Category Archives: News

Obstruction of justice: Comey memo says Trump asked him to end Flynn investigation

The New York Times reports: President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” [Continue reading…]

Politico adds: “[Comey’ memo is] very rich in detail and hopefully it will come out soon,” the friend of Comey, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO. “There are other memos about his meetings too. He wrote down every word Trump said to him as soon as he could.” [Continue reading…]

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Israel said to be source of secret intelligence Trump gave to Russians

The New York Times reports: The classified intelligence that President Trump disclosed in a meeting last week with Russian officials at the White House was provided by Israel, according to a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information. The revelation adds a potential diplomatic complication to the episode.

Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and a major intelligence collector in the Middle East. The revelation that Mr. Trump boasted about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries. It also raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the Middle East. [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s fraudulent voter-fraud commission

In an editorial, the New York Times says: President Trump’s repeated claim that “millions” of noncitizens voted illegally in the 2016 election has always been transparently self-serving — a desperate attempt to soothe his damaged ego and explain how he could have lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes.

It also lined up nicely with a yearslong crusade by Republican officials to convince Americans that “voter fraud” is an actual problem. As Mr. Trump’s own lawyers have pointed out, it’s not. But that hasn’t stopped the president from trying, as he so often does, to commandeer the machinery of the federal government to justify his own falsehoods. The most recent example was his creation last week of an advisory commission whose ostensible goal is to “enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes,” with an emphasis on weeding out “improper” or “fraudulent” registration and voting.

To state the obvious, this isn’t a commission. It’s a self-driving vehicle preprogrammed to arrive at only one destination: that strange, fact-free land in which, according to Mr. Trump and many conservatives, hordes of foreigners and people without valid photo identification flood the polls, threatening the nation’s electoral integrity. The right-wing politicians and anti-voter activists who appear to believe this never trouble themselves with the actual data.

So here it is: Voting fraud is extremely rare, and in-person fraud — the only kind that would be caught by voter ID laws — is essentially nonexistent, as study after study has shown. And as for those foreigners, a new survey of local election officials in 42 jurisdictions turned up a total of about 30 cases of suspected noncitizen voting last November — out of more than 23 million votes. [Continue reading…]

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A new Yalta and the revival of Europe

Roger Cohen writes: In the end the French election turned on the most unlikely of subjects: Europe. Yes, the ugly European duckling of 2016 politics — rejected by Britain, mocked by President Trump — ushered Emmanuel Macron into the Élysée Palace as France’s youngest president.

Macron, throughout his campaign, was strong in his support of the European Union and its shared currency, the euro. That was risky; identification with the European Union hardly seemed a winning ticket. But it was precisely on the euro and the union that Marine Le Pen, the rightist candidate of the National Front, committed public political suicide.

In the final TV debate, days before this month’s vote, she babbled and blundered for minutes on end about Europe and its currency. It was, as Macron put it, “du n’importe quoi” — roughly meaningless garbage. And it was garbage that touched the French in a very sensitive area: their pocketbooks.

The French, unlike Americans, don’t talk about money but they think about it as much as anyone else.

Le Pen confused the euro and the ECU (a basket of European currencies once used as a unit of account); she seemed to think Britain had been in the euro and made the wild claim that Brexit had sent the British economy skyrocketing; she blabbered about the coexistence of a restored franc for French people and a euro for big companies; she appeared to decree that other nations would leave the euro at the same time as her France. She accused Macron of “submission to European federalism.”

The retort was swift. It was also devastating because the French, it turns out, are attached to the euro. Macron said the value of people’s savings would plunge 20 to 30 percent the day after a return to the franc. He asked how anyone from the producer of Cantal cheese to Airbus — small or large enterprises fully integrated in the European economy — would function once compelled to do their foreign transactions in euros and pay their employees’ salaries in francs. He predicted the return of capital controls as people rushed to get money out of the country.

