President Donald Trump has embarked on a five-day trip to Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea—his longest foreign visit since taking office—aiming to secure trade, mineral, and ceasefire deals before meeting China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday, where he hopes to strike a major agreement despite lingering tensions over his trade policies.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel’s main goal in Gaza is to destroy Hamas’s remaining tunnels and dismantle its weapons, calling this key to securing victory. He said the IDF is prioritizing tunnel demolition while coordinating with U.S. officials to fully implement President Trump’s plan to eliminate Hamas’s military infrastructure.
New York Attorney General Letitia James was arraigned at a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, Friday, where she pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The charges against James stem from her 2020 purchase of a home in Norfolk, Virginia. Prosecutors allege that James misled a bank about the nature of the residence in order to obtain more favorable loan conditions. The indictment states that James misrepresented the financial institution in claiming it would be her secondary residence, and instead rented it out to a family. According to the indictment, the lower interest rate would allow James to save nearly $19,000 over the course of the 30-year loan. James entered the not guilty plea herself to U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker. She is being represented in the case by defense attorney Abbe Lowell, and by Andrew Bosse, a former assistant U.S. attorney based in Norfolk who formerly headed up the office’s criminal division. James’ arraignment is the latest in a string of prosecutions brought against the president’s perceived political foes, despite objections from career prosecutors — some of whom have since been fired or resigned. James, a Democrat, has long-drawn Trump’s ire after she campaigned for attorney general in 2016 largely on vows to investigate Trump’s actions and businesses. She also successfully secured a $450 million civil fraud case against him last year, though an appeals court later tossed the financial penalty portion of the case. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a statement after she was indicted. “These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” she added. Her indictment, like the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, was presented to a grand jury by former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, whom President Donald Trump installed as the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia last month. Trump, in September, said he would install Halligan as the top prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia, replacing interim attorney Erik Siebert, who resigned under pressure to indict both Comey and James. “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” Halligan said in a statement. “The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.” After the arraignment, it is likely that she will file a motion to dismiss her case for vindictive and selective prosecution, following similar steps taken by Comey’s legal team in Alexandria earlier this week.
British Airways has confirmed it will restart daily flights between London Heathrow and Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, joining a growing list of European carriers restoring scheduled service to Israel. Spain’s Iberia will relaunch its Madrid–Tel Aviv route, rejoining Air Europa which recently resumed operations on the same city pair. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) will resume its Copenhagen–Tel Aviv route next week after a nine-year hiatus. Germany’s low-cost carrier Eurowings and Swiss International Air Lines are also resuming flights, while Italy’s ITA Airways and Air India are expected to restore service by year-end. The return of major European airlines is beginning to ease the surge in fares that followed months of reduced capacity. Winter ticket prices on key routes have already fallen sharply as seat supply improves. U.S. carriers are also returning. American Airlines announced it will resume daily nonstop flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport beginning March 28, deploying Boeing 777-200ER aircraft; tickets go on sale October 27. The move follows United Airlines’ resumption of Newark–Tel Aviv service in July and Delta Air Lines’ restart of JFK–Tel Aviv service on September 1, which now operates seven times weekly. The coordinated return of transatlantic and European services signals a broader normalization of air links with Israel after months of disruptions, offering travelers more capacity and downward pressure on fares ahead of the winter season. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen has offered an account of his agency’s global intelligence operations—revealing that the widely-publicized sabotage of Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure in September 2024 is only part of a far broader espionage campaign. In an appearance on the The Brink podcast, Cohen said the now-notorious “pager operation” — in which operatives within Hezbollah were duped into activating explosive-laden devices — reflected a strategic paradigm he developed more than two decades ago. The method, he said, is known within Mossad as the “manipulated equipment method” or “pager method,” and it was implemented across “virtually every potential theatre of operation.” “You know how many equipment I mean treated equipment that we have in these countries? You can’t. You don’t. I do,” Cohen said of the scale of the campaign. “In all the countries that you can imagine,” he added when pressed for geographic specifics. Cohen traced the origins of the scheme to the early 2000s, saying it was developed in the period 2002-2004 while he led Mossad’s Special Operations division under former chief Meir Dagan. According to Cohen, the logic was simple: if adversaries are purchasing equipment, Israel should intervene by embedding itself into their supply chain and exploiting it. “If I know that … Iran