BERLIN — European officials have expressed confidence that they can endure a winter with limited Russian energy, as Moscow postponed restarting the flow of natural gas to Germany through a closely watched pipeline.
The European Union has been preparing for the possibility that Russia may cut gas deliveries in retaliation for European opposition to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Under the long tenure of President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia has wielded its energy supply in myriad ways for foreign policy gains, often in efforts to seek leverage over European policies by turning off the gas spigot in the wintertime.
The E.U.’s economy commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, said Saturday that the bloc was “well prepared to resist Russia’s extreme use of the gas weapon,” according to Reuters.
“We are not afraid of Putin’s decisions, we are asking the Russians to respect contracts, but if they don’t, we are ready to react,” he said on the sidelines of an economic forum in Italy.
Germany, in particular, has imposed tough energy-saving measures.
“Even if things get really tight again with deliveries from Russia, we’ll most likely get through the winter,” Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said in an interview with the WAZ, a regional daily, that was published on Friday and that he posted to his Twitter account on Saturday morning.
The German ministry overseeing gas deliveries noted that Germany’s gas storage is already nearly 85 percent full, a target set for the beginning of October.
And while Germany was getting 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia in February, when Russia first attacked Ukraine, Russian gas accounted for around 10 percent of Germany’s gas mix on Tuesday — the last full day when gas flowed through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline — thanks to months of sourcing gas from other countries. Currently, Germany receives the bulk of its natural gas from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium.
“We have noted Russia’s unreliability in recent weeks and accordingly we have continued — undeterred and consistently — with our measures to strengthen our independence from Russian energy imports,” a spokeswoman for the German ministry responsible for energy said in a statement on Friday. “As a result, we are now much better equipped than we were a few months ago.”
Among the host of energy-saving rules mandated by the government to prepare are regulations that came into force Sept. 1 and which state that most public buildings can only be heated to 66 degrees Fahrenheit and cannot be externally lit after 10 p.m. But officials note that the situation is still tense and that gas savings are very much required.
“I don’t want to be misunderstood; this is not yet the ‘all clear’ signal,” Robert Habeck, the energy minister, said on Wednesday.
Gazprom, the Russian-owned energy giant, had been expected to resume the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Saturday after three days of maintenance. But hours before, it said that it had found oil leaks around a turbine used to pressurize the pipeline, forcing it to call off the restart. It did not give a timeline for restarting.
The gas giant said on Saturday that Siemens Energy, the German company that built the turbine, was going to help repair the broken equipment. But Robin Zimmermann, a spokesman for the company, said that as of Friday night it had not received any such request.
Siemens also does not believe that the claimed leak would be enough to force a full shutdown of the turbine, the company said. “From our technical understanding as the manufacturer of the turbine, what was found yesterday is no reason to let the turbine stand still,” Mr. Zimmerman said.
The water system in Jackson, the Mississippi capital, has been failing for years. In 2021, a harsh winter storm knocked the system out for a month. Even when water is flowing from the taps, residents struggle with intermittent boil-water advisories and high bills for water that is not always safe to drink. This week, in part because of severe floods, the treatment plant failed completely, leaving the city’s residents without water to drink, bathe or even flush toilets.
Authorities say a plane that was circling over northern Mississippi and whose pilot had threatened to crash it into a Walmart store landed safely on Saturday.
Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Twitter that the “situation has been resolved and that no one was injured.” He thanked law enforcement agencies that helped in bringing the aircraft down.
The pilot, identified as 29-year-old Cory Wayne Patterson, was in custody and charged with grand larceny and making terroristic threats, Tupelo Police chief John Quaka said during a Saturday afternoon press conference.
Patterson, an employee at the airport in Tupelo, allegedly stole the Beechcraft King Air C90A just after 5 a.m. — when the air traffic control tower was unmanned. He does not have a pilot’s license or experience in landing planes but has had some flight instruction, Quaka said. His job at the airport involves refueling planes.
A Walmart in the town was evacuated just after 5:20 a.m. after Patterson called 911 and reported that he was going to fly the plane into the store, Quaka said. Major streets in Tupelo were also shut down.
Negotiators subsequently made contact with Patterson and were able to convince him not to fly the plane into the Walmart, according to Quaka.
The Beechcraft was in the air for more than five hours, circling over Tupelo and another community nearby. An online flight tracking service showed the plane meandering in the sky for several hours and following a looping path.
Law enforcement told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal shortly after 8 a.m. that the plane had left the airspace around Tupelo and was flying near a Toyota manufacturing plant in nearby Blue Springs.
Just after 9:30 a.m. local time, Patterson posted on Facebook from the plane. At the conclusion of the post he wrote “goodbye,” Quaka said. The plane was low on fuel. But, with some instruction from a private pilot, Patterson was able to land the plane about 30 minutes later.
The plane sustained minimal damage during the landing, Quaka said. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane touched down in a field several miles northwest of Ripley Airport in Ripley, Mississippi.
No one was injured in the incident.
CBS affiliate WCBI-TV posted video of the plane flying over the area.
Leslie Criss, a magazine editor who lives in Tupelo, woke up early and was watching the situation on TV and social media. Several of her friends were outside watching the plane circle overhead.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in this town,” Criss told The Associated Press. “It’s a scary way to wake up on a Saturday morning.”
Former state Rep. Steve Holland, who is a funeral director in Tupelo, said he had received calls from families concerned about the plane.
“One called and said, ‘Oh, my God, do we need to cancel mother’s funeral?'” Holland said. “I just told them, ‘No, life’s going to go on.'”
Patterson will likely face federal charges as well, Quaka said.
Multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the FAA, were involved in the investigation. They are still working to discern a motive.
The airplane drama unfolded as tens of thousands of college football fans were headed to north Mississippi for Saturday football games at the University of Mississippi in Oxford and Mississippi State University in Starkville. Tupelo is between those two cities.
WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) – The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs during its Aug. 8 search at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, as well as 48 empty folders labeled as “classified,” according to court records that were unsealed on Friday.
The unsealing by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in West Palm Beach came one day after she heard oral arguments by Trump’s attorneys and the Justice Department’s top two counterintelligence prosecutors over whether she should appoint a special master to conduct a privilege review of the seized materials at Trump’s request.
Cannon deferred ruling immediately on whether to appoint a special master but said she would agree to unseal two records filed by the Justice Department.
Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who was appointed by Trump, questioned the usefulness of such an appointment.
“I think at this stage, since they’ve (FBI) already gone through the documents I think it’s a waste of time” to have a special master, Barr said in an interview on Fox News.
Barr, who left the post in late December 2020, defied Trump by not backing his false claims that the presidential election that year had been stolen from him.
In the interview, Barr added that he saw no “legitimate reason” for Trump having documents at his Florida estate if they were classified.
He added, “I frankly am skeptical of this claim (by Trump) that ‘I declassified everything.’ Because frankly I think it’s highly improbable and second, if he sort of stood over scores of boxes not really knowing what was in them and said ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse, show such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
One of the records, released on Friday, provides a little more detail about the 33 boxes and other items the FBI found inside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, as part of its ongoing criminal investigation into whether he illegally retained national defense information and tried to obstruct the probe.
It shows that documents with classification markings were at times co-mingled with other items such as books, magazines and newspaper clippings.
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An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents searched it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 15, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
Also found were unspecified gifts and clothing items.
Of the more than 11,000 government records and photos, 18 were labeled as “top secret,” 54 were labeled “secret” and 31 were labeled “confidential,” according to a Reuters tally of the government’s inventory.
“Top secret” is the highest classification level, reserved for the country’s most closely held secrets.
There were also 90 empty folders, 48 of which were marked “classified,” while others indicated that they should be returned to staff secretary/military aide.
It is not clear why the folders were empty, or whether any records could be missing.
The other record that was unsealed is a three-page filing by the Justice Department updating the court about the status of its investigative team’s review of the documents seized.
That filing, dated Aug. 30, said investigators had completed a preliminary review of the materials seized and will investigate further and interview more witnesses.
The Justice Department’s criminal investigation could be potentially put on pause if Cannon agrees to appoint a special master to come in and conduct an independent third-party review of the seized records.
