03 April 23
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The porn star whose dalliance with Trump led to his indictment says she feels vindicated but expects there will be violence.
“This pussy grabbed back,” the porn star told The Times of London.
That, of course, is a reference to Trump’s crude joke to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women, which surfaced on a tape a month before the 2016 election.
Daniels admitted to mixed feelings about the news that a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday indicted Trump for his role in the hush-money payment to keep her from going public while he was running for president.
“It’s monumental and epic, and I’m proud. The other side of it is that it’s going to continue to divide people and bring them up in arms,” Daniels said.
“It’s vindication,” the adult film star added. “But it’s bittersweet. He’s done so much worse that he should have been taken down [for] before.”
More than once during the interview, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, expressed no illusions about how some Americans might respond to the criminal case.
“Whatever the outcome is, it’s going to cause violence, and there’s going to be injuries and death,” she said. “There’s the potential for a lot of good to come from this. But either way, a lot of bad is going to come from it, too.”
Trump is expected to surrender and be arraigned on Tuesday. Before the grand jury acted, he had raised the spectre of violence, saying that “potential death & destruction” could accompany his indictment and posting a photo of himself next to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Daniels said she has been attacked for coming forward for years, with trolls calling her “‘gold digger,’ ‘slut,’ ‘whore,’ ‘liar,’ whatever.” But she is now receiving threats that are much “violent and graphic.”
She said she does fear for her own safety, having received death threats on “all social media platforms, and email, and phone” immediately after the indictment.
“The country is more divided and people are more desperate. I’m not afraid of [Trump], or of the government, but it just takes one crazy supporter who thinks they’re doing God’s work or protecting democracy,” she said.
Daniels blamed Trump for much of this increasingly feverish rhetoric, saying he has “gotten away with inciting a riot, and causing death and destruction”—a reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
But Daniels said she won’t be cowed or shamed.
“I am fully aware of the insanity of it being a porn star. But it’s also poetic; this p*ssy grabbed back,” she said.
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President Biden signed an executive order further cracking down on the use of commercial spyware on Monday. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
The Biden administration has been trying to choke off use of hacking tools made by the Israeli firm NSO. It turns out that not every part of the government has gotten the message.
Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent.
If the veiled nature of the deal was unusual — it was signed for the front company by a businessman using a fake name — the timing was extraordinary.
Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists. The White House placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist, declaring the company a national security threat and sending the message that American companies should stop doing business with it.
The secret contract — which The New York Times is disclosing for the first time — violates the Biden administration’s public policy, and still appears to be active. The contract, reviewed by The Times, stated that the “United States government” would be the ultimate user of the tool, although it is unclear which government agency authorized the deal and might be using the spyware. It specifically allowed the government to test, evaluate, and even deploy the spyware against targets of its choice in Mexico.
Asked about the contract, White House officials said it was news to them.
“We are not aware of this contract, and any use of this product would be highly concerning,” said a senior administration official, responding on the basis of anonymity to address a national security issue.
Spokesmen for the White House and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to make any further comment, leaving unresolved questions: What intelligence or law enforcement officials knew about the contract when it was signed? Did any government agency direct the deployment of the technology? Could the administration be dealing with a rogue government contractor evading Mr. Biden’s own policy? And why did the contract specify Mexico?
The secret contract further illuminates the ongoing battle for control of powerful cyberweapons, both among and within governments, including the United States.
The weapons have given governments the power to conduct targeted, invasive surveillance in ways that were unavailable before the advent of the tools. This power has led to abuses, from the Mexican government spying on journalists who were investigating military crimes to Saudi Arabia using NSO technology to hack the devices of political dissidents. The use of spyware against journalists and opposition figures sparked a political scandal in Greece.
Rampant abuse of commercial spyware has led to growing calls from Western political leaders to limit access to them. And yet their power makes the tools alluring to intelligence services, militaries and law enforcement agencies in democracies and autocracies alike. The story of NSO’s push to break into the United States market brings to life how these tensions have played out.
President Biden signed an executive order last week to clamp down on government use of commercial spyware. It prohibits federal departments and agencies from using hacking tools that might be abused by foreign governments, could target Americans overseas or could pose security risks if installed on U.S. government networks. The order covered only spyware from commercial entities, not tools built by American intelligence agencies, which have similar in-house capabilities.
After this article was published online, the senior administration official told The Times that if there was a contract in November 2021 giving the United States access to the NSO tool, it would violate the new executive order.
Even as the Biden administration has showcased its efforts to drive NSO out of business, it was clear even before the revelation of the latest contract that some agencies have been drawn to the power of these cyberweapons.
Elements of America’s expansive national security apparatus in recent years have bought the weapons, deployed them against drug traffickers, and have quietly pushed to consolidate control of them into the hands of the United States and its closest allies. As The Times reported last year, the F.B.I. purchased access in 2019 to NSO’s most powerful hacking tool, known as Pegasus, which invades mobile phones and mines their contents.
