President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named Person of the Year for 2020 by Time.
Andrew Harnik/AP
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Andrew Harnik/AP
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named Person of the Year for 2020 by Time.
Andrew Harnik/AP
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump twice this year: once at the polls and again for Time‘s Person of the Year.
Time‘s choice to name Biden and Harris over Trump, who was also shortlisted, marks the first time a president-elect and vice president-elect have appeared together on a Person of the Year cover. Harris is also the first vice president-elect to get the designation.
“If Donald Trump was a force for disruption and division over the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and worldviews that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive,” the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal, said.
Harris is the country’s first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect. Biden, who at 78 will be the oldest person ever to assume the presidency, is alsothe oldest ever to be named Person of the Year by the magazine. He follows Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist who last year became the youngest ever to receive the honor — at age 16.
Biden and Harris made the cut after topping a shortlist that included the movement for racial justice, Dr. Anthony Fauci and front-line workers in the fight against COVID-19.
But the choice of Biden isn’t exactly a surprise, as selecting a president-elect for Person of the Year is a nearly nine-decade-old tradition at the magazine. The first president-elect named Person of the Year (then “Man of the Year”) was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1932, for his New Deal plan to bring America out of the Great Depression.
Greenwald, who resigned as the co-founding editor of The Intercept in October after he accused his now-former colleagues of censoring an article critical of then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden, appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Thursday and weighed in on the damage that has been done by the media during the election.
“We need to recognize what a historic crime and disgrace this is,” Greenwald began, “not only in journalism, but as soon as these [Hunter Biden] documents became known, the operatives in the intelligence community, the CIA, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former NSA Director] Michael Hayden — all of the standard professional liars — issued a letter claiming that this material was the hallmark of Russian disinformation, even though they had no basis for thinking that.
“And that gave the media permission to lie to the public continuously and Silicon Valley [permission] to censor these materials,” Greenwald went on.
“So not only did the public not become aware of them, they were lied to. Not only by claiming Russia was involved, even though there’s zero evidence that they were and no one thinks that, but by calling it disinformation, the implication was that these documents were forgeries, when now we know that the criminal investigation that’s been ongoing is about the very transactions that these documents cover,” Greenwald explained.
“This is an incredible crime by the corporate media [to] lie to the public and bury information before an election, but [it’s] also again domestic interference on the part of intelligence agencies in order to manipulate the outcome of our election.”
When asked why he thought major media organizations no longer report on intelligence services with “some level of skepticism,” Greenwald responded by saying intelligence services have “partnered” with the media as part of an effort to block the Trump agenda “on the premise that Trump presidency was dangerous.”
“If the media really wants to believe that the Trump presidency poses a danger, that’s their prerogative, but what they don’t have the right to do is to become disinformation agents,” Greenwald said. “And the CIA and all of those guys in the intelligence community, they were all open to the fact that they wanted Donald Trump to lose and they wanted to sabotage his presidency.”
He continued, “Remember, Chuck Schumer told Rachel Maddow in early 2017 that the CIA was going to sabotage Trump’s presidency if he continues to criticize them and that was the story for the last four years, a union between the intelligence agencies that fed lies to the media that mindlessly repeated them for their own interests.”
PALM BEACH, Fla. – Former Florida coronavirus data chief Rebekah Jones hit back on Thursday against state police claims that bodycam footage shows officers acted appropriately when they raided her home on Monday as part of an investigation before they took hardware she said contains evidence of government wrongdoing.
“You can see there’s an officer clearly pointing a gun at my face through the window next to my door,” Jones said in an interview with Florida Today.
Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement released bodycam footage on Thursday showing officers trying to contact Jones by calling her phone and knocking on her door Monday morning. When they received no response, one officer points a pistol at the door while another holding a sledgehammer demands Jones open the door. She obeys and exits with her hands up, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants.
The officer with his gun drawn then enters Jones’ home. “Do not point that gun at my children!” Jones yells, as her husband and kids walk down the stairs of the two-story house.
“This video demonstrates that FDLE agents exercised extreme patience,” Commissioner Richard Swearingen said Thursday in a statement from FDLE.
“This video does not help FDLE,” Jones said in the Florida Today interview, noting that officers repeated her phone number and address, but the department did not retract that information from the video when publishing it. The video also includes her license plate.