However, Cannon signaled at Thursday’s hearing she might be willing to permit U.S. intelligence officials to continue reviewing the materials as part of their national security damage assessment, even if a special master is appointed.
The Justice Department has previously said in court filings it has evidence that classified documents were deliberately concealed from the FBI when it tried to retrieve them from Trump’s home in June.
The Justice Department also opposes the appointment of a special master, saying the records in question do not belong to Trump and that he cannot claim they are covered by executive privilege, a legal doctrine that can be used to shield some presidential communications.
Memphis police on Saturday in a tweet that they are following all leads into the disappearance of Eliza “Liza” Fletcher, who was last seen around 4:20 a.m. Friday.
A Commercial Appeal reporter watched Friday night as police searched the Old Forest section of Overton Park in midtown Memphis. Police declined to say who or what they were searching for.
Police also removed multiple items from the Fletcher home on Friday, but have not said what was taken or why.
Memphis and university police said Fletcher, a mother of two and a teacher at St. Mary’s Episcopal School, was forced into a dark SUV after a brief struggle. Police said the vehicle appears to be a dark-colored GMC Terrain.
Fletcher was reported missing at about 7 a.m. Friday. The FBI and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation joined the investigation and law enforcement released grainy images of Fletcher running and the dark SUV believed to be the one she was forced into. Fletcher, who is 5′ 6″ tall, weighs 137 pounds, and has brown hair, was wearing purple shorts and a pink sports bra.
Fletcher’s disappearance grabbed the city’s attention ahead of Labor Day weekend. The Memphis Police Department Facebook post detailing Fletcher’s kidnapping was shared thousands of times. City police also sent out multiple notices about the abduction and descriptions of the car throughout Friday.
Her family is offering a $50,000 reward through Crimestoppers and said in a statement Friday night they are praying for Fletcher’s safe return.
Her church, Second Presbyterian, just blocks away from where she was last seen, opened its sanctuary for prayer. Dozens came, a church staff member said. The parking lot was full Friday afternoon.
The church’s senior pastor, George Robertson, noted in an interview Friday that Fletcher’s kidnapping was not the first in Memphis this year or even this week.
“Someday we’ll eliminate this kind of tragedy,” Robertson, the senior pastor at Second Presbyterian Church said. “We also grieve the abduction that occurred a couple of days ago near Wolfchase. We grieve all of this kind of violence and evil in our city. It just makes us grieve. We grieve for ourselves, we grieve for the Fletchers and we also grieve for our city. Our whole city is hurting.”
Three children were abducted in Whitehaven on Sept. 2 and were later found three miles away. A mother and her one-year-old were abducted last weekend near Wolfchase and forced to withdraw money from an ATM before being released. And on Aug. 18, two children were kidnapped and later recovered by police in South Memphis.
There have been at least 100 incidents classified as kidnapping in Memphis this year, according to public safety data posted on the city’s website.
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at former Attorney General Bill Barr after Barr said there was “no legitimate reason” for classified documents to be at Mar-a-Lago.
Why it matters: Barr was once considered an ally of Trump while serving as attorney general during his administration from 2019 to 2020.
What he said: “Bill Barr had ‘no guts,’ and got ‘no glory.’ He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump wrote Friday night in a TruthSocial post, suggesting Barr is a “Republican In Name Only.”
“Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast – Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!” the former president wrote.
Flashback: Barr told Fox News Friday night that the DOJ had every right to investigate Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate since there was no “legitimate reason” for Trump to hold classified documents there.
“I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they should have been — could be taken out of government, away from the government if they are classified,” Barr told Fox News. “I, frankly, am skeptical of the claim that [Trump] declassified everything.”
The big picture: Some Trump allies have recently distanced themselves from the former president over the Mar-a-Lago search.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the FBI’s search “fair game” while former Vice President Mike Pence said he didn’t want to prejudge the search “until we know all the facts.”
Among the material allegedly seized from former President Trump’s home were numerous empty folders that once contained classified information or intel designated to be returned to the military, renewing questions over fallout from the potential mishandling of records and if they have since been recovered.
In an inventory from the Justice Department unsealed by a judge Friday, the government detailed that interspersed with Trump’s personal belongings were 48 empty folders with classified banners as well as another 42 empty folders that were labeled “return to staff secretary/military aide,” according to the filing.
The majority were found in Trump’s office, rather than the storage room at Mar-a-Lago.
It’s not clear if the materials the folders once housed are elsewhere in the boxes of recovered evidence, but experts say the suite of questions the detail raises argues in favor of allowing the Justice Department to continue its investigation, even as Trump seeks to stall its progress.
“The ideal scenario that would describe this is that the empty folders are actually for the records that are somewhere else in the boxes — that someone just didn’t keep them in the folder in the way they were supposed to, so they’re not actually out there in the wild somewhere,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, a nonprofit law firm specializing in national security law.
“The least optimistic scenario is that they are nowhere to be found because they are already with someone else.”
The inventory list was given to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon shortly before she heard arguments from Trump’s legal team asking to stall the FBI investigation so that a third-party special master could review the evidence to protect what they claim could be privileged material. The DOJ has argued such a move is unnecessary as its own team of staff not assigned to the case has already reviewed the evidence for privileged material.
Beyond the empty folders, the Friday inventory details in broad strokes the other types of documents that were found within Trump’s office among the tranche of more than 100 recovered classified records: three documents marked confidential, 17 documents marked secret and seven documents marked top-secret.
Larry Pfeiffer, who previously served as senior director of the White House Situation Room and was chief of staff at the CIA, said the system for tracking classified documents should allow investigators to account for what information should be in the folders and determine if it is still on site.
But he expressed concern that the fact that they even ended up at Mar-a-Lago could mean proper record-keeping — even with career national security staffers on hand at the White House — may not have been taken seriously.
“To me, it sounds like there was either a horrific systemic breakdown in those processes, No. 1., or those people just felt completely intimidated by Trump and the people around him. Or there were people who were completely operating around the system — that documents were flowing in and out of the Oval and up into the residence without ever going through this tracking process,” Pfeiffer told The Hill.
“I think it’s possible it was a mistake. I think it’s possible they were folders that were holding the documents that were already found. But I worry it could have been folders that had other documents in them and now the mystery is where are the other documents? And that’s the scary part.”
That includes the materials that expressly directed they be returned to the military.
“Anything that was in the folder should have been returned. The folder being there suggests it wasn’t,” Pfeiffer said.
The inventory list notes that the records were found mixed with clothes, books and other personal effects as well as some 10,000 presidential records that likely should be maintained by the National Archives.
That they were kept with Trump’s belongings — and in some cases, in his office — could be an important detail for the DOJ, one they alluded to in their filing. The department noted that “all evidence — including the nature and manner in which they were stored” — will inform their investigation.
“The co-mingling of all this stuff shows that there was no care taken with these records at a few different points in the process because at least one of two things happened to lead to this scenario,” McClanahan, the national security lawyer, said.
“No 1., while he was in office he or his staff haphazardly mixed all this classified and unclassified material together in boxes, showing that they weren’t handling it properly in the office. Or two, after he got home, he started rooting through the boxes and putting things in and taking things out, which would show that there was clear awareness and involvement of the classified nature of this material. I think that it’s probably going to be a mix of the two,” he added.
The confusion around the documents also adds another dimension to the special master case. Cannon noted she would weigh whether to allow the intelligence community to continue its review of the potential national security implications tied to the mishandling of material, including how to protect sources and methods. The review is being led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
“I don’t think finding empty folders gives it any more urgency than it already deserves. The fact that some of the most sensitive documents in our government were sitting around in storage rooms at a golf resort in Florida, intermingled with a bunch of other stuff, that clearly people [without clearances] could have physical access to … is frightening,” Pfeiffer said.
“The urgency is there regardless of whether there were empty folders found or not. And so therefore, having a special master now potentially put a halt to the damage assessment/risk assessment that the ODNI is doing, that would be further delay that we shouldn’t have to put up with.”
Others warn there’s no good way to block the Justice Department’s work while allowing the intelligence community to conduct its own assessment about the potential fallout.
