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08 December 22
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Griner was detained in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after Russian authorities said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage.
President Joe Biden signed off on the trade, which took place in the United Arab Emirates, even though it meant leaving behind Paul Whelan, an American corporate security executive who remains jailed in Russia.
"She is safe, she is on a plane, she is on her way home," Biden said in remarks from the White House on Thursday morning. "She will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones and she should have been there all along."
"I'm proud that today we have made one more family whole," Biden said, adding that he will continue to work to free Whelan. "We’ll keep negotiating for Paul’s relief. I guarantee it."
Brittney Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, was in the Oval Office with Biden and the two were able to speak with her by phone, according to a senior administration official.
Cherelle Griner, speaking after Biden, expressed her "sincere gratitude" to Biden and several other officials she mentioned by name for their work.
Griner will be flown to a medical facility in San Antonio where she will receive care, a senior administration official said. Cherelle Griner, will meet her there, according to a senior administration official.
The move marks one of the most high-profile prisoner swaps between Moscow and Washington since the Cold War, with the Kremlin seeing the return of Viktor Bout, who Russian President Vladimir Putin has been wanting to get back — and who had served 11 years of a 25-year sentence in the United States.
Griner’s return to the United States will cap a monthslong saga that began in February when she was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after Russian authorities said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage. She was later jailed on drug charges.
The 32-year-old Phoenix Mercury player was the subject of prolonged and often public negotiations between the two countries after a trial that underscored frayed relations amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Biden's administration had sought the release of both Griner and Whelan.
“I’m telling you, I am determined to get her home and get her home safely — along with others, I might add,” Biden said of the situation on Nov. 9.
CBS first reported Griner’s release.
Whelan was serving a 16-year prison sentence after being accused of spying, which the U.S. has denied. People familiar with the negotiations for his release say the Russians refused to release Whelan without getting a Russian spy in return. The U.S. insists it does not have any Russian spies in its custody, and thus no one to trade to meet the Kremlin’s demand.
Griner’s release marks a stunning turn of events from last month, when she began serving a nine-year sentence at a Russian penal colony more than 200 miles east of Moscow.
During her trial in July, Griner pleaded guilty but said she had no criminal intent. Griner said the canisters, which she had been prescribed to treat chronic pain, were packed inadvertently as she hurriedly prepared for her flight.
As her trial neared its end in early August, it became public that the U.S. put a prisoner swap offer on the table for Moscow to consider. Russia called for “quiet diplomacy” but said after her sentencing that it was ready to discuss a deal.
NBC News reported in July that the U.S. proposed a prisoner exchange with Russia for the release of Griner and Whelan, who has been detained since 2018. That deal, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed at the time, would have included the U.S. releasing Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death" because he was considered one of the world’s largest illicit arms dealers.
Bout was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in 2012 after he was convicted of selling arms to Colombian rebels, which prosecutors said were intended to kill Americans. The Kremlin has been demanding his release over the past decade, saying he was unfairly targeted.
The Washington-Moscow swap marks the most prominent diplomatic engagement between the two countries since the U.S. and its allies firmly backed Kyiv and condemned the Kremlin for launching the war against its neighbor in February.
The Biden administration has faced tremendous pressure to help bring home the 6-foot-9 Houston native. Griner’s teammates, family and friends, as well as a number of U.S. celebrities lobbied for her return.
Griner’s release is the second publicly known U.S. prisoner swap with Russia since the war in Ukraine started. American Trevor Reed was released in April after spending nearly three years in a Russian jail. The former Marine was freed in a prisoner exchange that saw Biden commute the sentence of Konstantin Yaroshenko, a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving time in Connecticut who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the U.S. in 2010.
With the United States and its Western allies confronting the realities of a new Cold War with Russia in the wake of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the high-stakes swap will evoke memories of Soviet-era trades involving spies.
One of the most well known Cold War swaps involved American pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. He was traded in 1962 for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in an exchange on a fog-shrouded bridge between West Berlin and East Germany.
The largest U.S.-Russian spy swap since the Cold War came in 2010 when 10 Russian agents, including Anna Chapman, were exchanged for four other Russians accused of spying for the West — among them Sergei Skripal, who was later poisoned with a nerve agent in the United Kingdom. The British government blamed Moscow for the poisoning.
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Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan warned on Dec. 7 against stripping state courts of oversight over elections in favor of state legislatures. (photo: Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)
But some justices also indicated they believed state courts could be restrained from becoming too big a player in election decisions — at some point when “the state court would not be acting as a court but would be acting more as a legislature,” in the words of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Under the theory advanced by North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders, state lawmakers throughout the country could have exclusive authority to structure federal elections, subject only to intervention by Congress. The “independent state legislature theory” holds that the U.S. Constitution gives that power to lawmakers even if it results in extreme partisan voting maps for congressional seats and violates voter protections enshrined in state constitutions.
