by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
It took an explicit commitment from his Israeli counterpart to open Gaza for humanitarian aid for President Joe Biden to agree to make an extraordinary wartime trip to Tel Aviv.
While the trip will amount to a dramatic show of support for Israel as it prepares its response to last week’s Hamas attacks, it will also act as Biden’s strongest push for easing the suffering of civilians and allowing those who want to leave Gaza out.
The high-stakes diplomacy with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his interlocutor of four decades, underscores the delicate balance Biden is striking as he embarks upon the last-minute wartime visit later on Tuesday evening.
At stake are the lives of millions of civilians, including Americans, currently stuck in the coastal Palestinian enclave where a humanitarian crisis is underway as Israeli troops mass at its borders ahead of an expected ground invasion.
While there was no explicit stipulation from the US that Israel not launch its invasion until Biden leaves the region, that’s the understanding among American officials who have spent the past several days debating and planning the president’s visit, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
American officials want humanitarian plans for Gaza fully signed off on and implemented before start of the invasion, the people said, describing that task as among Biden’s main objectives during his visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
While Biden has stopped well short of encouraging a ceasefire – the word hasn’t been used at all in the administration’s response so far – he has issued steadily stronger warnings about protecting civilian life, including during his telephone calls with Netanyahu.
Traveling to Israel in person may provide Biden – who despises Zoom calls and has long espoused the importance of face-to-face meetings – a better opportunity to convey those views to his Israeli counterpart, a leader with whom he believes he has a deep understanding.
Ultimately, Biden and his senior aides believe that they need to be in the room with Netanyahu to have influence with the prime minister and his team – requiring unequivocal support for Israel’s right to defend itself and eliminate Hamas.
But they’re also acutely aware that public support for Israel will not last forever, particularly if civilians in Gaza bear the brunt of Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks – requiring a degree of calibration by the president.
This is a posture that one official called an effort to “hug them close” to continue to work side-by-side throughout what’s expected to be a very difficult period ahead.
Speaking late Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden would arrive in Israel focused on the “the critical need for humanitarian assistance to get into Gaza, as well as the ability for innocent people to get out.”
He said the US had not sought assurances from Israel about the timing of its ground invasion ahead of Biden’s trip.
“We’re not dictating terms or operational directions to the Israelis,” Kirby said.
Aides said Biden had expressed a strong interest in making the journey after Netanyahu invited him over the weekend, and there was little question he would ultimately make the trip in support of a country for which he has deep personal affection.
He spent Monday deliberating over the trip at the White House with his top national security and intelligence advisers.
Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was convening a marathon session with top Israeli officials to discuss opening Gaza to humanitarian aid and preventing civilians from getting caught up in Israel’s response to last weekend’s terror attacks.
While Blinken’s schedule has been highly fluid this week, the meeting stretched far longer than initially expected – almost seven-and-a-half hours in a meeting with Israel’s war cabinet. The length underscored the scale of the work, with US officials and their Israeli counterparts breaking out into separate rooms and trading paper back and forth trying to close on actual language for an agreement.
The proposals included safe zones and aid corridors. In announcing Biden’s Wednesday trip after hours of negotiations, Blinken said that the United States and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”
Former US Ambassador David Satterfield, who the president named Monday as his envoy for Middle East humanitarian assistance, will run point on turning the conceptual agreement into a tangible plan, people familiar with the matter said.
Satterfield will be meeting with Israeli officials on Tuesday to start to figure out the specific contours of the plan. In the initial meeting between Blinken and Netanyahu in Jerusalem, US officials laid out that they would work with the Israelis on the plan and that they intended to announce publicly that they were working on it.
When they reconvened in Tel Aviv, US officials had fleshed out more of the ideas. Netanyahu was not in the room for the entirety of the seven-and-a-half hour meeting due to a cabinet meeting, but there were negotiations the entire time. US officials set up next door and he would come out periodically and the US would exchange papers with the Israelis. There was a total of nine hours of negotiations.
The deal under consideration is only about the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, not Israeli crossings into Gaza, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
The Israeli concern is oversight and anything going in could be used for other uses by Hamas, so-called “dual-use” items, like fuel, this person said. The focus now, they added, is getting in the most basic items as quickly as possible – food, medicine, water.