“The FBI’s investigation and the Intelligence Community (IC) assessments are inextricably intertwined from a counterintelligence perspective,” Brian Greer, a former CIA attorney, told The Hill by email.
“To assess the risks, it’s important for the IC to know who accessed a given document, and they can only get that from the FBI. But if the court prohibits the FBI from accessing certain classified documents because they might be subject to an executive privilege claim, that process will break down.”
Cannon declined to make an immediate ruling on the matter when each side presented their arguments Thursday, but McClanahan said if she grants Trump’s request it could ultimately backfire for a former president who often insists he has been treated unfairly.
He noted a special master could easily decide the FBI did not obtain any materials that should be protected by either attorney-client or executive privileges, as Trump is asserting.
“He won’t be able to say, ‘the DOJ privilege review team wrongfully decided it,’ he’s going to have to say, ‘the DOJ privilege review team, and the subject matter expert that I asked for, and a federal judge wrongfully decided it,’” McClanahan said.
“And in an area like this where there’s not a whole lot of room for him to be right — that’s a very risky move.”
Sept 3 (Reuters) – Russia kept one of its main gas supply routes to Europe shut on Saturday, stoking fears of winter fuel shortages and spotlighting differences between Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and Germany’s Siemens Energy (ENR1n.DE) over repair work on the pipeline.
Already struggling to tame soaring gas prices, European governments had expected the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to resume flows after a short maintenance this week but Russia abruptly cancelled the restart, citing an oil leak in a turbine.
Europe has accused Russia of weaponising energy supplies in what Moscow has called an “economic war” with the West over the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow blames Western sanctions and technical issues for supply disruptions.
The latest Nord Stream shutdown, which Russia says will last for as long as it takes to carry out repairs, added to fears of winter gas shortages that could help tip major economies into recession and energy rationing.
The discovery of the oil leak on Friday coincided with the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy democracies proceeding with plans to impose a price gap on Russian oil, intending to shrink President Vladimir Putin’s resources to fight the war in Ukraine.
Gas shortages also prompted European Union member Sweden on Saturday to unveil a financial support package for energy firms.
“If we do not act, there is a serious risk of disruptions in the financial system, which in the worst case could lead to a financial crisis,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
“Putin wants to create division, but our message is clear: you will not succeed,” she said.
GAS PRICE RALLY EXPECTED
Gazprom said Siemens Energy was ready to carry out repairs on the pipeline but that there was nowhere available to carry out the work, a suggestion Siemens Energy denied, saying it had not been asked to do the job.
Siemens Energy has also said that sanctions do not prohibit maintenance.
Before the latest round of maintenance, Gazprom had already cut flows to just 20% of the pipeline’s capacity.
“Siemens is taking part in repair work in accordance with the current contract, is detecting malfunctions … and is ready to fix the oil leaks. Only there is nowhere to do the repair,” Gazprom said in a statement on its Telegram channel on Saturday.
Siemens Energy said it had not been commissioned to carry out the work but was available, adding that the Gazprom-reported leak would not usually affect the operation of a turbine and could be sealed on site.
“Irrespective of this, we have already pointed out several times that there are enough additional turbines available in the Portovaya compressor station for Nord Stream 1 to operate,” a spokesperson for the company said.
Flows through Nord Stream 1 were due to resume early on Saturday morning. But hours before it was set to start pumping gas, Gazprom published a photo on Friday of what it said was an oil leak on a piece of equipment.
Siemens Energy, which supplies and maintains equipment at Nord Stream 1’s Portovaya compressor station said on Friday the leak did not constitute a technical reason to stop gas flows.
“Global natural gas prices will likely rally hard on Monday as markets readjust to this latest #Gazprom development,” Tom Marzec-Manser, Head of Gas Analytics at ICIS, said on twitter.
“The closure of #NordStream1 reduces overall Russian pipeline flows yet further and will make balancing supply & demand this winter all the more difficult.”
Asked about the halt on Saturday, Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said that the European Union expects Russia to respect its agreed energy contracts but is prepared to meet the challenge if Moscow fails to do so. read more
The German network regulator said that the country’s gas supply was currently guaranteed but the situation was fragile and further deterioration could not be ruled out.
“The defects alleged by the Russian side are not a technical reason for the halt of operations,” it said.
Wholesale gas prices have rocketed more than 400% since August 2021, squeezing households already gripped by a cost-of-living crisis and forcing some energy hungry industries, such as fertiliser and aluminium makers, to scale back production.
The European Commission has said a full cut-off of Russian gas supplies to Europe, if combined with a cold winter, could reduce average EU gross domestic product by up to 1.5% if countries did not prepare in advance.
MOSCOW (AP) — Russians who came for a last look at former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday mourned both the man and his policies that gave them hope. President Vladimir Putin claimed to be too busy to attend.
Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at age 91, launched drastic reforms that helped end the Cold War. But he also precipitated the breakup of the Soviet Union, which Putin had called the 20th century’s “greatest geopolitical catastrophe.”
The farewell viewing of his body in an ostentatious hall near the Kremlin was shadowed by the awareness that the openness Gorbachev championed has been stifled under Putin.
“I want to thank him for my childhood of freedom, which we don’t have today,” said mourner Ilya, a financial services worker in his early 30s who declined to give his last name.
“I am a son of perestroika,” he said, using the Russian word for Gorbachev’s reform, or reconstruction, initiatives.
“I’d like us to have more people like him in our history,” said another mourner, Yulia Prividennaya. “We need such politicians to settle the situation in the world when it’s on the verge of World War III.”
After the viewing, Gorbachev’s body was buried next to his wife Raisa in Novodevichy cemetery, where many prominent Russians lie, including the post-Soviet country’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, whose struggle for power with Gorbachev sped up the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The procession that carried the coffin into the cemetery was led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, editor of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Russia’s last major Kremlin-critical news outlet before it suspended operations in March. Gorbachev used funds from his own Nobel prize to help start the paper.
The Kremlin refusal to formally declare a state funeral reflected its uneasiness about the legacy of Gorbachev, who has been venerated worldwide for bringing down the Iron Curtain but reviled by many at home for the Soviet collapse and the ensuing economic meltdown that plunged millions into poverty.
On Thursday, Putin privately laid flowers at Gorbachev’s coffin at a Moscow hospital where he died. The Kremlin said the president’s busy schedule would prevent him from attending the funeral.
Asked what specific business would keep Putin busy on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the president was scheduled to have a series of working meetings, an international phone call and needs to prepare for a business forum in Russia’s Far East that he’s due to attend next week.
Gorbachev’s body was displayed for public viewing at the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, an opulent 18th-century mansion near the Kremlin that has served as the venue for state funerals since Soviet times.
Mourners passed by Gorbachev’s open casket flanked by honorary guards, laying flowers as solemn music played. Gorbachev’s daughter, Irina, and his two granddaughters sat beside the coffin.
The grand, chandeliered hall lined by columns hosted balls for the nobility under the czars and served as a venue for high-level meetings and congresses along with state funerals during Soviet times. Upon entering the building, mourners saw honor guards flanking a large photo of Gorbachev standing with a broad smile, a reminder of the cheerful vigor he brought to the Soviet leadership after a series of dour, ailing predecessors.
The turnout was large enough that the viewing was extended for two more hours beyond the stated two hours.
Despite the choice of the prestigious site for the farewell ceremony, the Kremlin stopped short of calling it a state funeral, with Peskov saying the ceremony will have “elements” of one, such as honorary guards, and the government’s assistance in organizing it. He wouldn’t describe how it will differ from a full-fledged state funeral.
Saturday’s ceremony had all the trappings befitting a state funeral except the name, including the national flag draping Gorbachev’s coffin. with goose-stepping guards firing shots in the air and a small band playing the Russian anthem, which uses the same melody as the Soviet anthem.
But officially declaring a state funeral for Gorbachev would have obliged Putin to attend it and would have required Moscow to invite foreign leaders, something that it was apparently reluctant to do amid soaring tensions with the West after Russia sent troops to Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin who served as Russia’s president in 2008-2012, showed up at the farewell ceremony. He then released a post on a messaging app channel, referring to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to engineer Russia’s breakup, a policy he described as a “chess game with Death.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who often has been critical of the Western sanctions against Russia, was the only foreign leader who attended the farewell on Saturday. The U.S., British, German and other Western ambassadors also attended.
