California don’t like."
Newsom and his Democratic allies in the state Legislature are convinced the U.S. Supreme Court would have to uphold their gun proposal if it allows the Texas abortion law to stand. But it might not be that simple.
The U.S. Constitution specifically says people have a right to bear arms, and the Supreme Court has interpreted that broadly. The right to an abortion is not specifically protected in the Constitution. But the court has recognized lots of other protections that aren't explicitly stated in the Constitution.
Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University, said she believed if the conservative court majority could find a way to distinguish between the Texas law and the California proposal, they will.
“I think it will be a real test of this court’s principles about how they regard a law like that that basically does exactly what (the Texas law) did only in the context of assault weapons,” she said.
California law defines assault weapons as semiautomatic rifles or pistols that have a variety of functions. The bill would let people seek a court order to stop the spread of these weapons and recover a minimum of $10,000 in damages for each weapon, plus attorney’s fees.
California’s bill, authored by Democratic state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, is not yet available on the state’s website. But a fact sheet provided by Hertzberg’s office said the bill would apply to those who manufacture, distribute, transport, import into California, or sell assault weapons, .50 BMG rifles or “ghost guns” — untraceable weapons that can be bought online and assembled at home.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, said he believed the bill's true purpose is to ban guns altogether in California.
“There’s no question that it would put some of the smaller mom-and-pop gun stores out of business if they were challenged in court. They don’t have the resources to defend themselves, even if they are not guilty,” he said. “This will have a huge chilling effect, and that’s their intent."
The bill is one of four pieces of legislation targeting the gun industry in California. The other bills would make it illegal to market assault weapons to children, crack down on ghost guns and make it easier for people to sue gun manufacturers for liability in shootings.
Earlier this week the families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut announced they have agreed to a $73 million settlement of a lawsuit against Remington, the maker of the rifle used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in 2012. The case was watched because of its potential to provide a roadmap for victims of other shootings to sue firearm-makers.
California Democratic Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, introduced AB 2571, which would limit the type of firearms advertising and marketing that can be geared toward children. She and Newsom said the gun industry is using social media and children’s books, mascots, apparel and guns decorated to appeal to kids.
They specifically criticized a company called Wee1 Tactical, which markets the JR-15, patterned after the popular adult AR-15 assault-style semi-automatic rifle.
The company’s website says its goal is to “safely help adults introduce children to the shooting sports.” The company’s logo is a skull sucking on a baby pacifier and it is on hats, shirts, patches and stickers.
“How the hell did they think that’s OK?” Newsom asked.
The company did not immediately respond to a telephone message and email seeking comment.
'So it does appear to be more transmissible. Does it result in a more severe illness? I think the jury's out on that.' (photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: More Contagious Version of
Omicron Spreads in US, Fueling Worries
Simply put, how concerned should we be about the spread of BA.2 in the United States?
I guess it’s worth asking whether one of these Omicron subvariants is likely going to grow and become more common in the United States. I think that is very likely, that the Omicron subvariant BA.2 will continue to gain ground and possibly even replace the current virus population, though that remains to be determined.
It also remains to be seen whether this variant is fundamentally different in terms of what matters to patients, which is: Is it more transmissible, is it more severe, and does it escape vaccines?
Let’s look at those three, then.
For transmissibility, it does appear to be gaining ground in a population in which there’s a lot of Omicron virus circulating. So it does appear to be more transmissible. Does it result in a more severe illness? I think the jury’s out on that. I’m not aware of any clinical data that shows it’s more severe. Where it’s taken over as the dominant variant, like in South Africa, it doesn’t appear to be causing the same sort of hospitalization and death rate that Delta caused a number of months ago. So I would say that it’s not clear that it’s more severe and so far it looks like it’s clinically, relatively similar, but there’s very little information.
There was a preprint that came out this week in Japan suggesting that BA.2 could be more severe, but it was done in hamsters.
When I say clinical data I’m specifically referring to humans. Population studies of humans. I’m aware of the preprint from Japan and the laboratory model and animal models have some limitations to them. For example, Omicron BA.1 is actually very mild in hamsters. But I would argue that human clinical data is probably the most relevant here.
Fair enough. But how effective does BA.2 appear to be at escaping vaccines?
