Recently Added Videos

The apparent attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday represents a dramatic escalation in regional and international tensions. Coming just one month and one day after an attack on four other oil tankers in the same area, oil prices have spiked upward in fear of what might happen next.

What’s going on here? Blame Iran.

The United Arab Emirates and Saudis might want a United States showdown with Iran but they would not risk jeopardizing the U.S. relationship by conducting a false flag attack. Moreover, the damage to the two tankers in this latest incident is suggestive of a torpedo attack: video shows at least one of the tankers on fire with waterline damage amidships. Iran has an array of means for such an attack, including attack submarines of various sizes, disguised fishing and passenger boats, and military fast boats.

Regardless, this attack fits comfortably with the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps penchant for thinly deniable action. Suffering deep financial losses due to escalating U.S. sanctions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps wants to pressure the international community into restraining the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Iran will hope that this attack is sufficiently calibrated to avoid clear evidence of its culpability and thus avoid U.S. retaliation. In that, it is designed as a halfway measure between doing nothing and inviting U.S. retaliation by overtly attempting to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

But Iran’s escalation should not be seen solely through the prism of this attack. Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has made veiled but apparent threats of Iranian resistance to the Trump administration’s pressure. And an Iranian-enabled missile attack on Saudi Arabia this week illustrates that the Revolutionary Guards is escalating. This sits squarely within Iran’s theocratic penchant for resistance against great odds (look up the Battle of Karbala).

The question is how the U.S. and its allies should respond.

The measure of this aggression will require some kind of significant response. Iran is now actively disrupting international oil markets and free passage of an arterial trade route. That cannot stand. But rightly neither is there much appetite in the U.S. or the region for a war.

I suspect what we will now see is a significantly increased naval presence by the U.S. and its allies to protect transit routes. Iranian forces and fishing vessels (due to the threat of disguised attacks) will likely be warned to keep distance from other vessels or face being sunk. We should expect them to test that warning, and for allied vessels to fire on them in response. Hopefully they will get the message and go back to port.

In terms of naval air-power, the U.S. currently has only an amphibious ready group in the area, so expect one of the carriers now in the Atlantic to be redeployed back to the Gulf.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/gulf-of-oman-tanker-attacks-everything-you-need-to-know

Fox News’ Sean Hannity supported President Trump’s comments Wednesday that he would be willing to listen to a foreign government if they approached him with information on a political opponent, calling it a “genius setup” by the president.

“In many ways that was a genius setup because the media mob will fall right into his trap, breathlessly spewing fake, phony outrage over a nonstory for days,” Hannity said during his monologue on “Hannity” on Wednesday night.

TRUMP TELLS REPORTERS HE’S ‘ALWAYS RIGHT’ DURING OVAL OFFICE PRESS CONFERENCE WITH POLISH PRESIDENT

Trump made the comments to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, adding that he would not necessarily contact the FBI if such an approach was made.

“I think I’d want to hear it. … I think you might want to listen. There isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump said in the interview.

Hannity defended the president and blasted Democrats for being critical of the president’s comments but not Hillary Clinton’s past actions or possible misconduct that led to the Russia investigation.

“Listening is much different than, let’s see, lying, spying, and paying for Russian lies and spreading it through the media by ‘deep state’ operatives and then using it as a basis for a FISA warrant,” Hannity said.

“Why are they not outraged about Hillary paying for Russian lies, disinformation, Comey generously using the unverifiable data from Russia to spy on the Trump campaign and get a FISA warrant?” the host continued.

Hannity also said the president’s comments should force those outraged by them to address why they have not been outraged by Clinton’s conduct.

“This will all get another round of fake, phony, moral selective outrage over that interview,” he said, “but it’s a perfect setup because if they are outraged about that and how can you not be outraged over what I just said?”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Hannity said Democrats are concerned only about Trump and not about justice.

“They are worried about obstruction of justice but only if it’s Trump, not Hillary,” he said. “They are worried about underlying crimes but only if it’s Trump, not Hillary. They are worried about believing but only if it bludgeons Trump, not the lieutenant governor of … the Commonwealth of Virginia over serious sex allegations.”

Fox News’ Liam Quinn contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hannity-praises-trumps-comments-about-listening-to-foreign-government-genius-set-up-for-dems

Amanda Knox arrived in Italy Thursday for the first time since her 2015 acquittal in a years-long murder case there.

Knox will take part in a three-day conference on criminal law in Italy, according to the conference’s organizers. She landed at an airport in Milan, in the country’s north, emerging to a throng of reporters.

The conference, scheduled to take place in the northern Italian city of Modena from Thursday to Saturday, is devoted to the subject of wrongful convictions and judicial populism. Knox will debate the topic of the media’s role in criminal trials on the final day of the conference.

Daniele Mascolo/Reuters
Amanda Knox, a former American student who was accused and then acquitted of the murder of her roommate British student Meredith Kercher and visits Italy to speak at the Criminal Justice Festival, arrives at Milan’s Linate airport, Italy, June 13, 2019.

Knox, 31, said in a tweet that she was “honored” to accept the invitation from The Italy Innocence Project.

The Italy Innocence Project, founded in 2013, is a non-profit organization that studies issues related to wrongful convictions in Italy and is part of the Law Department of the University of Roma.

Daniele Mascolo/Reuters
Amanda Knox, a former American student who was accused and then acquitted of the murder of her roommate British student Meredith Kercher visits Italy to speak at the Criminal Justice Festival, arrives at Milan’s Linate airport, Italy, June 13, 2019.

Before she arrived in Italy, Knox posted a photo on Instagram appearing to show her hanging from a cliff, saying she created her “own inspirational workplace poster” because she felt “frayed.”

“Hang in there!” she wrote.

