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NBC News’ Courtney Kube interviews Juliane Gallina, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Digital Innovation, on her biggest cybersecurity concerns.March 29, 2024
Mystery over fish die-off in Florida
01:34
Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. dies at age 87
01:42
Biden fundraiser with three presidents raises $26 million
01:52
First anniversary of reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention in Russia
01:32
Now Playing
Top CIA cybersecurity official speaks out on election interference, TikTok and passwords
01:46
UP NEXT
Haiti gang leader says he is open to talks with the government
Former President Donald Trump and eight other defendants accused of illegally trying to interfere in the 2020 election in Georgia on Friday submitted a formal application to appeal a judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case.
Trump and other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office tossed off the case, saying her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee earlier this month found that there was not a conflict of interest that should force Willis off the case but said that the prosecution was “encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.”
McAfee’s ruling said Willis could continue her prosecution if Wade left the case, and the special prosecutor resigned hours later. Lawyers for Trump and other defendants then asked McAfee to allow them to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and he granted that request.
The filing of an application with the appeals court is the next step in that process. The Court of Appeals has 45 days to decide whether it will take up the matter.
The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade upended the case for weeks. Intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February, overshadowing the serious allegations in one of four criminal cases against the Republican former president. Trump and 18 others were indicted in August, accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow 2020 presidential election loss to President Biden in Georgia.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 1, 2024, in Atlanta.
Alex Slitz / Getty Images
The appeal application says McAfee was wrong not to disqualify both Willis and Wade from the case, saying that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement that the case should have been dismissed and “at a minimum” Willis should have been disqualified from continuing to prosecute it. He said the Court of Appeals should grant the application and consider the merits of the appeal.
A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.
Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law, an expansive anti-racketeering statute, to charge Trump and the 18 others. Four people charged in the case have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
McAfee clearly found that Willis’ relationship with Wade and his employment as lead prosecutor in the case created an appearance of impropriety, and his failure to disqualify Willis and her whole office from the case “is plain legal error requiring reversal,” the defense attorneys wrote in their application.
Given the complexity of the case and the number of defendants, the application says, multiple trials will likely be necessary. Failure to disqualify Willis now could require any verdicts to be overturned, and it would be “neither prudent nor efficient” to risk having to go through “this painful, divisive, and expensive process” multiple times, it says.
In his ruling, McAfee cited a lack of appellate guidance on the issue of disqualifying a prosecutor for forensic misconduct, and the appeals court should step in to establish such a precedent, the lawyers argue.
Finally, the defense attorneys argued, it is crucial that prosecutors “remain and appear to be disinterested and impartial” to maintain public faith in the integrity of the judicial system.
Breaking down Trump’s free speech claims in Georgia election case – CBS News
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A judge in the Georgia 2020 election case heard arguments Thursday over whether former President Donald Trump’s First Amendment rights shield him from prosecution. CBS News campaign reporter Katrina Kaufman joins “America Decides” with key takeaways.
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Georgia judge hears Trump’s First Amendment claim in election interference case – CBS News
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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers argue his Fulton County election interference case should be dismissed because the acts he is charged with are protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. CBS News campaign reporter Katrina Kaufman has the latest on the case.
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Activists gathered in front of Indonesia’s parliament in March 2024 to protest alleged violations in the presidential election, however, a clip of police firing water cannons shared in posts about the demonstrations has circulated online since 2019. The footage — filmed by a local media outlet — shows a violent protest in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta against proposed amendments for a new criminal code.
The clip — viewed more than 4,700 times — was shared alongside the false claim on TikTok on March 6, 2024, with superimposed text that reads “BREAKING NEWS”.
The clip shows a photo of a massive rally, with the logo for Indonesian media outlet Kompas TV partially visible in the picture. The Indonesian-language text added to the video indicated it was from a recent protest against Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
It translated in part as: “Senayan is burning. The second reform has started. Jokowi is forced to step down. The people demand that democracy is restored.”
Activists use the term “the second reform” to demand a cleaner and more democratic government (archived link).
In the video, a female narrator can be heard saying in Indonesian: “We are now seeing the situation in front of the Indonesian parliament building in Jakarta.