“So this looks like a further attempt from FDLE to just cause more trouble for me for releasing the video inside pointing guns at my kids,” Jones said.
National media have reported on the raid since Jones recorded it on a camera and posted it to Twitter on Monday. FDLE’s bodycam video lacks footage after officers went into her home.
FDLE said in its statement that “agents afforded Ms. Jones ample time to come to the door and resolve this matter in a civil and professional manner. As this video will demonstrate, any risk or danger to Ms. Jones or her family was the result of her actions.”
“I had no registered weapons in my name,” Jones said. “They know that, they checked that. Me and my husband don’t have weapons. I came downstairs in my pajamas. … they were there to serve a search warrant for a computer. This was not some illegal underground drug cartel.”
FDLE was issuing a warrant to Jones to justify seizing her computers, smartphones and other electronics as part of a computer hacking investigation. The department says someone gained access to the state’s emergency management system and sent a text message to 1,750 recipients saying “It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”
FDLE has said officers traced the message to Jones’ Internet Protocol, or IP, address, associated with Jones’ Comcast account, from which they got her address.
Jones denies she sent that message, saying during the Florida Today meeting that the username and password to log into the emergency management system had been publicly available on a state website.
Swearingen, the FDLE commissioner, said in the department’s Thursday statement that the media should “demand Ms. Jones release the entirety of the video she recorded while agents were present in her home.”
But Jones said the recording she posted to Twitter was ended when an officer noticed the camera recording from a table in her home and shut it off.
Since the raid and national coverage of it, Jones has raised nearly $220,000 on GoFundMe, where she said any money not spent on replacing her equipment or hiring a lawyer will go to a legal fund to defend whistleblowers.
Jones has also had to spend some of the money she raised to hire private security, now that her personal information has been publicized, she said. “I have to have moving expenses pretty soon because clearly I’m not safe in the state.”
To those who believe she is doing all this for attention, Jones said in the Florida Today interview, “You guys (reporters) know more than anyone that I didn’t want this.” When the newspaper reported in May that she had been fired, Jones begged the reporter to retract the story. “I hid for five days … thinking everyone would just move on.”
The health department fired Jones in May for refusing to falsify coronavirus data that would look friendlier to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push to reopen businesses and public places, she says in a whistleblower complaint filed in July.
Jones could not elaborate on her evidence of falsification because the whistleblower investigation is ongoing, she said.
“I’m being muzzled somewhat by legal advice to say ‘Don’t show my hand,'” Jones said. But now that FDLE has her computer equipment, she believes they will peruse the data on it.
The hardware the state seized contains evidence of wrongdoing at the highest levels of the state, Jones said, but she still has digital backups of it all. “They thought that they had everything but that’s why there’s the cloud,” she said, referencing online digital file storage services.
If Jones had it her way at the Department of Health, she said, she would’ve done things differently. “I would’ve just listened to the science,” she said, referencing issues such as a current lack of mask mandates for schools in 20 of Florida’s 67 counties.
And like other health scientists, Jones urged people against traveling for Christmas.
“We really just need to get thru the next few months, let the vaccine do its job, and then slowly get back to normal. It’s hard to give up things… but if we don’t skip this one it’s gonna be a lot of of people’s last Christmas when it doesn’t have to be.”
Several high-profile figures, including reality TV star Kim Kardashian West, had appealed to President Donald Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison.
With witnesses looking on from behind a glass barrier, the 40-year-old Bernard was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. Eastern time.
Bernard directed his last words to the family of the couple he killed, speaking with striking calm for someone who knew he was about to die. “I’m sorry,” he said, lifting his head and looking at the witness-room windows. “That’s the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day.”
Speaking for more than three minutes, Bernard said he had been waiting for this chance to say he was sorry — not only to the victims’ family, but also for the pain he caused his own family. Earlier, he said about his role in the killing, “I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t.”
Bernard was 18 when he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley on their way from a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas. Federal executions were resumed by Trump in July after a 17-year hiatus despite coronavirus outbreak in U.S. prisons.
