Afternoon summary
Good afternoon. We’re closing our US politics liveblog a little earlier than normal today. Please turn to our Ukraine liveblog for the latest on the situation there.
Here’s a look back at what’s happened so far today:
- The National Archives confirmed that it discovered classified material among the documents Donald Trump took with him to his Florida resort and alerted the justice department. The Archives disclosed the findings in a letter posted to its website on Friday.
- Republican congressman Jim Hagedorn of Minnesota died on Friday after a long battle with kidney cancer, his wife said. He was 59.
- The US blamed the Russian government for carrying out a spate of cyber-attacks on Ukrainian banks and its defense ministry.
- Canadian police have started arresting protesters after a weeks-long standoff in the nation’s capital.
- The White House continues to urge diplomacy as it prepares for an invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Once again, follow our live coverage of the escalating tensions in Ukraine here:
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Psaki has wrapped up the press briefing and Biden has finished his call with allied leaders. We’re now awaiting for remarks from Biden, in which he will again urge “deterrence and diplomacy” as tensions rise in Ukraine.
We’ll cover Biden’s remarks in our Ukraine liveblog, which you can read here:
Updated
Psaki said the US continues to believe that Russia is positioned to invade Ukraine. If they decided against it, that’s a “positive step.”
“We hope we’re wrong,” Psaki said of the US assessment. “We hope that if Russia doesn’t invade, we’ll be relieved.”
Asked why the US hasn’t imposed sanctions preemptively, Psaki said: “Our collective view from our national security team is that sanctions are meant to be a deterrent. If you put all the sanctions in place now, what’s to stop them invading?”
National Archives: classified material among records Trump took to Mar-a-Lago
The National Archives confirmed in a letter on Friday that it had identified classified material among the troves of documents Donald Trump took with him to Mar-a-lago. As a result, the National Archives said it had “been in communication” with the Justice Department to discuss the matter.
The National Archives has “identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes,” wrote David Ferriero, the national archivist, in a letter addressed to New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and posted on the National Archives and Record Administration’s website.
Maloney, a Democrat who is investigating how Trump handled presidential records, had written to the National Archives requesting more information related to the “15 boxes of presidential records that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently recovered from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.”
“Because NARA identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” Ferriero wrote in the letter.
He also stated that “some White House staff conducted official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts, as required by section 2209 of the PRA. NARA has already obtained or is in the process of obtaining some of those records.”
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Neuberger said it was rare for the US government to ascribe blame for a cyber-attack so quickly.
“The speed with which we made that attribution ... is very unusual and we’ve done so because of a need to call out the behavior quickly,” Neuberger said.
Asked if Russia was was behind the cyber-attacks both on the Ukrainian banks and its defense ministry, Neuberger said that is the assessment of the US.
“We do believe that Russia does use cyber as part of its projecting force whether that is influencing, coercing or destabalizing,” she said.
Updated
US: Russian government responsible for cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks
The White House press briefing is underway.
Anne Neuberger, the deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, is speaking first, outlining what the US is doing to prepare for a potential cyberattack by Russia at home, in Ukraine and in allied nations.
She said the US has been ramping up its efforts to prepare since before Thanksgiving, urging private companies to take steps to secure critical infrastructure. Currently there are “no specific or credible threats to the homeland,” she said.
Ukraine suffered a cyber-attack targeting two banks and its defense ministry, which the country’s deputy prime minister said was the largest of its type ever seen.
Neubergerg said the US had evidence that Russia was behind the cyberattacks.
“We believe that the Russian government is responsible for wide-scale cyber attacks on Ukrainian banks this week,” she said.
“While of limited impact, this recent spate of cyber attacks in Ukraine are consistent with what a Russian effort could look like and laying the groundwork for a more disruptive cyber attacks accompanying a potential further invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. “
Updated
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, inarguably the most prominent member of the Squad, is pushing back on the Axios story, arguing that it is moderates, and not progressives who sank Biden’s agenda.
Ocasio-Cortez accused moderates of “lazily blaming” progressives when it was their machinations, she said, that ultimately brought down Biden’s domestic policy agenda, which included proposals to extend the child tax credit (CTC) that, as a result of legislative inaction, expired in December.