“You can see that security officers have started to shoot water cannons toward the protesters who gathered in front of the Indonesian parliament building.”
Screenshot of the false post, taken on March 28, 2024
The post surfaced a day after hundreds of people gathered in front of the Indonesian parliament building in Jakarta’s Senayan district to protest alleged interference in the February 2024 presidential election won by Prabowo Subianto (archived link).
Prabowo’s running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka is the eldest son of incumbent President Jokowi. Critics alleged the outgoing leader used state resources to favour Prabowo and Gibran — however, Jokowi has denied this (archived link).
The clip was also viewed more than 10,000 times after it was shared with a similar claim elsewhere on TikTok here and here; as well as on Instagram and SnackVideo.
2019 protest footage
Reverse image and keyword searches on Google found a video published on YouTube by Indonesian broadcaster Kompas TV on September 24, 2019 (archived link).
The report was headlined: “Latest Update — Heating Up, Police Release Water Cannon on Demonstrators in Front of the Indonesian Parliament Building”.
“The police started to push back the demonstrators in front of the Indonesian parliament building using water cannons to disperse the crowd gathering in front of the Indonesian Parliament Building,” the report’s caption said.
“The police have also put forces on standby inside the area of the parliament building. Demonstrators are throwing various objects at the security forces.”
The caption also included the hashtags “DemoMahasiswa”, “DPRRI” and “RevisiKUHP” — which translate respectively as “StudentDemonstration”, “IndonesianParliament” and “CriminalCodeRevision”.
The picture used in the false video was taken from Kompas TV video’s 19-second mark, while the voice of the female narrator can be heard throughout the original clip.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip in the false post (left) and the corresponding scene from the original Kompas TV footage (right):
Screenshot comparison of the clip in the false post (left) and the corresponding scene from the original Kompas TV footage (right)
Keyword searches of the hashtags on social media platform X found a report published by local news organisation Indopos.co.id about a rally in front of parliament in September 2019 to protest proposed changes in Indonesia’s criminal code (archived link).
AFP reported that police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters at the demonstration.
Protests erupted nationwide against a wide-ranging legal overhaul that proposed new laws that would criminalise pre-marital sex, restrict sales of contraceptives, make it illegal to insult the president and toughen the Muslim-majority country’s blasphemy laws.
The Indonesian parliament passed the legislation in December 2022.
Another image taken from the Kompas TV clip was published by the Indonesian news outlet Tribunnews, an affiliate company of Kompas Gramedia group, on September 24, 2019 (archived link).
AFP previously debunked other misinformation related to the 2024 elections here.
South Korea’s main opposition leader Lee Jae-myung did not wear a red face mask emblazoned with a Chinese flag while running for president in 2022, contrary to false claims by Facebook posts sharing a doctored photo of him days before parliamentary elections on April 10, 2024. The posts compared Lee to his election rival South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, pictured wearing a plain white mask. However, the original photo shows Lee wearing a mask with a slogan supporting South Korea’s finance industry — not a Chinese flag. Footage from the event in January 2022 shows Yoon donning the same red mask later at the event to celebrate the opening of the country’s stock market in the new year.
“During the presidential election, Lee Jae-myung insisted on wearing a red mask symbolising Communist China,” reads a Korean-language Facebook post shared on March 25.
“Candidate Yoon said he would wear a white mask.”
The post includes a side-by-side shot of Lee and Yoon signing a guestbook. While Yoon’s face mask is white, Lee is seen wearing a red mask adorned with a Chinese flag.
Screenshot of the misleading claim shared on Facebook. Captured March 26, 2024.
Lee is the head of South Korea’s largest opposition Democratic Party. He lost by a razor-thin margin to Yoon in the country’s previous presidential election in May 2022.
The opposition leader now aims to fend off challenges to his party’s parliamentary majority from Yoon’s ruling People Power Party in a nationwide election on April 10 (archived link).
The posts surfaced days after Lee was criticised for saying South Korea should remain neutral between China and Taiwan by saying “xie xie” to both sides — using the Chinese word for “thank you” — according to a local report (archived link).