Alfred Bourgeois, a 56-year-old Louisiana truck driver, is set to die Friday for killing his 2-year-old daughter by repeatedly slamming her head into a truck’s windows and dashboard. Bourgeois’ lawyers alleged he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but several courts said evidence didn’t support that claim.
Before Bernard’s execution, Kardashian West tweeted that she’d spoken to him earlier: “Hardest call I’ve ever had. Brandon, selfless as always, was focused on his family and making sure they are ok. He told me not to cry because our fight isn’t over.”
And just before the execution was scheduled, Bernard’s lawyers filed papers with the Supreme Court seeking to halt the execution. The legal team expanded to include two very high-profile attorneys: Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard law professor who was part of Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team and whose clients have included O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow and Mike Tyson; and Ken Starr, who also defended Trump during the impeachment and is most famous as an independent counsel who led the investigation into Bill Clinton.
But about two and a half hours after the execution was scheduled, the Supreme Court denied the request, clearing the way for the execution to proceed.
Bernard had been crocheting in prison and even launched a death-row crocheting group in which inmates have shared patterns for making sweaters, blankets and hats, said Ashley Kincaid Eve, an anti-death penalty activist.
Eve forwarded to The Associated Press Bernard’s latest communication with her on Wednesday, in which he wrote, “I feel good today!” Eve, who is an Indianapolis-based lawyer but has not represented Bernard, said he was not as resigned to dying as others executed this year have been.
“He desperately wants to live,” she said.
Federal executions during a presidential transfer of power also are rare, especially during a transition from a death-penalty proponent to a president-elect like Biden opposed to capital punishment. The last time executions occurred in a lame-duck period was during the presidency of Grover Cleveland in the 1890s.
Defense attorneys have argued in court and in a petition for clemency from Trump that Bernard was a low-ranking, subservient member of the group. They say both Bagleys were likely dead before Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire, a claim that conflicts with government testimony at trial. Bernard, they say, has repeatedly expressed remorse.
“I can’t imagine how they feel about losing their family,” Bernard said about surviving Bagley relatives in a 2016 video statement from death row. “I wish that we could all go back and change it.” He also described taking part in youth outreach programs and embracing religion, saying, “I have tried to be a better person since that day.”
The case prompted calls for Trump to intervene, including from one prosecutor at his 2000 trial who now says racial bias may have influenced the nearly all-white jury’s imposition of a death sentence against Bernard, who is Black. Several jurors have also since said publicly that they regret not opting for life in prison instead.
Kardashian West said in a series of recent tweets that Bernard’s “role was minor compared to that of the other teens involved.”
The Justice Department refused to delay Thursday’s execution of Bernard, another inmate Friday and three more in January, even after eight officials who participated in an execution last month tested positive for the coronavirus. The eight federal executions in 2020 already is more than in the previous 56 years combined.
One of Bernard’s co-defendants, Christopher Vialva, was executed in September. Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, released a statement after that execution, saying, “I believe when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences for their actions.”
Prosecutors said Vialva, the oldest of the teens at 19, was the ringleader who shot the Bagleys, as they lay in the trunk before Bernard set the car on fire.
The teenagers approached the Bagleys in the afternoon on June 21, 1999, and asked them for a lift after they stopped at a convenience store — planning all along to rob the couple. After the Bagleys agreed, Vialva pulled a gun and forced them into the trunk.
The Bagleys, both of whom were in their 20s, spoke through an opening in the back seat and urged their kidnappers to accept Jesus as they drove around for hours trying to use the Bagleys’ ATM cards. After the teens pulled to the side of the road, Vialva walked to the back and shot the Bagleys in the head.
The central question in the decision to sentence Bernard to death was whether Vialva’s gunshots or the fire set by Bernard killed the Bagleys.
Trial evidence showed Todd Bagley likely died instantly. But a government expert said Stacie Bagley had soot in her airway, indicating smoke inhalation and not the gunshot killed her. Defense attorneys have said that assertion wasn’t proven. They’ve also said Bernard believed both Bagleys were dead and that he feared the consequences of refusing the order of the higher ranking Vialva to burn the car to destroy evidence.
The first series of federal executions over the summer were of white men, which critics said seemed calculated to make them less controversial amid summer protests over racial discrimination. Four of the five inmates set to die before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration are Black men. The fifth is a white woman who would be the first female inmate executed by the federal government in nearly six decades.