Here’s what’s really going on: those mods signed a letter in Aug holding the entire party agenda hostage demanding BBB NOT pass w/BIF, sinking Biden’s plan.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 18, 2022
Now CTC expired &they don’t know how to accept responsibility so are lazily blaming the same folks they always do.The end. https://t.co/J7j1uiW15r
“Truly wild how these folks called the shots & got their desired nominees, agenda, priorities, legislative order, and excluded us from participating in campaigns yet find no shortage of ppl willing to write as their uncritical stenographers,” she wrote. “This is how capital & power works folks.”
For context, a group of moderate members of the House extracted a promise from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last summer that effectively predicated their support for Biden’s Build Back Better agenda on first passing a separate, smaller infrastructure bill. Progressives were furious because leadership had promised the two measures would move forward together.
The House passed the infrastructure bill, which Biden signed into law. It also eventually passed a version of Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which remains indefinitely stalled in the Senate.
Russia has amassed up to 190,000 troops on the borders with Ukraine, the US warned on Friday, claiming it was “the biggest mobilisation of troops since the second world war” and an increase of more than 90,000 in less than a month.
The estimate including Russian-backed troops inside Ukraine only added to a growing sense of foreboding among western diplomats, as they gathered for a major security conference in Munich, that efforts to avert war in Europe were doomed and that Vladimir Putin had irrevocably chosen the path of conflict.
News that the Russian-supporting republics of Donetsk and Luhansk had announced a mass evacuation to Russia and reports of a car bomb in Donetsk close to separatist headquarters added to fears of an impending assault as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, warned of a strategy of “creating false provocations”.
In Moscow, it was announced that Putin would this weekend oversee a drill of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles.
In full:
Republican Jim Hagedorn dies at 59
Tributes are being paid on both sides of the aisle to Jim Hagedorn, a Republican congressman from Minnesota who died of kidney cancer on Thursday night, aged 59.
“It is with a broken heart, shattered spirit and overwhelming sadness I share [that] my husband Congressman Jim Hagedorn passed away peacefully last night,” his wife, Jennifer Carnahan, wrote in a Facebook post.
“Jim loved our country and loved representing the people of southern Minnesota. Every moment of every day he lived his dream by serving others. There was no stronger conservative in our state than my husband and it showed in how he voted, led and fought for our country.”
Hagedorn was elected in 2018 and diagnosed the following year.
House Republican leaders paid tribute on Friday, as did former president Donald Trump. Hagedorn was among Republicans in Congress who voted to object to electoral results in the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, said Hagedorn “endured the personal challenge of cancer treatment with dignity and grace while serving our country and his constituents. Despite our policy differences on many issues, Jim and I were united in the common goal of achieving greater opportunities for future generations of Minnesotans.”
Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from the northern state, called Hagedorn “a fighter for his constituents and a friend to so many, including me”.
Last piece of Putin’s puzzle: preparing Russians for war
The omens of impending war we were warned about now seem to be lining up like the horsemen of the apocalypse.
The field hospitals have been set near the border, blood banks have reportedly been brought in. On the information war front, a dossier of alleged Ukraine war crimes circulated at the United Nations security council, and a video popped up purporting to show an attempted Ukrainian attack on chlorine tanks in the Donbas.
Now the rebel leaders in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have ordered the evacuation of women and children to Russia, claiming – with no evidence whatsoever – that a Ukrainian attack is imminent. Right on cue, a car bomb went off in Donetsk, injuring no one but providing a fireball for the cameras.
All of this is more or less what US and UK briefers have told journalists to expect in the run-up to a Russian invasion. The one piece that had been missing from Vladimir Putin’s relentless build-up was an effort to prepare the Russian population for the prospect of a major war. That piece seems to be slotting into place.
Read on:
Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within 21 days, as part of an investigation into Trump family finances. The development poses the former president with a dilemma: should he invoke his right to silence by pleading the fifth?
What does ‘pleading the fifth’ mean?