Blinken said in his remarks in Tel Aviv overnight that the US shares “Israel’s concern that Hamas may seize or destroy entering Gaza or otherwise preventing it from reaching the people who need it.”
“The hold-up is making sure the Israelis feel comfortable and the Egyptians feel comfortable with the way the aid is going in,” the person said. “If I were the Israelis, I would suspect anything.”
The Egyptians, the source added, “will not allow one human being out until humanitarian aid gets in.”
The goal is to have most of the plan teed up by Biden’s arrival, but officials acknowledge it’s a heavy lift and will require other parties to agree to it as well. There remains a good amount of trepidation that despite the many, many hours Blinken was in consultation with Israeli officials and others, some things may not gel.
Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy efforts in the Middle East this week offered a preview of sorts for Biden’s own talks. His meetings with Arab leaders were seen by US officials as roughly productive, but far from conclusive.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s public dressing down of Blinken was a particular point of annoyance among US officials.
Sitting in the presidential palace in Cairo, the Egyptian strongman told Blinken: “You said that you are a Jewish person, and I am an Egyptian person who grew up next to Jews in Egypt. … They have never been subjected to any form of oppression or targeting and it has never happened in our region that Jews were targeted in recent or old history.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman forcing Blinken to wait hours for their meeting also wasn’t appreciated by US officials but was more expected.
After his meeting with Sisi, Blinken called Biden to brief him on the developments, with a primary focus on the consistent message he heard from Arab leaders that a humanitarian aid plan was a necessity.
Biden, who had been through his own rounds of calls with regional leaders, was aware of the reality and asked Blinken to travel back to Israel to work toward that end with Israeli counterparts.
On Monday, after scrapping a planned visit to Colorado to remain at the White House, Biden himself spoke to Sisi by telephone – a critical piece, officials said, of finalizing plans for the trip.
While the president’s visit to Tel Aviv is on its face the most dramatic public display of support this week, the decision to travel afterward to the Jordanian capital Amman underscores how strategically the White House is attempting to balance the public and military support with the reality that Arab partners are critical to Biden’s approach.
In Amman, Biden will meet with Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Ahead of Biden’s visit, King Abdullah warned Tuesday that the displacement of Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt is a “red line” and said there would be no refugees in Jordan and no refugees in Egypt.
“That is a red line, because I think that is a plan by certain of the usual suspects to try and create de facto issues on the ground,” he said, speaking alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a news conference in Berlin.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US secretly provided Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles, according to two US officials, providing Ukraine with a significant new capability that could allow its forces to hit new Russian targets that were previously out of reach.
The confirmation came on Tuesday after images of the missiles’ submunitions inside Ukraine began circulating on social media.
US officials indicated to CNN on Tuesday that Ukraine has already used the ATACMS, some variants of which have a maximum range of approximately 186 miles, to attack Russia’s Berdyansk and Luhansk airfields in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian military tweeted on Tuesday that the attack destroyed several Russian helicopters, an ammunition depot and an air defense launcher, but did not specify whether they used ATACMS to do it.
It is not clear when the US missiles were provided. But the US decided in recent weeks to send them quietly because they wanted to take the Russians by surprise, especially after months of public back-and-forth over whether President Joe Biden would agree to send the weapons, an official said. The Russians are aware of the range of the missiles and the US was concerned they would move equipment and weapons out of reach before the missiles could be used, the official said.
The US has sent some weapons secretly in the past. In August 2022, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had sent HARM anti-radiation missiles to Ukraine unannounced.
But the US typically announces significant weapons packages to Ukraine, including when it sent Patriot air defense systems last year and cluster munitions this year. Asked repeatedly over the last several weeks about the status of the systems, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the US has “nothing to announce.” That was a deliberate choice of words, officials said.
The Pentagon said it was referring all questions about the ATACMS to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Discussions about sending the systems picked up substantially last month, CNN previously reported. US officials had previously been reluctant to send the long-range surface-to-surface guided missiles amid fears about escalating the conflict as they could potentially be fired into Russia itself. That concern largely waned over the last several months, however, since Ukraine demonstrated that it was not using other US-provided weapons to attack territory inside Russia, officials said.
During a visit to Washington, DC, in September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his request for the ATACMS during a meeting with Biden and Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said at the time that “when we talk about long-range missiles for Ukraine, it is not just a whim, but a real need. The effectiveness of the army on the battlefield, as well as the lives of the military and our progress depend on it.”