In our preprint, which is under review at a major journal, we looked at Pfizer-vaccinated individuals as well as a cohort of Omicron-infected individuals. Similar to with BA.1, there was very little neutralization prior to a third boost of Pfizer. But after a third boost, neutralizing antibody titers [a test that measures the level of antibodies in a blood sample] came up strongly to both BA.1 and BA.2, still at substantially lower levels than the vaccine-matched strain. The neutralization titers between BA.1 and BA.2 were relatively similar. In our hands, there’s a slight trend toward lowering antibody titers against BA.2 about 1.3-to-1.4-fold.
That’s a relatively minor difference; overall, we found that antibody responses to BA.2 were roughly comparable, trending slightly lower, but roughly comparable to BA.1. That was true in vaccinated individuals and in people who were infected with Omicron BA.1. Those two data sets suggest that Omicron BA.2 does evade vaccines but to a similar extent, not a greater extent as Omicron BA.1. Also it shows that people who are vaccinated and then infected with BA.1 have high neutralizing antibody titers against BA.2, suggesting there would be a substantial degree of cross-reactive natural immunity as well.
Could you explain what makes BA.2 more transmissible?
I can’t because I don’t know. There are a lot of mutations that are similar between BA.1 and BA.2, but each one has a lot of separate mutations and the biology of each one of those mutations is not yet fully known. So I don’t believe we know exactly why BA.2 appears to be more transmissible than BA.1. It does make sense that there’s so many mutations on BA.1 that it may not be optimized for human transmission. It makes sense that when something fundamentally different arrives, there might be further iterations that make it more adaptive to human populations. So I’m not surprised that there’s variants and subvariants of Omicron that are slightly or somewhat better in different regards. This one, according to our data, appears to have relatively similar immunological properties to BA.1.
So does that assuage any fears of another massive wave like with Omicron 1.0?
I can’t predict whether it will be a new surge or not, but it’s probably going to be driven more by increased transmissibility. It has similar, not fundamentally greater, ability to evade vaccines. The ability of BA.2 to become more dominant than BA.1 in certain populations appears to be more due to its increased transmissibility rather than some sort of brand-new immune escape from vaccines.
What do you think about the decision to drop mask mandates in New York and California just as BA.2 appears to be making inroads?
Overall, the Omicron surge is coming down. We’ll have to monitor very closely whether one of these subvariants will lead to an uptick in infections. I do agree that what’s most important is hospitalizations and deaths; the case numbers are not as important as the numbers of severally ill people. But I think that people are weary, people have pandemic fatigue, it’s definitely going in a better direction now than it was a couple months ago. But we have to be vigilant with testing and making sure that as we start to roll back pandemic restrictions, we don’t see a new surge in cases, particularly not severe cases.
It’s the next chapter of the pandemic. It’s probably not a completely different chapter; it’s probably a subsection of the Omicron chapter.
Mark Finchem has received Donald Trump's endorsement in the race for secretary of state in Arizona. (photo: Rachel Mummey/Reuters)
Mark Finchem, a supporter of the ex-president’s ‘big lie’ about the 2020 election, could soon oversee voting in the state
Former US presidents usually reserve their most gushing praise – replete with Capital Letters – for global allies or people they are promoting for high office. A candidate for the US Senate, perhaps, or someone vying to become governor of one of the biggest states.
Trump by contrast was heaping plaudits on an individual running for an elected post that a year ago most people had never heard of, let alone cared about. He was endorsing Mark Finchem, a Republican lawmaker from Tucson, in his bid to become Arizona’s secretary of state.
Until Trump’s endorsement, Finchem, like the relatively obscure position for which he is now standing, was scarcely known outside politically informed Arizona circles. Today he is a celebrity on the “Save America” circuit, one of a coterie of local politicians who have been thrown into the national spotlight by Trump as he lays the foundations for a possible ground attack on democracy in the 2024 presidential election.
The role of secretary of state is critical to the smooth workings and integrity of elections in many states, Arizona included. The post holder is the chief election officer, with powers to certify election results, vet the legal status of candidates and approve infrastructure such as voting machines.
In short, they are in charge of conducting and counting the vote.
About three weeks after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election – and on the same day that Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in Arizona was certified – Finchem hosted Rudy Giuliani at a downtown Phoenix hotel. Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, announced a new theory for why the result should be overturned: that Biden had relied on fraudulent votes from among the 5 million undocumented immigrants living in the state – a striking number given that Arizona only has a total of 7 million residents.