The ruling party slammed Lee’s comments as “obsequience” to China, calling Lee’s party “anti-state forces that should not be allowed to gain power” (archived link).
The doctored image was widely shared by Facebook pages expressing support for Yoon’s People Power Party, including here, here, here and here.
Altered image
A reverse image search on Google found the original image published by the South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo on January 3, 2022, in a report about Lee and Yoon attending a New Year’s ceremony at the Korea Exchange to mark the opening of the stock market (archived link).
The report features various photos of Lee wearing a red mask decorated with a tiger illustration and the slogan “South Korea’s capital market will lead the world” — not a Chinese flag. Yoon is also seen wearing the same mask in some photos.
The third image in the report corresponds to the original photo of Lee and Yoon, clearly showing Lee’s mask with no Chinese flag.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the doctored image (left) and the original image published by the JoongAng Ilbo in January 2022 (right):
Screenshot comparison between the doctored image (left) and the original image published by the JoongAng Ilbo in January 2022 (right)
“Democratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung (left) and People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk Yeol (right) each sign a guestbook ahead of the 2022 securities and derivatives market opening ceremony held at the Korea Exchange in Seoul on the morning of the 3rd,” the photo’s caption reads.
Lee and Yoon can be seen wearing the same red masks in photos of the ceremony published in multiple other local reports, including here, here and here (archived links here, here and here).
The one-hour event was also streamed live on Korea Exchange’s official YouTube account on January 3, 2022, showing Lee singing the guestbook at its 30-second mark (archived link).
Yoon can be seen signing the same guestbook while wearing a white mask at the 4:36 mark, but later donning Korea Exchange’s red mask over his white one before posing for a group photo at the 53:21 mark.
Lee has been a frequent target of disinformation leading up to the April parliamentary races, which AFP has debunked here, here and here.
Joe Lieberman, former senator and vice presidential candidate, dies at 82 – CBS News
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Joe Lieberman, a former senator from Connecticut and the Democratic vice presidential candidate in the 2000 election, has died at age 82. Major Garrett looks back on his legacy.
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Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, national political reporter Ben Kamisar explains why Democrats’ success in special and off-year elections won’t necessarily give Biden a boost. Plus, Garrett Haake, who covers the ins and outs of Trump world, interviews new RNC co-chair Lara Trump.
Democrats notch another special election win, riding momentum that has eluded Biden so far
By Ben Kamisar
Democrats are celebrating the results of another special election that drew national attention — this time an almost 25-point victory in a swingy state House district in Alabama, where Republicans have faced backlash over a recent court case that put access to IVF at risk in the state.
The party’s success there, along with other recent special and off-year elections in competitive and even red-leaning areas, suggests there is a sizable well of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden to tap into this fall. But so far, it’s not clear if he will be able to ride the same wave of momentum as these down-ballot Democrats.
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The 81-year-old Biden remains unpopular as concerns over his age persist. At best, national and swing-state polls look like a coin-flip for the president, even as he seeks to emphasize issues like abortion rights that have led to Democratic gains elsewhere. Biden’s support with key segments of his coalition, particularly voters of color and young voters, remains soft.
Democrats point to the scoreboard as evidence Biden is in better shape than the polls suggest. After a better-than-expected 2022 midterm election showing, the party held onto the governorship in red Kentucky last year, all while the abortion-rights-supporters side swept key ballot measures. More recently, Democrats won pivotal special elections for the U.S. House in New York and the state House in Pennsylvania.
But it’s difficult to draw a straight line from special and off-year elections to a presidential contest. Special elections are typically low-turnout affairs: Less than 6,000 votes were cast in Tuesday’s Alabama state House contest. So while abortion and IVF may have been an animating issue there, it’s unclear exactly how it will play out after billions of dollars are spent on further defining Biden and Donald Trump.
Plus, as 538’s Nathaniel Rakich wrote last month, while Democrats had a string of strong special election showings in most of 2023, Republicans have broadly done better in recent months.