The relatively modest ceremony contrasted with a lavish 2007 state funeral given to Yeltsin, who anointed Putin as his preferred successor and set the stage for him to win the presidency by stepping down.
Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party who worked on economic reform plans under Gorbachev, hailed him for “offering people an opportunity to say what they thought – something that Russia never had before.”
Putin has avoided explicit personal criticism of Gorbachev, but has repeatedly blamed him for failing to secure written commitments from the West that would rule out NATO’s expansion eastward. The issue has marred Russia-West relations for decades and fomented tensions that exploded when the Russian leader sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
In a carefully phrased letter of condolence released Wednesday avoiding explicit praise or criticism, Putin described Gorbachev as a man who left “an enormous impact on the course of world history.”
“He led the country during difficult and dramatic changes, amid large-scale foreign policy, economic and society challenges,” Putin said. “He deeply realized that reforms were necessary and tried to offer his solutions for the acute problems.”
The Kremlin’s ambivalence about Gorbachev was reflected in state television broadcasts, which described his worldwide acclaim and grand expectations generated by his reforms, but held him responsible for plunging the country into political turmoil and economic woes and failing to properly defend the country’s interests in talks with the West.
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s and Europe’s largest nuclear plant has stopped supplying Ukrainian-held territories with electricity, Kremlin-backed authorities said Saturday, as a team of inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog continued their mission at the site.
The Russian-appointed city administration in Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia plant is located, blamed an alleged Ukrainian shelling attack on Saturday morning, which they said had destroyed a key power line.
“The provision of electricity to the territories controlled by Ukraine has been suspended due to technical difficulties,” the municipal administration said in a post on its official Telegram channel. It wasn’t clear whether electricity from the plant was still reaching Russian-held areas.
Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Kremlin-appointed regional administration said on Telegram that a shell had struck an area between two reactors. His claims could not be immediately verified.
Over the past weeks, Ukraine and Russia have traded blame over shelling at and near the plant, while also accusing each other of attempts to derail the visit from U.N. experts, who arrived at the plant Thursday. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s mission is meant to help secure the site.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian troops launched another attempt to seize the plant late Friday, despite the presence of the IAEA monitors, sending 42 boats with 250 special forces personnel and foreign “mercenaries” to attempt a landing on the bank of the nearby Kakhovka reservoir.
The ministry said that four Russian fighter jets and two helicopter gunships destroyed about 20 boats and the others turned back. It added that the Russian artillery struck the Ukrainian-controlled right bank of the Dnieper River to target the retreating landing party.
The ministry claimed that the Russian military killed 47 troops, including 10 “mercenaries” and wounded 23. The Russian claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Russia reported earlier that about 60 Ukrainian troops previously tried to land near the plant on Thursday and Russian forces thwarted that attempt.
As of Saturday morning, neither the Ukrainian government nor the country’s nuclear energy operator, Enerhoatom, had commented on these allegations.
The plant has repeatedly suffered complete disconnection from Ukraine’s power grid since last week, with Enerhoatom blaming mortar shelling and fires near the site.
Local Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of pounding two cities that overlook the plant across the Dnieper river with rockets, also an accusation they have made repeatedly over the past weeks.
In Zorya, a small village about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Zaporizhzhia plant, residents on Friday could hear the sound of explosions in the area.
It’s not the shelling that scared them the most, but the risk of a radioactive leak in the plant.
“The power plant, yes, this is the scariest,” Natalia Stokoz, a mother of three, said. “Because the kids and adults will be affected, and it’s scary if the nuclear power plant is blown up.”
Oleksandr Pasko, a 31-year-old farmer, said “there is anxiety because we are quite close.” Pasko said that the Russian shelling has intensified in recent weeks.
During the first weeks of the war, authorities gave iodine tablets and masks to people living near the plant in case of radiation exposure.
Recently, they’ve also distributed iodine pills in Zaporizhzhia city, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the plant.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to take the role of “facilitator” on the issue of the Zaporizhzhia plant, in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday, according to a statement from the Turkish presidency.
The Ukrainian military on Saturday morning reported that Russian forces overnight pressed their stalled advance in the country’s industrial east, while also trying to hold on to areas captured in Ukraine’s northeast and south, including in the Kherson region cited as the target of Kyiv’s recent counteroffensive.
It added that Ukrainian forces repelled around half a dozen Russian attacks across the Donetsk region, including near two cities singled out as key targets of Moscow’s grinding effort to capture the rest of the province. The Donetsk region is one of two that make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas, alongside Luhansk, which was overrun by Russian troops in early July.
Separately, the British military confirmed in its regular update Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces were conducting “renewed offensive operations” in the south of Ukraine, advancing along a broad front west of the Dnieper and focusing on three axes within the Russian-occupied Kherson region.
“The operation has limited immediate objectives, but Ukraine’s forces have likely achieved a degree of tactical surprise; exploiting poor logistics, administration and leadership in the Russian armed forces,” the UK Ministry of Defense said on Twitter.
Russian shelling killed an 8-year-old child and injured at least four others in a southern Ukrainian town close to the Kherson region, Ukrainian officials said.
And in 2016, Clinton, ran into her own problems when she estimated that half of Trump’s supporters could go into what she called “the basket of deplorables” — meaning, she said, that they were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.” The phrase turned into a rallying cry for Trump’s supporters, and after he was elected, some threw a “DeploraBall” to celebrate.
A court filing unsealed on Friday included a detailed inventory of the material that the F.B.I. removed in its Aug. 8 search of former President Donald J. Trump’s office and storage area at Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida. Among the items seized, according to the list, were 18 documents marked as top secret, 54 marked as secret, 31 marked as confidential and 11,179 government documents or photographs without classification markings. Forty-eight empty folders marked as having contained classified information were also taken, though the list did not specify whether that information was recovered.
In total, the inventory included 33 groups of items that F.B.I. agents removed from Mar-a-Lago, including individual documents as well as containers full of materials like books, articles from newspapers and magazines or gifts and pieces of clothing. These seemingly more innocuous objects were often mixed together in the same boxes or containers as government documents, both with and without classification markings.
1. Documents from Office
1 document marked “secret”
2 other government documents
2. Container from Office
2 documents marked “confidential”
7 documents marked “top secret”
15 documents marked “secret”
43 empty folders marked for classified documents
28 empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”
69 other government documents
99 magazines, newspapers and other media
3. Documents from Office
2 other government documents
4. Documents from Office
1 document marked “confidential”
1 document marked “secret”
357 other government documents
26 magazines, newspapers and other media
5. Documents from Office
396 other government documents
6. Documents from Office
640 other government documents
7. Documents from Office
1 other government document
8. Container from Storage Room
2 other government documents
68 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 article of clothing or gift
1 book
9. Container from Storage Room
65 other government documents
91 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 article of clothing or gift
10. Container from Storage Room
11 documents marked “confidential”
21 documents marked “secret”
255 other government documents
30 magazines, newspapers and other media
3 articles of clothing or gifts
1 book
11. Container from Storage Room
8 documents marked “confidential”
2 documents marked “top secret”
1 document marked “secret”
104 other government documents
116 magazines, newspapers and other media
12. Container from Storage Room
71 other government documents
39 magazines, newspapers and other media
13. Container from Storage Room
2 documents marked “confidential”
1 document marked “top secret”
708 other government documents
62 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 article of clothing or gift
14. Container from Storage Room
2 documents marked “confidential”
438 other government documents
87 magazines, newspapers and other media
15. Container from Storage Room
1 document marked “confidential”
4 documents marked “secret”
2 empty folders marked for classified documents
2 empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”
78 other government documents
65 magazines, newspapers and other media
2 books
16. Container from Storage Room
60 other government documents
76 magazines, newspapers and other media
17. Container from Storage Room
2 other government documents
67 magazines, newspapers and other media
5 articles of clothing or gifts
18. Container from Storage Room
1 document marked “secret”
2 empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”
1,571 other government documents
4 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 book
19. Container from Storage Room
1 document marked “confidential”
236 other government documents
53 magazines, newspapers and other media
5 articles of clothing or gifts
20. Container from Storage Room
16 other government documents
121 magazines, newspapers and other media
21. Container from Storage Room
1,406 other government documents
2 magazines, newspapers and other media
22. Container from Storage Room
29 other government documents
109 magazines, newspapers and other media
23. Container from Storage Room
1 document marked “secret”
8 empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”
70 other government documents
67 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 book
24. Container from Storage Room
1,603 other government documents
1 magazine, newspaper or other media
25. Container from Storage Room
1 document marked “confidential”
1 document marked “secret”
1 empty folder marked for classified documents
20 other government documents
76 magazines, newspapers and other media
26. Container from Storage Room
3 documents marked “top secret”
1,841 other government documents
8 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 article of clothing or gift
1 book
27. Container from Storage Room
52 other government documents
1 magazine, newspaper or other media
1 article of clothing or gift
23 books
28. Container from Storage Room
2 documents marked “confidential”
4 documents marked “top secret”
8 documents marked “secret”
795 other government documents
2 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 article of clothing or gift
1 book
29. Container from Storage Room
1 document marked “top secret”
35 other government documents
86 magazines, newspapers and other media
30. Container from Storage Room
82 other government documents
29 magazines, newspapers and other media
31. Container from Storage Room
41 other government documents
111 magazines, newspapers and other media
32. Container from Storage Room
88 other government documents
94 magazines, newspapers and other media
1 book
33. Container from Storage Room
2 empty folders marked for classified documents
2 empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”
Bill Barr said the Justice Department probably had “pretty good evidence” before the Mar-a-Lago raid.