Two weeks after that, Finchem was among 30 Republican lawmakers in Arizona who signed a joint resolution. It called on Congress to block the state’s 11 electoral college votes for Biden and instead accept “the alternate 11 electoral votes for Donald J Trump”.
Finchem was present in Washington on 6 January 2021, the day that hundreds of angry Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people with 140 police officers injured. He had come to speak at a planned “Stop the Steal” rally, later cancelled, to spread the “big lie” that the election had been rigged.
Communications between Finchem and the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally earned the lawmaker a knock on the door from the January 6 committee this week. The powerful congressional investigation into the insurrection issued a subpoena for him to appear before the panel and to hand over documents relating to the effort to subvert democracy.
Finchem will have to answer to the committee for what he did in the wake of the 2020 election, or face legal consequences. But there’s a more disconcerting question thrown up by his candidacy for secretary of state: were he to win the position, would he be willing and able to overturn the result of the 2024 presidential election in Arizona, potentially paving the way for a political coup?
“Someone who wants to dismantle, disrupt and completely destroy democracy is running to be our state’s top election officer,” said Reginald Bolding, the Democratic minority leader in the Arizona House who is running against Finchem in the secretary of state race. “That should terrify not just Arizona, but the entire nation.”
Trump has so far endorsed three secretary of state candidates in this year’s election cycle, and Finchem is arguably the most controversial of the bunch. (The other two are Jody Hice in Georgia and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.)
Originally from Kalamazoo in Michigan, he spent 21 years as a public safety officer before retiring to Tucson and setting up his own small business. In 2014 he was elected to the Arizona legislature, representing Oro Valley.
Even before Finchem was inaugurated as a lawmaker, he was stirring up controversy. On the campaign trail in 2014, he announced that he was “an Oath Keeper committed to the exercise of limited, constitutional governance”.
The Oath Keepers are a militia group with a list of 25,000 current or past members, many from military or law enforcement backgrounds. They have been heavily implicated in the January 6 insurrection.
The founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, and nine co-defendants are facing trial for seditious conspiracy based on allegations that they meticulously planned an armed attack on the heart of American democracy.
Finchem entered the Arizona legislature in January 2015 and soon was carving out a colourful reputation. With his bushy moustache, cowboy hat and boots, and offbeat political views, his hometown news outlet Tucson Weekly dubbed him “one of the nuttier lawmakers” in the state.
Bolding, who entered the legislature at the same time as Finchem, remembers being called into his office soon after they both started. “He wanted to show me a map of how Isis and other terrorist groups were pouring over the border with Mexico to invade the United States,” Bolding told the Guardian.
One of the first measures sponsored by Finchem reduced state taxes on gold coins on the basis that they were “legal tender”. He then introduced legislation that would have imposed a “code of ethics” on teachers – a “gag law” as some decried it – that would have restricted learning in class.
The nine-point code was later revealed to have been cut and pasted from a campaign calling itself “Stop K-12 Indoctrination” backed by the far-right Muslim-bashing David Horowitz Freedom Center.
“In essence he wanted a pledge of fealty from teachers that they wouldn’t discuss ‘anti-American’ subjects,” said Jake Dean, who has reported on Finchem for the Tucson Weekly.
It was not until Trump began to fire up his supporters with his big lie about the 2020 election that Finchem truly found his political voice. The state lawmaker was a key advocate of the self-proclaimed “audit” of votes in Maricopa county carried out by Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that spent six months scavenging for proof of election fraud and failed to produce any.
To this day no credible evidence of major fraud in the 2020 election has been presented, yet Finchem continues to beat that drum. Last month he told a Trump rally in Florence, Arizona: “We know it, and they know it. Donald Trump won.”
In his latest ruse, Finchem this month introduced a new bill, HCR2033, which seeks to decertify the 2020 election results in Arizona’s three largest counties. There is no legal mechanism for decertifying election results after the event.
As the August primary election to choose the Republican and Democratic candidates for secretary of state draws closer, attention is likely to fall increasingly on Finchem’s appearance in Washington on the day of the insurrection. Allegations that he played a role in inciting the Capitol attacks led to an unsuccessful attempt to have him recalled from the legislature, as well as a motion by Arizona Democrats to have him expelled from the chamber.