The right of any person to decline to answer questions put to them in criminal proceedings flows from the fifth amendment of the US constitution. The amendment, dating to 1791, protects individuals from self-incrimination. “Nor shall any person be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” it says.
Technically, the investigation into alleged fraudulent accounting at the Trump Organization is being conducted by Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, as a civil case, and as such is not covered by the right to silence. There is a complication, though: James has made clear she is working in unison with the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is also looking into Trump finances but as a criminal matter.
On Thursday, hours before Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and his children Donald Jr and Ivanka had to present themselves for questioning, the former president’s lawyers protested that he was being put in an impossible bind.
Alina Habba told the court: “They either disclose evidence in a civil investigation or they have to invoke the constitutional right not to testify, thereby triggering an adverse inference in the civil action. How is that fair, your honour?”
Does pleading the fifth imply the witness is guilty?
US law could not be clearer. Invoking your right not to answer a question in a criminal case says nothing about your guilt, and no inference may be drawn from it. The supreme court has underlined that point several times.
Of course, what the law says is not the end of the calculation. Witnesses have to weigh up how a jury might respond were the case to go to civil trial, as Trump’s might. If you are a politician like Trump, there is also the vexed issue of public opinion.
Full piece:
Hannity to Clinton over 'actual malice' remark: 'Bring it on'
After Hillary Clinton hinted that she could sue Fox News for “actual malice” in its reporting on a supposed scandal involving her campaign supposedly spying on that of Donald Trump, the primetime opinion host Sean Hannity was not backing down.
“Bring it on,” he said.
Hannity’s response was predictably pugnacious. Also predictable, given his fondness for controversy, Jesse Watters opened his show on Thursday night by comparing Clinton to a rat.
Clinton had spoken to New York Democrats earlier.
“Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again,” she said. “And as an aside, they’re getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks.”
“Actual malice” is the standard under US law which must be proved if defamation suits against media bodies are to be successful. Its absence from an inaccurate op ed, which was deemed the result of honest mistakes, was the reason a judge and jury this week dismissed a suit brought by Sarah Palin against the New York Times.
Clinton was referring to Fox News reporting of a filing by John Durham, the special counsel investigating the investigation into Trump and Russia. Observers and fact-checkers point out that rightwing outlets have reported selectively and inaccurately on the filing, as they feed a fascination with Clinton shared by Trump and his supporters.
Nonetheless, Hannity made a show of welcoming what any Clinton suit would mean, eg: the flushing into the public domain of otherwise private or unknown materials.
“It’s called discovery and it’s called depositions,” he said. “Bring it on. Malice? Really? It’s called news. Hillary, we invite you to bring it on. It’s from a legal filing we quoted exactly from the filing that was put in federal court.”
The media watchdog Mediate said Fox News did not quote exactly from the filing.
Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, tweeted that she had “called [Fox News] and their bullshit out by name”.
Dr Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, has tested positive for Covid-19, along with his wife and five-year-old son. The diagnosis follows the announcement that his four-year-old daughter tested positive for Covid earlier this week.
Murthy said his son has a runny nose and low-grade fever but is otherwise spending the day playing with his sister and watching cartoons.
Update: my 5 year old son, my wife Alice, and I have all tested positive for COVID-19. Our son has a runny nose and low grade fever but is otherwise eating, drinking, playing with his sister, and watching his favorite cartoons.
— Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) February 18, 2022
Murthy his wife and son are all vaccinated, but his daughter is ineligible because of her age.
In a series of personal posts on Twitter, Murthy shared his concerns as a parent. “Staring at my daughter’s positive test, I asked myself the same questions many parents have asked: Will my child be ok? Could I have done more to protect her? Was this my fault?” he wrote.
He also commiserated with parents around the world who have struggled to balance work and family during the pandemic and expressed regret that there isn’t a vaccine yet for children under the age of 5.
Twitter is, well, aTwitter over a report in Axios blaming the progressive politics of the Squad for Democrats’ electoral woes.
The piece, presented in characteristic bullet point-fashion, ascribes the accusation to “top Democrats” though it quotes the cofounder of a centrist thinktank, a former senator and an influential but hardly senior member of Congress.