She also penned an essay published on Medium Wednesday discussing her interaction with the public amid intense media scrutiny. Entitled “Your Content, My Life,” Knox called on media outlets to be “compassionate,” “brave,” and to ” treat its subjects like the human beings they are.”

“Someone’s life may make a great story, but it’s still their life,” she wrote.

Paula Lobo/ABC
Amanda Knox, the study abroad student who was accused in Italy of the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, is standing up for other women as host of her own docuseries, “The Scarlet Letter Reports.”

Knox was a 20-year-old college student studying abroad in Italy when she was accused of murdering her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, in November 2007. After a long judicial ordeal, which involved two appeal court trials and two Supreme Court decisions, Knox, along with Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend at the time, were finally acquitted of murder in 2015.

Knox left Italy immediately after the acquittal and has not returned to the country.

Federico Zirilli/AFP/Getty Images
Amanda Knox, one of the three suspects in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, is escorted by police upon her arrival at a court hearing in Perugia, Italy, Sept. 16, 2008.

Rudy Guede was found guilty of Kercher’s murder in a separate trial in 2008 and is serving a sentence of 16 years.

Martina Cagossi, a criminal lawyer and one of the founders of The Italy Innocence Project, told ABC News that she met Knox at a conference in the U.S. and said Knox had shown interest in her organization.

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/International/amanda-knox-returns-italy-1st-time-acquittal/story?id=63635801

The fatal shooting of a suspect who allegedly emerged from his vehicle with a weapon after ramming the vehicles of approaching law enforcement officers sparked a clash between Memphis, Tenn., residents and police on Wednesday night, according to reports.

The suspect was not named by authorities but was identified by two local politicians and on numerous social media posts as Brandon Webber, 20. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said early Thursday that the suspect killed by the U.S. Marshals Service had been wanted on numerous warrants.

In the violence that followed, at least two dozen law enforcement officers and at least two journalists were injured, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland wrote on Facebook.

TENNESSEE MOTHER, 19, ACCUSED OF PUTTING 8-MONTH-OLD IN FREEZER, GETS 2 YEARS’ PROBATION

In addition, Strickland added, “Multiple police cars were vandalized. A concrete wall outside a business was torn down. The windows were broken out at fire station 31.”

One video posted online showed a man smashing a chair against a police vehicle.

Police retreat under a cloud of tear gas as protesters disperse from the scene of a standoff after Frayser community residents took to the streets in anger against the shooting of a youth by U.S. Marshals earlier in the evening, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn. (Associated Press)

Police reported that they had received a call for assistance from the U.S. Marshals Service earlier in the evening.

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported that a “tense standoff” developed between law enforcement and residents after the shooting, which took place in the Frayser neighborhood.

Frayser community residents taunt authorities as protesters take to the streets in anger against the shooting of a youth identified by family members as Brandon Webber by U.S. Marshals earlier in the evening, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn. (Associated Press)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

As the crowd grew restless, several gunshots were heard and police officers were seen with shields and batons.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) also responded, FOX 13 reported.

The NAACP tweeted that the organization was monitoring events in the city.

The crowd began to disperse around 10 p.m., the Commercial Appeal reported.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/memphis-police-officers-injured-in-unrest-following-shooting-reports

Thursday’s suspected attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman come a month after four commercial ships were hit in the same waterway, heightening tensions in a region already on edge.

But these reported attacks appear to be even more aggressive. Here’s the difference between the two incidents.

May 12 incident

In the incident on May 12, four ships were at anchor in the UAE port of Fujairah, a few kilometers from the coast, when they were apparently hit by mines or improvised explosive devices likely attached to their hulls overnight. The attacks caused no injuries and no evacuation. They were, essentially, pin-prick strikes, a subtle message.

The US and Saudi Arabia suspect Iran was behind those attacks — though no evidence of its involvement has been presented. Tehran denied any involvement, and precisely who carried out the attack is still under investigation.

Today’s incident

The two tankers involved in today’s suspected attacks were some 70 kilometers from the UAE, closer to the Iranian coast.

One of them was hit above the water line by what witnesses described as “some sort of shell,” according to an official from the firm that owns the boat. The other ship caught on fire following an explosion. The crews of both boats were evacuated.

There has been no assigning of blame thus far today, but the volume has been turned up.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/gulf-of-oman-incident-latest-intl/index.html

Media captionPolice use tear gas on protesters

Authorities have shut some government offices in Hong Kong’s financial district after the worst violence the city has seen in decades.

By Thursday morning the crowds had largely dispersed around government headquarters – where police and protesters had pitched battles on Wednesday.

The protesters are angry about plans to allow extradition to mainland China.

Despite the widespread opposition, the government has not backed down.

However, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) delayed a second reading of the controversial extradition bill and it is unclear when it will take place.

How did the violence unfold?

The second reading, or debate over the extradition bill was originally scheduled for Wednesday.

In an attempt to prevent lawmakers from participating in the debate, activists in the tens of thousands blockaded key streets around the government headquarters in central Hong Kong. Police were also out in riot gear.

Later the tensions boiled over as protesters tried to storm key government buildings demanding the bill be scrapped.

Media captionHong Kong protesters force way into government building

Police responded by firing tear gas and rubber bullets to block them and get them to disperse. After hours of chaos, the crowd eventually dissipated overnight.

Rights group Human Rights Watch accused the police of using “excessive force” against protesters.

Seventy-two people aged between 15 and 66 were injured in the violence, including two men who were in critical condition and some 21 police officers, nine of whom were taken to hospital.

Two protesters have now been arrested for rioting, according to news site SCMP.

An SCMP reporter said they were detained while trying to get a check-up in hospital. They had reportedly revealed to medical officers that their injuries were a result of the protests.

It is not clear if they are the same men who were described as critical.

A Telegram group administrator has also been arrested for conspiracy to commit public nuisance, local news outlets reported.

Ivan Ip was said to be the administrator of a group chat on Telegram – which has been used as one of the main channels of communication by protesters – which had 30,000 members.