He also said Trump’s request for a special master was a “crock of shit.”
Trump on Friday called Barr, his one-time ally, a “weak and pathetic RINO.”
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at his one-time ally Bill Barr on Friday after the former attorney general defended the Justice Department’s raid on Mar-a-Lago.
“Bill Barr had ‘no guts,’ and got ‘no glory.’ He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, referring to Barr as a “Republican In Name Only.”
“Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast – Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!” Trump continued.
In a second post, he also criticized Barr’s handling of the Russia probe and the “Laptop from Hell,” presumably a reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Barr was largely considered a staunch ally of Trump while serving as his attorney general from February 2019 to December 2020. Their relationship changed when Barr came forward to say the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have impacted the election results, directly defying Trump’s insistence that the election had been stolen from him. He departed the administration one month before the end of Trump’s term.
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Barr dismissed arguments that the Justice Department’s decision to raid Mar-a-Lago was an overstep.
“I personally think, for them to have taken things to the current point, they probably have pretty good evidence, but that’s speculation,” Barr said.
He also dismissed Trump’s defense that he had declassified all the documents that were being held at his Florida club and residence.
“I, frankly, am skeptical of this claim that, ‘I declassified everything,’ because, frankly, I think it is highly improbable,” Barr said. “And, second, if in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and then said, ‘I hereby declassify everything in here’ — that would be such an abuse and such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
During the Mar-a-Lago raid on August 8, the FBI seized highly classified documents, according to court records. The Justice Department is investigating potential violations of laws pertaining to the handling of government documents.
Several people were injured in a fast-moving wildfire burning in the Northern California town of Weed in Siskiyou County ahead of Labor Day weekend, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, fire crews are also having to battle a second wildfire burning in the area.
The so-called Mill Fire has destroyed multiple homes and forced several thousand people to be under mandatory evacuations on Friday, Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency, said. When an evacuation order is issued, that means there is an immediate threat to livelihood. Evacuation is mandatory in this case.
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a state of emergency in Siskiyou County due to the “rapidly-spreading fire.” A Fire Management Assistance Grant has also been secured from FEMA. Both are set to help funding to help contain the fire and those impacted by it.
The fire started around 12:50 p.m. near Woodridge Court and Woodridge Way, just off Highway 97 on Friday, according to Cal Fire.
KCRA 3 has learned the fire started at an old mill building before it spread to nearby vegetation, but the cause remains unknown. Rebecca Taylor, communications director for Roseburg Forest Products based in Springfield, Oregon, said she did not know where or how the fire started but the company evacuated its veneer plant in Weed after the fire was reported. Some of its property is burned. The plant employs 145 people, although not all were on shift at the time, Taylor said.
Weed is located about 70 miles north of Redding and is just to the west of Mt. Shasta.
The fire has burned at least 3,921 acres as of 10:16 p.m., according to Cal Fire. Images shared by Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System, which does aerial surveillance of fires, show several homes have been burned in the fire.
Cal Fire said there are no containment lines around the fire, which are used to help prevent the spread of flames. However, extreme wildfire behavior in recent years has shown that fires are capable of spreading past containment lines.
Suzi Brady, a Cal Fire spokeswoman, said several people were injured and taken to a hospital. She said she didn’t know the extent of their injuries.
Brady said residents are still evacuating and that the blaze continues to rapidly spread amid 36 mph winds.
Cal Fire said an evacuation shelter was set up at the Karuk Wellness Center in Yreka at 1402 Kahtishraam.
Large animals can be dropped off at the Siskiyou County Fairgrounds at 1712 Fairlane Road in Yreka.
The Siskiyou County Office of Emergency Services said there’s an animal shelter at Rescue Ranch and a dog shelter at Oberlin.
Road closures
Highway 97 is currently closed from the junction with State Route 265 in Weed to about six miles south of Macdoel, Caltrans said.
Boles Fire also burned parts of Weed in 2014
In September 2014, a wildfire in Weed destroyed 110 homes and damaged another 90. Among the buildings destroyed were two churches, a community center and a library.
Weed resident Elizabeth Parker said many of the homes in the community has just re-built from the Boles Fire, “and they’re gone again.”
“Angel Valley was gone from the Boles Fire and it’s gone again,” Parker said.
Watch Below | Mill Fire evacuee talks about escaping the wildfire
(Click through the photo gallery below to see the destruction of the Boles Fire.)
KCRA 3’s David Bienick toured the community of Weed a day after a devastating fire swept through the town, destroying about 150 structures, most of them homes.
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
The Grace Community Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Weed was destroyed in the so-called Boles Fire. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
A burnt Bible page located outside the church destroyed by a fire that swept through the town of Weed on Monday. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
A church bell at the Holy Family Catholic Church, which was destroyed in the devastating Weed fire.
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
A section of Weed Elementary School that was damaged in the fire. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
Trees outside the town of Weed that were charred in Monday’s fire. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
Water in a community center pool next to the Weed library. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
The remains of the Weed Community Center with Mt. Shasta in the background. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
There is nothing left inside the Weed library after Monday’s devastating fire except some shelves. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
This cat was found by firefighters hiding in a closet of a home damaged in the fire. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: Photo courtesy Jeff Hunter, OES
The cat suffered some burns to its whiskers, but was otherwise uninjured. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: Photo courtesy Jeff Hunter, OES
A power worker cuts lines in one of the neighborhoods heavily damaged by the fire on Monday. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
This house at Center and Arbaugh streets in Weed was untouched by the fire; however, the house to the left and on the other side of street were destroyed. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
These two trucks are covered in red fire retardant used in the firefight. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
A charred car was heavily damaged near Morris and Oak streets in Weed.
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
Fire retardant from the firefight covers a car parked in a neighborhood damaged by flames. (Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
A fire crew hoses down hot spots in the community of Weed.(Sept. 16, 2014)
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
On Tuesday, firefighters were mopping up hot spots in Weed. Many people who were forced to flee have left their possessions outside homes.
PHOTO: David Bienick/KCRA
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
Firefighters are gaining ground on a wildfire Tuesday that raced through the far Northern California town of Weed, which damaged or destroyed 100 homes and a church.
PHOTO: u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
The Boles Fire forced more than 1,500 people out of their homes Monday near Weed, in Siskiyou County (Sept. 15, 2014).
PHOTO: Mary T. Clark/u local
@bostonN took the following photo of the Boles Fire in Weed. (Sept. 15, 2014)
PHOTO: @bostonN/Twitter
Another fire is burning near the Mill Fire
Video from Alert Wildfire shows another fire burning not too far from where the Mill Fire is in Siskiyou County. It was reported around 4:20 p.m. southwest of Gazelle along Gazelle Callahan Road.