“The push to defund the police, rename schools and tear down statues has created a significant obstacle to Democrats keeping control of the House, the Senate and the party’s overall image,” Axios co-founder Mike Allen writes.
The recall this week of three San Francisco board members, who were accused of prioritizing the renaming of schools over returning children to classrooms, he continues, is “part of a barrage of evidence that the progressive activism of the Squad pushed the party’s image way left of where most voters are — even most Democratic voters,.”
“It’s what we’ve been screaming about for a year,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of center-left Third Way, which launched Shield PAC to defend moderate Democrats, told Allen.
The backlash was swift.
Many were quick to note that it was moderates, not progressives, who blocked passage of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, depriving the party of a major legislative victory to campaign on. But senator Joe Manchin or senator Kyrsten Sinema were not mentioned.
Neither were Covid-19 or inflation, which are top priorities for voters in poll after poll. Economic discontent and frustration with the pandemic has dragged down Biden, bringing support for his party with him.
It also appears to blame the Squad for championing issues that most Democrats support, like transgender rights. On the other hand, it suggest Democrats are suddenly backing away from ideas like “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” which most elected officials denounced from the outset.
Democrats certainly face a host of challenges headed into the midterms, not least of all because the president’s party typically loses seats in the midterm elections. But blaming the Squad for all their problems, of even most of their problems, is perhaps too simplistic.
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Marking five years since the #MeToo movement, Anita Hill pays homage to Susan Fowler, whose blog post drew attention to a culture of rampant misogyny and harassment at Uber.
Fowler revealed how leaders, especially those in management who engaged in or ignored sexual harassment in their organization, shape culture. Second, she detailed how the lack of standards and transparency in human resource offices’ sexual harassment procedures failed victims miserably. And, finally, she exposed work colleagues’ complicity in bad behavior, and the role of bystanders who saw no option other than to go along with workplace harassment.
The essay is the first in a series Hill will write commemorating the anniversary of the movement.
Hill helped pave the way for the movement when she provided detailed testimony of workplace harassment by Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court nomination hearing in 1991. The treatment of Hill by Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has haunted his political career, prompting him to apologize to her before launching his campaign in 2019.
Now, as Biden weighs potential Supreme Court nominees, seeking to make good on his pledge to nominate a Black woman to the nation’s highest court, many activists have urged him to consult Hill, a law professor, on the matter. The White House has declined to say whether Biden has sought Hill’s opinion.
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Biden to deliver remarks on Ukraine
Biden will speak publicly this afternoon to “give an update on our continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy, and Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine,” according to the White House.
The remarks were just added to his public schedule. He is now scheduled to speak at 4pm EST, after hosting a phone call with Transatlantic leaders to discuss “continued diplomatic and deterrence efforts.”
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In a fascinating new interview, Politico’s Ryan Lizza sits down with J Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge and conservative legal thinker who played a central role in the behind-the-scenes wrangling between Trump and then vice president Mike Pence over whether a vice president could overturn the results of the election.
Luttig was categorical in his analysis: the answer was no.
Pence’s team wanted to leverage Luttig’s conservative credentials to counter the argument being made by his former clerk, John Eastman, that the vice president could unilaterally overturn the election results in his role as president of the Senate.
Luttig was eager to help. But he first needed to figure out how to send a Tweet.
No big deal, fate of the republic hangs on this one guy figuring out how to tweet, via @RyanLizza @playbookdc pic.twitter.com/Ty7ZPdBWBK
— Ben Weyl (@benweyl) February 18, 2022
Spoiler alert: Luttig figured out how to send a Tweet, and Pence cited his analysis in a fateful letter published before he went to the Capitol on 6 January that stated he did not have the authority to reverse the electoral results.
“I understood the gravity of the moment and the momentous task that I was being asked to help the vice president with. I had been following all of this very closely in the days leading up to it,” Luttig said. “It was then — and may forever be — one of the most significant moments in American history.”
Listen to the interview via Politico here.
To the wider world, Nascar driver Brandon Brown is perhaps better known for inspiring, unwittingly, the vulgar anti-Biden chant “Let’s go Brandon” than for his fearsome driving.