Reports say he is being accused of plotting with others to charge the LegCo building and blocking other neighbouring roads.

Image copyright
BBC News

After the violence on Wednesday, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, in a tearful address, called the protests “organised riots”, and dismissed accusations that she had “sold out” Hong Kong.

Only a handful of protesters remained in the central business district in the city on Thursday morning, though some roads and a downtown shopping mall still remain closed, said local broadcaster RTHK.

Image caption

One man remained picking up rubbish from the streets

Image caption

There is still a strong police presence around the downtown areas of the city

What we learned about Hong Kong’s youth

By Martin Yip, BBC News Chinese, Hong Kong

The morning after the most violent protests Hong Kong has seen in decades, the scene outside the Legislative Council complex is quiet.

Debris is strewn about the roads – umbrellas, surgical masks – the aftermath of a serious confrontation.

Areas are still being cordoned off by police in riot gear, but there are no signs of protesters returning.

There is one elderly man shouting at police – he might seem like a lone voice, but anger against the police use of force is widespread.

As things stand, there is no fixed date for the reading of the extradition bill, although we’d expect that to happen next week.

Many members of the public, and the government, will feel a sense of shock.

They all learned something about Hong Kong’s youth: the strength of their feeling about Hong Kong’s political integrity is not to be underestimated.

They also showed they can get organised very quickly and they are willing to take more radical measures than the generation that led the Occupy protests five years ago.

What is the extradition plan?

The government of Carrie Lam has proposed amendments to the extradition laws that would allow extradition requests from authorities in mainland China, Taiwan and Macau for suspects accused of criminal wrongdoing such as murder and rape.

The requests would be decided on a case-by-case basis.

The move came after a 19-year-old Hong Kong man allegedly murdered his 20-year-old pregnant girlfriend while they were holidaying in Taiwan together in February last year.

The man fled to Hong Kong and could not be extradited to Taiwan because the two do not have an extradition treaty.

Hong Kong has entered into extradition agreements with 20 countries, including the UK and the US, but an agreement with China has never been reached.

Why are people angry about it?

Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 until sovereignty was returned to China in 1997.

It is now part of China under a “one country, two systems” principle, which ensures that it keeps its own judicial independence, its own legislature and economic system.

But people in Hong Kong are worried that should the extradition bill pass, it would bring Hong Kong more decisively under China’s control.

Image copyright
Reuters

Image caption

Demonstrators are worried about what the passing of the bill would mean for Hong Kong

“Hong Kong will just become another Chinese city if this bill is passed,” one 18-year-old protester told the BBC.

Most people in Hong Kong are ethnic Chinese but the majority of them don’t identify as Chinese – with some young activists even calling for Hong Kong’s independence from China.

Critics of the bill, including lawyers and rights groups, also say China’s justice system is marred by allegations of torture, forced confessions and arbitrary detentions.

But Ms Lam’s government says the amendments are required to plug loopholes in the law that effectively make Hong Kong a haven for those wanted on the mainland.

She has also said there will be legally binding human rights safeguards.

What could happen next?

Protests have quietened down for now but protesters are expected to return when the second reading of the bill eventually takes place.

This time, police officers will be better prepared and it is possible that there could be a repeat of the violence that took place on Wednesday.

But despite the protests, the bill is not likely to be scrapped – and this is due to the makeup of Hong Kong’s parliament.

The LegCo is elected in a very complex way, with not all seats directly chosen by Hong Kong’s voters. Most seats not directly elected are occupied by pro-Beijing lawmakers likely to throw their support behind the bill.

The passing of the bill is an outcome local protesters are unlikely to accept. In the end, it’s going to come down to a battle of wills.

Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48618484

An overwhelming majority of Americans say that a sitting president should be subject to criminal charges, according to a new poll. 

The national survey, which was released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, found that 69 percent of Americans polled support charging a sitting president. Meanwhile, 24 percent of respondents said that a president should face charges for alleged crimes only after they leave the White House. 

Fifty-two percent of Republican respondents voiced support for charging a sitting president, while 83 percent of Democrats said they’d favor charging a sitting president. 

When it comes to President TrumpDonald John TrumpHouse panel OKs space military branch Harris calls Trump ‘a national security threat’ after he says he’d take information from foreign power Harris calls Trump ‘a national security threat’ after he says he’d take information from foreign power MORE, respondents were evenly split on whether he has committed crimes while in office, with 45 percent saying he did, and the same amount saying he did not. Ten percent said they did not know. 

A majority, 57 percent, of respondents said they think Trump committed crimes before he was in the White House. 

Despite the findings, 61 percent of Americans polled said that Congress should not launch impeachment proceedings against Trump. Thirty-three percent said the body should. Support is higher among just Democrats, with 62 percent saying Congress should impeach. 

The release of special counsel Robert MuellerRobert (Bob) Swan MuellerKamala Harris says her Justice Dept would have ‘no choice’ but to prosecute Trump for obstruction Kamala Harris says her Justice Dept would have ‘no choice’ but to prosecute Trump for obstruction Dem committees win new powers to investigate Trump MORE‘s report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has prompted renewed calls for an impeachment inquiry, and has reignited the debate on whether a sitting president can be prosecuted. 

Mueller said last month that his office did not charge Trump with a crime because it was “not an option” under regulations from the Department of Justice about indicting a sitting president. 

The Quinnipiac survey found that 55 percent of respondents believe Mueller’s report did not exonerate Trump of wrongdoing, while 35 percent said the report did clear him.

“Even though questions clearly linger on the true thrust of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, an even larger majority says impeachment is just not the way to go,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

While dozens of Democrats and one House Republican have called for impeachment, polls have shown that a majority of Americans oppose the process. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released in early May found that 65 percent of respondents said they were against impeachment. 