A subsequent Times investigation has found:
- The secret November 2021 contract used the same American company — designated as “Cleopatra Holdings” but actually a small New Jersey-based government contractor called Riva Networks — that the F.B.I. used two years earlier to purchase Pegasus. Riva’s chief executive used a fake name in signing the 2021 contract and at least one contract Riva executed on behalf of the F.B.I.
- The 2021 contract was for the same NSO geolocation tool once used by an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of a brutal campaign against perceived threats to the kingdom.
- The deal unfolded as the European private equity fund that owns NSO pursued a plan to get U.S. government business by establishing a holding company, Gideon Cyber Systems. The private equity fund’s ultimate goal was to find an American buyer for the company.
- A potential deal last year with L3Harris, the American defense giant, to buy NSO’s hacking tools and take on the bulk of its work force was far more advanced than previously known. Despite NSO being on the Commerce Department blacklist, L3Harris executives had discussions with Commerce Department officials about the potential deal, according to internal department records, and there was a draft agreement in place to finalize it before the White House publicly objected and L3Harris dropped its plans.
This article is based on more than three dozen interviews with current and former American and Israeli government officials, corporate executives, technology experts and a review of hundreds of pages of government documents, some of them produced under Freedom of Information Act requests by The Times.
Breaking Into the U.S. Market
In February 2019, Novalpina Capital, a London-based private equity fund, purchased NSO for approximately $1 billion. At the time, NSO still had a near-monopoly on premier hacking tools for mobile phones, and the fund was confident it could expand the business by attracting new government clients around the world.
NSO had spent nearly a decade winning business with its army of elite hackers and the promise and power of its signature tool, Pegasus, which had the ability to extract all of the contents of a mobile phone, from emails to photos to videos.
Novalpina Capital also had a bigger goal, according to three people with knowledge of the fund’s strategy. Seeing a big potential market, it wanted to sell spyware to the United States and its closest “Five Eyes” intelligence partners: Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the same time, NSO had been ensnared by years of scandal over revelations of the abuses of Pegasus by numerous governments. In Saudi Arabia, aides to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had used Pegasus against associates of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist killed by Saudi operatives in Istanbul in October 2018.
An NSO spokesperson said the company’s technologies “are only sold to allies of the U.S. and Israel, particularly in Western Europe, and are aligned with the interests of U.S. national security and governmental law enforcement agencies around the world.”
But although Novalpina had acquired NSO in the belief that it could weather the criticism of how Pegasus had been deployed, the fallout from suggestions that Pegasus was linked to Mr. Khashoggi’s murder never subsided. By the middle of 2020, NSO was seen as radioactive by some in the investment fund’s leadership. The fund began looking to unload the firm.
Novalpina set up Gideon Cyber Systems, a U.S.-based holding company, in 2020. Novalpina’s strategy for Gideon was to strip NSO’s powerful hacking tools, including Pegasus, and the company’s work force from NSO’s Israeli leadership and put the spyware under Gideon’s management — in essence making NSO an American company. Then, the thinking went, the private equity fund could sell Gideon to a large American military contractor or other U.S. investor, paving the way for the United States and its closest allies to have the tools in their arsenals.
During the Trump administration, NSO was already beginning to break into the U.S. government market, and in 2019 the F.B.I. purchased a license for Pegasus. The bureau had two aims: to study the spyware to see how adversaries might use it and to test Pegasus for possible deployment in the bureau’s own operations inside the United States.
To make the purchase, the F.B.I. used Riva Networks, the small, New Jersey-based contractor, but used a cover name for the company, “Cleopatra Holdings.” According to public records, Riva has years of experience selling products and services to the Defense Department and other government agencies.
In a 2018 letter to the government of Israel, the Justice Department authorized “Cleopatra Holdings” to purchase Pegasus on behalf of the F.B.I. The Times has reviewed a copy of the letter, and a redacted version was produced as part of The Times’ Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the F.B.I.
For Novalpina, the fact that the F.B.I. had purchased a license to use Pegasus was significant. Getting the bureau’s validation — and that of other U.S. government agencies — was an essential step toward convincing a U.S. investor to purchase the weapons.
The F.B.I. installed the first Pegasus system in a Riva facility in June 2019. An F.B.I. spokesperson declined to comment on why the bureau used a cover name to make the purchase, or say what safeguards were put in place to ensure that an operational spy tool located in a private facility was not being abused. The spokesperson said that license was no longer active and “the software is no longer functional.”
Addressing American Concerns
As it continued trying to generate U.S. government interest in NSO’s hacking tools, Novalpina had to address concern within American spy agencies that the tools posed a counterintelligence risk — that they might contain back doors that would allow Mossad or other Israeli intelligence services to gain access to American secrets if the tools were used on U.S. government networks.