Le Pen gaped at him, laughed inappropriately, fired increasingly wild and unrelated salvos, and generally seemed on the verge of total meltdown. It was the end. Europe had killed her. For any Europhile, and I proudly wear that badge, it was the sweetest of moments after a rough passage. [Continue reading…]

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Over 100,000 community events to mark first anniversary of Jo Cox’s death

The Guardian reports: A scarecrow festival, a “deep fat friar” medieval lunch and a Ramadan meal in a church hosted by Syrian refugees are among the community events due to take place to mark the first anniversary of the murder of Jo Cox.

More than 100,000 events are expected to be held across the UK as part of The Great Get Together, organised by the Jo Cox Foundation. Organisers hope it will be the biggest number of community events since the Queen’s diamond jubilee.

Cox was stabbed and shot outside her constituency surgery in Batley and Spen, West Yorkshire, on 16 June last year by Thomas Mair. The weekend of events will take place between 16 and 18 June, with picnics, street parties and iftar, the meal eaten by Muslims to break their fast during Ramadan.

They have been organised in conjunction with The Big Lunch, an annual event that aims to combat loneliness with communal meals and activities.

In Leeds, a group of Syrian refugees will host an iftar at a local church and provide free meals to homeless people. Other events include a teddy bears’ picnic in Hartlepool, a scarecrow festival in Ilkley and a medieval lunch in Coventry.

A street party will also take place in Cox’s former constituency. It is hoped that a party in London’s Olympic Park will attract up to 10,000 participants.

Brendan Cox, the widower of the murdered MP, said he was “amazed and humbled” by the numbers who had responded to calls to mark the anniversary. “I think the huge response is because we’re tapping into the national mood,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Trump may have violated the President’s oath of office

Jack Goldsmith, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Benjamin Wittes, and Elishe Julian Wittes write: If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office. As Quinta and Ben have elaborated on in some detail, in taking the oath President Trump swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of his ability. It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.

Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law–just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office.

Congress has alleged oath violations—albeit violations tied to criminal allegations or breaches of statutory obligations—all three times it has passed or considered seriously articles of impeachment against presidents: against Andrew Johnson (“unmindful of the high duties of his oath of office”), Richard Nixon (“contrary to his oath”), and Bill Clinton (“in violation of his constitutional oath”). Further, two of the three articles of impeachment against Nixon alleged no direct violation of the law. Instead, they concerned Nixon’s abuse of his power as President, which, like the President putting the nuclear codes on Twitter, is an offense that can only be committed by the President and has thus never been explicitly prohibited in criminal law.

There’s thus no reason why Congress couldn’t consider a grotesque violation of the President’s oath as a standalone basis for impeachment—a high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself. This is particularly plausible in a case like this, where the oath violation involves giving sensitive information to an adversary foreign power. That’s getting relatively close to the “treason” language in the impeachment clauses; it’s pretty easy to imagine a hybrid impeachment article alleging a violation of the oath in service of a hostile foreign power. So legally speaking, the matter could be very grave for Trump even though there is no criminal exposure.

This approach to sensitive information does not appear to be a one-off. President Trump has previously taken heat for his cavalier attitude towards safeguarding classified information, for example when he openly reviewed plans related to a North Korean nuclear test in the Mar-a-Lago dining room in full view of other diners or when he appeared to inadvertently confirm the authenticity of leaked CIA documents on Fox News. [Continue reading…]

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Trump violates intel partnership by revealing highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador

The Washington Post reports: President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.” [Continue reading…]

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How Trump gets his fake news

Politico reports: White House chief of staff Reince Priebus issued a stern warning at a recent senior staff meeting: Quit trying to secretly slip stuff to President Trump.

Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming, according to four White House officials familiar with the matter.

Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.

