Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal, prosecutors inadvertently revealed in a recently unsealed court filing — a development that could significantly advance the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and have major implications for those who publish government secrets. The disclosure came in a filing in a case unrelated to Assange. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote that “due to the sophistication…

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The European Union is “best prepared” for Britain to backtrack and abandon Brexit, EU President Donald Tusk says. Matt Kelly writes: As Theresa May announced her Cabinet’s collective approval of the withdrawal deal she negotiated with Brussels, she listed three options: her deal, no deal and no Brexit. It was the first time she acknowledged that not doing Brexit at all is even a possibility. And she couldn’t avoid it, since no Brexit is today — on form at least…

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The Guardian reports: Saudi Arabia says it will pursue the death penalty for five suspects charged with ordering and carrying out the killing of the Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, in the latest effort to distance the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from the grisly murder. The Saudi public prosecutor claimed Saudi agents, including the head of forensics at the national intelligence service and members of Prince Mohammed’s security detail, had orders to abduct Khashoggi but decided…

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Jonathan Chait writes: Well-functioning democracies don’t have criminal oligarchies running the country with legal impunity. The kind of deep systemic corruption Trump is implementing, in which establishing a political alliance with a ruling family is a key step in amassing and protecting wealth, depends on selective legal enforcement. More to the point, it requires business partners. Maybe Donald Trump can’t be hauled off to prison, but his partners can. And that prospect can scare off the collaborators Trump needs. Second,…

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The Washington Post reports: As he jetted to Paris last Friday, President Trump received a congratulatory phone call aboard Air Force One. British Prime Minister Theresa May was calling to celebrate the Republican Party’s wins in the midterm elections — never mind that Democrats seized control of the House — but her appeal to the American president’s vanity was met with an ornery outburst. Trump berated May for Britain not doing enough, in his assessment, to contain Iran. He questioned…

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Fintan O’Toole writes: So, at long last, it seems that the negotiations on Brexit between the United Kingdom and the European Union have produced a draft agreement. We do not yet know what it contains but it will be a compromise that falls far short of the high expectations of June 2016 when the British voted to leave. It will tie Britain to the EU’s customs union and single market for an indefinite but probably very long time. Instead of…

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Marie Brenner reports: Perhaps all you need to know to understand the essense of Bill Browder is what he carried with him in his briefcase when he lived in Putin’s Russia. “At all times,” he told me not long after we met, “I had $5,000 in cash in case I had to flee for the border and pay off the guards.” Bill Browder’s stories are melodramas. They often begin with a ringing phone—or a knock on a door. In May…

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The New York Times reports: North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat. The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted…

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