To try to overcome this problem after President Biden took office, Gideon began working with another American firm, Boldend, with deep ties to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, which helped arrange meetings with government officials.
During a virtual meeting on May 5, 2021, the team pitched Christopher Inglis, a former top National Security Agency official working for Paladin Capital who was about to become the White House national cyber director, on what they were doing to address concerns about deploying Israeli technology inside U.S. government systems.
At the meeting, Mr. Inglis was cautiously supportive of the approach, but he said they needed to consider the reputational baggage of NSO.
“I told them, ‘You are inheriting more than this exquisite technology, you are inheriting the history of how it’s been used,” Mr. Inglis said in an interview.
He also said the technology should not be used for offensive purposes — to hack American adversaries — but instead as defensive tools to help test the vulnerabilities of U.S. systems.
Around this time, the team also gave a briefing to C.I.A. officials about the technology, according to two people.
Once Mr. Inglis moved to the White House job two months later, the team did not hear from him again. In fact, Mr. Inglis entered a White House in the midst of an effort to put NSO out of business because of concerns about how its products were enabling human rights abuses and undercutting dissent and press freedoms around the world.
That effort accelerated when, in the middle of 2021, Biden administration officials learned that American diplomats based in Uganda had been hacked by Pegasus, the first known use of the spyware against the U.S. government.
On Nov. 3, 2021, the Biden administration publicly announced its decision to put NSO on the Commerce Department blacklist, in effect trying to put it out of business and putting the United States on record as seeking to rein in the proliferation of commercial spyware.
Days later came a well-disguised step in the other direction: Gideon, the U.S. affiliate of NSO, entered into the contract with “Cleopatra Holdings” — Riva Networks — specifying that the U.S. government would get access to NSO’s premier geolocation tool, what the company calls Landmark.
A Mysterious Contractor
Landmark turns phones into a kind of homing beacon that allows government operatives to track their targets. In 2017, a senior adviser to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, the same person accused of orchestrating the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, used Landmark to track Saudi dissidents.
Under the contract with Gideon, U.S. government officials had access to a special NSO portal that allowed them to type in mobile phone numbers, which enabled the geolocation tool to pinpoint the specific location of the phone at that moment without the phone user’s knowledge or consent. NSO’s business model requires clients to pay for a certain number of “queries” per month — one query being each individual attempt to locate a phone.
Under this contract, according to two people, there have been thousands of queries in at least one country, Mexico. The contract also allows for Landmark to be used against mobile numbers in the United States, although there is no evidence that has happened.
The November 2021 contract was signed under the name “Bill Malone,” identified as the chief executive of Cleopatra Holdings. In fact, the man who signed the contract is Robin Gamble, the chief executive of Riva Networks, according to two people familiar with the connection between Riva and Cleopatra.
A Times reporter recently visited the Washington, D.C., address for Cleopatra Holdings identified in the 2018 Justice Department letter to the Israeli government. The office had signs near the door saying it was monitored by 24-hour surveillance, and the lobby displayed an American flag on a stand and a framed certificate from a military special operations unit. There were no signs for Cleopatra Holdings, and the person who answered the door said she had never heard of the firm, but asked for the reporter’s business card.
An address for Riva Networks listed in a public database appears to be a residential home in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood. Nobody answered when a reporter knocked on the door. Mr. Gamble and the company did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
Trying to Find a Buyer
The decision to put NSO on the Commerce Department blacklist scared off most potential acquirers. But one soon emerged: L3Harris, a defense industry giant that specializes in selling electronic warfare and surveillance technology to the Defense Department, F.B.I. and U.S. spy agencies. According to the company’s 2021 annual report, more than 70 percent of the company’s revenue came from U.S. government contracts.
Four people familiar with the situation said L3Harris received cautious indications of support for pursuing an acquisition from officials inside several American and law enforcement agencies. L3 Harris did not respond to messages seeking comment.
L3Harris executives also held meetings with senior Israeli officials led by Major. Gen. Amir Eshel, the defense ministry’s director general at the time, who would have needed to authorize such a deal, given the Israeli national security interest in NSO. The executives told the Israelis that American intelligence agencies supported the acquisition as long as certain conditions were met, according to five people familiar with the discussions.
L3Harris also lobbied the Commerce Department to get NSO removed from the blacklist, according to documents obtained by The Times from a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Commerce Department sent a list of questions to NSO, which included questions about whether Americans outside the United States were protected from having NSO’s products deployed against them. The department also asked if NSO would “shut down access to its products if the U.S. government informs them that there is an unacceptable risk of the tool being used for human rights abuses by a particular customer?”
On May 13, 2022, Tania Hanna, the head of L3Harris’s government relations department, requested a meeting with Matthew Borman, a top Commerce Department official overseeing the blacklist.
Days later, a lawyer from the firm representing L3Harris, Covington & Burling, requested a meeting with Commerce Department officials that “involves an issue that is important from a U.S. and Israel national security/foreign policy perspective.”