The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted June 6-10 among a national population of 1,214 voters. It has a margin of error of 3.5 percent. 

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/448158-poll-nearly-70-percent-of-americans-say-sitting-president-should-be

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/13/europe/amanda-knox-italy-intl/index.html

Several law enforcement officers in Memphis were injured during a protest that began after federal officials killed a man they were attempting to arrest Wednesday, officials said.

A driver wanted on multiple felony warrants attempted to ram law enforcement vehicles when officers with a regional U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force attempted to arrest him in Memphis’ Frayser community about 7 p.m., Tennessee Bureau of Investigation public information officer Keli McAlister said. The man, who has not been publicly identified, then got out of the vehicle with a weapon, McAlister said.

“The officers fired, striking and killing the individual,” McAlister said. No officers were injured in the incident, she said.

After the shooting, a crowd gathered to protest the shooting.

Memphis police officers, who were not involved in the shooting, were called to assist. Some in the crowd threw rocks and other objects at police, local media reported.

Shelby County Sheriff’s deputies brace against the crowd as protesters take to the streets of the Frayser community in anger against the shooting a youth by U.S. Marshals earlier in the evening, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn.Jim Weber / AP

Around 25 officers among all agencies that responded were injured, Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings said at a news conference, although he said most were minor injuries.

“The officers did an enormous job tonight showing restraint in a very volatile situation,” Rallings said. He said officers had to don protective gear as the crowd threw objects, and a “chemical agent” was used to disperse the crowd.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said in a statement posted online early Thursday that six of the injured officers were taken to the hospital, and that at least two journalists were also injured.

Memphis police said that three people were arrested in the violence.

The mayor said police cars were vandalized and windows were broken out at a fire station. “Let me be clear — the aggression shown toward our officers and deputies tonight was unwarranted,” Strickland said in the statement.

The shooting involved officers with the United States Marshals Service — Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the shooting, said in a statement.

Officers were seen in riot gear, and video of the scene showed a police car with a broken window, NBC affiliate WMC of Memphis reported.

A Memphis police officer looks over a damaged squad car after protesters took to the streets of the Frayser community in anger against the shooting a youth by U.S. Marshals earlier in the evening, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn.Mark Weber / AP

Some in the crowd dispersed amid rain around 10 p.m., The Commercial Appeal newspaper of Memphis reported.

Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer said that about 300 people joined to protest the shooting. “Every life lost should matter…every single one. How many times will this be ok? It cannot continue to be,” she tweeted after going to the Frayser area.

The shooting occurred in a northern area of Memphis, according to the state investigation agency.

McAlister said the investigation into the officer-involved shooting is ongoing. Asked how many marshals opened fire, McAlister said that is part of the investigation but that multiple marshals were on the scene.

The police chief recognized those in the community who attempted to diffuse the situation.

“I do want to commend individuals that did not decide to commit acts of violence toward the police officers, that showed restraint — I know that there were many individuals in the crowd that tried to assist in keeping everyone calm,” Rallings said.

“My message tonight is that, is we should all wait and make sure we know exactly what happened before we spread misinformation or we jump to conclusions,” he said. He said the police department has been supportive of protests “but we will not allow any acts of violence, we will not allow destruction of property.”

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dozens-officers-injured-during-protest-memphis-after-task-force-kills-n1017086

June 12 at 4:44 PM

Top artificial-intelligence researchers across the country are racing to defuse an extraordinary political weapon: computer-generated fake videos that could undermine candidates and mislead voters during the 2020 presidential campaign.

And they have a message: We’re not ready.

The researchers have designed automatic systems that can analyze videos for the telltale indicators of a fake, assessing light, shadows, blinking patterns — and, in one potentially groundbreaking method, even how a candidate’s real-world facial movements — such as the angle they tilt their head when they smile — relate to one another.

But for all that progress, the researchers say they remain vastly overwhelmed by a technology they fear could herald a damaging new wave of disinformation campaigns, much in the same way fake news stories and deceptive Facebook groups were deployed to influence public opinion during the 2016 election.

Powerful new AI software has effectively democratized the creation of convincing “deepfake” videos, making it easier than ever to fabricate someone appearing to say or do something they didn’t really do, from harmless satires and film tweaks to targeted harassment and deepfake porn.

And researchers fear it’s only a matter of time before the videos are deployed for maximum damage — to sow confusion, fuel doubt or undermine an opponent, potentially on the eve of a White House vote.

“We are outgunned,” said Hany Farid, a computer-science professor and digital-forensics expert at the University of California at Berkeley. “The number of people working on the video-synthesis side, as opposed to the detector side, is 100 to 1.”

These AI-generated videos have yet to drive their own political scandal in the United States. But even simple tweaks to existing videos can create turmoil, as happened with the recent viral spread of a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), distorted to make her speech stunted and slurred. That video was viewed more than 3 million times.

Deepfakes have already made their appearance elsewhere: In Central Africa last year, a video of Gabon’s long-unseen president Ali Bongo, who was believed in poor health or already dead, was decried as a deepfake by his political opponents and cited as the trigger, a week later, for an unsuccessful coup by the Gabonese military.

And in Malaysia, a viral clip of a man’s seeming confession to having sex with a local cabinet minister is being questioned as a potential deepfake. He “does not look like this. . . . His body isn’t as built as in the video,” a local politician said, according to the Malay Mail newspaper in Kuala Lumpur.

The threat of deepfakes, named for the “deep learning” AI techniques used to create them, has become a personal one on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers believe the videos could threaten national security, the voting process — and, potentially, their reputations. The House Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing Thursday in which AI experts are expected to discuss how deepfakes could evade detection and leave an “enduring psychological impact.”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who chairs the committee, said Thursday, “I don’t think we’re well prepared at all. And I don’t think the public is aware of what’s coming.”