The episode illustrates the impossible mission of managing a White House led by an impetuous president who has resisted structure and strictures his entire adult life. [Continue reading…]

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Steve Bannon and Brexit

The Observer reports: On 18 November 2015, the British press gathered in a hall in Westminster to witness the official launch of Leave.EU. Nigel Farage, the campaign’s figurehead, was banished to the back of the room and instead an American political strategist, Gerry Gunster, took centre stage and explained its strategy. “The one thing that I know is data,” he said. “Numbers do not lie. I’m going to follow the data.”

Eighteen months on, it’s this same insight – to follow the data – that is the key to unlocking what really happened behind the scenes of the Leave campaign. On the surface, the two main campaigns, Leave.EU and Vote Leave, hated one other. Their leading lights, Farage and Boris Johnson, were sworn enemies for the duration of the referendum. The two campaigns bitterly refused even to share a platform.

But the Observer has seen a confidential document that provides clear evidence of a link between the two campaigns. More precisely, evidence of a close working relationship between the two data analytics firms employed by the campaigns – AggregateIQ, which Vote Leave hired, and Cambridge Analytica, retained by Leave.EU.

British electoral law is founded on the principle of a level playing field and controlling campaign spending is the key plank of that. The law states that different campaigns must not work together unless they declare their expenditure jointly. This controls spending limits so that no side can effectively “buy” an election.

But this signed legal document – a document that was never meant to be made public and was leaked by a concerned source – connects both Vote Leave and Leave.EU’s data firms directly to Robert Mercer, the American billionaire who bankrolled Donald Trump.

This is a deeply complex story. It has taken three months of investigation to unravel the web of connections – both human and contractual. But these connections and threads linking two separate foreign data analytics companies – one based in Canada and one based in London – raise profound and troubling questions about our democratic process. Because these intricate links lead, in not many steps, to Robert Mercer.

This ordinary-looking document is at the heart of a web of relationships that link Mercer with the referendum to take Britain out of the EU. What impact did Mercer have on Brexit? Did the campaigns know of the link? Did they deliberately conceal it? Or could they, too, have been in the dark?

Because, legally, these two companies – AggregateIQ in Canada and Cambridge Analytica, an American company based in London, have nothing to connect them publicly. But this intellectual property licence shown to the Observer tells a different story. This created a binding “exclusive” “worldwide” agreement “in perpetuity” for all of AggregateIQ’s intellectual property to be used by SCL Elections (a British firm that created Cambridge Analytica with Mercer).

The companies may have had different owners but they were legally bound together. And, the Observer has learned, they were working together on a daily basis at the time of the referendum – both companies were being paid by Mercer-funded organisations to work on Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in America. What is more, several anonymous sources reveal the two companies, working on two separate British Leave campaigns, actually shared the same database at the time.

In fact AggregateIQ had a non-compete clause. Leave.EU announced in November 2015 it was working with Cambridge Analytica which means that AggregateIQ must have had explicit permission to work with Vote Leave.

And yet none of this was visible. Dominic Cummings, a former Tory special adviser who was Vote Leave’s chief strategist, was a vocal critic of Ukip, Farage, Leave.EU and its millionaire backer, Arron Banks. And the two campaigns followed different strategies – Leave.EU targeting Ukippers and disaffected working-class Labour voters with images of queues of refugees. Vote Leave targeted middle England with a message about returning £350m a week from Europe to the NHS.

Follow the data, however, and another story is revealed, which leads directly to Mercer and his close associate, Steve Bannon, now Donald Trump’s chief strategist in the White House. Mercer was the owner of Cambridge Analytica, a firm which, as the Observer detailed last week, was spun out of a British firm with 30 years experience in working for governments and militaries around the world, specialising in “psychological operations”. At the time of the referendum, the Observer has learned, Bannon was the head of it. [Continue reading…]

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Manafort’s real-estate deals said to be probed by N.Y.’s top cop

Bloomberg reports: New York State has opened an investigation into the real-estate dealings of President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, deepening the already intense legal scrutiny of the young administration.

