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Category: Politics

Pence and Biden demonstrate how to handle mishandled classified documents

Pence and Biden demonstrate how to handle mishandled classified documents

Politico reports: The Justice Department has taken possession of a “small number” of documents with classified markings that former Vice President Mike Pence found in his Indiana residence earlier this month, according to Greg Jacob, the custodian of Pence’s White House records. In a Jan. 22 letter to the National Archives, Jacob indicated that FBI agents came to Pence’s Indiana home on the night of Jan. 19 to retrieve documents that the former vice president had located a few days…

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Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, gears up for likely 2024 run for president

Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, gears up for likely 2024 run for president

CNBC reports: Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump, has hired key staff and is canvassing potential donors as she explores a presidential run against her former boss in 2024, according to people briefed on her plans. Haley is putting together a national finance committee and communications team in advance of a potential campaign, these people explained. Some of the new hires have been directed to report for work at Haley’s nonprofit…

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Mike Pompeo dismisses murder of Jamal Khashoggi by saying such crimes are ‘routine’ in Middle East

Mike Pompeo dismisses murder of Jamal Khashoggi by saying such crimes are ‘routine’ in Middle East

In response to comments reportedly made by Mike Pompeo in his new memoir, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) issued the following statement: “Pompeo’s crass and craven comments appearing to justify Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by disparaging his political views and falsely associating them with terrorism mirror the same justifications Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and other tyrants use to excuse their crimes,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN. “It is despicable that a senior American official is suggesting…

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Could independents upend U.S. climate politics?

Could independents upend U.S. climate politics?

Alexander Burns writes: A small band of political strategists gathered last September in a restaurant near Dupont Circle to meet a visitor from the other side of the world. Everyone at the table was immersed in the battle against climate change; nearly all had been involved in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the clean-energy law Democrats enacted over the summer. Their guest was Byron Fay, an Australian operative who had arrived in Washington with an exotic political scheme in mind….

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Former FBI executive allegedly ‘committed the very violations he swore to investigate’ by taking payments from Russian oligarch

Former FBI executive allegedly ‘committed the very violations he swore to investigate’ by taking payments from Russian oligarch

The New York Times reports: A former high-level F.B.I. official has been indicted in New York and Washington, D.C., on charges of taking money from a former foreign intelligence service agent and conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Russia by taking secret payments from a Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, the authorities said on Monday. The former official, Charles McGonigal, who had been the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division in New York before he retired in…

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UK government helped sanctioned Putin ally sue British journalist

UK government helped sanctioned Putin ally sue British journalist

Open Democracy reports: The UK government helped the boss of Russia’s murderous mercenary army to circumvent its own sanctions and launch a targeted legal attack on a British journalist, openDemocracy can reveal. Yevgeny Prigozhin is the founder of Wagner, a private army that the US government last week announced it would designate a “transnational criminal organisation”, allowing it to impose even tougher sanctions on the group. For years it has been accused of human rights abuses and war crimes in…

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Berlin not blocking export of tanks to Ukraine, EU diplomat says

Berlin not blocking export of tanks to Ukraine, EU diplomat says

Reuters reports: Germany is not blocking the re-export of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, the European Union’s top diplomat said on Monday, after Poland vowed to send some as long as other countries did too. The Kyiv government wants the German-made Leopard 2, one of the most widely used Western tanks, to help it break through Russian lines and recapture territory this year. Germany, which must approve re-exports of the Leopard, has held back, wary of moves that could cause Moscow…

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Depleted under Trump, a ‘traumatized’ EPA struggles with its mission

Depleted under Trump, a ‘traumatized’ EPA struggles with its mission

The New York Times reports: The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration. The chemicals chief said her staff can’t keep up with a mounting workload. The enforcement unit is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades. And now this: the stressed-out, stretched-thin Environmental Protection Agency is scrambling to write about a half dozen highly complex rules and regulations that…

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Florida is where free speech goes to die