Aside from these election results, Democrats are waiting for other positive indicators to catch up to Biden. He just embarked on a multimillion-dollar post-State of the Union advertising and travel blitz aimed at shoring up his 2020 coalition, there are signs that Americans’ views of the economy are improving, and a similarly unpopular Trump will be the first former president to go on trial in a matter of weeks, further shining a light on his wide-ranging legal woes.
With more than 200 days until Election Day, no matter what anyone says, the outlook for Biden — and for Trump — remains muddy.
The RNC’s answer to uniting the fractured party: Biden
With less than a month on the job as a Republican National Committee co-chair and de-facto face of the national party, Lara Trump has a lot on her plate. But in our wide-ranging interview, what she seemed least troubled by was how she plans to unite a coalition of voters behind a deeply polarizing candidate in Donald Trump.
Her response? Joe Biden will do it for them.
Lara Trump’s answers to questions about outreach — to voters of color and the millions of Republicans who backed Nikki Haley and other candidates in the primary — revolved around Biden pushing, rather than Trump pulling, them back into the MAGA tent.
Asked about appealing to Haley’s supporters, she presented a binary choice.
“The option is Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And so whether you like his personality or not, should not have any bearing on anything. They are welcome to come back,” Lara Trump said. “We would love to have them come back.”
She also argued that gas prices, the situation at the southern border and America’s place on the world stage will motivate these voters to return.
When asked about expanding her father-in-law’s appeal to Black voters, where cutting into Biden’s major advantage in 2020 could swing key states, Lara Trump appeared more open to pursuing voters where they are, but around the same general theme.
“When you’re talking about reaching out to minority communities, these are the people oftentimes who have been hardest hit by some of the bad policies of Joe Biden,” she said. “So we certainly are going to be doing a lot of outreach.”
She went on to say that Trump would campaign in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and New York City — only two of which are in battleground states, but all of which have large Black populations.
The push-not-pull strategy makes a certain amount of sense in this historic battle between two unpopular candidates who are essentially incumbents. If you can’t make yourself more popular, it’s a race to destroy the other guy first. Trump’s campaign and allies believe that his loyal supporters provide him with a higher floor than Biden, who faces doubts across the various flanks of his party.
Watch the full interview here →
🗞️ Today’s top stories
🩺 Obamacare deadline: The next president will decide the fate of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Biden has said he wants to extend them, but it’s not clear what Trump would do. Read more →
🏃 Battle-ground game: The Associated Press delves into the Trump campaign and the RNC’s ground game in key swing states — or lack thereof. Read more →
👀 Trump watch: Trump is expected to attend the wake Thursday of the New York police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty this week. Read more →
↗️ Impeachment off-ramp: With Republicans lacking the votes to impeach Biden, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., is floating sending criminal referrals to the Justice Department instead. Read more →
⚖️ Decline to defend: Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake opted not to mount a defense against allegations that she defamed Maricopa County election officials following the 2022 elections. She will try to dispute damages instead. Read more →
☀️ The sun’ll come out tomorrow: Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., announced that she will not run for re-election, opening up a potentially competitive House seat. Read more →
📖 A $59.99 Bible: Trump released a “God Bless the U.S.A. Bible” priced at $59.99 (plus shipping and other fees) with country music singer Lee Greenwood. Read more →
That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
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WASHINGTON — An environmental lawyer whom Donald Trump wanted to take over the Justice Department in the days before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a disbarment hearing on Wednesday.
Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department civil lawyer with no criminal law experience, had wanted to investigate a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, including via smart thermostats. Just hours before the Jan. 6 attack, Trump nearly made Clark the acting attorney general of the United States but backed off when Justice Department leadership threatened to resign en mass.
Federal authorities searched Clark’s home in June 2022, and he now faces criminal charges in Georgia in the state racketeering case against Trump and others. Clark surrendered to authorities in August in that case and entered a not-guilty plea. He is also unindicted co-conspirator no. 4 in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump.
Clark briefly testified during a disciplinary hearing unfolding this week before the Ad Hoc Hearing Committee for the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, which is deciding whether Clark should lose his bar license for his involvement in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. The case was initiated in 2022 by the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel and has been held up in litigation for nearly two years.
Before Clark’s testimony, his lawyer talked about wanting to prevent Clark from having to repeatedly assert his Fifth Amendment right and “avoid us being on MSNBC for no good reason.”