The probe by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, one of the most outspoken critics of the president, is in a preliminary stage, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the investigation isn’t public. Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign from April to August last year, has owned property in the Hamptons and Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is also in the early stages of an investigation into Manafort’s transactions, a person familiar with that probe said. Representatives for Schneiderman and Vance declined to comment.

The inquiries by the two Democrats could pose added legal peril for Manafort if investigators find evidence of a crime. Unlike a probe by the U.S. Justice Department and FBI, the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have no authority over New York state investigators scrutinizing whether Manafort broke state laws. Schneiderman is responsible for enforcing New York’s securities laws under the Martin Act, which gives him broad powers to pursue white-collar crime. [Continue reading…]

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GOP senators, pulling away from Trump, have ‘a lot less fear of him’

The New York Times reports: Senate Republicans, increasingly unnerved by President Trump’s volatility and unpopularity, are starting to show signs of breaking away from him as they try to forge a more traditional Republican agenda and protect their political fortunes.

Several Republicans have openly questioned Mr. Trump’s decision to fire the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and even lawmakers who supported the move have complained privately that it was poorly timed and disruptive to their work. Many were dismayed when Mr. Trump seemed to then threaten Mr. Comey not to leak negative information about him.

As they pursue their own agenda, Republican senators are drafting a health care bill with little White House input, seeking to avoid the public relations pitfalls that befell the House as it passed its own deeply unpopular version. Republicans are also pushing back on the president’s impending budget request — including, notably, a provision that would nearly eliminate funding for the national drug control office amid an opioid epidemic. And many high-ranking Republicans have said they will not support any move by Mr. Trump to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

So far, Republicans have refrained from bucking the president en masse, in part to avoid undermining their intense push to put health care and tax bills on his desk this year. And the Republican leadership, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, remains behind Mr. Trump.

But with the White House lurching from crisis to crisis, the president is hampering Republicans’ efforts to fulfill his promises. [Continue reading…]

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James Clapper: Democratic institutions are ‘under assault’ by Trump

The Guardian reports: Former director of national intelligence James Clapper has accused Donald Trump of placing American democratic institutions “under assault” following the sacking of James Comey and cautioned that the former FBI director’s removal is “another victory” for Russia.

The forceful criticism comes as the justice department began screening candidates for Comey’s replacement and Democrats renewed calls for a special prosecutor to oversee an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

“I think in many ways our institutions are under assault,” Clapper told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “Both externally, and that’s the big news here, is Russian interference in our election system. And I think as well our institutions are under assault internally.”

When asked to clarify if the internal assault came from the president directly, the former spy chief added: “Exactly.” [Continue reading…]

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Major U.S. investigation of Russian money laundering through NYC real estate gets shut down abruptly

CNN reports: A major US investigation into Russian money laundering has come to an abrupt end.

The case aimed to expose how Russian mobsters allegedly stole $230 million and hid some of the cash in New York City real estate. Also sure to come up was the suspicious death of the Russian lawyer who exposed the alleged fraud, though US prosecutors weren’t alleging that the defendants were behind it.

The trial was set to start on Monday, but late Friday night, federal prosecutors in New York announced they settled the case with Prevezon, the company accused of buying up “high-end commercial space and luxury apartments” with laundered money.

The abrupt conclusion has some involved in the trial wondering why this Russian investigation had been cut short.

“What most concerns me is: Has there been any political pressure applied in this?” asked Louise Shelley, an illicit finance expert who was set to testify in support of the US government on Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

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FBI agents group endorses Mike Rogers for FBI director

Politico reports: The FBI Agents Association on Saturday backed former lawmaker and FBI agent Mike Rogers to replace ousted FBI director James Comey.

FBIAA President Thomas F. O’Connor said in a statement that Rogers, who was formerly chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, “exemplifies the principles that should be possessed by the next FBI Director.”