Rachel Thomas, the co-founder of Fast.ai, a machine-learning lab in San Francisco, says a disinformation campaign using deepfake videos probably would catch fire because of the reward structure of the modern Web, in which shocking material drives bigger audiences — and can spread further and faster than the truth.

“Fakes often, particularly now, don’t have to be that compelling to still have an impact,” Thomas said. “We are these social creatures that end up going with the crowd into seeing what the other people are seeing. It would not be that hard for a bad actor to have that kind of influence on public conversation.”

No law regulates deepfakes, though some legal and technical experts have recommended adapting current laws covering libel, defamation, identity fraud or impersonating a government official. But concerns of overregulation abound: The dividing line between a parody protected by the First Amendment and deepfake political propaganda may not always be clear-cut.

And some worry that the potential hype or hysteria of fake videos could even erode how people accept video evidence. Misinformation researcher Aviv Ovadya calls this problem “reality apathy”: “It’s too much effort to figure out what’s real and what’s not, so you’re more willing to just go with whatever your previous affiliations are.”

It might already be leaving an impact. In a Pew Research study released this month, about two-thirds of Americans surveyed said altered videos and images had become a major problem for understanding the basic facts of current events. More than a third said “made-up news” had led them to reduce the amount of news they get overall.

There also are fears that deepfakes could lead to people denying legitimate videos — a phenomenon the law professors Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron call “the liar’s dividend.” President Trump, for instance, has told people the “Access Hollywood” video, in which he boasted of assaulting women, was doctored. (After the real audio was first revealed by The Washington Post in October 2016, Trump apologized for the remarks.)

Officials with the Democratic and Republican parties and the nation’s top presidential campaigns say they can do little in advance to prepare for the damage, and are counting on social networks and video sites to find and remove the worst fakes. But the tech companies have differing policies on takedowns, and most don’t require that uploaded videos must be true.

“People can duplicate me speaking and saying anything … and it’s a complete fabrication,” former president Barack Obama told an audience in Canada last month. “The marketplace of ideas that is the basis of our democratic practice has difficulty working if we don’t have some common baseline of what’s true and what’s not.”

The technology is progressing rapidly. AI researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow last month unveiled a “few-shot” AI system that could create a convincing fake of someone with only a few still photos of their face. The lead researcher, Egor Zakharov, said he could not discuss it, citing ongoing peer review, but in a statement the team said that the “net effect” of making video special-effects technologies more widely available “has been positive … [and] we believe that the case of neural avatar technology will be no different.”

Another group of AI researchers, including from Stanford and Princeton universities, just debuted a separate system that can edit what someone appears to be saying on video, just by changing some text, with the AI swapping around the person’s voiced syllables and mouth movement to leave only a seamlessly altered “talking head.”

The lead researcher, Ohad Fried, said the technology could be used to enhance low-budget filmmaking and help localize videos to international languages and audiences. But he also said it could be abused to falsify video or “slander prominent individuals.” Video made using the tool, he said, should be presented as synthetic. But he said regulators, tech companies and journalists should play a more leading role in researching how to unmask fakes.

“In general people do need to understand that video may not be an accurate representation of what happened,” he said.

Deepfake video is just one part of how AI is revolutionizing disinformation. New natural-language AI systems such as GPT-2, by the research lab OpenAI, can feed on written text and spit out many more paragraphs in a similar tone, theme and style — a boon, perhaps, to spam chatbots and “fake news” creators, even if the underlying ideas sometimes trend toward gibberish.

The technique has already been used to automatically parrot political leaders’ speaking style after “learning” from hours of U.N. speeches. To counteract it, researchers at the University of Washington and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence last month unveiled a fake-text-detector system, called Grover, that could potentially expose what it calls machine-generated “neural fake news.”

Convincing fake audio is also on the horizon, including from Facebook AI researchers, who have replicated a person’s voice using computer-generated speech that sounds deceivingly lifelike. The system, MelNet, learned its impersonations by listening to hundreds of hours of TED Talks and audiobooks; in samples, the system can make Bill Gates, Jane Goodall and others say sentences such as “A cramp is no small danger on a swim.”

In AI circles, identifying fake media has long received less attention, funding and institutional backing than creating it: Why sniff out other people’s fantasy creations when you can design your own? “There’s no money to be made out of detecting these things,” said Nasir Memon, a professor of computer science and engineering at New York University.

Much of the funding for researching ways of detecting deepfakes comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s high-tech research arm, which in 2016 launched a “Media Forensics” program that sponsored more than a dozen academic and corporate groups pursuing high-level research. Matt Turek, a computer-vision expert who leads the DARPA program, called synthetic-media detection a “defensive technology” against not just foreign adversaries but domestic political antagonists and Internet trolls.

“Nation-states have had the ability to manipulate media since, essentially, the beginning of media,” Turek said. But a strong-enough fake-spotting system would make it so groups with more-limited resources would face “enough computational burden to make it not worth the risk.”

The trick for unraveling a deepfake, researchers said, is building a tool that works in what cryptography circles call a “trustless environment,” in which authoritative details of the video’s creator, origin and distribution can be impossible to trace. And speed is critical: With every minute that an investigator spends debunking video, a clip can spread that much further across the Web.

Forensic researchers have homed in on a range of subtle indicators that could serve as giveaways, such as the shape of light and shadows, the angles and blurring of facial features, or the softness and weight of clothing and hair. But in some cases, a trained video editor can go through the fake to smooth out possible errors, making it that much harder to assess.

With one new method, researchers at the universities of California at Berkeley and Southern California built a detective AI system that they fed hours of video of high-level leaders and trained it to look for hyper-precise “facial action units” — data points of their facial movements, tics and expressions, including when they raise their upper lips and how their heads rotate when they frown.