or other countries … are buying something that I can be part of their supply chain, I will do,” Cohen said. He pointed to the 2006 Second Lebanon War — in which Israel fought Hezbollah — as the initial battlefield where this “manipulated equipment” tactic was tested. Cohen says that the strategic method was then scaled and refined for global use. Perhaps most striking, Cohen admitted that the system had not been deployed effectively in the Gaza Strip, identifying the region as a “critical shortfall” in Mossad’s intelligence architecture. “Not Gaza. Not enough,” he told the podcast host. He suggested that had the system been operational there, Israel’s readiness in the run-up to the October 7th 2023 attack might have been very different. Cohen didn’t restrict his critique to foreign targets. He also took aim at Israel’s internal security agencies. He said that when he sought to take responsibility for intelligence operations in Gaza prior to the October 7 attack, he was met with stiff resistance from both Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service) and the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Cohen claimed the agencies treated Mossad’s proposals with institutional arrogance: “We’re the IDF… we’re Shin Bet… we don’t need you.” He maintained that his warnings about a deficiency in intelligence coverage were regularly voiced, but went unheeded: “I have told and written that they ‘have nothing sufficient on the level of intelligence’ prior to October 7th.” And he challenged those agencies for failing to publicly dispute the claim. The revelations raise fundamental questions about how far Israel’s covert operations have extended—and where vulnerabilities remain. By describing a system that is global, meticulously engineered and highly embedded in adversary logistics, Cohen’s account sheds light on the evolving nature of intelligence warfare in the 21st century. But the admission of a gap in Gaza may fuel renewed scrutiny of Israel’s strategic posture along its southern border. Critics may argue that if Mossad’s capabilities were so advanced elsewhere, why were they unable—or perhaps unpermitted—to deploy them where they were arguably most needed. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Democratic Socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani tried to deflect mounting criticism Thursday after a bruising mayoral debate in which his rivals painted him as untested, unproductive, and missing in action in Albany. Speaking at a press conference in Murray Hill, Mamdani accused former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa of running on empty rhetoric rather than ideas for the city. “I spent 90 minutes on stage with Andrew Cuomo and I, like many here, could tell you his critiques of me, his critiques of Curtis Sliwa, but I could not tell you what he was actually running on to deliver for this city,” Mamdani said. But the Queens lawmaker, 34, refused to answer questions from reporters about his legislative record — or his absence from the state Capitol — even as critics continued to pounce on his threadbare résumé. Cuomo, running as an independent, accused Mamdani during Wednesday night’s Spectrum NY1 debate of “never accomplishing anything,” blasting him for passing just four bills in five years. “You never even proposed a bill on housing or education,” Cuomo charged. “You don’t know how to run a government. You don’t know how to handle an emergency. You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly… Shame on you!” Sliwa, the perennial GOP contender, was even more cutting. “Your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin,” he told Mamdani, drawing laughs from the audience. Mamdani, who entered the Assembly in 2020, has struggled to shake criticism that his legislative record is thin and his time in Albany fleeting. The New York Post reported in June that he missed roughly half of all Assembly votes this year while campaigning for mayor. After collecting his paycheck when the state budget passed in April, Mamdani didn’t return to Albany for the remainder of the session. He passed just one bill in 2024 — the same number as an 88-year-old Republican lawmaker from Nassau County who was homebound with health issues. Even some of Mamdani’s colleagues have expressed frustration. “I show up! I’m there every day doing my job,” said Assemblyman Chris Tague (R-Schoharie). “He should be an actor in Hollywood — everything is theatrics and acting with him.” While the number of standalone bills passed isn’t always the defining measure of a legislator’s influence, Mamdani has also struggled to shape the state’s sprawling budget process. His flagship free-bus pilot program, briefly included in the 2023 budget, was axed by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie the following year after Mamdani voted against the spending plan. Cuomo, 67, used the debate to turn Mamdani’s signature issues against him, mocking his complaints that Albany hasn’t delivered funding for juvenile offender programs. “If Zohran thought that there was money locked up in Albany, maybe he should have gone to Albany and proposed a bill to release it,” Cuomo quipped. The former governor, who’s styled his independent bid as a centrist alternative to both Mamdani’s democratic socialism and Sliwa’s hard-right populism, sought to portray the Assemblyman as an unserious protest candidate. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives,” Cuomo said. Mamdani fired back from the stage, accusing Cuomo of rewriting history. “We just had a former governor say, in his own words, that the city has been getting screwed by the state,” he […]
Authorities are on the scene after two suspicious packages were found near a kosher supermarket in Johannesburg, South Africa, following an earlier report of a suspicious device in the area.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “We think it’s in Israel’s long term security, and I think our Israeli partners agree, to be able to have a Gaza that is no longer an operating space for a terrorist organization. That’s why this plan calls for the demilitarization of Gaza, and that’s what we’re committed to.”