The US announced a new aid package to Ukraine while Zelensky was visiting that did not include ATACMS. But asked again earlier this month about providing the missiles, Biden told reporters, “I have spoken with Zelensky, and everything he’s asked for, we’ve worked out.”
Currently, the maximum range of US weapons committed to Ukraine is around 93 miles with the ground-launched small diameter bomb. Ukraine also has the UK-provided long-range Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of about 155 miles. ATACMS missiles are fired from HIMARS rocket launchers, the same type of vehicle that launches the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles that Ukraine already employs.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed under oath in New York on Tuesday for a lawsuit related to his time as president and the termination of a Russia investigation-era FBI official.
The deposition is to be conducted by attorneys for the FBI official, Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page late in the day on Tuesday, sources familiar with Trump’s schedule say.
The deposition comes as Trump’s obligations in court continue to mount – on Tuesday he’s also attending the civil fraud trial related to his business inflating its assets. Monday, he was ordered not to disparage possible witnesses, court officers or prosecutors while facing federal criminal charges related to January 6. On Friday, jury selection will begin in the first trial of his co-defendants in the 2020 election subversion case in Georgia.
Whether the deposition of Trump would be allowed has been an issue fought in court for years, with the Justice Department under the Trump administration and even the Biden administration seeking to shield Trump from giving the testimony, citing legal protections surrounding presidents and their actions while in office.
But the federal courts in Washington, DC, ultimately sided with Strzok and Page.
The case, and Strzok and Page’s pursuit of Trump’s testimony, has tested the limits of confidentiality around the presidency.
Strzok is accusing the Justice Department of wrongfully terminating him because of Trump’s publicly stated anger toward him and the Russia investigation. He and Page are also suing over the release of their text messages to the press.
Trump is allowed to be questioned on Tuesday at the deposition for no more than two hours. A judge previously put specific parameters around the questions he can be asked. Strzok’s and Page’s attorneys are able to ask Trump about his public statements and other communications he made about the pair in 2017 and 2018.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
Conservative Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is bringing the House back to the floor Tuesday to vote on whether he will succeed ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy and finally end the chamber’s prolonged paralysis amid deep GOP divisions.
Jordan is currently short of the votes he needs to be elected speaker, even after the Ohio Republican picked up key support from holdouts on Monday. Jordan’s allies are bullish that the Ohio Republican can eventually corral the 217 votes he needs to be elected speaker, but it’s not clear whether Jordan can ultimately be the one who unifies the fractured House Republican conference.
As of Tuesday morning, six Republicans said they were opposed to Jordan, while three more were leaning against him.
The exact number of votes Jordan can lose is a moving target. If all members are voting, Jordan can only afford to lose four Republicans. But Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis will be away from the Capitol on Tuesday for his mother-in-law’s funeral, meaning Jordan can now only lose three GOP votes, instead of four, if all Democrats are present. This is a temporary drop until the Florida Republican returns, however, and Bilirakis will arrive back in Washington as soon as Tuesday evening, his office told CNN.
The slim margin is what led to McCarthy’s removal at the hands of a band of eight GOP rebels – and a small group of House Republicans unhappy with Jordan could block his ascension, too.
But Jordan and his allies have made significant headway over the past several days, with the Ohio Republican pitching skeptical lawmakers one on one – and his allies outside Congress attacking the holdouts and threatening political consequences if they stand against a favorite of the Trump-aligned GOP base.
“I feel really good,” Jordan told CNN just before the vote. “Whatever it takes to get a speaker today.”
“We need to get a speaker today and we feel really good about where we’re at,” he added.
It’s been two weeks since McCarthy’s historic ouster. Until the House selects a speaker, the chamber is in a legislative paralysis, unable to consider legislation, such as passing additional military aid to Israel or government funding – with the threat of a shutdown just a month away thanks to McCarthy’s six-week stopgap spending deal that prompted the move against him.
Jordan’s allies believe the number of GOP opponents has shrunk from the 55 who voted Friday against supporting him on the floor to roughly eight-to-10 holdouts.
On Monday, several key holdouts said they would support Jordan, including Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri, who had previously called Jordan a “nonstarter.”