The case could have a major influence on results in the 2024 election. It has drawn attention in part because of the nation’s polarized politics, where former president Donald Trump and his allies still advocate to overturn the 2020 election, and the midterms showed that control of Congress can depend on the drawing of congressional district lines.
The court’s three most conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — seemed receptive to a reading of the Constitution in line with that of the North Carolina legislators. The court’s liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — did not.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Barrett seemed more conflicted, and perhaps looking for ways to ensure that state courts do not take over the supervision of election processes in which legislatures are the primary actors.
All of the justices seemed to agree that was a goal. But drawing a line to decide when a court stops acting as a court and moves into legislative territory could be a difficult task.
Washington lawyer Donald B. Verrilli Jr., a former solicitor general in the Obama administration representing the state’s election officials, said the U.S. Supreme Court should second-guess state supreme courts only when a decision marks such a “sharp departure from the state’s ordinary modes of constitutional interpretation that it lacks any fair and substantial basis in state law.”
Republican leaders in North Carolina want the Supreme Court to restore a redistricting map that was drawn by the GOP-led legislature but rejected as a violation of the state constitution by the state’s supreme court.
Backers of the independent state legislature theory say the U.S. Constitution’s election clause gives state legislatures “the federal function of regulating congressional elections” and that states may “not limit the legislature’s discretion.” Because there is a similar reference to “legislature” in an accompanying provision of the Constitution regarding presidential elections, the stakes are even higher.
Attorney David H. Thompson, representing North Carolina Republicans, pointed to founding-era history and the text of the Constitution to explain why state courts cannot limit the power of legislators to set federal election rules.
Because the U.S. Constitution specifies that the “legislature” sets federal election regulations, “States lack the authority to restrict the legislatures’ substantive discretion when performing this federal function,” Thompson said.
But Roberts and Barrett said the court’s precedents do not support such an absolutist view.
Roberts noted that the court held decades ago that a governor may veto the legislature’s redistricting plan. “The power to veto the actions of the legislature significantly undermines the argument that it can do whatever it wants,” Roberts said.
When Thompson said there could be a difference between procedural roles for other state actors like governors and judges but not a substantive one, Barrett said it was “notoriously difficult” for courts to draw lines between substance and procedure.
The court’s liberals were more focused on the big picture of Thompson’s theory.
“It seems very much out of keeping with the way our governmental system works and is meant to work,” Kagan said, adding: “This is a proposal that gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country . . . And you might think that it gets rid of all those checks and balances at exactly the time when they are needed most.”
“There is a check. There is a balance,” Thompson said. “We’ve got the legal check from federal law, and we’ve got the political check that the founders envisioned of going to Congress.”
Opponents, including civil rights organizations, Democratic-led states and former Republican judges and election lawyers, say North Carolina’s approach would endanger hundreds of state constitutional provisions and state court decisions. In the past, state courts have played an influential role in the congressional redistricting battles following the 2020 Census. Judges have reined in Republican gerrymanders in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, for instance, and rejected maps drawn by Democratic-led legislatures in New York and Maryland.
Attorney Neal Katyal, representing North Carolina Common Cause and League of Conservation Voters, said the lawmakers’ theory is at odds with the historical record. He warned of a “blast radius” if the justices accept the argument that would create chaos for voters with “one set of rules for federal elections and one set of rules for state elections.”
The Biden administration opposed the independent state legislature theory. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices that “text, long-standing practice, and precedent show that the Elections Clause did not displace” state courts’ “ordinary check on state lawmaking.” Agreeing with the legislative leaders’ theory, she said, would “wreak havoc in the administration of elections across the nation.”
In North Carolina, a purple state, analysts said the map created by Republican legislators after the 2020 Census would have given the GOP an edge in 10 of 14 congressional districts. Democratic justices on the elected state Supreme Court said the redistricting maps had a partisan tilt “not explained by the political geography of North Carolina.”
Under a new map imposed by the courts just for the 2022 election, the congressional delegation is split 7 to 7.
In various decisions leading up to the 2020 elections and since, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas have said they were skeptical that state courts have the power to overrule the legislature’s decisions regarding federal elections.
Alito pressed the lawyer for the challengers about whether a state supreme court composed of elected judges was any less political than having lawmakers draw voting maps.
“There’s been a lot of talk about the impact of this decision on democracy,” he told Katyal. “Do you think that it furthers democracy to transfer the political controversy about districting from the legislature to elected supreme courts, where the candidates are permitted by state law to campaign on the issue of districting?”
Throughout the argument, several justices returned to the court’s handling of the disputed 2000 presidential vote in Bush v. Gore. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in a concurring opinion that the Constitution’s grant of power to legislatures to oversee elections limited the power of state judges to intervene, while recognizing a role for the courts.
Kavanaugh noted in an exchange with Thompson that Rehnquist “seemed to acknowledge that state courts would have a role interpreting state law and that federal court review of that should be, in his words, deferential and simply should be a check to make sure that state court had not significantly departed from state law.”