A meeting was scheduled for June 15 between Mr. Borman and David Kornick, the president of L3Harris’s Intelligence and Cyber division, according to an email exchange. Because of extensive redactions in the Commerce Department documents, it is unclear whether the meeting took place. A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment.
The negotiations between L3Harris and NSO got so far that the two parties put together a draft agreement, with plans to finalize the deal in June of last year, according to a copy of the agreement and emails reviewed by The Times.
There was a parallel discussion going on about NSO’s fate in Israel.
Senior officials in Mossad and the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, wanted to nationalize the company so that it could continue selling its products to Israeli intelligence.
The prime minister at the time, Naftali Bennett, instead decided to support NSO’s sale to L3Harris, but on the condition that NSO would be free to sell its products to Israeli intelligence agencies.
What the Israelis didn’t know was that there was already stiff opposition inside the White House to the L3Harris deal. When news of the potential acquisition leaked on the site Intelligence Online, White House officials went public with their opposition, and said they would push to block any sale of NSO to a defense contractor with national security clearances. The L3Harris deal was dead.
But the secret contract for access to the phone-tracking tool was not. Cleopatra Holdings still makes monthly payments to Gideon Cyber Solutions for continued access to Landmark.
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A supporter of the Affordable Care Act stood in front of the Supreme Court in November 2020. (photo: Samuel Corum/Boston Globe)
On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas reversed a provision of the Affordable Care Act which required that insurers cover all the costs associated with screening tests, medications, counseling, and other services recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts that advises the government.
The decision followed a ruling by the judge in September that said members of the task force were unconstitutionally appointed because they were not selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Though likely to be appealed, the decision voids the requirement that insurers fully cover a large swath of preventive services that the task force has recommended since 2010, when the ACA was passed. Those include anxiety screening in children and adolescents, weight screening and control for pregnant women, unhealthy drug use screenings for adults, and coverage of an HIV-prevention drug known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
The ACA requires full coverage of a number of other services that were recommended by other groups. Those requirements will remain in place, including full coverage of contraception.
Insurers will also still be required to follow coverage recommendations for preventive care in place before 2010, said Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
“These are questions insurers will have to resolve and that HHS will offer guidance on,” Bagley said. “There will be a fair amount of uncertainty.”
While the decision has imperiled how much patients will have to pay to access certain preventive services, insurers may provide coverage of certain services, with cost sharing, or might continue to provide full coverage, even if not mandated
It is unclear when consumers might start to incur costs for these preventive services, as many insurance contracts are annual. Many also expect the federal government to attempt to seek a stay of the ruling. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the largest insurer in the state, said in a statement that it was reviewing the details of the ruling. However, the statement said, coverage of services recommended by the task force remains the same for now and would not immediately require cost sharing — meaning that consumers wouldn’t have to pay co-pays or other costs associated with the care.
“We are deeply concerned that this decision will create consumer confusion about the coverage and cost of important preventive services,” the insurer said in a statement.
Lora Pellegrini, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, said her members strongly support coverage of the preventive services implemented under the ACA, and said the group supported codifying such requirements into state law.
“As health plans, we’ve been committed to preventive services and prevention, and there’s lots of data that getting certain preventive services will save money in the long run,” Pellegrini said. “These particular items were ones the task force deemed appropriate. Ultimately, this is about chipping away at the ACA.”
Massachusetts legislators had already taken action in preparation for Thursday’s decision. Legislation filed by state Senator Cindy Friedman and state Representative John Lawn would protect the no-cost-sharing provisions not only of the task force recommendations, but also for other services protected from cost sharing by the ACA, including immunizations and preventive care and screenings for infants, children, and adolescents. Friedman said the bill tried to codify a wider range of preventive services beyond those at risk today, given the appetite among certain groups to go after the ACA.
But she questioned the desire of political groups to hinder any kind of access to critical preventive services.
“It’s a political decision at best, and inhumane at worst,” Friedman said. “It will take health care away from millions of Americans if it is allowed to stand. … We as a state need to take steps that mitigate the dangerousness of it.”
Two other bills would codify and expand PrEP access. One would codify the no-cost-sharing provisions for PrEP and would allow the state’s insurance commissioner to enforce it. Another would seek to go further by enabling pharmacists to prescribe, dispense, and administer PrEP for a 60-day supply, with the expectation that patients would follow up with their doctor for longer-term access to the drug.
PrEP access without cost sharing was already an issue, even when the ACA mandates were in effect, with consumers saying they still faced bills for follow-up care and lab work. Advocates worry the Texas decision will further erode coverage of the drug.
“This will increase HIV transmission just among men who have sex with men by 17 percent in the first year alone,” said Ben Klein, senior director of litigation and HIV law for the GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. “That is astounding and unacceptable. We need to be moving the needle in the opposite direction.”