“I feel like he can bring together everybody, from the moderates to the ultra conservatives, and Republicans across the spectrum,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York. “The bottom line is we’ve got to get back to work. We don’t have any time here to waste.”
Even if Jordan doesn’t have the votes on the initial ballot, he could force additional votes, just as McCarthy did in the 15 rounds it took him to be elected speaker in January.
But there are still a group of lawmakers publicly opposing Jordan, including GOP lawmakers still angry that a small group of Republicans forced out McCarthy and then opposed the speaker nomination of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who initially defeated Jordan inside the GOP conference, 113 to 99.
“I can’t get past the fact that a small group in our conference violated the rules to get rid of Kevin, and then blocked Steve,” said Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. “You don’t have a process where I play by the rules and these other people can’t and then they get what they want. That’s not American. Americans want fair play and rule of law.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said he planned to continue to support Scalise on the floor. “You can remember we had an election; the guy who won was the guy who I was with,” he said Monday, while warning that any attempts to pressure him would backfire.
Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, said he’s opposed to Jordan, noting Monday evening that he needed to hear Jordan publicly say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Jordan on Tuesday doubled down on objecting to the 2020 election certification.
Several Republicans – including from districts won by President Joe Biden – declined to say Monday evening whether they would vote for Jordan on the floor.
House Democrats have blasted Republicans for putting forward Jordan as the next potential speaker. “I was the last person on the floor January 6, and the idea that this guy is the Republican nominee to be speaker, a guy who aggressively agitated the activities that happened on January 6, I think is disgusting,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Jordan’s backers have urged the conference to unify around him – even those who went after McCarthy and opposed Scalise.
Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania argued that those angry shouldn’t take it out on Jordan because he supported both McCarthy and Scalise.
“Feelings are hurt,” Perry said. “But Jim didn’t have anything to do with that. So they need to assign their ire, if you will, to those who they think deserve it – but certainly not Jim Jordan.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Biden administration to continue regulating so-called ghost guns – untraceable homemade weapons – as firearms under federal law.
The court’s brief order grants the Justice Department’s request to wipe away a lower court order and allow the regulations to remain in effect while a legal challenge brought by firearm manufacturers continues to play out in the lower courts.
There were no noted dissents to the order.
Ghost guns are kits that a user can buy online to assemble a fully functional firearm. They have no serial numbers, do not require background checks and provide no transfer records for easy traceability. Critics say they are attractive to people who are legally prohibited from buying firearms.
In the Justice Department’s emergency application to the justices, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar pointed out that a district court judge had essentially ignored an order the Supreme Court issued just two months ago.
Back in August, a 5-4 court sided with the Biden administration in a challenge brought by a group of manufacturers and allowed the regulations to remain in effect while legal challenges play out. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberal justices in the government’s favor.
After the order was issued, however, a district court judge based in Texas stepped in to block the regulations as applied to two manufacturers. The injunction was then largely upheld by the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an unusually sharp filing, Prelogar told the justices in an emergency application that the district court and the 5th Circuit “have effectively countermanded this Court’s authoritative determination about the status quo that should prevail during appellate proceedings in this case.”
The court “should not tolerate that affront,” she wrote.
“Although there’s no explanation for today’s ruling, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a repudiation of the lower courts for not correctly reading the tea leaves of the court’s August ruling that froze a similar injunction,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “In that sense, it’s just the latest in an increasing line of rulings by the Supreme Court pushing back against district courts in Texas and the 5th Circuit.”
Prelogar called the lower court ruling “a grave threat to public safety because the lack of background checks makes ghost guns uniquely appealing to felons, minors, and other prohibited persons – and because when ghost guns are inevitably used in crime, they are essentially impossible to trace.”
In 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives updated its regulations to define the kits as firearms under the law so that the government could more carefully track them.
The rule does not prohibit the sale or possession of any ghost gun kit, nor does it block an individual from purchasing such a kit. Instead, it requires compliance with federal laws that impose conditions on the commercial sale of firearms. Those conditions include requirements that commercial manufacturers and sellers mark products with serial numbers and keep records to allow law enforcement to trace firearms used in crimes.
by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, politics
The federal judge overseeing the election subversion case against Donald Trump in Washington, DC, placed a limited gag order on the former president after his continued attacks against potential witnesses, prosecutors and the court itself, following a testy hearing Monday.