“Your position seems to go further than that,” Kavanaugh said.
Some justices, including Roberts, questioned whether there might be a problem with state supreme courts reversing the decisions of legislatures based on vague constitutional provisions. North Carolina’s court, for instance, threw out the legislature’s plan for violating a guarantee to “free elections.”
“When the state supreme court was freed of standards and rules, it was no longer acting as the judiciary,” Thompson said.
But Sotomayor pointed out that’s what courts do in interpreting a constitution.
“I take your answer to mean that there are no judicially enforceable standards to interpret the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and equal protection clauses of the [U.S.] Constitution because they, on their face, would appear to be as unmanageable,” she said.
Verrilli reminded the justices that the state’s Republican leaders were not challenging the state supreme court’s reading of the law, only its authority, which included because of state law the imposition of a new map.
If a court finds a constitutional problem, there must be a remedy, Verrilli said. “You have to have a map to have an election.”
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Demonstrators celebrating the arrest of Pedro Castillo in front of the police station where he was detained in Lima on Wednesday. (photo: Marco Garro/The New York Times)
ALSO SEE: Peru Swears in a New President Amid Constitutional Crisis
Ahead of an impeachment vote by Congress, Pedro Castillo tried to dissolve the government and seize power. The attempt ended with his ouster and arrest.
But shortly before noon, the Peruvian leader addressed the country in a surprise televised address. He announced the dissolution of Congress and the installation of an emergency government, stunning political leaders across the spectrum, including his own allies, by effectively trying to carry out what was widely condemned as an attempted coup to cling to power.
Government officials resigned en masse. The top court declared the move unconstitutional. And the country’s armed forces and the national police issued a joint statement suggesting they would not support him.
By day’s end, Pedro Castillo, 53, was ousted from power and under arrest. Dina Boluarte, his vice president, was sworn in as president and became the first woman to lead Peru.
It was a cinematic conclusion to Mr. Castillo’s presidency, the first leftist to be elected Peru’s president in more than a generation. The former farmer, teacher and union activist had campaigned last year on a pledge to transform the ailing economy and reverse the high rates of poverty among rural Peruvians, which had worsened during the pandemic.
But his attempt to seize power echoed a similar move by former President Alberto Fujimori 30 years ago. Like Mr. Castillo, Mr. Fujimori was a populist outsider who was elected democratically in 1990. Two years later, he staged a coup to shut down Congress with the support of the military, and ruled as a dictator until 2000. He is now in prison on charges of corruption and human rights abuses.
But Peru has continued to be convulsed by years of high-level corruption scandals resulting in six presidents since 2016. Twice before during Mr. Castillo’s 16 months in power Congress had tried to oust him, but failed to garner enough votes for an impeachment.
Mr. Castillo was one of several leftists in Latin America who had been swept into power by votes disillusioned by the establishment, fed up with decades of inequality, high unemployment and an elite political class tainted by years of corruption and infighting.
But he appeared uninterested in making good on his campaign promises and was quickly confronted by a cascading stream of obstacles that paralyzed his administration, including high-level corruption scandals, criminal investigations and cabinet turnover.
Mr. Castillo churned through more than 80 ministers and filled many posts with political allies lacking relevant experience, some of whom have faced investigations for corruption, domestic violence and murder.
Prosecutors accused him of leading a criminal organization with lawmakers and family members to profit off government contracts and of repeatedly obstructing justice, sometimes seemingly in plain view — such as when his daughter disappeared from the presidential palace as she faced arrest and his office later claimed that footage that would have captured the moment went missing.
The president’s approval rating slumped to 19 percent in Lima, though in rural areas it remained at 45 percent, just four percentage points lower than a year ago, according to polls last month by the Institute of Peruvian Studies.
Congress scheduled a third impeachment vote last week after Mr. Castillo threatened to dissolve Congress last month.
It was just hours before that vote when Mr. Castillo announced the dissolution of Congress and the installation of an emergency government to rule by decree, while also imposing an immediate national curfew.
“We have taken the decision to establish an emergency government, to reestablish the rule of law and democracy to which effect the following measures are dictated: to dissolve Congress temporarily, to install a government of exceptional emergency, to call to the shortest term possible to elections for a new Congress with the ability to draft a new Constitution,” Mr. Castillo said.
Mr. Castillo’s declaration plunged the fragile democracy into its biggest political crisis in years. Twice, Congress had tried to oust Mr. Castillo from power, but failed to garner enough votes for an impeachment.
But it quickly became apparent that his announcement had little support, prompting the mass resignation of many of his top cabinet members, a fire hose of denunciations from political opponents and constitutional experts and a joint statement from the armed forces and the police suggesting that he lacked any legal right to carry out his decree.
“We reject the breaking of constitutional order and we urge the population to respect the political constitution, remain calm and trust state institutions,” the police later said in a separate statement.