ELIMINATED: The IDF announced that Abbas Hassan Karki, a senior Hezbollah terrorist in charge of the group’s logistics in southern Lebanon, was killed in an Israeli drone strike near the town of Toul, close to Nabatieh. Karki, who led Hezbollah’s “Southern Front” logistics and previously held several key roles, was reportedly central to rebuilding the group’s military infrastructure and overseeing weapons storage and transfers across the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Knesset’s annexation vote cannot proceed and warned that such a move could jeopardize all peace agreements.
A reservist from Abu Ghosh was arrested after police discovered a large cache of ammunition and military equipment in his home. He reportedly told officers he kept the items there because he didn’t want to leave them in his vehicle. Police have detained him for questioning.
The IDF concluded its largest military drill since the war began, a five-day exercise along the Lebanon border led by the 91st “Galilee” Division with support from the Air Force, Navy, police, and emergency services. The drill aimed to boost readiness for extreme defense scenarios, rapid mobilization, and offensive operations, incorporating lessons from two years of conflict. It also included logistics, medical, and maintenance training, such as evacuating casualties under fire and providing emergency support.
The last time U.S. President Donald Trump visited South Korea in 2019, he made a surprise trip to the border with North Korea for an impromptu meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to revive faltering nuclear talks. Now, as Trump is set to make his first trip to Asia since his return to office, speculation is rife that he may seek to meet Kim again during his stop in South Korea. If realized, it would mark the two’s first summit since their last meeting at the Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019, and fourth overall. Many experts say prospects for another impromptu meeting aren’t bright this time but predict Trump and Kim could eventually sit down for talks again in coming months. Others dispute that, saying a quick resumption of diplomacy isn’t still likely given how much has changed since 2019 — both the size of North Korea’s nuclear program and its foreign policy leverage. Talks of fresh diplomacy Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim as he boasted of his relationship with the North Korean leader and called him “a smart guy.” Ending his silence on Trump’s outreach, Kim last month said he held “good personal memories” of Trump and suggested he could return to talks if the U.S. drops “its delusional obsession with denuclearization” of North Korea. Both Washington and Pyongyang haven’t hinted at any high-profile meeting ahead of the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in South Korea. But South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told lawmakers in mid-October that it was possible for Trump and Kim to meet at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone again when the U.S. president comes to South Korea after visiting Malaysia and Japan. “We should see prospects for their meeting have increased,” said Ban Kil Joo, assistant professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul. He cited the recent suspension of civilian tours to the southern side of Panmunjom and Kim’s comments about a possible return to talks. If the meeting doesn’t occur, Ban said Kim will likely determine whether to resume diplomacy with Trump when he holds a major ruling party conference expected in January. No notable logistical preparations that imply an impending Kim-Trump meeting have been reported, but observers note that the 2019 get-together was arranged only a day after Trump issued an unorthodox meeting invitation by tweet. Kim’s greater leverage Since his earlier diplomacy with Trump fell apart due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea, Kim has accelerated the expansion of an arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike the U.S. and its allies. He has also strengthened his diplomatic footprint by aligning with Russia over its war in Ukraine and tightening relations with China. Subsequently, Kim’s sense of urgency for talks with the United States could be much weaker now than it was six years ago, though some experts argue Kim would need to brace for the end of the Russia-Ukraine war. “Considering the current situation, it seems difficult to imagine Kim Jong Un coming over for talks,” said Kim Tae-hyung, a professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University. With an enlarged nuclear arsenal, stronger diplomatic backing from Russia and China and the weakening enforcement of sanctions, Kim has greater leverage and clearly wants the U.S. to acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power, a status needed to call for the lifting of […]