To test these “soft biometric” models, Farid and his team worked with a team of digital-avatar designers to create some deepfakes of their own, swapping the faces of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Hillary Clinton and President Trump onto their own impersonators on “Saturday Night Live.” The system has scored high in accuracy on gauging a number of different kinds of fakes: videos of a satirical human impersonator; “face-swap” fakes, popular in social-media apps; “lip-sync” fakes, in which the real face remains but the mouth is substituted; and “puppet-master” fakes, in which a target’s face is placed onto an actor’s body.

The research, titled “Protecting World Leaders Against Deep Fakes,” was partially developed with funding from Google, Microsoft and DARPA. It will be revealed alongside other techniques next week in California at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, a landmark annual summit sponsored by the biggest names in American and Chinese AI.

Sam Gregory, a program director at Witness, a human-rights group that helps train amateur journalists around the world to record abuse, said the world’s social media platforms need to unify around a “shared immune system” designed to find and stop viral fakes. Scanning top politicians’ faces using Farid’s method, Gregory said, would offer protection to high-level leaders, but not to local politicians, journalists or other people who could be vulnerable to attack.

Farid wants media outlets to have access to the deepfake-detecting tool so they can assess news-making video when it arises. But making the system more widely available carries its own threat, by potentially allowing deepfake creators to examine the code and find workarounds. This cat-and-mouse game is a long-running frustration for forensic researchers, ensuring that even a promising detection method is only of temporary use.

Siwei Lyu, director of a computer-vision lab at the State University of New York at Albany, helped pioneer research last year that found many deepfakes had a telltale clue: a lack of blinking. It was an investigative victory — until two weeks later, when Lyu received an email from a deepfake creator who said they had solved the problem in their latest fakes.

Lyu believes media manipulation can have a broader psychological effect, by subtly shifting people’s understandings of politicians, events and ideas.

“Everybody knows it’s a fake video. But they watch it,” Lyu said. “It’s generating an illusion. It can wreak a lot of damage. It’s very hard to remove. And it can come from anywhere. With the Internet, all the boundaries are becoming blurred.”

High-definition fake videos often are the easiest to detect, researchers said. The more detail in a video, the more opportunities for the fake to reveal its flaws. But the modern Web works against that advantage because most social media and messaging sites compress the videos into formats that make them quicker and easier to share, removing critical clues.

That challenge to some appears insurmountable, and has led some researchers to instead pursue an authentication system that would fingerprint footage right as it’s captured. It could help make fakes easier to spot, but would require agreement from makers of smartphones, cameras and websites — a far-off proposal that could take years.

“I worked on detection for 15 years. It doesn’t work,” Memon said. “Facebook videos? Things thrown around in WhatsApp? . . . It may never work. Meanwhile, the adversary has really gone up a few notches.”

Political campaigns that have long prepared defenses against bruising video gaffes said they were stumped on how to prepare for the new weapons of mass deceptions. Several campaign officials said they pinned their hopes on the tech companies acting more aggressively to police for fakes.

A Democratic National Committee official said it has helped train campaigns on how to combat disinformation and push for takedowns from the social-media sites. A Republican National Committee official said it is encouraging employees to stay on alert for suspicious content, and that its digital team works with the tech giants to flag harmful posts and accounts.

But the tech giants’ policies don’t align on whether fakes should be deleted or flagged, demoted and preserved. YouTube, for instance, quickly pulled the distorted Pelosi video, saying it violated its “deceptive practices” policies. But Facebook kept it online, saying in a statement to The Post that “we don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true.”

YouTube said it is “exploring and investing in ways to address synthetic media” and compared it to previous challenges, such as fighting spam and finding copyright-infringing videos, that it has tackled with a mix of software and human review.

Facebook is funding some universities’ manipulated-media research and, in a statement to The Post, said “combating misinformation is one of the most important things we can do.” The company was targeted by its own fake this week, when an altered video of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared to show him boasting of his “total control” over the world’s data. (The fake remains online.)

Twitter said it challenges more than 8 million accounts a week that attempt to spread content through “manipulative tactics.” But fact-checking every tweet is not feasible, the company said, adding that it doesn’t “think we should set the precedent of intervening to decide what is and is not truthful online.”

The company added that “the clarification of falsehoods happens in seconds” on the site because of real-time checks from other users, and that “typically factually inaccurate material gains very little distribution on Twitter until it is” disproved. The company could not offer any statistics to support that claim.

Perhaps the most pervasive problem for modern visual storytelling, researchers said, is not sophisticated fake videos but misattributed real ones: footage of a real protest march or violent skirmish, for instance, captioned as if it had happened somewhere else.

The detection systems have taken on a newfound urgency due to the upcoming election, but there is also a growing interest from corporate America to protect against viral frauds. Shamir Allibhai, the founder of Amber, a small fake-detection start-up, said his firm is working now with a test group of corporate clients seeking a shield against deepfakes that could show, for instance, a chief executive saying racist or misogynistic slurs.

In a world where video has played a pivotal role in shaping modern history, researchers said it’s nevertheless critical to find a way to spot the fakes — and some fear what could happen if the authority of video slips away.

“As a consequence of this, even truth will not be believed,” Memon said. “The man in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square moved the world. Nixon on the phone cost him his presidency. Images of horror from concentration camps finally moved us into action. If the notion of not believing what you see is under attack, that is a huge problem. One has to restore truth in seeing again.”

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/12/top-ai-researchers-race-detect-deepfake-videos-we-are-outgunned/

How this Indian hotel chain plans to conquer the China market

Since Indian budget hotel start-up OYO entered China last year, it has opened nearly 10,000 hotels and 450,000 rooms. Its CEO Ritesh Agarwal outlines two reasons for the…

read more

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/13/hong-kong-extradition-bill-a-new-day-of-anti-government-protests.html

Iran’s Arabic TV al-Alalam reported that Pakistan’s local authorities also confirmed that the sound of explosions were heard.