The U.S. Embassy in Lima also condemned Mr. Castillo. “The United States emphatically urges President Castillo to reverse his attempt to close Congress and allow democratic institutions in Peru to work according to the constitution,” the embassy said in a tweet. “We encourage the Peruvian public to stay calm during this uncertain time.”
The president’s declaration seemed to shock even Mr. Castillo’s closest allies.
“I am a defender of the democratic order, of the Constitution and I am deeply convinced that politics cannot be above the law,” Benji Espinoza, who was the president’s personal lawyer until he resigned Wednesday, told RPP, a local radio station.
Mr. Castillo had seemingly been considering such a move for some time. Last month, he publicly threatened to dissolve Congress and had quietly tried to survey military leaders about supporting him, according to local media outlets.
After his defense minister resigned on Saturday, citing personal reasons, rumors of a military coup — in favor of and against Mr. Castillo — went viral on social media, leading some opposition lawmakers to stay the night in Congress on Sunday for fear of a violent attempt by the armed forces to close the chamber. No such attempt was made. By Tuesday, the head of Peru’s army had also resigned, citing personal reasons.
On Wednesday, just two hours after Mr. Castillo’s announcement, Congress convened and voted to impeach the president. Lawmakers voted 101-6 with 10 abstentions to remove him from power.
He was seen leaving the presidential palace in a car that later entered a police station, and on Wednesday night the prosecutor’s office said it had directed his arrest on charges of “rebellion.” The police later said that he would be held at the same prison where Mr. Fujimori is serving his sentence, at a naval base on the outskirts of Lima.
Shortly after the congressional vote, Ms. Boluarte was sworn in as Peru’s new leader.
“It is up to us to talk, to engage in dialogue, to reach agreements,” she said after she was sworn in before lawmakers who applauded and cheered her. “I ask for time to rescue our country from corruption and incompetence within the government.”
Ms. Boluarte, 60, called for a truce between Peru’s political parties in order to reestablish national unity and return the country to a path of economic growth.
A former lawyer and a member of a Marxist political party until she was pushed out last year for criticizing the party leader, Ms. Boluarte ran on Mr. Castillo’s ticket last year. She served as both his vice president and his minister of development and social inclusion, but resigned from the ministry after the president formed his last cabinet last month.
Ms. Boluarte is not particularly well-known, and in a recent poll, Peruvians favored new general elections over her replacing Mr. Castillo in office in a scenario in which he was impeached.
Former President Martín Vizcarra, the only Peruvian leader to be successfully ousted before Mr. Castillo, left office after the vote in 2020, but filed an appeal before the Constitutional Tribunal, which declined to weigh in on its legality.
The next president lasted less than a week in office, and his successor governed Peru for the next eight months, until Mr. Castillo took office.
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Time magazine's cover shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, surrounded by other individuals and crowds of protesters woven together with bright yellow sunflowers and blue and yellow Ukrainian flags. (photo: Time)
So it may not come as a surprise to many that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and "the spirit of Ukraine" are officially Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2022.
The magazine, which has bestowed the honor annually since 1927, released the announcement on Wednesday alongside a lengthy profile of the wartime leader. It credits his stewardship of Ukraine's defense — which has halted Russia's advance and regained key territories — as well as its public image.
"Whether one looks at this story of Ukraine with a sense of hope or a sense of fear, and the story is, of course, not fully written yet ... Zelenskyy has really galvanized the world in a way we haven't seen in decades," Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said when revealing the news on the TODAY show.
The cover features a profile of Zelenskyy in his classic army-green sweater, surrounded by individual figures and crowds of protesters. They are interspersed with bright yellow sunflowers and blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags.
The publication refers to Zelenskyy's pointed refusal to evacuate abroad when Russia first invaded in February, as well as his risky visits to frontline regions in the months since, as examples of his fortitude that have inspired other Ukrainians in their fight for freedom.
And it highlights his strategic efforts to keep Ukraine top-of-mind for supporters around the world.
"If we fall out of focus, we are in danger," Andiry Yermak, his chief of staff, said.
In his army-green tees and quarter-zips, Zelenskyy cuts a recognizable figure in his many virtual appearances at global conferences, speeches to educational institutions and visits with foreign leaders and Hollywood celebrities alike.
Time (like many others) notes that the 44-year-old former actor and comedian, who was elected president in 2019 after playing one on a TV show, relies on a unique background and set of skills to meet the current moment.
"[Zelenskyy] was adaptable, trained not to lose his nerve under pressure," writes Time reporter Simon Shuster. "He knew how to read a crowd and react to its moods and expectations. Now his audience was the world. He was determined not to let them down."
But the war has changed Zelenskyy too — and not just because of the physical toll it has taken. One military adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, told Time that the president has ditched quick movements, jokes and chattiness for a more aggressive posture.
"He's lost that actorly quality, and he's turned into a boss," he said.
Time isn't only praising the president; it's also honoring "the spirit of Ukraine" as its person of the year.