Both pieces of PrEP legislation are sponsored by state Senator Julian Cyr and state Representative Jack Patrick Lewis. In a statement, Lewis called the Texas decision “a dire threat to public health.” In an interview, Cyr added that of the 24,900 people in the state eligible to take PrEP, only approximately 9,100 currently were. If fewer take the drug because of the cost-sharing impediments, HIV transmission will increase.
“These extremists will have blood on their hands thanks to their policies,” Cyr said. “Perhaps that is their intent. I cannot convey how serious and alarming of a moment we are all in as a nation.”
A portion of the Massachusetts insurance market is already protected from the abolishment of some ACA provisions. The state’s Health Connector, which manages the online health insurance marketplace, already requires insurance offerings to have no cost sharing for services recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force, as part of its seal of approval process. Massachusetts laws could further extend such protections to a greater portion of the market.
However, even if the state were to codify these services, the law would not apply to the approximately 60 percent of the commercially insured market that is self-insured. As of 2021, 2.39 million people were in what is known as self-insured plans, where the employers themselves assume financial risk for eligible medical costs incurred by their employees and employees’ families. Many large companies choose to self-insure, and industry officials have noted that some smaller companies are following suit. While such plans must comply with federal coverage mandates, they are under no obligation to comply with state mandates.
“There’s so little that we can do, because we have no governing authority over those plans,” Friedman said. “This has to change at the federal level. We can’t make an employer do something. The whole system is at risk.”
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Former president Donald Trump speaks during an event March 13 in Davenport, Iowa. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)
Ex-staffer’s emails, texts are guiding investigators, who increasingly suspect Trump went through boxes after subpoena
The additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.
The new details highlight the degree to which special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers at Trump’s Florida home and private club has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case — whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records.
The emphasis on obstruction marks a key distinction so far between the Mar-a-Lago investigation and a separate Justice Department probe into how a much smaller number of classified documents ended up in an insecure office of President Biden’s, as well as his Delaware home. The Trump investigation is much further along than the Biden probe, which began in November and is being overseen by a different special counsel, Robert K. Hur. Biden’s lawyers say they have quickly handed over all classified documents found in Biden’s possession.
The Trump investigation team has spent much of its time focusing on events that happened after Trump’s advisers received a subpoena in May demanding the return of all documents with classified markings, the people familiar with the matter said. Smith is trying to determine if Trump or others mishandled national security documents, and if there is enough evidence to ask a grand jury to charge him with obstructing the investigation.
The Mar-a-Lago investigation is one of four separate criminal probes involving Trump, who is campaigning for another term in the White House. Trump has been indicted by a New York grand jury that heard evidence about money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. He is set to make his first court appearance in that case Tuesday. He is also being investigated by the Justice Department and a state prosecutor in Georgia over efforts to block Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
An FBI spokesman referred questions to a spokesman for the special counsel, who declined to comment.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a written statement: “The witch-hunts against President Trump have no basis in facts or law. The deranged special counsel and the DoJ have now resorted to prosecutorial misconduct by illegally leaking information to corrupt the legal process and weaponize the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion and conduct election interference, because they are clearly losing all across the board.”
The statement went on to point to the Biden classified documents probe, as well as the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, suggesting that conduct there was worse than anything that happened at Mar-a-Lago. “President Trump is the only leader fighting for the Constitution and to protect the American people from being abused by those who want to destroy our system of government,” Cheung said.
In the classified documents case, federal investigators have gathered new and significant evidence that after the subpoena was delivered, Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession, the people familiar with the investigation said.
Investigators now suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes, these people said. While Trump’s team returned some documents with classified markings in response to the subpoena, a later FBI search found more than 100 additional classified items that had not been turned over.
Court papers filed seeking judicial authorization for the FBI to conduct the search of Trump’s home show agents believed that “evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises.”
The application for court approval for that search said agents were pursuing evidence of violations of statutes including 18 U.S.C. 1519, which makes it a crime to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal a document or tangible object “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency.”
A key element in most obstruction cases is intent, because to bring such a charge, prosecutors have to be able to show that whatever actions were taken were performed to try to hinder or block an investigation. In the Trump case, prosecutors and federal agents are trying to gather any evidence pointing to the motivation for Trump’s actions.
The Washington Post reported in October that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had told investigators that he moved boxes at Mar-a-Lago at the former president’s instruction after the subpoena was issued. Smith’s team has video surveillance footage corroborating that account, The Post reported, and considers the evidence significant.
In addition, the people familiar with the investigation said, authorities have another category of evidence that they consider particularly helpful as they reconstruct events from last spring: emails and texts of Molly Michael, an assistant to the former president who followed him from the White House to Florida before she eventually left that job last year. Michael’s written communications have provided investigators with a detailed understanding of the day-to-day activity at Mar-a-Lago at critical moments, these people said.