Shipping executives have been circulating messages on Thursday morning saying that oil tanker M.T Front Altair had been abandoned, with its crew safely rescued by a nearby vessel, and that it was fully loaded and on fire.

The fire on Front Altair was caused by a “surface attack”, one of the messages said. The messages also said that a second tanker in the vicinity, Kokuka Courageous, could not be contacted, with its automatic identification system having gone offline.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2019/jun/13/uk-house-prices-brexit-oil-price-tanker-fire-arcadia-green-business-live

The Justice Department intends to interview two CIA officers for its review of the origins of the Russia investigation.

U.S. Attorney John Durham’s team wants to talk to at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior analyst who examined Russia’s role in meddling in the 2016 election, according to the New York Times.

Although formal requests have not yet been submitted, CIA Director Gina Haspel informed senior officials that her agency will cooperate, but will work to ensure that sources, methods, and intelligence provided by allies would be protected.

Attorney General William Barr tasked Durham, a U.S. attorney from Connecticut, with leading the inquiry focused on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign, which the FBI began in the summer of 2016.

American officials say Barr is interested in understanding how the CIA coordinated with the FBI and how the agency came to its conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to sow discord in the election to help Trump and undermine his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

The review is not a criminal inquiry, but should Durham find criminal activity he can take prosecutorial action. Top CIA officials are said to be anxious over the federal prosecutor’s efforts.

The Justice Department’s examination of the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign has been cheered by Republicans and criticized by Democrats. After Trump granted Barr sweeping powers to declassify secret information and instructed a handful of agencies to cooperate with his investigation, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff panned the effort as a “disturbing” scheme to politicize intelligence.

A DOJ letter written to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., outlining the scope of its investigation said the review is “broad in scope and multifaceted” and includes a look at actions both by the U.S. government and by foreigners.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-durham-seeks-interviews-with-two-cia-officers-over-russia-investigation-origins

He added that it “was a very personal, very warm, very nice letter.” Ah, love! And as if he were eying North Korea for a new Trump resort, the president declared: “North Korea has tremendous potential, and he’ll be there.” Kim is “the one that feels that more than anybody,” and underscoring just how wise the dear leader is, Trump concluded: “He totally gets it.”

Source Article from https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/06/13/ej-dionne-trump-sides/

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, said he is “glad this is finally over” after speaking to the Senate Intelligence Committee for around three hours on Wednesday.

Trump Jr. said he was happy to clarify answers from an interview with the panel’s staff in 2017, but told reporters, “I don’t think I changed any of what I said because there was nothing to change.”

Senators wanted to discuss the answers Trump Jr. gave in that 2017 interview, as well as the answers he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a separate interview behind closed doors that year. He appeared in response to a subpoena from the panel’s Republican chairman, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference.

The president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told a House committee in February that before the presidential election he had briefed Trump Jr. approximately 10 times about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. But Trump Jr. told the Judiciary panel he was only “peripherally aware” of the real estate proposal.

The panel was also interested in talking to him about other topics as well, including a 2016 campaign meeting in Trump Tower in New York with a Russian lawyer that captured the interest of special counsel Robert Mueller. Emails leading up to the meeting promised dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent. Mueller’s report, released in April, examined the meeting but found insufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime.

Trump Jr. would not discuss the details of the Senate interview, but said he was happy to comply if clarification was needed.

“I am glad this is finally over, we’re able to put some final clarity on that, and I think the committee understands that,” he said. Asked as he walked away if he is worried about perjury, Trump Jr. said “not at all.”

He also noted that Cohen is “serving time right now for lying to these very investigative bodies.”

Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and other crimes. He is currently serving a three-year prison sentence.

Trump Jr. said “I am glad this is finally over, we’re able to put some final clarity on that, and I think the committee understands that.” Asked as he walked away if he is worried about perjury, Trump Jr. said “not at all.”

Trump Jr.’s testimony comes as the Intelligence Committee continues its two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Some Republicans are becoming restless with the topic, and Burr received considerable blowback from colleagues over the subpoena. But he told fellow senators that Trump Jr. had backed out of an interview twice, forcing the committee to act.

Neither Burr nor the top Democrat on the panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, would comment on the interview as they left.

The president said in May he believed his son was being treated poorly.

“It’s really a tough situation because my son spent, I guess, over 20 hours testifying about something that Mueller said was 100 percent OK and now they want him to testify again,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I don’t know why. I have no idea why. But it seems very unfair to me.”

It was the first known subpoena of a member of the president’s immediate family, and some Republicans went so far last month as to suggest Trump Jr. shouldn’t comply.

Burr’s home state colleague, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., tweeted, “It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a GOP member of the panel, said he understood Trump Jr.’s frustration. Cornyn’s Texas colleague, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said there was “no need” for the subpoena.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has defended Burr, saying “none of us tell Chairman Burr how to run his committee.”

Still, McConnell made it clear that he is eager to be finished with the probe, which began in early 2017.

It’s uncertain when the intelligence panel will issue a final report. Burr told The Associated Press last month that he hopes to be finished with the investigation by the end of the year.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-jr-speaks-senate-intel-committee-glad-it-s-finally-n1016891

Fox News’ host Greg Gutfeld dismissed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris‘ comments saying her DOJ would have “no choice” but to prosecute President Trump comparing her to a desperate man trying to meet women at a bar.

“That’s what candidates are like right now. They are the desperate guy at the bar who will say anything to get your number. It’s just to get some kind of media spotlight. And they are not trying to appeal to America. Because America doesn’t care,” Gutfeld said on “The Five” Wednesday.

Sen. Harris, D-Calif., in a newly released NPR interview, said she believes the only reason former Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not recommend prosecuting Trump was because of the Justice Department’s policy against indicting a sitting president. The senator said that once out of office, Trump would be subject to charges and that the DOJ should pursue them.