The so-called Mountain Fire is burning on the west side of Interstate 5, whereas the Mill Fire started on the east of I-5.
Firefighters battle flames, hot weather conditions
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for Siskiyou County from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday when area winds were expected to reach up to 31 mph.
California is in the grip of a prolonged heat wave. Temperatures have been so high that residents have been asked for three consecutive days to conserve power during late afternoon and evening hours when solar energy declines.
Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Massive flames were seen right after the Mill Fire sparked
This is a developing story, stay with KCRA 3 for the latest.
This is CNBC’s live blog tracking Friday’s developments on the war in Ukraine. See below for the latest updates.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, says the team of inspectors at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine will stay at the facility.
“We are not going anywhere,” Grossi told reporters. “The IAEA is now there, it is at the plant and it is not moving. It is going to stay there.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Moldova that any threat against the security of Russian forces in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack against Moscow.
His comments have renewed fears that the region could be at risk of being drawn into the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
British Defense secretary visits Ukrainian troops training alongside U.K. forces
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace visited Ukrainian volunteer troops training alongside U.K. forces. The military training occurs outside of Ukraine’s borders.
The British Ministry of Defense said in a tweet that military instructors from Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland were also present to train Ukrainian soldiers.
— Amanda Macias
Eight more agricultural vessels approved to leave Ukraine
The organization overseeing the export of agricultural products from Ukraine said it has approved eight more vessels to leave the besieged country.
The Joint Coordination Center, an initiative of Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, said that the vessels are carrying a total of 196,285 metric tons of grain and other food products.
The ships are expected to depart on Saturday and are destined for Spain, Egypt, Israel, India, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Netherlands.
“When this mechanism is implemented, it will become an important element of protecting civilized countries and energy markets from Russian hybrid aggression,” Zelenskyy said in a nightly video address posted on the Telegram messaging app.
“It is long overdue for such energy sanctions against Russia. The sanctions that will not only limit the flow of petrodollars and gas euros to Moscow but also restore justice for all Europeans, whom Russia is trying to blackmail with an artificially inflated price crisis on the energy market,” he said, according to an NBC News translation.
The Kremlin previously warned it would stop selling oil to countries that impose price caps on Russian energy exports and said that such an imposition of a limit on the country’s crude would disrupt the global oil market.
— Amanda Macias
Head of IAEA will brief UN Security Council next week
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said that he will brief the U.N. Security Council next week following a site inspection of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Grossi, who led a team of 13 inspectors to the plant earlier in the week, told reporters in Vienna that he would also produce a report highlighting initial findings from the trip.
He told reporters that he saw everything that he was asked to see while at Zaporizhzhia and that the Russian military did not approach the inspectors during the visit.
— Amanda Macias
Two IAEA inspectors will remain at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said that two inspectors will remain at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
“This has tremendous value,” Grossi told reporters during a press conference at the international airport in Vienna, Austria after arriving from Ukraine.
Grossi, who led a team of 13 inspectors to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant earlier in the week, said that the inspectors will continuously monitor the plant and immediately inform the IAEA of security concerns.
Grossi told reporters that the IAEA will stay at Zaporizhzhia “for as long as needed.”
“My concern is the physical integrity of the power supply and the staff,” he added.
— Amanda Macias
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen applauds G-7 price cap on Russian oil
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen praised a price cap measure on Russian oil devised by G-7 countries in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The cap, designed to further cripple the Russian economy and discourage the Kremlin from pursuing its assault on Ukraine, will remove a major funding source for the war while maintaining oil supplies on the global energy market by forcing the Eastern European nation to sell its product at a cheaper cost without cutting off a crucial fuel source.
Yellen called the plan a “critical step forward in achieving our dual goals of putting downward pressure on global energy prices while denying Putin revenue to fund his brutal war in Ukraine.”
“This price cap is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight inflation and protect workers and businesses in the United States and globally from future price spikes caused by global disruptions,” Yellen said in a statement. “We have already begun to see the impact of the price cap through Russia’s hurried attempts to negotiate bilateral oil trades at massive discounts.”
— Chelsey Cox
More than 60 vessels carrying agricultural goods have left Ukrainian ports
ISTANBUL, TURKIYE – AUGUST 09: An aerial view of “Glory” named empty grain ship as Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Turkiye and the United Nations (UN) of the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) conduct inspection on vessel in Istanbul, Turkiye on August 09, 2022. The UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed a deal on July 22 to reopen three Ukrainian ports — Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny — for grain that has been stuck for months because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which is now in its sixth month. (Photo by Ali Atmaca/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
More than 60 agricultural vessels have departed Ukraine in the first month since exports restarted, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
Under the U.N.-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal to reopen three Ukrainian ports, a total of 1.72 million metric tons of agricultural products have been exported.
The majority of the vessels have departed from Ukraine’s Chornomorsk port.
— Amanda Macias
Gazprom halts gas supplies to Europe after an oil leak was detected on Nord Stream pipeline
Russia’s Gazprom announced a halt of gas supplies to Europe through the Nord Stream pipeline, citing the need for additional repairs.
Earlier in the week, the Russian gas giant stopped energy supplies to Europe via the pipeline in a planned “maintenance outage” expected to last until Sept. 3.
“Gas transportation to the Nord Stream gas pipeline has been completely stopped until the issues on the operation of the equipment are eliminated,” the energy company added on Telegram.
— Amanda Macias
Power unit at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant restored, Ukrainian energy company says
Ukraine’s state energy company said a power unit at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was reconnected to the power grid.
“Today, September 2, 2022, power unit No. 5 of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which was disconnected as a result of another mortar shelling by the Russian occupying forces at the Zaporizhzhia site, was connected to the power grid at 1:10 p.m,” according to an update from Energoatom on the Telegram messaging app.
“Currently, two power units are operating at the station, which produce electricity for the needs of Ukraine,” the company added, according to an NBC News translation.
— Amanda Macias
More than 9.9 million people have fled Ukraine for EU countries
The European Commission says that more than 9.9 million people have fled Ukraine and arrived in the EU since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
Of the 9.9 million people, approximately 4.1 million have applied for temporary resident status. More than 506,000 Ukrainian children have registered for school in EU member countries.
— Amanda Macias
G-7 finance ministers agree to impose Russian oil price cap
The Group of Seven economic powers agreed on a plan to implement a price capping mechanism on Russian oil exports. The policy is designed to drain the Kremlin’s war chest and better protect consumers amid soaring energy prices.
Ahead of the announcement, Russia warned it would stop selling oil to countries that impose price caps on Russian energy exports and said the imposition of a limit on Russian crude would lead to the significant destabilization of the global oil market.
The G-7 is comprised of the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and Japan.
Russia could be like ‘North Korea on steroids’ when Putin is replaced
Former Kremlin advisor Sergei Guriev warned that Russia could become like “North Korea on steroids” when President Vladimir Putin is replaced.
“Regimes like this change in very unpredictable ways,” Guriev told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy. “The reason for that is Putin has built his regime in a way nobody can replace him.”
Guriev, a Russian economist who abruptly left the country in 2013, said Putin’s successor would likely not last long because the system is currently built around the 69-year-old leader.
“It could be months, it could be several years, it could be North Korea on steroids, who knows? But it could also be a situation where the system collapses and somebody who wants to rebuild the economy reaches out to the West,” Guriev said.
The time is now for a price cap on Russian pipeline gas, EU chief says
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the 27-nation bloc must urgently establish a price cap on Russian pipeline gas flowing to Europe.
“I firmly believe that it is now time for a price cap on Russian pipeline gas to Europe,” von der Leyen told reporters, according to Reuters.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the Eastern European country of Moldova that any threat against the security of Russian forces in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack against Moscow.
“Everyone should understand that any kind of actions that will raise a threat to the security of our servicemen will be considered in accordance with international law as an attack on the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said, according to The Associated Press.
Internationally recognized as part of Moldova, Transnistria is situated on Ukraine’s southwestern border and is home to a sizeable pro-Russian separatist population.