“The consensus in our caucus was that individuals who participated in the January 6 insurrection do not belong serving as members of the legislature,” Bolding said.
Finchem has responded to claims that he helped organize the insurrection by threatening to sue. Through lawyers he has denied that he played any role in the violent assault on the Capitol building, saying that he “never directly witnessed the Capitol breach, and that he was in fact warned away from the Capitol when the breach began”.
In his telling of events, he was in Washington that day to deliver to Mike Pence an “evidence book” of purported fraud in the Arizona election and to ask the then vice-president to delay certification of Biden’s victory. For Finchem, January 6 remains a “patriotic event” dedicated to the exercise of free speech; if there were any criminality it was all the responsibility of anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter activists.
The Guardian reached out to Finchem to invite him to explain his presence and actions in Washington on January 6, but he did not respond.
He has repeatedly insisted that he never came within 500 yards of the Capitol building. But photos and video footage captured by Getty Images and examined by the Arizona Mirror show him walking through the crowd of Trump supporters in front of the east steps of the Capitol after the insurrection was already under way.
At 3.14pm on January 6, more than two hours after the outer police barrier protecting the Capitol was overcome by insurrectionists, Finchem posted a photograph on Twitter that he has since taken down. It is not known who took the photo, but it shows rioters close to the east steps of the building above the words: “What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal.”
Finchem’s campaign to become the next secretary of state of Arizona is going well. Last year his campaign raised $660,000, Politico reported – more than three times Bolding’s haul.
Bolding sees that as indicative of a fundamental problem. On the right, individuals and groups have spotted an opportunity in the secretary of state positions and are avidly targeting them; on the left there is little sign of equivalent energy or awareness.
“The public in general may not understand what’s at stake here. All Democrats, all Americans, should be concerned about this and what it could do to the 2024 presidential election,” he said.
Dean agrees that there is a perilous void in public knowledge. “What’s so insidious about the Trump plan is that it is focusing on state-level races where voters know very little about what the secretary of state does. That’s a danger, as it gives Finchem a realistic path in which he could win – and Finchem will do what Trump wants.”
Supporters await the arrival of presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung in Seoul, South Korea. (photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
One of the front-runners to become the next president of South Korea has been linked to a series of extraordinary scandals, but the witnesses keep disappearing.
The ruling party’s candidate for the top job is suspected of profiting immensely from a multi-million-dollar real estate swindle, which allegedly included members of organized crime in his hometown of Seongnam.
Three men who may have had access to damning information about Lee Jae-myung’s murky past as mayor of Seongnam have dropped dead in little more than two months.
Just weeks before the crucial presidential election, a veil of silence has descended on this sprawling city on the southern fringes of metropolitan Seoul.
Family members of the three executives who carried with them the secrets of a massive real estate deal have not spoken publicly, and other insiders have gone quiet.
“People are afraid to talk,” Jang Young-ha, a lawyer who has followed Lee for years, told The Daily Beast.
Aides to Lee, who was mayor of this glittering city of 1 million people for nearly eight years, denounced as “fake news” any relationship between Lee, the mysterious deaths and the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars into secret coffers.
What is definitely not manufactured, however, is the startling fact that two of the top people at the Seongnam Development Corporation committed suicide in December just before they were to be interrogated for their roles in bribes related to the massive real estate project over which Lee held sway. Then, last month, a third man died of a heart attack after saying that a local company had forked over enormous sums to cover Lee’s legal fees in an entirely different case, in which he was accused of lying when he denied having anything to do with his older brother committed to a mental hospital years ago.
Lee, while in office here from 2010 to 2018, had the power to order the purchase of land at low prices for a development project and then parcel it out as joint public-private property. “As mayor he had a lot of authority,” said Jang.
At issue is what became of the profits of around $100 million, accrued by an asset management company that took over the project without having to compete for the bid. The government has spurned all demands for an investigation which the opposition People Power Party believes would point to Lee. The presidential candidate has not been charged and denies any complicity in the deal.
The cases, in which Lee’s involvement is suspected but not proved, are transfixing a city that’s mushroomed over the past 30 years as a centrally planned project bringing new wealth into a suburb whose citizenry once existed on the margins of poverty. In one generation, say those who’ve watched Seongnam’s rapid rise, it’s attracted gangsters known locally as “the mafia” thanks to the Godfather films and a ton of other American crime movies that proliferate on Korean TVs and computers.