Mr. McConnell’s concerns about the moderates’ compromise was earlier reported by Politico, and was relayed on the condition of anonymity by a senior Democrat familiar with the conversation between the senator’s aides and other congressional leaders. Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment, though he has made it clear that he was cool to the compromise, instead urging his colleagues to drop both the liability shield and the state and local aid in favor of a much narrower package.
“I think the question I have is, will we say, ‘Hey, look, we were successful in getting $908 billion, getting people together to that number,’” said Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah and one of the lawmakers involved in the current bipartisan discussions. “We’ve solved a whole series of elements — maybe on state and local, the liability, we wait, given the time frame, until next year.”
But top Democrats have rejected the suggestion from Mr. McConnell and other Republicans that Congress put aside those two issues. They have also panned a $916 billion alternative that the White House presented on Tuesday. That proposal, outlined by Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, failed to revive lapsed federal supplemental jobless payments in favor of a round of $600 stimulus checks, half the amount approved this year.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California noted on Thursday that Congress had previously stayed through Christmas to haggle over unfinished spending legislation. “We have to have a bill,” she told reporters at her weekly news conference, “and we cannot go home without it.”
The prospects for a one-week stopgap government funding bill intended to avert a shutdown on Friday and buy additional time for negotiations were unclear in the Senate on Thursday, as lawmakers struggled to secure consensus on a sweeping military policy bill and the spending measure.
MADISON (WKOW) — The Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 115th Fighter Wing has announced the death of the F-16 pilot who crashed Wednesday in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
In accordance with Department of Defense policy, the 115th Fighter Wing will not release the pilot’s identity until 24 hours after notifying the service member’s next of kin, according to a news release.
“We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family during this difficult time,” 115th Fighter Wing commander Col. Bart Van Roo said. “Today is a day for mourning, and the 115th Fighter Wing along with the entire Wisconsin National Guard stands with the pilot’s family as we grieve the loss of a great Airman, and patriot.”
“We are an extremely close knit group at the fighter wing, and the loss of one of our own brings immeasurable sadness to every member of our organization,” he said.
The crash occurred within Michigan’s Hiawatha National Forest during a training mission Tuesday night. A multi-state, interagency search for the pilot and aircraft immediately followed the crash. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
The 115th Fighter Wing is appreciative of the community support provided to its members and will release additional details as they become available.
The 115th Fighter Wing will provide another update early Friday morning.
The delay is the latest to beset the most traditional class of vaccines backed by Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to speed up vaccine development. The vaccines that have racked up early successes, such as those from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which an advisory committee recommended Thursday should be authorized, were seen as major risks, because the technologies are new.
Deadlines, real and perceived, haven’t been sufficient to drive Washington’s factions to an agreement, despite the U.S. breaking a record-high 3,000 daily COVID fatalities, and hospitals straining at capacity from soaring caseloads nationwide.
Deadlines, real and perceived, haven’t been sufficient to drive Washington’s factions to an agreement, despite the U.S. breaking a record-high 3,000 daily COVID fatalities, and hospitals straining at capacity from soaring caseloads nationwide.
Cyber security and digital rights experts questioned the evidence presented to the public thus far by state agents to justify the execution of a search warrant Monday on a fired Florida Department of Health data scientist, calling it “thin” and “fishy.”
Armed state agents entered Rebekah Jones‘ home on Monday morning and seized three computers, two phones, and several memory cards and thumb drives as part of an investigation into some 1,750 messages sent over a state emergency management messaging system on Nov. 10 that called on civil servants to blow the whistle on Florida’s COVID-19 pandemic response.
Jones was the architect of the state’s COVID-19 dashboard but was fired in May for what officials said was a pattern of insubordination. She says she was fired because she refused to manipulate data to favor Governor Ron DeSantis’ plans to reopen the economy.
The FDLE in an eight-page affidavit claimed to have traced “through the use of investigative resources” the origin of the Nov. 10 message to an Internet Protocol (IP) address associated with Jones’ Comcast account for her Tallahassee home.
Jones has denied sending the message.