DEMS’ LONG GAME? PELOSI RAISES PROSPECT OF PROSECUTING TRUMP ONCE HE LEAVES OFFICE

“I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes,” Harris said on the NPR Politics Podcast.

The Greg Gutfeld Show” host said he “didn’t believe” Harris and pointed out that Democratic presidential candidates are “being tricked” into taking hard-left points of view.

“They’re being tricked into thinking there is no lane for moderates. Like everybody has to go this way and actually, America actually likes a moderate. You don’t have to be a rabid flame thrower. I don’t believe her for a second. It’s interesting that she has to do this because she is not taking off. And I thought that she would have taken off,” Gutfeld said.

Fox Business’ Kennedy added that she wished Mueller “picked a side” so that everyone could move on from the issue.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“Do you know what would have been nice if we weren’t left in this expanded gray area which is what the Mueller report gave us. I really do wish he would have picked a side and I wish he would have pressed the issue,” Kennedy said.  “And if the president had done something so bad that was chargeable, if it were a civilian, then he should have put that in there.”

Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gutfeld-kamala-harris-trump-prosecute-desperate

The House has approved a resolution that will make it easier to file lawsuits against the Trump administration when officials defy subpoenas.

The legislation passed 229-191, along party lines.

It empowers Democrats to take legal action to enforce subpoenas against Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn. It also allows committee chairmen to take future legal action without a vote of the full House, as long as they have approval from a bipartisan group of House leaders.

Tuesday’s vote reflects an evolving strategy for Democrats, who have moved toward lawsuits and away from criminal contempt as they investigate President Donald Trump and his administration.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats “need answers on the questions left unanswered” by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report.

Source Article from https://time.com/5605036/house-authorizes-lawsuits-to-enforce-subpoenas-against-attorney-general-barr-and-don-mcgahn/

CLOSE

President Trump insisted that Russia didn’t help him get elected, one day after special counsel Robert Mueller spoke publicly for the first time.
USA TODAY

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would likely take information about his 2020 election rivals from foreign adversaries, such as Russia and China. 

During an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump was asked whether his campaign would accept information from foreign governments in this upcoming election or turn it over to the FBI. 

“I think maybe you do both,” Trump said, adding that if Norway had information on an opponent, he thinks he would want to hear it. “I think you might want to listen, there’s nothing wrong with listening.”

When asked whether he would want that type of interference in the 2020 election, Trump said: “It’s not an interference.”

“They have information. I think I’d take it,” Trump continued. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI.”

‘What is being hidden?’: House panel votes contempt for Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross

Intelligence officials have noted that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a probe into Moscow’s effort to interfere in the election, noted in his 448-page report that Russia’s interference was done in an effort to elect Trump. 

The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., on Wednesday met with lawmakers to discuss a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, where he’s previously said he believed he was getting damaging information on then-Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

The president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has also recently declined to say whether he would call the FBI if he were invited to another meeting with Russia, like the one at Trump Tower.

CLOSE

President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner won’t say if he would call the FBI if Russia tried to contact the campaign by email. (June 3)
AP, AP

Trump criticized earlier reports that said his son could be charged over the meeting.

“I was reading that my son was going to go to jail,” the president said. “This is a good young man, that he was going to go to jail.”

When asked whether Trump Jr. should have gone to the FBI, he said, “Put yourself in [that] position?”

“You’re a congressman, somebody comes up, and says, ‘Hey, I have information on your opponent.’ You call the FBI?”

“I’ve seen a lot of things over my life, I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI,” he continued. “This is somebody that said we had information on your opponent. ‘Oh, let me call the FBI.’ Give me a break. Life doesn’t work that way.”

More: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Democrats ‘not even close’ to starting impeachment

Poll: Biden leads Trump by 13 percentage points nationally in head-to-head matchup

Trump also criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray’s comments during a congressional testimony last month in which he told lawmakers that “the FBI would want to know about” any foreign election meddling.

“The FBI director is wrong,” he said.

“They come up with oppo research, ‘Oh, let’s call the FBI,'” Trump continued. “The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it.

“But you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it. They’ve always had. And that’s the way it is, it’s called oppo research.”

Like what you’re reading?: Download the USA TODAY app for more

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/12/donald-trump-abc-take-foreign-info-2020-rivals/1438670001/

President Donald Trump may not alert the FBI if foreign governments offered damaging information against his 2020 rivals during the upcoming presidential race, he said, despite the deluge of investigations stemming from his campaign’s interactions with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether his campaign would accept such information from foreigners — such as China or Russia — or hand it over the FBI, Trump said, “I think maybe you do both.”

“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump continued. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”

President Trump made the remark during an exclusive interview with ABC News over the course of two days, wherein Stephanopoulos joined the president on a visit to Iowa and back to Washington for a day inside the White House.

ABC News
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos talks with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, June 12, 2019.

Trump disputed the idea that if a foreign government provided information on a political opponent, it would be considered interference in our election process.

“It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”

President Trump lamented the attention on his son, Donald Trump Jr., for his role in the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Stephanopoulos asked whether Trump Jr. should have taken the Russians’ offer for “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton to the FBI.

“Somebody comes up and says, ‘hey, I have information on your opponent,’ do you call the FBI?” Trump responded.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.”

“The FBI director said that is what should happen,” Stephanopoulos replied, referring to comments FBI Director Christopher Wray made during congressional testimony last month, when he told lawmakers “the FBI would want to know about” any foreign election meddling.

But on Wednesday, the president refuted Wray’s sentiment.

“The FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life,” Trump said. “Now maybe it will start happening, maybe today you’d think differently.”

Tune in next week for an hour-long ABC News special, only on ABC — including “ABC News Live,” the 24/7 streaming news channel available on abcnews.com, Roku, Hulu, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/id-exclusive-interview-trump-listen-foreigners-offered-dirt/story?id=63669304