Writing for the Guardian, Andrew Lawrence explores how the viral moment has put Brown in a difficult position, as the driver tries to balance profits and politics with marginal success.
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The “Freedom Convoy” of trucks, which began as a protest against a government vaccination mandate and grew into a wildly disruptive demonstration that included all manner of political grievances, has drawn praise and support for some of the leading conservative figures in the US.
Donald Trump hailed the Canadian truckers and said “we are with them all the way.” Fox News’ Sean Hannity has provided viewers with nearly wall-to-wall coverage of the protests. On -air he called the truckers “brave” and sent his “solidarity, love and support.” Texas senator Ted Cruz hailed them as “heroes” while Kentucky senator Rand Paul urged them to drive south and “clog up” US cities.
The Republicans’ support of the overwhelmingly white trucker protest has drawn accusations of hypocrisy and racism after the very same conservative leaders forcefully denounced the Black-led racial justice protests that spread across the world in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
At the time, law enforcement in Washington tear gassed peaceful protesters to make way for Trump’s photo-op at a church, part of a deliberate show of force against demonstrators. Republicans pushed legislation to punish the protestors while conservative media figures condemned the them using derogatory language.
In a new report, Sergio Olmos examines the starkly divergent responses through the example of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who last year signed an anti-rioting law that stiffened penalties for protesters who blocked roads.
Draft legislation from DeSantis – seen by many as the leading heir to Donald Trump – was even more draconian. He initially sought to extend “stand-your-ground” laws that would have granted legal immunity to drivers claiming to have unintentionally killed or injured protesters disrupting traffic.
Yet DeSantis has thrown his support behind conservative trucker convoys using similar tactics to protest against vaccine mandates that for weeks have blocked roads between Canada and the US, stalling trade between the two nations and leading to disruptions to the global supply chain. He also announced Florida’s attorney general would investigate GoFundMe after it dropped the page for donations to Canadian truckers.
In the piece, Jared Holt, a researcher of extremism, tells Olmos that Republicans’ are far more concerned with obstructing the Biden presidency than ideological consistency.
“I think the hypocrisy on display makes evident that this kind rhetoric is best understood as a piece of a broader project and not a hard ideological stance,” said Holt, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s digital forensic lab, a non-profit that monitors and combats disinformation online.
Read the full report here:
Canadian police move in to arrest protesters from Ottawa trucker convoy
Canadian Police began arresting protesters on Friday in an effort to break up the “freedom convoy” that has for weeks paralyzed Canada’s capital, snarled traffic and disrupted business on both sides of the border.
Reporting from Ottawa, Leyland Cecco writes that “dozens of police moved in on the protest camp near Parliament Hill on Friday morning, arresting protesters and attempting to remove people from the vehicles that have blockaded the city since late January.”
A police drone hovered overhead as the officers, some carrying automatic weapons and dressed in helmets and grey fatigues, moved in on the camp.
Canada was warned before protests that violent extremists infiltrated convoyRead more
Some protesters surrendered and were taken into custody; others were seen being led away in handcuffs.
Senate passes measure to avert shutdown
Hello live blog readers. It’s Friday! You made it through the week. I’m Lauren Gambino in Washington.
The Senate scrambled to avert a government shutdown, passing a short-term funding bill last night before skipping town for the President’s Day weekend. The measure, which funds the federal government for just three short weeks, heads to Joe Biden desk for signature ahead of the midnight deadline tonight. Expect a repeat of the drama when Congress returns from their recess. Who says Washington is broken?
Biden has nothing on his public schedule. He will host a phone call with Transatlantic leaders this afternoon to discuss “Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine and our continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy,” according to a White House official.
Vice President Kamala Harris is in Munich, where she is holding a whirlwind round of talks with world leaders, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday. Earlier on Friday, she met with Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg at the Commerzbank.
We remain, of course, supportive of diplomacy as it relates to the dialogue and discussions we’ve had with Russia, but we are also committed to taking corrective actions to ensure there will be severe consequences in terms of the sanctions we have discussed,” Harris said during their bilateral talks.
Read our sister blog for the latest updates on the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