A 21-year-old semitruck driver accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing a fiery crash that killed three people on a southern California freeway is in the country illegally, U.S. Homeland Security officials said Thursday. Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and jailed after Tuesday’s eight-vehicle crash in Ontario, California, that also left four people injured. He faces three counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence causing injury, the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office said. Singh is scheduled for arraignment Friday. The district attorney’s office said he does not yet have a lawyer. Singh, of Yuba City, California, is from India and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 across the southern border, Homeland Security said Thursday in a post on X. That revelation prompted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to restate earlier concerns about who should be able to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. Duffy and President Donald Trump have been pressing the issue and criticizing California ever since a deadly Florida crash in August was caused by an immigrant truck driver the federal government says was in the country illegally. The Transportation Department significantly restricted when noncitizens can get commercial driver’s licenses last month. Duffy said this week’s crash wouldn’t have happened if Newsom had followed these new rules. “These people deserve justice. There will be consequences,” he said in a statement. Newsom’s office responded that the federal government approved Singh’s federal employment authorization multiple times and this allowed him to obtain a commercial driver’s license in accordance with federal law. California’s Highway Patrol said in a release that traffic westbound on Interstate 10, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) west of San Bernardino, had slowed about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, struck other vehicles and caused a chain-reaction crash. Dashcam video from the tractor-trailer obtained by KABC-TV shows the truck slamming into what appears to be a small, white SUV in the freeway’s center lane. It continued forward, plowing into several other vehicles, including another truck. It then crossed over two lanes before crashing into an already-disabled truck on the freeway’s right shoulder. Flames can be seen erupting alongside the tractor-trailer as it crosses the two right lanes. California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez says the agency has seen the KABC video and believes it is dashcam video from the truck that caused the crash. “This tragedy follows a disturbing pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, directly threatening public safety,” Homeland Security said Thursday in its X post. Deadly crash in Florida In August, a truck driver made an illegal turn on Florida’s Turnpike, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of West Palm Beach, and was struck by a minivan. Two passengers in the minivan died at the scene, and the driver died at a hospital. Homeland Security has said that truck driver, Harjinder Singh, was in the United States illegally. Florida authorities said he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018. Homeland Security said Harjinder Singh obtained a commercial driver’s license in California, which is one of 19 states, in addition to the District of Columbia, that issue licenses regardless of immigration status, according to the National Immigration Law Center. The Trump administration has pointed to the Florida crash while sparring with California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. In April, Trump […]
President Donald Trump said late Thursday that he was ending “all trade negotiations” with Canada because of a television ad opposing U.S. tariffs that he said misstated the facts and called “egregious behavior” aimed at influencing U.S. court decisions. The post on Trump’s social media site came after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he aims to double his country’s exports to countries outside the U.S. because of the threat posed by Trump’s tariffs. Trump’s call for an abrupt end to negotiations could further inflame trade tensions that already have been building between the two neighboring countries for months. Trump posted, “The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs.” “The ad was for $75,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Carney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The prime minister was set to leave Friday morning for a summit in Asia, while Trump is set to do the same Friday evening. Earlier Thursday night, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute posted on X that an ad created by the government of Ontario “misrepresents the ‘Presidential Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade’ dated April 25, 1987.” It added that Ontario did not receive foundation permission “to use and edit the remarks.” The foundation said it is “reviewing legal options in this matter” and invited the public to watch the unedited video of Reagan’s address. Carney met with Trump earlier this month to try to ease trade tensions, as the two countries and Mexico prepare for a review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a trade deal Trump negotiated in his first term, but has since soured on. More than three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and nearly $3.6 billion Canadian (US$2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border daily. Trump said earlier this week that he had seen the ad on television and said that it showed that his tariffs were having an impact. “I saw an ad last night from Canada. If I was Canada, I’d take