Once his testimony got underway, Clark repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment right, as well as law enforcement privilege, deliberative process and attorney-client privilege.
Patricia Matthews, a member of the three-person panel hearing the case, asked Clark who his client was in connection with his invocation of attorney-client privilege: “For whom were you the attorney?” she asked.
“For President Trump, the head of the executive branch, the sole head, the unitary head of article two, the executive branch of the United States government,” Clark said. (Typically, Justice Department employees say that their client is the United States of America, not one particular president.)
Clark’s lawyer intervened when Matthews asked a follow-up question.
Earlier in the morning, the panel heard testimony from former acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen whom Trump had proposed replacing with Clark. Rosen testified that he remembered telling Donald Trump he could have the DOJ leadership he wanted, “but it’s not going to change the facts” about the election.
Rosen testified that Clark was seeking to investigate issues that were “nowhere in his lane” and that, looking back, “Mr. Clark wasn’t very forthcoming” during the period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Clark, Rosen testified, “had read things on the internet.” Rosen said he thought for a time that giving Clark some info about DOJ’s efforts to investigate some of the conspiracy theories Clark believed in might help Clark with “coming off the ledge, if you will.”
Clark and then No. 2 DOJ official Richard Donoghue that Clark was “way out of bounds, way out of his lane.” Donoghue testified to the Jan. 6 Committee that he highlighted Clark’s lack of criminal or election experience during an hours-long standoff in the Oval Office on Jan. 3, 2021, telling Clark: “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”
Rosen testified about the same Jan. 3 meeting during Wednesday’s hearing, saying that he and other lawyers in the room, “everybody, had indicated they would, in some manner, feel obliged to resign” if Trump named Clark as acting attorney general.
The threat of mass resignations at the Justice Department ultimately helped convince Trump to step back from his plan to appoint Clark, several lawyers in the room have testified.
Clark’s defense team on Wednesday called Suzi Voyles, a Republican politician and Trump delegate whose claims of voter fraud in Georgia in 2020 were investigated and dismissed by state authorities. Voyles testified that she still suspected voter fraud in Georgia and spoke about how she believed that voting machines work, adding, “I’m not very technical.”
A disciplinary board for the D.C. Bar Association previously recommended that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani lose his law license, writing that Giuliani’s “effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy” and that his “malicious and meritless claims have done lasting damage.”
Washington — Democrat Marilyn Lands won a special election for an Alabama state House seat late Tuesday, flipping a Republican-held seat in the deep-red state in the aftermath of a court ruling in the state that threw access to fertility treatments into question.
Lands, a mental health counselor, made reproductive rights central to her campaign. She’s spoken openly about her own abortion when her pregnancy was nonviable. And she ran advertisements on reproductive health care, like contraception and in vitro fertilization, being threatened in the state, after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that equated frozen embryos to children and led major IVF providers in the state to pause fertility treatments.
“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation,” Lands said in a statement after her victory on Tuesday. “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”
Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands speaks to voters in the suburbs in Huntsville, Alabama on March 20, 2024.
Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The seat representing Alabama’s 10th district in the state legislature had long been held by Republicans. But former President Donald Trump won the district by a slim margin in 2020, making it a toss-up district that Democrats had set their sights on. Lands also ran for the seat in 2022, but narrowly lost to her Republican opponent.
Heather Williams, president of Democrats’ legislative campaign arm, called the special election “the first real test” of how voters would respond to the IVF ruling in Alabama and reproductive rights more broadly, and “a harbinger of things to come.”
“Republicans across the country have been put on notice that there are consequences to attacks on IVF — from the bluest blue state to the reddest red, voters are choosing to fight for their fundamental freedoms by electing Democrats across the country,” Williams said in a statement.
Democrats are hoping this year for a repeat of the 2022 midterm elections, when the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and subsequent restrictions in states became a major motivator at the ballot box, fending off an expected red wave. Democrats are expecting that fallout from the IVF ruling to reinvigorate the voter base, keeping reproductive rights top of mind heading into the 2024 election.
Kaia Hubbard
Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.