“It is well known that IP addresses can be spoofed. In other words, I can make an IP or I can make it look as though Internet traffic is coming from somewhere else,” said Kevin Butler, associate director of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research and a professor of computer science at the University of Florida.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the country’s leading internet civil liberties and data privacy advocacy group, in 2016 published a 22-page white paper laying out why IP addresses on their own are unreliable personal identifiers, and are commonly misused or misunderstood by police and the courts. A key reason is that information can often relay through multiple IP addresses.
“It’s a thin read to just use the IP address, and it’s one that we really, really discourage,” said Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s executive director. “An IP address is nothing, is not even remotely like a fingerprint… the reason that we worry about IP addresses is the cops will often pretend like they’re a fingerprint.”
Butler, at the University of Florida, said making an IP address that appears to come from elsewhere isn’t that complicated.
“These types of attacks are things that, you know, my students in my undergraduate security class are aware of how to do,” he said.
Because of this, Butler and Cohn wonder what other information, beyond the affidavit, was presented to a judge to authorize the search warrant on Jones’ home.
In an email sent Wednesday, FLORIDA TODAY asked the FDLE if there was additional information whether public or confidential that was presented to the judge. The FDLE has so far not replied.
Jason Lewis, an assistant professor of computer science who heads the cyber security program at Florida Southern College and a former law enforcement agent who served as an investigator for the United States Secret Service’s Colorado Electronic Crimes Task Force, said the affidavit to his eyes did not sufficiently establish probable cause.
“The use of investigative resources: now, I’ve used that phrase before, but never like this, that is a jump,” he said, referring to the language in the affidavit that ties the IP address to Jones. “To say that I have an IP address, and then through use of investigative resources, it belongs to Rebekah I would dare say that to me doesn’t scream probable cause. I really don’t see how, that they’re showing to a reasonable person, that the facts support a crime and tying it to her.”
“It would be like saying ‘I found a bullet and through investigative resources Jason shot it’,” he said.
He said there’s no reason for records that would link the IP address to Jones’ Comcast account to be confidential. Furthermore, IP addresses change over time and the affidavit does not demonstrate that FDLE proved that it corresponded to Jones at the time the message was sent, Lewis said.
“(The agent) didn’t spell all that out, and to me that’s what you need for probable cause,” he said. “There’s no technique or source you need to protect when you say you’re tying an IP address to subscriber, so why not tell me that? To me that’s really fishy.”
Cybersecurity and digital rights experts also said the fact that the emergency system in question relied on a shared user name and password further complicates the case.
The username and password was shared among “multiple” users, past and present, according to the FDLE affidavit which did not specify the number of users with access.
“The idea that somebody would be immediately, or individually identifiable just sort of goes out the window with regards to a username and password. If those are all shared then holding any one person accountable based on the account details, it’s not possible,” said UF’s Butler.
It was also revealed Wednesday that the username and password for the system are on a document that was publicly available on a Department of Health site, as first reported by Ars Technica. As of Thursday morning that document was still online.
Neither FDLE nor DOH responded to questions about access to the emergency messaging system.
Already, the definition of “authorized” access to a computer system is legally ambiguous, and is at the heart of a case that is presently before the Supreme Court: Van Buren v. United States.
“I think that in this case we have another set of facts where the police are trying to say authorized means: anytime you do anything that somebody doesn’t like, and that can’t be the basis for a criminal law that sends the cops with guns drawn to your house,” said Cohn of the EFF.
The FDLE in their affidavit claim evidence of a violation of Florida computer-related crimes statute, that relates to when “a person commits an offense against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, or electronic devices if he or she willfully, knowingly, and without authorization or exceeding authorization: Accesses or causes to be accessed any computer, computer system, computer network, or electronic device with knowledge that such access is unauthorized or the manner of use exceeds authorization.”
But Cohn noted that missing from the affidavit is the question of what damage the alleged offense caused.
“What (Jones) did, didn’t cause any damage,” she continued. “Normally you don’t see prosecutors prosecuting for computer crimes something that didn’t cause any harm… it seems to be a very sketchy use of discretion to try to use this very serious statute against somebody who didn’t cause any harm to your systems.”
A violation of the statute cited by FDLE is a third-degree felony that can result in a prison term of up to 5 years and a $5,000 fine, if proven in court.
“Political harm because it embarrassed the governor is not harm, in the context of computer crime law,” Cohn said.