that same ad also,” he said then. In his own post on X last week, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, posted a link to the ad and the message: “It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched.” He continued, “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.” A spokesperson for Ford didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night. But Ford previously got Trump’s attention with an electricity surcharge to U.S. states. Trump responded by doubling steel and aluminum tariffs. The president has moved to impose steep U.S. tariffs on many goods from Canada. In April, Canada’s government imposed retaliatory levies on certain U.S. goods — but it carved out exemptions for some automakers to bring specific numbers of vehicles into the country, known as remission quotas. Trump’s tariffs have […]
Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Friday that coordinating a cease-fire in Gaza is “a historic mission,” as the United States and its international partners work to sustain the truce, deliver humanitarian aid and prepare for a multinational peacekeeping force to enter the territory. At a press conference convened at the U.S.–Israel Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel — the hub overseeing the cease-fire in Gaza — Rubio described the emerging effort as the centerpiece of America’s strategy. He warned the implementation “is not going to be a linear journey. There’s going to be ups and downs and twists and turns.” But he added: “I think we have a lot of reason for healthy optimism about the progress that’s being made.” Rubio said the State Department and affiliated agencies are increasing their presence at the coordination center, and the staffing will continue to grow to “provide personnel on things like emergency response and the coordination of humanitarian assistance.” The focus, he said, remains on the initial phase of the cease-fire plan. “We’ve got to get through the process that we’re involved in right now, which is making sure the cease-fire holds without anything disrupting it, making sure people are getting the life-sustaining aid that they need in a way that’s not being looted or stolen or diverted in any way, and at the same time, creating the conditions for the [International] Stabilization Force to come in as soon as it possibly can be put together to provide the stabilization we need to move to the further phases of this plan,” Rubio said. He issued a warning about the volatility in Gaza: “On the other side of that yellow line,” he said, referring to areas from which the IDF withdrew under the cease-fire, “there is still a terrorist group that remains armed, and we’ve seen them take actions against their own population.” Rubio urged greater media attention to Hamas’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza, saying: “That’s something to point to.” Asked whether Israel would need U.S. “permission” to resume fighting Hamas if it re-arms, Rubio replied: “I don’t think this has to do anything with permission or anything of that nature. This has to do with basically, we’re all committed to making this plan work. There is no plan B. This is the best plan. It’s the only plan. It’s one that we think can succeed. It’s one that we believe is on the way to success.” He repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. cease-fire plan benefits from broad regional support and is the “only” viable option. On the question of Hamas’s disarmament, Rubio stressed: “If Hamas refuses to demilitarize, it’ll be a violation of the agreement, and that’ll have to be enforced. I’m not going to get into the mechanisms by which it is going to be enforced, but it’ll have to be enforced.” He added: “This is a deal, and a deal requires conditions to be met. Israel has met their commitments. They’re standing at the yellow line, and that is contingent upon the demilitarization.” Rubio acknowledged the long timeline ahead. “Hamas disarmament and the demilitarization of Gaza under the second phase of the deal is a long-term project,” he said. “We want to help create the conditions here so that people in Gaza don’t have to be terrorized by […]
Top Biden administration officials personally authorized an FBI investigation that targeted nearly 100 Republican-aligned groups, donors, and even sitting members of Congress, newly released records show — a move senior Republicans are now calling one of the most egregious abuses of federal power in decades. The unclassified files, made public Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), reveal that former Attorney General Merrick Garland, then–Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and former FBI Director Christopher Wray all signed off on the operation, code-named “Arctic Frost.” The April 2022 memo formally greenlit a sweeping probe into what the bureau described as “an apparent effort to obstruct Congress’ certification of the Electoral College” following the 2020 presidential election. Grassley accused the Justice Department and FBI of “unleashing unchecked government power at the highest levels,” warning that “Arctic Frost” amounted to “weaponized law enforcement that’s arguably worse than Watergate.” “My oversight will continue,” Grassley wrote on X, calling the findings a “bombshell” that exposed a “systematic effort to surveil political opponents.” The