Though limited in scope, the gag order from Judge Tanya Chutkan is likely the biggest limit on the former president’s speech he has ever been handed.
“This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses,” Chutkan said. “This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice.”
“His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify public servants who are simply doing their jobs,” Chutkan said.
The hourslong hearing laid out how Trump would be able to discuss special counsel Jack Smith’s history-making prosecution against him on the campaign trail. Chutkan outlined the order in court and plans to issue a more detailed written order in the coming days.
Here’s what to know about the gag order and Monday’s hearing:
The gag order Chutkan implemented bars Trump from making certain comments about the special counsel’s team or potential witnesses in the federal election subversion case, including any comments that directly target court personnel, potential witnesses or the special counsel and his staff.
“One could come away from these arguments with a mistaken understanding that the First Amendment is an absolute right,” Chutkan said Monday. “That is false. The First Amendment yields to the administration of justice.”
Chutkan said she was particularly troubled by comments she believes raise “a real possibility of violence” against Smith, his team, and witnesses in the case.
Trump has made several such comments since he was indicted over the summer, Chutkan noted during the hearing, including referring to Smith as a “thug” and saying Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a potential witness in the case, committed a “treasonous act” during his tenure that was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
“In what kind of case do you think it would be appropriate for a criminal defendant to call the prosecutor a thug and stay on the streets?” the judge asked Trump attorney John Lauro. “‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest’ comes to mind.”
A New York state judge imposed a similar gag order regarding against the former president earlier this month after he attacked a member of the court’s staff via social media. That order bars Trump only from speaking publicly about the court staff in his civil fraud trial.
Trump can criticize Biden and DOJ
Monday’s order does not, however, impose restrictions on disparaging comments about Washington, DC – where the trial will take place – or certain comments about the Justice Department at large, both of which the government requested. Chutkan also specified that Trump “can certainly state that he is being unfairly prosecuted.”
While restricting some of the former president’s speech, Chutkan agreed with Trump’s defense attorneys that it is within the former president’s rights to criticize Joe Biden and his administration.
In the protective order proposed by prosecutors, Trump would be barred from making comments about the Justice Department as a whole under Biden, including Trump’s continued assertion that the Justice Department was prosecuting him on Biden’s orders. Prosecutors did not, however, oppose Trump’s ability to criticize Biden as president.
“He can criticize President Biden to his heart’s content, your honor, because President Biden has nothing to do with this case,” prosecutor Molly Gaston said in court, adding that the Justice Department takes no issue with Trump calling Biden “crooked.”
But the judge said there are limits.
“When you start to use a word like ‘thug’ to describe a prosecutor doing their job, that wouldn’t be allowed by any other criminal defendant,” Chutkan said. “Just because the defendant is running a political campaign does not allow him to do whatever he wants.”
She added: “If the message Mr. Trump wants to express is ‘my prosecution is politically motivated,’” he can do so without using “highly charged language.”
Chutkan did not say during the hearing what penalties she would implement should Trump break the rules of the gag order, but listed several options she believed were available for her to choose from.
Those options include admonishing Trump in court, imposing financial penalties, home detention or revoking his pretrial release. Chutkan also said she believed she could issue a show-cause order, which would require Trump justify why he breached the rules of the gag order.
Violations of the gag order may not necessarily need to be raised by prosecutors for Chutkan to impose a penalty, she said.
Trump said on his social media site that he plans to appeal the ruling.
While arguing against the proposed gag order, Lauro argued that that the former president was being punished by the Biden administration during an election cycle and noted that the trial date was set for March 4, 2024, the day before the Super Tuesday primary.
“This trial will not yield to the election cycle, and we will not revisit the trial date,” Chutkan told Lauro.
Trump’s lawyers have already made a motion to push back the trial date in the Florida classified documents case but have only asked for certain filing deadlines to be extended in the DC case.
The hearing grew heated at points when Lauro and Chutkan sparred about political rhetoric and tone.
For instance, Lauro accused the special counsel’s office, through the proposed gag order, of trying to “to prevent President Trump from speaking out about the issues of the day.”
Chutkan responded: “I understand that you have a message you want to get out. I do not need to hear any campaign rhetoric in my court.”
“Politics stops at this courtroom door,” Chutkan added.