Sarasota attorney Ron Filipkowski, who resigned from a state commission in protest of the raid on Jones’ home, agreed.
“I have handled a lot of these kinds of cases in my career, and generally, the way that this statute is used, is to prosecute people who are hacking into other people’s systems to steal their identity, to steal their money, to crash their servers, to cause some sort of harm to that person or entity, which is not present here,” Filipkowski said. The now former Republican was reappointed last year by DeSantis to the 12th Judicial Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission, which nominates judges to fill vacancies.
Filipkowski, in his resignation letter, said he reviewed the warrant, and said the raid was “unconscionable.”
While he said that an IP address can be enough to establish probable cause, it was the breadth of the warrant that troubled him most.
“It’s broadened out to allow them to basically seize any of her devices including zip drives, including things that really are wholly unrelated to that criminal statute,” he said. “There’s no minimization.”
“I think they intentionally worded it that broadly because they are on a fishing expedition, because they’re not just looking at violations of that statute. They’re looking for communications that are between state employees and Rebekah,” he said.
Lewis, the former cybercrimes investigator, also questioned why authorities seized thumb drives and memory cards to investigate accessing an online messaging system. “The only things I think that you would have had probable causes to seize would be the router and the computers” as well as the modem. Jones’ router and modem weren’t seized.
The state attorney’s office in Leon county has yet to file charges. The judge that signed the warrant was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in October and sworn in last month. Signing the warrant was his first act.
The governor’s office has denied any knowledge or involvement in the FDLE’s investigation but Jones has described the raid as retaliation and an attempt by DeSantis “to get to my sources.”
Cohn said the FDLE’s actions and the information in the affidavit don’t help dispel that perception the raid was politically motivated.
“This is way out of proportion, and I think it feeds the argument that this is political and not about law enforcement.”
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon is a watchdog reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact him at 321-355-8144, or asassoon@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @alemzs
WASHINGTON – Congressional investigators say Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield may have directed officials to delete a contentious email sent by a Trump appointee that demanded the health agency halt weekly COVID-19 mortality reports that the official called CDC “hit pieces on the administration.”
The revelation came from Dr. Charlotte Kent, the head of the scientific publications branch and editor of the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), after she testified Monday behind closed doors before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. It comes as the U.S. on Wednesday reported more than 3,000 COVID-19 deaths for the first time, a single-day toll worse than 9/11. New infections are also booming, leaving hospitals across the nation with bed shortages and prompting stay-at-home orders in some places and mask mandates in 38 states.
Kent said she was told to delete a four-page email by a colleague who said the direction came from Redfield, which the committee says could violate a federal law that is punishable by up to three years in prison.
The email was sent by Paul Alexander, who at the time of the Aug. 8 email was the scientific adviser to Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo. The email includes misspellings, demands and accusations that the CDC was aiming to hurt Trump with its reporting. Both Alexander and Caputo have since left their roles in the department.
“This is designed to hurt this Presidnet for their reasons which I am not interested in. I am intersted in this or any President being served fairly and that tax payers money not be used for political reasons,” Alexander wrote in the 11:42 p.m. email, which was obtained by Politico. “They CDC, work for him. The public wants honesty and fair reporting so that they can be informed, not to be decieved.”
The email demands that the weekly reports be halted unless Alexander approves of them first. Alexander goes through several MMWR articles on the ability of children to get and spread COVID-19 and accuses the CDC of bias and misleading Americans with data.
“The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy,” he argued in the email, according to Politico. “They may say ‘it’s the data’; I agree on one level, but they are constantly reporting incompletely and writing in a manner to make the nation run and dig a hole and climb inside with their children for 10 years.”
Kent told the committee, “I was instructed to delete the email,” and explained that when she went to look for the memo, it had already been removed from her inbox. “I went to look for it after I had been told to delete it, and it was already gone,” she said, according to the committee.
Redfield, in a statement, responded to Kent’s claims about the email, which he was copied on.
“Regarding the email in question, I instructed CDC staff to ignore Dr. Alexander’s comments,” he said. “As I testified before Congress, I am fully committed to maintaining the independence of the MMWR, and I stand by that statement.”