Michael’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
Investigators have also amassed evidence indicating that Trump told others to mislead government officials in early 2022, before the subpoena, when the National Archives and Records Administration was working with the Justice Department to try to recover a wide range of papers, many of them not classified, from Trump’s time as president, the people familiar with the investigation said. While such alleged conduct may not constitute a crime, it could serve as evidence of the former president’s intent.
These people said prosecutors have collected evidence that Trump ignored requests from multiple advisers to return the documents to the archives over a period of a year, that he asked advisers and lawyers to release false statements claiming he had returned all documents, and that he grew angry after being subpoenaed for the documents.
Investigators also have evidence that Trump sought advice from other lawyers and advisers on how he could keep documents after being told by some on his team that he could not, people familiar with the investigation said. They have collected evidence that multiple advisers warned Trump that trying to keep the documents could be legally perilous.
As investigators piece together what happened in May and June of last year, they have been asking witnesses if Trump showed classified documents, including maps, to political donors, people familiar with those conversations said.
Such alleged conduct could demonstrate Trump’s habits when it came to classified documents, and what may have motivated him to want to keep the papers. The Post has previously reported that Trump told aides he did not want to return documents and other items from his presidency — which by law are supposed to remain in government custody — because he believed they belonged to him.
Investigators have also asked witnesses if Trump showed a particular interest in material relating to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, people familiar with those interviews said. Milley was appointed by Trump but drew scorn and criticism from Trump and his supporters after a series of revelations in books about Milley’s efforts to rein in Trump toward the end of his term. In 2021, Trump repeatedly complained publicly about Milley, calling him an “idiot.”
The people did not say whether investigators specified what material related to Milley they were focused on. The Post could not determine what has led prosecutors to press some witnesses on those specific points or how relevant they may be to the overall picture that Smith’s team is trying to build of Trump’s actions and intent.
But people familiar with the matter stressed that a major thrust of the investigation has been the question of obstruction, and whether Trump sought to deliberately prevent officials from gathering all of the classified material at Mar-a-Lago.
The case stretches back to efforts by Archives officials to retrieve documents and other items from the former president in 2021, after they came to believe that some presidential records from the Trump administration — such as letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — were unaccounted for, and perhaps in Trump’s possession.
After months of back-and-forth, Trump agreed in January to turn over 15 boxes of material. When archivists examined the material, they found 184 documents marked classified, including 25 marked top secret, which were scattered throughout the boxes in no particular order, according to court filings.
That discovery suggested to authorities that Trump had not turned over all the classified documents in his possession when he left the White House. In May, a grand jury subpoena demanded the return of classified documents with a wide variety of markings, including a category used for secrets about nuclear weapons.
In response to the subpoena, Trump’s advisers met with government agents and prosecutors at Mar-a-Lago in early June, handing over a sealed envelope containing another 38 classified documents, including 17 marked top secret, according to court papers. According to government filings, Trump’s representatives claimed at the meeting that a diligent search had been conducted for all classified documents at the club.
Agents continued to gather evidence that suggested Trump was not fully complying with either government requests or subpoena demands, and that his team might have misled authorities and possibly held on to some sensitive files.
On Aug. 8, FBI agents conducted a surprise court-ordered search of Mar-a-Lago and found 103 documents marked classified, including 18 marked top secret, according to court papers. The investigation has recovered documents that describe highly sensitive U.S. intelligence efforts aimed at China, one document describing Iran’s missile program, and material covering other sensitive topics, including nuclear secrets.
Smith’s team has been presenting witnesses and evidence for months to a grand jury in Washington focused on the Mar-a-Lago probe, even as a separate grand jury at the same federal courthouse hears evidence related to efforts to block the results of the 2020 election, and the state-level prosecutors in New York and Georgia press forward with their cases.
The Mar-a-Lago prosecutors recently won a court fight that allowed them to question Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, before the grand jury about what he knew about the documents.
Grand jury proceedings are secret, and Smith has given no public indication of the pace of his investigation or when he expects it to be finished.
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John Fetterman. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
The Pennsylvania senator said in his first interview after his hospital stay that he’s eager “to start making up any lost time.”
“It’s a strange feeling for me to have,” he told Jane Pauley on CBS Sunday Morning, his first interview since seeking treatment for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in mid-February.
The freshman senator spoke to Pauley days before he was discharged from the hospital, where he spent nearly two months undergoing treatment. He admitted to being “miserable” during pivotal moments, starting with his November Senate win through his January swearing-in ceremony.
“I was definitely depressed,” he said, describing his mentality in January.
His depression left him unable to leave his bed or hold an appetite, resulting in weight loss. “I had stopped engaging some of the—most things that I love in my life,” he said. His sudden turn sparked concern among his Democratic colleagues, who pressed him on his lack of eating.
That concern extended to his household. His wife Gisele dove into research on depression, he said, unable to understand how a man with so much—three kids, a healthy marriage, a prosperous political career—could not find joy in it all.