Lavrov’s comments have renewed fears that the region could be at risk of being drawn into the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Moldova’s Foreign Ministry reportedly summoned the acting Russian ambassador to clarify the situation.
— Sam Meredith
UN inspectors at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant ‘not going anywhere’
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, is adamant that the team will maintain a continued presence at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine.
His comments come as both Russia and Ukraine say they fear a possible radiation disaster as a result of intense shelling at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The IAEA was finally able to visit the site on Thursday after a delay of several hours.
“We are not going anywhere,” Grossi told reporters. “The IAEA is now there, it is at the plant and it is not moving. It is going to stay there. We are going to have a continued presence there at the plant.”
Asked whether the world should be concerned about the Zaporizhzhia plant, Grossi replied: “I did not need to come here to worry about the plant. I worried, I worry and I will continue to be worried about the plant until we have a situation that is more stable, that is more predictable.”
— Sam Meredith
Russia’s energy influence over Europe may be coming to an end
Russia’s energy influence over Europe appears to be coming to an end, energy and political analysts say, potentially alleviating the risk of further supply disruptions.
Europe in recent months has endured a sharp drop in gas exports from Russia, traditionally its largest energy supplier.
A bitter gas dispute between Brussels and Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated the risk of recession and a winter gas shortage. What’s more, many fear Russia could soon turn off the taps completely. Russia denies using energy as a weapon.
Asked whether Russia’s energy influence over Europe may be coming to an end, Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC, “Yes. Actually, very much so.”
“Europe is heading towards a very difficult winter, probably two years of a very difficult adjustment with a lot of economic pain. But then Europe is essentially going to become more independent with a more diversified mix,” Demarais said.
“And what that means is that Russia’s energy weapon is going to become moot,” she added.
Reuters reported that an unnamed European G-7 official said “a deal is likely,” adding the extent of the specifics that will be publicized remains unclear.
More than 7 million Ukrainians have become refugees from Russia’s war
More 7 million Ukrainians have become refugees and moved to neighboring countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the U.N. Refugee Agency estimates.
Nearly 4 million of those people have applied for temporary resident status in neighboring Western countries, according to data collected by the agency.
“The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has caused civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcing people to flee their homes seeking safety, protection and assistance,” the U.N. Refugee Agency wrote.
— Amanda Macias
Zelenskyy said that journalists were barred from touring Zaporizhzhia plant with IAEA inspectors
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a nightly address that both Ukrainian and international journalists were not allowed to tour the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with IAEA representatives.
“Today, the IAEA mission arrived at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. It is good that it happened, the fact itself, despite all the provocations of the Russian military and the cynical shelling of Enerhodar and the territory of the station,” said in an update on the Telegram messaging app, according to an NBC News translation.
Zelenskyy added that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, promised him that independent journalists would accompany the inspectors.
“Unfortunately, IAEA representatives did not protect representatives of independent media,” Zelenskyy added.
Jon Heggie, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that the first call on Friday came in at 12:49 p.m. from a subdivision in the town of Weed, near a property owned by a wood products company, where some older buildings were in the process of being demolished. Within two hours, the blaze had grown to some 900 acres and evacuation orders had been issued for Weed and several nearby communities.
By 7 p.m., the blaze had grown to 2,580 acres, Cal Fire authorities said.
Kimberly Greene, the mayor of Weed, said that she was at the local community center, rebuilt after a 2014 wildfire, when the spouse of co-worker ran in and reported smoke in the distance.
“By the time we walked outside,” she said, “you could see the flames jumping the street.”
The air was hot and dry, she said, and the wind was “howling.” She rushed home and packed her car while fielding reports from fire authorities and from her neighbors in the working class town of about 2,900.
“We have our toiletries and our important papers, we have our guns out of the safe and packed and our trailer ready to go,” she said. She had not yet heard of any fatalities, but she said that a number of homes had been destroyed and that the swiftness of the blaze concerned her.
Donald Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr tore apart the one-term president’s defence of having secret papers at his home during an appearance on Fox News.
Mr Barr defended the FBI’s raid of Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and said that his former boss had been “jerking around” the Justice Department.
“I think the driver on this from the beginning was loads of classified information sitting in Mar-A-Lago,” Mr Barr said on the right-wing news network.
“People say this was unprecedented, well, it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, okay?”
His remarks came as the court documents revealed that agents found four dozen “CLASSIFIED” empty document files during their August search of the property, as well as dozens of secret and top secret papers.
“How long does the government try to get that back?” Added Mr Barr.
“They jawboned for a year, they were deceived on the voluntary actions taken, they then went and got a subpoena, they were deceived on that, they feel.
“The facts are starting to show they were being jerked around, so how long do they wait?”
The search came after the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago in June to collect classified documents, before returning several months later to take away more material.
Mr Barr also rejected Mr Trump’s claims that he declassified the documents taken from the White House to Florida as “highly improbable.”
He said that if Mr Trump had “stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them and said, I hereby declassify everything in here that would be such an abuse and that shows such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
And he also blasted Mr Trump’s lawsuit asking for a Special Master to go through the items seized by the FBI.
“Well, I think the whole idea of a Special Master is a bit of a red herring… at this stage, since they have already gone through the documents, I think it’s a waste of time.”
Mr Barr was sworn in as AG in February 2019 but resigned his position after Mr Trump was beaten in the 2020 election by Mr Biden.
But President Joe Biden is campaigning in Pennsylvania during the long weekend, too, an acknowledgment that the races here are far from over.
“Both of them appearing so soon around Labor Day not only says Pennsylvania is a battleground in 2022, but it’s a battleground in 2024,” said Celinda Lake, a pollster for Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. “Both of them want to run in an environment where their candidates have won in 2022.”
David Urban, a GOP strategist who was based in Pennsylvania when he served as a senior adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign, called the dueling events by Trump and Biden “a little mano-a-mano foreshadowing perhaps — it’s an incredibly important state, whether it’s 1776 or 1986 or 2022 or 2024.”
Trump’s rally in northeastern Pennsylvania — also his first public event since the FBI searched his home in Mar-a-Lago — comes amid frustration among establishment Republicans that the former president has threatened their chances in an otherwise favorable political environment by endorsing weak or far-right candidates in the GOP primaries. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently said that the House is likelier to flip than the Senate, citing “candidate quality.”
Mastriano, meanwhile, is the second-most poorly positioned Republican gubernatorial candidate in the top battlegrounds, falling behind Attorney General Josh Shapiro by about 7 points. Mastriano ran as a full-throated MAGA warrior in the primary, though Trump only backed the state senator when he was already on track to win the nomination.
GOP leaders and political consultants aren’t the only ones who are going to scrutinize how many Trump-endorsed candidates are victorious this fall. Trump himself is obsessed with his win-loss record and regularly touts it on the campaign trail. Potential 2024 GOP candidates are also keeping an eye on it.
“His general-election win record is going to be incredibly important toward his 2024 prospects,” said a former Trump official. “If it’s perceived that he put his own interests over the party and good candidates who could have won, and the candidates he endorsed lose, that creates an opportunity for his opponents in early primary states to argue that the party suffered because of his selfish decisions.”
Republican and Democratic strategists said Oz has the most to gain from Trump’s visit because of his nagging problems unifying the party base.
Mastriano, the face of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania, has done a better job locking down Republican rank-and-file voters. In fact, he has focused almost exclusively on the base during the general election, making regular appearances in conservative outlets while icing out the mainstream press. Trump’s rally will be one of the first Mastriano events the national media is allowed inside to cover.
Many in the GOP still view Oz, on the other hand, as insufficiently conservative on abortion, gun rights and other key issues. When Trump held a rally in the state to boost Oz during the primary, Trump supporters in the crowd booed him.
“It’s not a bad thing for him to remind the Republican base he’s a much better choice than Fetterman,” said Josh Novotney, a Pennsylvania GOP consultant, of the former TV host popularly known as “Dr. Oz.”
A person close to Oz’s campaign said that the candidate’s internal polling has found that the “wounds from the primary … have pretty much healed up,” though they did not provide specifics.