In a separate article, it credits some of the individuals who have contributed to Ukraine's resilience and recovery, ranging from medical providers and humanitarian leaders to volunteers and journalists. While some of that support came from outside the country, the publication also honors Ukrainians themselves.
"If the choices their President articulated gave moral clarity to an era we'd mostly been scrolling through, it was people who gave it meaning, by acting," it reads.
The publication also honored the women of Iran as 2022's Heroes of the Year, in addition to Blackpink as Entertainer of the Year and Aaron Judge as Athlete of the Year.
Time picked Zelenskyy from a shortlist of 10 people that included Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, gun safety advocates and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Its announcement comes two days after British business publication Financial Times named Zelenskyy its person of the year.
In that interview, he told the newspaper that he doesn't consider himself courageous.
"I am more responsible than I am brave," he said. " I just hate to let people down."
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Manchin’s proposed plan would have weakened safeguards and expedited permits to construct pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Senator had proposed to attach energy bill to appropriations legislation but plan fails amid criticism of party leadership
Joe Manchin, the fossil fuel-friendly senator from West Virginia, had attempted to latch the controversial deregulation and permitting reforms to a must-pass defense bill – after failing to get his so-called “dirty deal” passed earlier this year.
The proposal to attach his bill to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual appropriations bill that will be voted on later this week, was reportedly supported by Joe Biden and House leader Nancy Pelosi.
But progressive lawmakers and hundreds of climate, public health and youth groups opposed the move to pass such consequential reforms without proper scrutiny. Manchin’s legislation would weaken environmental safeguards and expedite permits to construct pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure while restricting public input and legal challenges.
On Tuesday, more than 750 organizations sent a letter to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and congressional leadership opposing what they call a “cruel and direct attack on environmental justice communities”. Attaching the “dirty deal” to the NDAA, which would have been one of Pelosi’s final acts as speaker, threatened her legacy and the party’s climate credibility, the groups said.
The deal was ditched – for now at least – amid mounting criticism aimed at the Democratic leadership.
Environmental groups welcomed the news, but warned the fossil fuel industry would not give up.
Ariel Moger, government and political affairs director at Friends of the Earth, said: “Manchin’s efforts to tie his dirty deal to any must-pass legislation he can get his hands on are undemocratic and potentially devastating for the planet. With momentum on the side of frontline communities, the fight will continue until the bill dies at the end of this Congress.”
Jeff Ordower, 350.org’s North America director, said: “Senator Manchin cannot get away with last-ditch efforts to push forward his fossil fuel fast tracking bill. The industry will keep trying these secretive, last minute efforts to push forward dirty deals, so we will continue to be alert and we won’t let up the fight.”
Manchin, who receives more campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry than any other lawmaker, warned of dire consequences for America’s energy security. He said: “The American people will pay the steepest price for Washington once again failing to put common sense policy ahead of toxic tribal politics. This is why the American people hate politics in Washington.”
Manchin’s bill, described by environmentalists as a “fossil fuel wishlist”, was first attached as a side deal to Biden’s historic climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, but was eventually thwarted after widespread opposition from progressive Democrats and civil society groups. It included limits on legal challenges to new energy projects including the 303-mile Mountain Valley gas pipeline across the Appalachian mountains that has been stalled by concerned communities and environmental groups in West Virginia and Virginia.
He and other proponents have said that fast-track permitting is needed for a rapid transition to renewables and in order to modernize the country’s outdated power transmission systems.
But Jeff Merkley, the Democratic senator representing Oregon, said Manchin’s deal was a dirty one, and had nothing to do with renewables. “This [bill] will give a whole lot more impetus to fossil fuels and run over the top of ordinary people raising concerns, that’s why it’s a dirty deal. This is a real travesty in terms of legislative deliberation, and in terms of environmental justice.”
On Tuesday, Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, had called on her colleagues to stand up against the fossil fuel industry and the undemocratic manner in which leadership was trying to push through the bill without scrutiny. She said: “It’s outrageous enough that Congress wants to spend another $847bn on our military-industrial complex, the largest annual military budget in history; we cannot allow them to then ram through Manchin’s dirty deal in the process.”
The NDAA is considered a must-pass bill because it authorizes pay increases and compensation for harmed troops, as well as establishing the following year’s personnel, arms purchasing and geopolitical policies.
Environmental and climate justice groups warned Democrats that frontline communities would not forget and would hold them accountable in 2024 if the deregulation bill was pushed through.
“To think that this is happening at the hands of Democrats, and their very last action of power is going to be to hurt our communities and strip our voice is really hurtful. I feel betrayed,” said Maria Lopez Nunez, deputy director of the New Jersey-based Ironbound Community Corporation and member of the White House environmental justice advisory council.
“For any Democrat that’s listening, if you’re playing along to this charade, our community will call you out and we will hold you accountable.”