four-page authorization memo, dated April 4, 2022, was written by Wray and sent to Garland for approval. The FBI chief argued that “open-source reporting and public statements made by individuals closely associated with Donald J. Trump, Inc. (Trump Campaign) present an articulable factual basis indicating the existence of a federal crime.” The document was signed by Garland the following day. Beneath his signature line, Monaco scrawled a handwritten note: “Merrick, I recommend you approve.” Though initially framed as an investigation into fake elector slates allegedly submitted to the National Archives from several battleground states, the operation soon widened to include a broad range of conservative figures, advocacy organizations, and lawmakers. The probe would later provide materials used by special counsel Jack Smith in his failed criminal case against Donald Trump, which alleged unlawful efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. According to Grassley’s disclosures, “Arctic Frost” expanded far beyond the Trump campaign orbit. The FBI quietly subpoenaed phone records belonging to nine congressional Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.). The subpoenas sought “toll analysis” data — records showing call times, recipients, durations, and locations — for the days surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Grassley said the move constituted “a direct surveillance of members of Congress,” raising constitutional and separation-of-powers concerns. “The Biden DOJ issued subpoenas to obtain our cell phone records,” Blackburn wrote in a letter co-signed by several affected lawmakers. “We have yet to learn of any legal predicate for doing so.” Blackburn has since accused Smith of having “spied on duly elected members of Congress” and called for his disbarment. The newly released records also show that 92 Republican or GOP-linked organizations and individuals — including prominent political groups such as Turning Point USA — were investigated under Arctic Frost. Grassley said that the operation “appeared to show Arctic Frost was much broader than just an electoral matter.” “Arctic Frost wasn’t just a case to politically investigate Trump,” Grassley said at a recent committee hearing. “It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.” […]
New York Attorney General Letitia James is set to make her first court appearance in a mortgage fraud case on Friday, the third adversary of President Donald Trump to face a judge on federal charges in recent weeks. James was indicted earlier this month on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a 2020 home purchase in Norfolk, Virginia. The charges came shortly after the official who had been overseeing the investigation was pushed out by the Trump administration and the president publicly called on the Justice Department to take action against James and other of his political foes. James, a Democrat who has sued Trump and his administration dozens of times, has denied wrongdoing and decried the indictment as “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.” The indictment stems from James’ purchase of a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family. During the sale, she signed a standard document called a “second home rider” in which she agreed to keep the property primarily for her “personal use and enjoyment for at least one year,” unless the lender agreed otherwise. Rather than using the home as a second residence, the indictment alleges, James rented it out to a family of three. According to the indictment, the misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties. James drew Trump’s ire when she won a staggering judgment against the president and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud. James’ indictment followed the resignation of Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he resisted Trump administration pressure to bring charges. Siebert was replaced with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor and presented James’ case to the grand jury herself. On Thursday, lawyers for James asked for an order prohibiting prosecutors from disclosing to the news media information about the investigation, or materials from the case, outside of court. The motion followed the revelation from earlier this week that Halligan contacted via an encrypted text messaging platform a reporter from Lawfare, a media organization that covers legal and national security issues, to discuss the James prosecution and complain about coverage of it. The reporter published the exchange that she and Halligan had. “The exchange was a stunning disclosure of internal government information,” lawyers for James wrote. They added: “It has been reported that Ms. Halligan has no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. But all federal prosecutors are required to know and follow the rules governing their conduct from their first day on the job, and so any lack of experience cannot excuse their violation.” The motion also asks that the government be required to preserve all communications with representatives of the media as well as to prevent the deletion of any records or communications related to the investigation and the prosecution of the case. Separately on Thursday, defense lawyers said they intended to challenge Halligan’s appointment, a […]