Local mafiosi may have nothing to do with any international crime organization, but “the Seongnam mafia,” like criminal organizations everywhere, exists on bribes, payoffs and favors while enriching themselves from internet sports gambling, said to be their primary source of income. To locals here, the hand of the mafia is seen in those three deaths and in threats that are fearful enough to breed its own omerta, or code of silence.
After Lee became governor of Gyeonggi Province, which surrounds the capital of Seoul and the port city of Incheon, “suspicions were raised” that he “was involved in a gangster organization,” JoongAng Ilbo, one of Korea’s major national newspapers, reported. The paper said the organization was named “Gukje Mafia”—“gukje” meaning “international”—and was based in Seongnam.
“Does the name contain the desire to start from the local area and influence politics and business like the Mafia?” the article asked, implying that the influence of the mafia may be extending well beyond the Seongnam city limits. A member of the National Assembly, the paper reported, dared link him to the gang, saying at a hearing, “You cannot cover the sky with your palm, the substance is clear.”
Lee, roundly denying any such links, asked the politician to apologize and resign.
One businessman who knows the city well said the need for silence could easily have led to two men taking their own lives rather than tell all to prosecutors hot on the trail of a scandal that could end up leading all the way to the presidential compound.
“The mafia hold the power here,” said the Seongnam insider who asked not to be named. “They were the only ones who can do these things.”
“They can tell these men, we will kill your family, your wife, your kids,” he told The Daily Beast as the restaurant manager poured another shot of soju from the bottle beside him. “They may live in jail, but the mafia will blame them for anything they say and take revenge.”
Three of the people who spoke to The Daily Beast readily identified themselves, exchanging name cards with me after I told them I was a journalist, but the understanding was I would not reveal anyone’s identity. In conversations here, “sensitivities” is the watch word. Whether from concern about joining any contentious political debate or worries about retribution or vengeance, people talk on condition of anonymity.
Lee presents himself as a poor man’s friend while heading a highly funded campaign against the conservative candidate of the People Power Party, Yoon Suk-yeol. He has denied knowing those who died and professed no knowledge of what they did.
The scandal, attracting media attention across South Korea, is threatening to drag him down as polls show him faltering in a neck-and-neck campaign leading to the presidential election on March 9.
Lee is a close ally of the incumbent President Moon Jae-in, who cannot run for a second five-year term under Korea’s constitution. He would intensify Moon’s quest for reconciliation and dialogue with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, including a joint agreement with the U.S., China and the two Koreas declaring the Korean War, which ended in 1953 in an armed truce, not a peace treaty, is over.
His opponent, Yoon espouses a return to a hardline policy, calling for “rebuilding” frayed relations with the U.S. while demanding the North give up its nuclear program as a prerequisite for any deal with the North.
It’s the local mafia, not North Korea, however, that inspires fear here.
What happened to the vast sums of money generated by the project is the topic of much speculation, but what’s known is that the two men who killed themselves, Kim Moon-gi and Yu Han-ki, both worked for the Seongnam Development Corporation. Three others are behind bars, including the top guy at the corporation, Yoo Dong-kyu, plus an investor and a lawyer. Yoo “was arrested at an early stage,” said Jang. “That’s why he cannot commit suicide.”
As for Lee Byung-chul, the third person who died, he’s said to have been a whistleblower who might have blabbed to prosecutors voluntarily. He severely embarrassed Lee Jae-myung’s team by releasing transcripts of phone conversations with a lawyer talking about the huge fees paid for defending Lee Jae-myung
Having vowed via social media that he would never commit suicide, Lee Byung-chul was reported missing for three days before his body was discovered in a motel room. Police said he had died of a heart attack, but there was no autopsy and he’s rumored to have been poisoned.
“I don’t think he died of a heart attack,” Kang Yong-seok,” an attorney and media personality, told the Daily Beast. “One week before, he didn’t have any symptoms from any disease.” Kang, a colorful, controversial talk show panelist and host, yaks openly about the implications of the case. The other two “were induced to commit suicide,” he said. “Lee has a lot of hidden money.”