“But depression does not make sense, right?” she told Pauley. “It’s not rational.”
Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed—under the guidance of a doctor—on his 14-year-old son’s birthday, a fact that both weighs heavily on him and brings a sense of renewed purpose.
“My aspiration is to take my son to the restaurant that we were supposed to go during his birthday but couldn’t, because I had checked myself in for depression,” he said.
It’s a drive Fetterman seeks to carry into all aspects of his life now that he’s in remission, he said.
“I will be going home,” he said. “And I can't wait to [see] what it really feels like, to take it all in, and to start making up any lost time.”
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Petteri Orpo will get the first chance at forming a coalition to obtain a majority in parliament as Sanna Marin's era as prime minister comes to an end. (photo: Lehtikuva/Antti Aimo-Koivisto/Reuters)
Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s hopes for re-election dashed as Finland’s main conservative party comes out on top in a closely fought election.
With all of the votes counted on Sunday, the centre-right National Coalition Party (NCP) came out on top at 20.8 percent. They were followed by the right-wing populist party, The Finns, with 20.1 percent, while Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats garnered 19.9 percent.
With the top three parties each getting around 20 percent of the vote, no party is in a position to form a government alone. Over 2,400 candidates from 22 parties were vying for the 200 seats in the Nordic country’s parliament.
“We got the biggest mandate,” NCP leader Petteri Orpo said as he claimed victory, surrounded by supporters in a restaurant in the capital, Helsinki.
“Based on this result, talks over forming a new government to Finland will be initiated under the leadership of the National Coalition Party,” he said.
Marin, who at age 37 is one of Europe’s youngest leaders, conceded defeat.
“Congratulations to the winner of the elections, congratulations to the National Coalition Party, congratulations to The Finns Party. Democracy has spoken,” the prime minister said in a speech to party members.
“We have gained support, we have gained more seats [in parliament]. That is an excellent achievement, even if we did not finish first today,” she added.
Marin, considered by fans around the globe as a millennial role model for progressive new leaders, has received praise in the West for her vocal support of Ukraine and her prominent role, along with President Sauli Niinisto, in advocating for Finland’s successful application to join NATO.
But at home, she has faced criticism for her partying and her government’s public spending, including on pensions and education.
The NCP, which has led in polls for almost two years, has accused Marin of eroding the country’s economic resilience at a time when Europe’s energy crisis, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine, has hit the country hard and the cost of living has increased.
It has promised to curb spending and stop the rise of public debt, which has reached just over 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since Marin took office in 2019.
Orpo, 53, told The Associated Press news agency on Sunday that Finland’s solidarity with Ukraine would remain strong during his tenure.
“First to Ukraine: We stand by you, with you,” the former finance minister said at the NCP’s victory event.
“We cannot accept this terrible war. And we will do all that is needed to help Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, because they fight for us. This is clear,” Orpo added.
“And the message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is: Go away from Ukraine because you will lose.”
The NCP’s share of votes translates into 48 seats in the Eduskunta, Finland’s parliament, while The Finns, a nationalist party running largely on an anti-immigration and anti-European Union agenda, is to get 46 seats and Marin’s Social Democrats 43 seats, respectively.
Observers say the result means a power shift in Finland’s political scene as the nation is now likely to get a new centre-right government with nationalist tones.
“It’s been an amazing election night. We just won 10 more seats. The next thing is to get government ready. So, it’s going to be a very exciting week ahead,” Kristinna Kokko, the National Coalition Party secretary, told Al Jazeera from Helsinki.
She said it was too early to talk about potential coalition partners. “Our prime minister candidate will lead the negotiations, and it’s going to be a tight negotiation in any case.”
Al Jazeera’s Mohammed al-Madhoun, reporting from Helsinki, said the NCP’s supporters were jubilant at Sunday’s win.
“Supporters here are cheering and celebrating the NCP’s win and this party is looking to come back to government after four years of momentous changes, starting with the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and Finland’s application to join NATO,” he said.
“The NCP is now thinking about how to form a new government, specially with the exceptional rise of the Finns Party, led by Riikka Purra,” he said, adding that the talks are expected to start in the coming days.
The NCP and The Finns largely share views on developing Finland’s economy, though they have differences in climate policies and European Union issues.
“I trust the Finnish tradition of negotiating with all parties and trying to find the best possible majority government for Finland,” Orpo told the AP.
“And you know what is important for us? It’s that we are an active member of the European Union. We build up NATO-Finland, and we fix our economy. We boost our economic growth and create new jobs. These are the crucial, main, important issues we have to write into the government programme,” he said.
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View of a deforested and burned area of the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil on Sept. 2, 2022. (photo: Douglas Magno/AFP)
The study, published in the journal Nature last month, found that clearing wide swaths of trees — what's known as deforestation — reduces rainfall in tropical rainforests which actually generate their own rain. When it rains, trees soak up and use that water. They then release that moisture, both through evaporation and through their leaves. That humid air rises and helps create clouds, which in turn create more rain.