On Wednesday, Manchin launched yet another bid to garner Republican support for his bill in the Senate, in hope of getting it through as an appendage to the NDAA. It seems likely to fail.
“Nobody wants Manchin’s filthy lump of coal, no matter how many ways he tries to polish it,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer need to see this dirty deal for what it is and leave it as a failed footnote in the 2022 history books.”
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Jared Kushner listens at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., last month as Donald Trump announces he is running for president again. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Congressional panels seek records about Jared Kushner’s diplomatic activities at time when family’s New York property was bailed out
Citing previously undisclosed emails and other documents related to former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, the committees on Monday night sent letters to the State and Defense departments requesting material that they say could shed new light on whether “Kushner’s financial conflict of interest may have led him to improperly influence U.S. tax, trade and national security policies for his own financial gain.”
The letters, obtained by The Washington Post, focus on efforts by Kushner and his father, Charles Kushner, to bail out a troubled 41-story Fifth Avenue office building in New York City. The Kushner company in 2018 made a deal with a Canadian company, Brookfield Asset Management, which invested $1.2 billion for a 99-year lease. As a result, the Kushner family company avoided defaulting on a loan that was due the following year.
Democrats have long raised questions about the deal because the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund, had a stake in one of Brookfield’s investment arms.
Brookfield said when it was negotiating its deal in 2018 that “no Qatar-linked entity has any involvement in or even knowledge of this potential transaction.” But Democrats have continued probing whether any Qatari money went into the project.
Now, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), in their roles as chairs of the Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight Committee, have broadened that inquiry, co-authoring letters to the State and Defense departments. They wrote that they are seeking an array of documents addressing their concerns that Jared Kushner’s role in Middle East policy could have played a role in the bailout.
Neither Jared Kushner, who now runs a private-equity company, nor Charles Kushner, who serves as chairman of the Kushner real estate company, responded to requests for comment.
The saga of the Fifth Avenue property has long been one of the darkest chapters in Jared Kushner’s career.
After his father went to prison for federal tax evasion and other charges after being convicted in 2005, Kushner — who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump — remade the family real estate business. He sold many of the company’s New Jersey apartments and paid $1.8 billion for the Fifth Avenue property, the most ever paid in the United States for an office building at that time. While Kushner called it a “great acquisition,” the purchase came just before the 2007 real estate crash, undercutting the value of the property and putting the family business at risk.
As Kushner recounted in “Breaking History,” his recent memoir: “There was no way I was going to let the investment fail. I had very little leverage, so I was willing to talk to anybody.” He called it the biggest challenge of his career.
By 2016, Kushner was simultaneously helping to run Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and seeking an investor to take over the property. A previously undisclosed email obtained by the committees says that Kushner talked with top Brookfield officials about the Fifth Avenue property on April 15, 2016. The property at the time was known as 666 Fifth Ave. and is now known as 660 Fifth Ave.
Five days later, in an email with the subject line “re 666,” Brookfield’s then-chairman, Ric Clark, wrote: “Jared — thanks for coming down last Friday. We are excited about your project.” Clark ended the email writing, “Congratulations on yesterday’s election,” apparently a reference to Trump’s victory in the New York Republican primary, which helped him secure the nomination. Clark did not respond to a request for comment.
In December 2016, as Kushner worked on Trump’s transition team, he met with representatives of a Chinese insurance firm regarding potentially investing in the property, the New York Times reported. Kushner also met with a Russian banker but told Congress that family business was not discussed, although the bank has said they talked about “promising business lines and sectors.”
Then, as Kushner began his White House role, he divested himself of his interest in the Fifth Avenue property and cut ties with the family company, where his father worked. At the same time, he retained real estate assets valued between $132 million and $407 million, The Post has reported.
As Kushner worked on Middle East policy, his father in April 2017 held a meeting with Qatar’s finance minister at which the Fifth Avenue property was discussed. Charles Kushner later told The Post that even if the Qataris had offered to wire funds on the spot, he would have turned them down to avoid questions about a conflict of interest with his son.
Jared Kushner played a significant role in policy affecting Qatar. He had helped persuade Trump to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia during a May 2017 visit to the Arab nation. A month later, Saudi Arabia joined several countries in breaking relationships with Qatar and imposing a blockade, accusing Qatar of financing terrorism. Kushner wrote in his memoir that, contrary to accusations by some in the administration, he was not to blame for the Saudi action against Qatar and “tried to convince them to delay the decision.” He then tried to work to lift the blockade against Qatar, he wrote.
With questions swirling about whether Kushner used his influence to get investors to bail out the Fifth Avenue building, Charles Kushner in January 2018 gave his first interview about the matter, telling The Post that he had purposefully avoided doing business with sovereign investment funds or similar entities, to avoid a conflict of interest with his son’s White House job.
A month after that interview, according to emails obtained by the committees, Charles Kushner talked with Clark, the Brookfield chairman, about investing in the Fifth Avenue property. An associate of Charles Kushner then emailed Clark with a summary of a proposed deal.