“It is essential that the next FBI Director understand the details of how Agents do their important work,” O’Connor said. “Mike Rogers’ background as a Special Agent, veteran of the armed forces and former member of Congress sets him apart as someone capable of confronting the wide array of challenges facing our help ensure that the Bureau remains the world’s premiere law enforcement agency.”

O’Connor added that during his time in Congress, Rogers “showed a commitment to confronting threats to our country in a nonpartisan and collaborative manner.” [Continue reading…]

Garrett M. Graff writes: During the Obama administration’s search for an FBI director, there was not a single former or current elected official seriously considered. By and large, Comey’s background—as well as the backgrounds of others who were floated in 2013 as Barack Obama considered that appointment, like Ken Wainstein, Patrick Fitzgerald and Lisa Monaco—was typical of bureau leaders past: Comey was a career federal prosecutor, former U.S. attorney and one-time No. 2 in the Justice Department.

The man he replaced, Robert Mueller, had precisely the same résumé—a career federal prosecutor, former U.S. attorney and one-time No. 2 in the Justice Department. Mueller was so driven by the Justice Department’s mission that, after a stint heading its criminal division under George H.W. Bush, he stayed only a brief period in private practice before starting over again at the bottom of the department’s hierarchy as a line criminal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. During that 2001 search by George W. Bush, perhaps the closest any candidate came to having political ties was George Terwilliger, a former U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general who, while in private practice, had helped with Bush’s legal strategy during the Florida recount. (It’s worth noting that Terwilliger, though, didn’t ultimately get the job.)

The three men who headed the FBI before Mueller were all longtime federal prosecutors-turned-federal judges: Louis Freeh, William Sessions and William Webster. Meanwhile, the first director of the FBI post-Hoover, Clarence Kelly, was a respected police chief and former FBI agent.

These leaders have by no means been without their own faults. Sessions was fired by President Bill Clinton in 1993 after a George H.W. Bush administration investigation found that Sessions had abused expenses and travel privileges. And Clinton’s relationship with Sessions’ successor, Freeh, grew so poisonous amid the scandals of the 1990s that the two men stopped speaking. Freeh also gave up his White House visitor badge, even as the threat of Al Qaeda rose across the globe—a sign that FBI directors can actually become too independent.

Even so, that independence is a fundamental bulwark of our impartial justice system, the idea that no individual in the country is above the law. The Trump administration appears to be considering undoing that long-standing tradition for no apparent reason—and without any real protest from official Washington. [Continue reading…]

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At Rouhani rally, daring slogans and reminders of Iran’s political ghosts

The New York Times reports: As supporters of Iran’s president awaited his arrival to fire them up for his May 19 re-election bid, the thoughts of many were with two other men under house arrest for years.

“Moussavi, Karroubi must be released!” the crowd of thousands thundered over and over, a reference to the country’s most prominent opposition leaders.

Hands raised, they drowned out a warm-up speaker at the campaign event for the president, Hassan Rouhani. Many wore green wristbands, a political symbol that, not too long ago, could get someone arrested in Iran.

Not these days — a concession in the modestly widened latitude permitted for political discourse when Iran gears up for elections. During the campaign, which lasts only a few weeks, politics are not only freer, but edgier.

The scene at the Rouhani campaign rally in Tehran on Tuesday has been replicated in other cities in recent days. In what appeared to be a warning that they not get out of hand, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Wednesday that anyone who disrupted the elections would get a “slap in the face.” [Continue reading…]

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Did Trump’s dinner with Comey break the law?

The Daily Beast reports: The timing of President Donald Trump’s dinner with FBI Director James Comey raises the question of whether the president attempted to—or did in fact—interfere with an ongoing FBI investigation. And that’s a federal offense.

The episode in question occurred in the earliest days of the Trump administration. Within days of Trump’s start at the White House, the Justice Department had reason to believe that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn may have been compromised by the Russians. Flynn was interviewed by the FBI on January 24.