This process, called precipitation recycling, accounts for up to 41% of the rainfall in the Amazon and up to 50% in the Congo, according to the study's authors. When trees are cut down, it breaks this cycle, hampering the formation of rain and leading to drought. Reduced precipitation recycling due to forest loss, the researchers say, has grave repercussions for agriculture, hydropower generation and climate resilience – as well as for the rainforest itself.
"Global efforts to restore large areas of degraded and deforested land could enhance precipitation, reversing some of the reductions in precipitation due to forest loss observed here," the authors wrote. They called for renewed efforts to protect rainforests and urged world leaders to act on their pledges to stop deforestation.
The study looked at satellite data on rainfall and forest loss in the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon, which covers nine countries; the Congo Basin, the second largest rainforest spanning six countries; and Southeast Asia, home to Indonesia's thriving Leuser Ecosystem.
Each of these rainforests is losing trees primarily to agricultural land use. The Amazon has lost a significant amount of its forest cover – more than an estimated 60 million acres from 2000 to 2010 alone. Much of the deforestation in the Amazon is due to soy cultivation and cattle farming.
In Indonesia, peatland forests are burned to the ground for lucrative palm oil plantations – a cheap oil commonly found in packaged foods, cleaning and cosmetic products and increasingly in biofuels. The palm oil industry, illegal logging and deforestation by small-scale farmers in West-Central Africa are also decimating the rainforests in the Congo Basin.
"When we're removing trees, we're making the environment drier and that lack of moisture that's the big cloud above those trees just disappears," said Callum Smith, a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds in England and co-author of the study.
In the Congo, deforestation could reduce local rainfall by 8-10% by the end of the century, the study points out. Scientists are also seeing the impact in the Amazon.
"The important thing to remember is that this is just due to forest loss," Smith said of the Congo prediction. "We're screening out the effect(s) of climate change."
Stopping deforestation
Robin Averbeck, forest program director at the Rainforest Action Network, said global forests are critical for producing rainfall and regulating global temperatures. They also capture carbon dioxide which is a major contributor to human-caused climate change. That gas releases, though, when trees are cut down or burned.
"Once we deforest, we lose one of our greatest natural defenses in protecting ourselves from climate change. This is not only true for forests, but also other ecosystems," Averbeck said. Draining and burning peatlands for palm oil plantations, particularly in Indonesia, also releases carbon into the atmosphere, they said.
Averbeck said banks, corporations and governments need to adopt and meaningfully enforce regulations and policies to prevent future deforestation while not funding or using crops or products cultivated on deforested land. They also said ensuring and protecting indigenous land rights is a critical step in preventing deforestation and rights abuses before they occur.
Indigenous lands contain 80% of the planet's remaining biodiversity, Averbeck pointed out. For this reason, Averbeck said it is critical for Indigenous people to be able to resist development and for governments and companies to respect their decision.
In Brazil, deforestation dramatically decreased through law enforcement under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010. The country saw deforestation surge and reach a fifteen-year high in 2021 under former president Jair Bolsonaro. Lula, who assumed the presidency again this year, campaigned on preserving the Amazon and protecting Indigenous communities.
Unlike Indonesia and the Brazilian Amazon, much of the forest loss in the Congo Basin is due to poor, small-scale farmers trying to survive, explained Frances Seymour, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, a global nonprofit that works with leaders to solve environmental problems. Addressing deforestation in the Congo Basin is more complex, she said.
"It really requires an across-the-board approach to rural development that provides these communities with access to improved agricultural methods and to clean energy sources and other alternatives to make a decent living and live a decent life that doesn't require the exploitation of forest resources," Seymour said.
She said it is important to distinguish between corporations and governments that are engaging in illegal actions – such as opening unlicensed palm oil plantations, illegal road construction and logging or corruption – and poorer communities who depend on the rainforest because they lack other resources.
"There's a real moral problem about exercising law enforcement against people who have no alternative, some of the most vulnerable people in the world," she said.
Bernardo Flores, an economist at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil said the Amazon region is already being stressed by hotter temperatures. According to a 2018 study, temperatures there have increased by more than one degree Farenheit over the last 40 years. Flores is worried that the rainforest is heading toward a tipping point.
"You would trigger this domino effect related to the loss of rainfall. Then you would lose a large part of the Amazon," he said. "We wouldn't be able to control that anymore."
It would mean a huge hit to the world's ecosystems – about one third of all freshwater fish species are found in the Amazon, Congo and Mekong basins – as well as local Indigenous communities and farmers.
Flores said stopping deforestation is important, but it's not the whole solution. Rainforests also need global temperatures to stop rising.
"The Amazon is important for everyone in the world," Flores said. "When humanity faces problems in the future that we now don't even imagine now, the solutions can come from the Amazon."
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