Two months later, Qatar’s leader visited the White House and Trump officials called for an end to the blockade. In their letter, the committees said the Trump administration’s support for the blockade “evaporated shortly after Charles Kushner’s discussion with Brookfield,” but they did not supply evidence that the two events are linked.
The following month, Brookfield and the Kushner real estate company confirmed that they were negotiating a deal on the Fifth Avenue building. Both parties said that at the time that there was no Qatari involvement in the investment, which was finalized later in 2018. Jared Kushner did not mention Brookfield in his memoir.
In the waning days of the Trump administration, Charles Kushner — who had been convicted of filing false tax returns and other charges — was pardoned by Trump and Jared Kushner traveled to the Persian Gulf region to finalize a deal to end the blockade of Qatar. The day after the Trump administration ended, Kushner created a private equity firm, for which he obtained a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The fund is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA has said ordered the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist.
In recent days, Kushner traveled to Qatar, where he was photographed at the World Cup with some of that nation’s leaders.
Democrats, meanwhile, have repeatedly sought information about the Fifth Avenue property bailout from Brookfield and Kushner.
On Dec. 9, 2020, Wyden co-authored a letter to Brookfield saying that despite Brookfield’s assurance that no Qatari money was involved in the deal, “it appears that is exactly what happened,” and requested documentation from the company about it. Then, on Oct. 13, 2022, Wyden sent another letter to Brookfield, accusing the company of “stonewalling on whether it intentionally misled the public” about the use of Qatar-linked funds to bail out the Kushner family property. Wyden alleged that Brookfield’s initial assurance that no Qatar-linked entities were involved “turned out to be false.”
Asked about Wyden’s allegations by The Post, Brookfield issued a statement that did not directly address the question of Qatar’s role: “We have been fully transparent and responded to all requests. As we have said all along, the decision to acquire this building was based purely on its own merits — it was an iconic, underperforming building in a prime location in need of significant redevelopment. The building has now been transformed, and we believe it will exceed our expectations in delivering value for our clients.”
The Qatar Investment Authority said via email that it would not comment. Qatari officials have previously said they did not learn about the Brookfield investment in the Kushner property until it was reported in the media. Subsequently, Reuters reported in 2019 that the Qatar Investment Authority would avoid putting its money in investment funds that it does not control.
The committees’ letter this week marks the most aggressive request yet for new information. The committees are seeking all relevant correspondence related to the Kushner family company, Brookfield, the Qatari fund, the blockade and other matters.
In addition, the committees said, they are requesting any correspondence that refers to “Kushner seeking to influence, interfere with, or supersede the normal operations and responsibilities” of the State and Defense departments.
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Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who was recently elected leader of the House Democratic caucus for the 118th Congress, speaks at a press conference at the Capitol on Dec. 6, 2022. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty)
With momentum behind the climate initiative, progressive organizers set up an event with Jeffries in mind. Instead, his constituents found an empty chair.
One hundred people attended, mostly Jeffries’s constituents, said two of the organizers.
New York Communities for Change and the Sunrise Movement had put the event together with Jeffries in mind. Since arriving in the House seven years earlier, Jeffries had risen quickly to be the Democratic caucus chair. The organizers hoped he would engage with constituents who supported the Green New Deal.
“He refused to come,” said NYCC policy director Alicé Nascimento. “We ended up having literally an empty chair at the center of the room to signal the fact that he was not there.”
Jeffries sent his district director in his place. “It’s very clearly stiff-arming,” said Pete Sikora, who directs the climate and inequality campaigns at NYCC.
Jeffries has become known in New York and nationally for his hostility to the Democrats’ left flank. While he has supported progressive policies on issues like criminal justice reform, he has vocally opposed progressives in other arenas — most notably backing their opponents in primary elections. “This was an attempt to try to break through that,” Sikora said of the 2019 Green New Deal event. (Jeffries’s spokesperson did not respond to a question about the event.)
Last week, House Democrats elected Jeffries as minority leader for the upcoming session, putting him in line to eventually become speaker of the House should Democrats retake the majority. Jeffries’s ascent to party leader presents a new opportunity to lead on climate issues and invest in fighting climate change, Sikora said, not only helping his district — which received more relief funding after Hurricane Sandy than any other district in the city — but also creating jobs across the country.
“This kind of thing should be a no-brainer for him,” Sikora said. “But that’s not consistent with how he’s played the politics.”
In response to a request for comment, Jeffries’s spokesperson Christie Stephenson said that the representative has consistently invited challenges from the left and that anyone who objected to his record “is welcome to primary him in Brooklyn in June 2024.” She added, “That these invitations have been consistently declined, despite being offered repeatedly by Chairman Jeffries directly, speaks for itself.”