Florida is where free speech goes to die

Bess Levin writes: One of Florida governor Ron DeSantis‘s favorite little mottos is “Florida is where woke goes to die.” In fact, a better, more accurate motto would be “Ron DeSantis’s Florida is where free speech goes to die, unless you’ve agreed to the governor’s list of preapproved talking points, like that LGBTQ+ people don’t exist, white people are and have always been awesome, and nonwhite people have nothing to complain about.” Defenders of the governor will not like this…

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Russian agents suspected of directing far-right group to mail bombs in Spain

Russian agents suspected of directing far-right group to mail bombs in Spain

The New York Times reports: American and European officials believe that Russian military intelligence officers directed associates of a white supremacist militant group based in Russia to carry out a recent letter bomb campaign in Spain whose most prominent targets were the prime minister, the defense minister and foreign diplomats, according to U.S. officials. Spanish and foreign investigators have been looking into who sent six letter bombs in late November and early December to sites mostly in Madrid, including the…

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MI5 refused to investigate ‘Russian spy’s’ links to Tories, says whistleblower

MI5 refused to investigate ‘Russian spy’s’ links to Tories, says whistleblower

Carole Cadwalladr reports: MI5 repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was attempting to cultivate influence with senior Conservative politicians and channel illegal Russian funds into the party, a Tory member has alleged in a new complaint lodged with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT). Sergei Cristo, a Conservative party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal, filing the case after corresponding with the chair of…

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American lawmakers urge U.S. to ship Abrams tanks to Ukraine

American lawmakers urge U.S. to ship Abrams tanks to Ukraine

Reuters reports: American lawmakers on Sunday pushed the U.S. government to export M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, saying that even sending a symbolic number to Kyiv would be enough to push European allies to do the same. Michael McCaul, the newly installed Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC’s “This Week” that “just one” Abrams tank would be enough to prompt allies, notably Germany, to unlock their own tank inventories for the fight against Russia….

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Supreme Court leak investigation ends with justices appearing as above the law

Supreme Court leak investigation ends with justices appearing as above the law

The New York Times reports: Last spring and summer, employees of the Supreme Court were drawn into an investigation that turned into an uncomfortable awakening. As the court marshal’s office looked into who had leaked the draft opinion of the decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, law clerks who had secured coveted perches at the top of the judiciary scrambled for legal advice and navigated quandaries like whether to surrender their personal cellphones to investigators. The “court family” soon…

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Trump team struggles to consolidate support ahead of S.C. event

Trump team struggles to consolidate support ahead of S.C. event

The Washington Post reports: Advisers to Donald Trump have blanketed South Carolina Republican officials with pleading phone calls in recent weeks in an effort to drum up endorsements and attendees for the former president’s first campaign swing of the 2024 cycle next week. But the appeals have run headlong into a complicated new reality: Many of the state’s lawmakers and political operatives, and even some of his previous supporters, are not ready to pick a presidential candidate. They find themselves…

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European leadership on Ukraine comes from smaller nations

European leadership on Ukraine comes from smaller nations

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: In the weeks leading up to Friday’s conference of the two dozen nations of the Ukraine Contact Group at the U.S.-run Ramstein Air Base in southwest Germany, there has been a steady trickle of information about what military hardware allies were planning to send to the war-torn nation to help bolster its defenses and launch counteroffensives to repel Russia’s invasion. For most participants who attended Friday’s meeting, the most coveted outcome eluded them. No…

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Germany continues standing in the way of effort to supply Ukraine with tanks

Germany continues standing in the way of effort to supply Ukraine with tanks

Politico reports: Germany dashed Ukrainian hopes that Berlin would finally decide on Friday to send modern battle tanks to Kyiv’s forces, with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius arguing there was no international agreement yet on the topic. Speaking outside a meeting of defense ministers at the U.S. Ramstein military base in Germany, Pistorius said his government had still not agreed to a Ukrainian request for German’s Leopard 2 tanks to aid an expected spring offensive. “We all cannot say today…

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