Public polls — as well as other internals — have told a different story. An August survey by Susquehanna Polling and Research found Oz winning Republicans 78 percent to 13 percent, with 9 percent of GOP likely voters “still sitting on the fence.” Fetterman was ahead with Democrats 87 percent to 9 percent.
The location of Trump’s rally serves the dual purpose of attempting to troll Biden and build support for Mastriano and Oz in a key region: Trump will speak in Wilkes-Barre, just outside of Biden’s hometown of Scranton.
For his part, Biden will be in Pittsburgh for the city’s Labor Day parade, after traveling earlier this week to Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre.
Luzerne County, where Wilkes-Barre is located, has played an outsized role in recent presidential and congressional elections. In 2016 Trump flipped the county, a white working-class area that was ancestrally Democratic, going a long way’s toward allowing him to capture the state. In 2020, Biden wasn’t able to take Luzerne, but he narrowed Trump’s margin of victory there and ran up the score in next-door Lackawanna County, helping him win back Pennsylvania.
In this year’s primary, Oz won both counties, giving him a jumping-off point to build from, though Fetterman received more votes in them than Oz.
For Mastriano, the counties were a rare weak spot on the map during the primary, likely because his top opponent hailed from northeastern Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Shapiro, who is holding a campaign office opening on Saturday in Scranton, was the lone statewide Democratic candidate in 2020 to win Luzerne County.
“[Trump] will be incredibly well-received when he lands … it’s Trump country,” said Urban. “If you’re going to win in Pennsylvania, that’s where you need big Trump numbers.”
But the event, which will feature Oz, Mastriano and Republican congressional candidate Jim Bognet along with the former president, also comes with risks for the GOP. Trump is loathed by many of the suburban and independent voters they are trying to win over. The former president flipped the state in the 2016 presidential election, but narrowly lost it to Biden in 2020. In a sign of how toxic his brand is in some parts of the state, Oz erased some of the Trump branding on his web site and social media accounts after the primary ended.
Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for Oz, said he “looks forward to President Trump talking to Pennsylvanians about the importance of fighting the radical, liberal agenda in Pennsylvania.”
Mastriano, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, said in an interview on a conservative podcast this week that Trump is “going to plug hard for myself and Oz” and “I expect he’s going to be swinging back because, as we discussed, what happened in Mar-a-Lago was unprecedented.”
Though the GOP’s concerns about Oz appear to have peaked over the summer, some national and Pennsylvania Republicans are still privately downbeat about his chances. They are worried that he may be too far behind in the polls to win, especially since voters begin casting ballots by mail in a few weeks.
And even though they have argued Fetterman is hiding from debates because he is in poor health after suffering a stroke in May, they don’t see that issue as likely to gain traction among voters, in part because Fetterman is on TV and he has been garnering positive headlines for his attacks on Oz on social media. They’ve also fretted about Oz’s ground game.
Republicans have been even more alarmed about Mastriano’s prospects. In the primary, GOP leaders were so fearful that he would lose the general election that they mounted a last-minute effort to coalesce behind one candidate in order to stop him. Some state Republicans grew more optimistic after the primary ended, but a TV advertising blitz by Shapiro over the summer went unmatched by Mastriano and the Republican Governors Association has yet to spend any money on his race.
But the last few weeks have given the GOP more hope in the state, particularly for Oz.
Some polls have shown a tightening race for the Senate, something both parties always expected to happen in the fall as more Republican money poured into the state. Oz has successfully recruited top conservative voices to rally around him, including on social media. And he has forced Fetterman to respond to his attacks over his criminal justice policy and unwillingness to commit to debates.
“I think Oz is in a pretty good position,” said Rob Gleason, the former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “Oz is getting around, doing his homework, doing town-to-town stuff. … Fetterman isn’t. He’s still wrestling with his post-stroke illness.”
As for Mastriano, Gleason said he “definitely has a chance because most people are going to vote against Joe Biden,” but “the big concern is he does not appear to be raising money.”
Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who managed Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, said that Trump and Biden’s upcoming visits to Pennsylvania demonstrate how tight the Senate and gubernatorial races could ultimately be — or perhaps already are.
“You’ve got the president of the United States and Donald Trump spending a lot of time in Pennsylvania,” he said. “It’s not because people think Mastriano doesn’t have a chance.”
Within a week of the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows handed over texts and emails to the National Archives that he had not previously turned over from his time in the administration, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.
Meadows’ submission to the Archives was part of a request for all electronic communications covered under the Presidential Records Act. The Archives had become aware earlier this year it did not have everything from Meadows after seeing what he had turned over to the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021. Details of Meadows’ submissions to the Archives and the engagement between the two sides have not been previously reported.
“It could be a coincidence, but within a week of the August 8 search on Mar-a-Lago, much more started coming in,” one source familiar with the discussions said.
The records Meadows turned over to the Archives were not classified, and the situation is markedly different from the Archives’ efforts to retrieve federal records from Trump and its referral to the Justice Department earlier this year when classified materials were discovered among documents the agency retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.
The source familiar with the discussions said that the Archives considered Meadows to be cooperating, even though the process started slowly.
“This is how it’s supposed to work,” the source added, saying it was not the kind of situation that needed to be referred to the Justice Department.
Another person familiar with the matter said the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago had nothing to do with Meadows’ decision to turn over the materials to the Archives, as it was a separate discussion.
Still, it’s an awkward position for Trump’s former chief of staff to be in, as Meadows also has been engaged in efforts to get Trump to return documents to the National Archives since last year, sources tell CNN. Meadows is one of Trump’s designees to the Archives, and he got involved in the summer of 2021 after being contacted by another designee, former Trump Deputy White House Counsel Pat Philbin.
While he was at Mar-a-Lago last summer, Meadows talked with Trump about the documents that the Archives was seeking to have returned, sources said. Meadows has continued to work with the Archives in its efforts to recover documents since then, according to the sources.
A spokesperson for Meadows declined to comment. The National Archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meadows’ engagement with the Archives and his discussions with Trump underscore the lengthy efforts the Archives embarked on to retrieve federal records from Trump that led to last month’s unprecedented FBI search of the former President’s residence.
Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents to the Archives in January, but additional documents with classified markings remained at Mar-a-Lago. Federal investigators sought to have those documents turned over in June through a grand jury subpoena and obtained a search warrant last month after developing evidence that not all classified material had been provided.
The Justice Department said in court filings unsealed Friday that the FBI retrieved more than 100 classified documents – including 18 with “top secret” markings – from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort during the August 8 search, along with more than 11,000 unclassified government documents, press clippings, gifts and clothing.
The Washington Post first reported Meadows had turned over materials to the Archives last month.
In recent months, Trump has been counseled to cut contact with Meadows, whose actions leading up to and on the day of the US Capitol attack have been deeply scrutinized by the House panel investigating January 6, sources have said. A source close to Trump said that while the former President has not completely cut ties with Meadows, Trump has complained about Meadows in conversations with other allies.
“Their relationship is not the same as it once was” while they served in the White House, the source told CNN.
The Archives’ engagement with Meadows over electronic communications in his possession began when it realized the January 6 committee had obtained records that the Archives didn’t have and believed fell under the Presidential Records Act. CNN reported earlier this year the contents of more than 2,300 text messages Meadows selectively provided to the House panel in the period between Election Day 2020 and President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
In addition to the text messages, Meadows also recently provided the Archives with about a dozen emails, one source said.
“This is a category of communication that was on a personal device, but you are supposed to hand it over,” the source said. “He had an obligation to ensure that his PRA materials were preserved and turned over.”
The back-and-forth between the Archives and Meadows has been going on for some time, and it was several months between the initial contact and the first batch that was provided, according to one source.
In recent weeks, Meadows’ lawyers arranged to turn over materials to the Archives that Meadows had already shared with Congress for the January 6 select committee investigation. Meadows agreed to provide the material to the Archives, though his legal team maintained that it believes it was not subject to the Presidential Records Act.
After the Archives made its request, Meadows and his lawyers went through his communications and handed over what they thought was covered under the Presidential Records Act, one source said. The law has carveouts detailing what materials do not need to be provided to the Archives, such as messages that were primarily personal or political in nature.
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