On January 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates rushed to the White House to tell Trump’s top lawyer of the Justice Department’s suspicions. She returned, at the White House counsel’s request, to continue the discussion on January 27.

That same night, the evening of January 27, the president had dinner with Comey, according to James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who told this to NBC News.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who convicted Scooter Libby for leaking a CIA agent’s name, told The Daily Beast that the context of Trump’s dinner is “really significant.”

“So even if he’s not obstructing an investigation into himself, he may be obstructing an investigation into Flynn,” said Zeidenberg, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

“Asking him for his loyalty, I don’t know if that would qualify as obstruction of justice in and of itself,” Zeidenberg said, adding, “That suggests consciousness of guilt.” [Continue reading…]

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Watchdog group alleges Sessions violated recusal rule in firing of Comey

The Washington Post reports: An ethics watchdog group filed a complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday alleging that his participation in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey violated Justice Department rules and Sessions’s promise to recuse himself from matters involving Russia.

“Firing the lead investigator is the most extreme form of interfering with an investigation,” wrote Fred Wertheimer, who signed the six-page complaint on behalf of his organization, Democracy 21.

The filing asked the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the matter and issue a public report — and to take additional action.

“Immediately, we call on OPR to take all necessary steps to ensure that the Attorney General withdraws from any participation in the selection of an interim or permanent Director of the FBI,” the complaint said.

When President Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, he announced that he had consulted with Sessions and the department’s No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Wertheimer, who has worked on ethics issues since the Watergate scandal, said the attorney general’s participation in the Comey firing violated Justice Department rules requiring staffers to recuse themselves from any criminal inquiry in which they have a “personal or political relationship.” [Continue reading…]

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How NSA secrets helped cybercriminals mount a worldwide attack

The Washington Post reports: Computers around the world are suffering an attack from malicious software. The compromised computers have been hit by “ransomware” — software that encrypts the computer’s hard drive so that all the information on it is unavailable, and refuses to release it until a ransom is paid in Bitcoin, an online currency that is difficult to trace. Among the victims are FedEx, Britain’s National Health Service and computers belonging to Russia’s Ministry for the Interior.

Ransomware attacks have happened before. What is unusual is how quickly this attack is compromising large numbers of critical computers. It has been so successful because it has made use of a so-called “zero-day exploit” — a previously unknown flaw in Windows software that makes it easy to take control of vulnerable systems. This zero day exploit became publicly known last month, when it was released as part of a treasure trove of NSA data by the “Shadow Brokers,” a shadowy group of hackers who many believe are associated with Russian intelligence. Criminal hackers appear to have combined this exploit with ransomware tools to mount a worldwide campaign. Here’s what you need to know to understand what happened. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: An “accidental hero” has halted the global spread of the WannaCry ransomware, reportedly by spending a few dollars on registering a domain name hidden in the malware.

The ransomware has wreaked havoc on organizations including FedEx and Telefonica, as well as the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), where operations were cancelled, x-rays, test results and patient records became unavailable and phones did not work.

However, a UK cybersecurity researcher tweeting as @malwaretechblog, with the help of Darien Huss from security firm Proofpoint, found and activated a “kill switch” in the malicious software.

The switch was hardcoded into the malware in case the creator wanted to stop it spreading. This involved a very long nonsensical domain name that the malware makes a request to – just as if it was looking up any website – and if the request comes back and shows that the domain is live, the kill switch takes effect and the malware stops spreading.

“I saw it wasn’t registered and thought, ‘I think I’ll have that’,” he is reported as saying. The purchase cost him $10.69. Immediately, the domain name was registering thousands of connections every second.

“They get the accidental hero award of the day,” said Proofpoint’s Ryan Kalember. “They didn’t realize how much it probably slowed down the spread of this ransomware.”

The time that @malwaretechblog registered the domain was too late to help Europe and Asia, where many organizations were affected. But it gave people in the US more time to develop immunity to the attack by patching their systems before they were infected, said Kalember. [Continue reading…]

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