The Department of Health and Human Services refuted the thrust of the committee’s findings and in a statement said the “characterization of the conversation with Dr. Kent is irresponsible.”
“We urge the Subcommittee to release the transcript in full which will show that during her testimony Dr. Kent repeatedly said there was no political interference in the MMWR process,” the agency said in a statement before stating the committee is “not operating in good faith.”
Kent also told lawmakers the CDC delayed publication of a study until after Redfield testified over the summer during a hearing where he argued schools should reopen. About 15 minutes after the conclusion of the hearing, the study was released and showed the virus spread at a kids summer camp in Georgia, the committee said.
“I am deeply concerned that the Trump Administration’s political meddling with the nation’s coronavirus response has put American lives at greater risk, and that Administration officials may have taken steps to conceal and destroy evidence of this dangerous conduct,” said Rep. James Clyburn, who chairs the committee.
The committee has requested a transcribed interview with Redfield on Dec. 17 and threatened to issue subpoenas if HHS did not turn over documents by Tuesday.
“I do think that it is unfortunate that Mr. McCarthy is trying to make an issue of this,” she said.
“But you know what he’s trying to do, he’s trying to deflect attention from the fact that he has QAnon in his delegation over there,” Pelosi added, referring to an outlandish conspiracy theory that has taken root among some conservatives and put Republicans on the defensive.
Pelosi said she and other congressional leaders were informed in 2015 about the matter at the same time that Swalwell was by the FBI. Law enforcement authorities were monitoring the woman at the center of the controversy and believed her to be an operative of China’s Ministry of State Security.
Known alternatively as Fang Fang or Christina Fang, the woman came to know Swalwell while he was still a city council member and had stayed in his orbit while he was in Congress, allegedly assisting with fundraising for Swalwell’s 2014 reelection campaign as well as helping to place an intern in his office, according to a report from Axios.
Swalwell immediately cut off contact with Fang — who is no longer in the country — when the FBI alerted him, and he has not been accused of any improper actions in his dealings with her.
“We knew at the same moment,” she said. “We knew when they knew and at that time, that was the end of it.”
McCarthy told Fox News Thursday morning that he was unaware of the matter until it came to light publicly earlier this week.
“I’m going to ask the FBI director to brief me,” McCarthy said. “As a leader and a member of the Gang of Eight, I did not know of this.”
Republicans have jumped at the chance to turn the screws on Swalwell following the report linking him to a suspected Chinese spy, and the news has captivated conservative media for days.
“Oh my gosh, talk about karma,” Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who sits with the California Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Thursday on Fox News.“If this doesn’t show that God doesn’t have a sense of humor, what else does?”
The idea that any member of Congress had contact with an alleged spy for one of the country’s biggest global rivals would be fodder under any circumstances, but Swalwell had a particularly large target on his back.
Swalwell gained prominence in recent years as a frequent antagonist of Trump’s during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, anddue to his abortive bid for the Democratic presidential nomination that ended in July 2019.
Republicans accused Swalwell of holding the president to a double standard.
“It was all Russia, Russia, Russia,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said Thursdayon Fox News. “He showed no concern about China, which if he went through an event of some type then he should be greatly concerned about China, and we didn’t hear from him on that.”
McCarthy and a collection of top Republicans have called into question Swalwell’s continued membership on the committee and tried to drag Pelosi and committee Chair Adam Schiff into the mire.
“He is jeopardizing national security,” McCarthy said Thursday. “When did Nancy Pelosi know of this and why did she maintain him on the committee?”
“To do that against a critic of the president, they may think they’re going to silence me,” Swalwell said Wednesday on CNN. “They are not going to silence me, but what they are going to do is they are going to make others think twice when they are asked to sit down and provide defensive information about people like this.”
Other congressional Republicans have also been quick to pile on to the California Democrat.
“Nancy Pelosi cannot allow him to stay on the intelligence committee, and he’s got to come clean with this,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Fox Business.
Trump himself thus far has not directly entered into the fray, but Thursday morning retweeted an earlier post from Texas Rep. Lance Gooden claiming Swalwell “actually colluded” with an an agent of theChinese government.
Lastly, even if auroras, also referred to as the northern lights, materialize, you need clear skies to see them, and it helps to have an unobtrusive moon for the sky to be as dark as possible.
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