Besides denying anything to do with the deaths of those three men who might have implicated him in the real estate case, Lee Jae-myung has had to fend off charges of abuse of an older brother, Lee Jae-sun, in which Lee and his wife tried to force him into a psychiatric hospital. Jae-sun, an accountant, had infuriated Jae-myung, when he was mayor, by claiming corruption in the real estate project.
Jang Young-ha himself has run as a conservative for mayor of Seongnam and remains a force in political debate. He’s best known these days for a book, written in Korean, “Good-by Lee Jae-Myung,” exposing Lee’s campaign against his brother, who died in 2017. The book, a best-seller here, describes Lee and his wife continually harassing the brother, often in abusive language, after he dared to criticize him publicly. A judge in Seoul district court rejected a demand by Lee’s Democratic Party to ban the book.
“If Lee becomes president, he will use [the presidency] as a weapon,” Jang told The Daily Beast.
Lee needs to win, say locals, so that he can appoint prosecutors who will be sure not to pursue the charges against him.
Kang Yong-seok spoke more frankly. Lee’s organization “is mostly criminal,” he said. “After the election, if he fails, he will go to jail.”
Manatees feed on romaine lettuce Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, at the Florida Power & Light Cape Canaveral Clean Energy Center in Cocoa. In an effort to help manatees battle the cold temperatures, Florida Power & Light's Cape Canaveral Clean Energy Center has been heating the water on an emergency basis, to prevent as many manatees as possible from dying from the cold. (photo: Patrick Dove/TCPALM)
Wildlife officials charged with managing the manatee are exhausting resources to help the creatures. A few ways the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, nonprofits such as Save the Manatee Club and Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, and corporations such as Sea World and Florida Power & Light are helping include:
• Emergency feeding.
• Expanded and improved rehabilitation facilities to take in more manatees.
• Established a manmade warm-water refuge.
• Increased monitoring at known observation sites.
The emergency feeding station established in December at an FPL natural gas power plant just south of Titusville in northern Brevard County seems to be helping a herd estimated to number just under a thousand.
However, the death toll still rises.
From Jan. 1 through Feb. 4, the most recent date data is available from the FWC, 164 dead manatees have been counted in state waters. Brevard County is still Ground Zero for what has been defined as an "unusual mortality event." In the shallow waters of the Indian River Lagoon, 111 manatees have died in 2022.
It seems as if the pace is on the mark to reach the 2021 record total of 1,100 manatee deaths, though there were more in January 2021 (186) than in January 2022 (120).
Last year, though, February was the worst month for deaths with 229, with March (194) close behind. April had 103, but every month thereafter had fewer than 70, which is reassuring.
There are holes in the data, unfortunately. FWC officials have been trying to recover manatee carcasses from the lagoon, but have been overwhelmed. Reports suggest three to 10 a day are being found dead in Brevard alone. The large majority of these are not being necropsied because transporting them all to the laboratory in St. Petersburg is not affordable and there isn't enough manpower to handle them all in a reasonable time.
It means wildlife managers are unsure of the exact cause of death for many. Cold stress, starvation and boat strikes are three causes of death that offer some external clues. Yet, very few 2022 deaths have been recorded as cold stress (five) or boat strikes (five), and the agency does not track starvation. These deaths are classified under natural (36). Of the 164 deaths, in 2022, 107 were classified as "not necropsied."
Can more be done to help these innocent animals?
Increased manpower: More help is needed to rescue manatees in distress, to recover dead manatees and to perform more necropsies to better determine how to protect the animals.
Expand or modify data recording: FWC should add a column on its mortality data spreadsheet to include starvation as a cause of death to more effectively track it. This can later be tied to seagrass losses in estuaries.
Relocate more manatees: Not all state waters are devoid of manatee food. Many freshwater lakes and canals have ample food supply when marine estuaries have little, but the manatees are not in the right spots at the right times.
Expand satellite tracking: By monitoring more manatees' movements, officials can better understand how to address which ones are in trouble.
More funding: Sympathetic donors are helping feeding and rescue efforts by donating to the Fish & Wildlife Foundation and the Save the Manatee Club. Funds also are coming in from state and federal government, but more is needed.
These measures may be necessary if Floridians wish to prevent this unusual mortality event from becoming a usual mortality event.
You can report sick, injured or dead manatees by contacting FWC's Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-3922 (FWCC), emailing or texting Tip@MyFWC.com or, if aboard a boat, using VHF Channel 16.
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