Ahead of his election as caucus leader, Jeffries made efforts to strengthen his relationships with progressive lawmakers and met with members including Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and several members of the Squad. But to climate organizers on the left who have lobbied Jeffries on environmental issues in his district for years, his absence from the 2019 forum was indicative of his broader attitude toward the left, not just on policy but on overall political strategy.
Now that he’s in line to become speaker, Jeffries’s approach to politics matters more than ever, Sikora said. “Our hope is that he begins to adjust how he deals with this type of vision and this type of politics, because it’s not just symbolic. It matters a lot in the way that he approaches bills and policies,” he said. “There’s a bunch of real concern here.”
Jeffries is one of only a handful of Democrats in New York’s congressional delegation who has not co-sponsored legislation on the Green New Deal, though he told CNN earlier this month he’s backed other climate change legislation. (Stephenson pointed to his role in passing the July 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included $368 billion slated for climate and energy spending.) Jeffries has not signed onto the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, which currently has five signatories from New York’s 19-member Democratic congressional delegation.
Jeffries has also been active in state and local primary elections, where climate issues have split progressives and the Democratic machine. “There’s a whole electoral history here of confrontations between the climate left and his candidates,” Sikora said.
State Sen. Jabari Brisport told The Intercept that Jeffries asked a local community organizer to challenge him in this year’s primary, although the campaign never materialized and Jeffries did not publicly campaign against him.
“He’s just not where Democrats are on a lot of progressive issues,” Brisport said.
Even on issues where Jeffries has sided with progressives, like backing Medicare for All, Brisport said serious work had to be put in to get him to co-sponsor the legislation. “It was like pulling teeth getting him to even sign on,” Brisport said, pointing to a pressure campaign by the Democratic Socialists of America. (The organizer declined to comment on the record. “The situation as it relates to DSA primary challenges is what it is,” Stephenson told The Intercept, including the link in her email.)
Former Jeffries spokesperson Michael Hardaway previously disputed claims that NYC-DSA pushed Jeffries to sign onto the legislation and noted that he had previously supported similar legislation from former Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “long before any so-called lobbying effort by some in gentrifying parts of Brooklyn.”
Stephenson said, “Those individuals on the far left who are having a meltdown about the rise of Hakeem Jeffries not being disrupted from below are intentionally misrepresenting the longtime support that Leader-elect Jeffries has shown for universal health care coverage legislation.”
State Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest said she personally delivered petitions to Jeffries while campaigning for Medicare for All before she was eventually elected to represent his old assembly district in 2020, ousting his protégé, incumbent Walter Mosley. “You have to kind of work hard to get him onto more progressive legislation,” she said. “I’ve delivered petitions to him, and the look that this man had on his face when I handed him a stack of petitions way back when, when I was working on the Medicare for All campaign — yeah, no.”
While Souffrant Forrest beat her primary challenger this year, she said, “Jeffries did not offer me any kind of support.” The Medicare for All campaign is an example of what progressives should be doing on other issues like climate change, Souffrant Forrest said. Jeffries has consistently campaigned against progressives, but “for him to be successful as a Democratic leader, it’s time for him to see that the progressives are there, the left is there, and to meet us. And to listen, both here and in Congress.”
Though Jeffries himself was first elected after ousting an incumbent, he has not smiled on primary challengers from the left against his centrist Democratic colleagues.
After progressive candidate Morgan Harper lost her race against Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, in 2020, Jeffries posted a tweet in which he appeared to blame progressives for starting a “fight” with incumbent Democrats. “Meltdown? Not us,” Jeffries tweeted, seeming to reference a headline from an Intercept story on the primary. “They started this fight. We will finish it.”
Last summer, Jeffries teamed up with conservative Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., to start a political action committee to protect incumbent Democrats facing primary challenges from their left. A new dark-money cutout spent more than half a million dollars backing incumbents in each of the same five races, and each candidate it backed won the primary.
Brisport also pointed to Jeffries’s endorsement earlier this year against an incumbent progressive in the state Senate; Sen. Robert Jackson beat the challenger and kept his seat. Jeffries also made a late endorsement against another candidate backed by the NYC-DSA in a City Council race last year; the DSA candidate lost.
While Jeffries campaigned in support of several embattled congressional Democratic candidates in New York this cycle, the party’s losses across the state are weighing on the minds of progressives as party leadership transitions to a new guard that operates, in some ways, much like the old one. There may be space for Jeffries to work with progressives on policy, but differences in political strategy could pose a more intractable issue.
Jeffries now has an opportunity to forge stronger relationships with the left in New York and around the country, although he’ll have to address those major strategic differences, said Liat Olenick, co-president of Indivisible Nation BK.
“He has done a lot to protect incumbents from progressive challengers in local and federal races and that is a concern for him being in leadership,” Olenick said. “It’s incredibly frustrating to see Jeffries and some of his allies in leadership put more effort into defeating young, energetic, progressive candidates than actually defeating Republicans.”
Particularly after Democratic losses last month in New York, Olenick said, the question remains: “Sometimes it seems like, do they even really want to win?”
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