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Ukraine enters uncharted territory with request to investigate Russian cyberattacks as war crimes

Ukrainian officials are breaking new ground — and possibly reshaping the future of cyber warfare — as they seek to convince the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to investigate whether certain Russian cyberattacks could constitute war crimes.

Cyberattacks have increasingly become a part of modern warfare in recent years, and have been repeatedly used by Russian forces amid the country’s war in Ukraine to target critical infrastructure.

Such attacks, though, are not listed as a form of war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Legal experts and researchers have previously made the case for the ICC to prosecute Russian cyberattacks, but the reported push from Ukrainian officials marks the first time a sovereign government has made such a request to the court — and could be a game changer.

“News that Ukrainian officials are weighing cyberattacks as potential war crimes is reflective of how seriously governments are taking these growing and evolving threats,” said Paul Martini, CEO and chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm iboss.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s chief digital transformation officer, Victor Zhora, told Politico that his country is gathering evidence of cyberattacks tied to military operations and are sharing information with the ICC in the hopes of potentially charging Russia for those crimes. 

Zhora argued that since Russia used cyberattacks to support its kinetic military operations that targeted Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and civilians, the digital attacks should also be considered as war crimes against Ukrainian citizens.

“When we observe the situation in cyberspace we notice some coordination between kinetic strikes and cyberattacks, and since the majority of kinetic attacks are organized against civilians — being a direct act of war crime — supportive actions in cyber can be considered as war crimes,” Zhora told Politico.

“We are discussing completely new terms and ideas on how to classify these attacks, which happened during the war, which have never happened before,” he added.

Zhora also noted last year’s Russian attacks against Ukraine’s largest private energy investor, DTEK, as an example of when cyberattacks are used in conjunction with kinetic warfare.

“Their thermal power plant was shelled, and simultaneously, their corporate network was attacked,” he said. “It’s directed and planned activity from Russians, which they did both in conventional domain and in cyber domain.”

Convincing the ICC could prove difficult, however, says David Hickton, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, due to cyber crimes not being explicitly enumerated as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

Under the 1949 treaties, war crimes can include willful killing of civilians, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments; willfully causing great suffering; and the taking of hostages, among other actions. Written before the modern technological era, the definition makes no mention of digital warfare.

Though they’re not included in the list, however, Hickton said cyberattacks could still be considered war crimes.

“It is quite possible, depending upon the facts, that cyber crimes could constitute war crimes, and I would support the effort to develop the evidence if a cyber medium was being used in warfare illegally,” he said. 

“I think just because cyber is not listed doesn’t mean cyber crime couldn’t be a war crime,” he added.

It is not clear whether or how the ICC has responded to the reported request from Ukrainian officials.

If the ICC does find that destructive Russian cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and civilians constitute war crimes, that could open grounds for potential prosecutions against the perpetrators of such attacks and possible reparations for the victims. 

Ukrainian officials aren’t the only ones trying to make the case before the ICC. Last year, a group of human rights lawyers and investigators in the Human Rights Center at University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law made a similar request to the court, urging it to look into whether a group of Russian hackers, known as Sandworm, could be prosecuted for launching destructive cyberattacks against Ukraine in 2015 and 2016, Wired reported.

That request followed the announcement made days after Russia invaded Ukraine by the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, that he was opening an investigation into possible war crimes committed by the Russian army.

“I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine in relation to the events already assessed during the preliminary examination by the Office,” Khan said at the time. 

He added that his investigation would expand as the Russia-Ukraine war continued to include any potential future crimes falling within the ICC’s jurisdiction.

The researchers at Berkeley asked Khan to “expand the scope of his investigation to include the cyber domain in addition to traditional domains of warfare – land, air, maritime, and space – given the Russian Federation’s history of hostile cyber activities in Ukraine.”

Lindsay Freeman, the director of technology, law and policy at the Human Rights Center, told Wired that the ICC prosecutor’s office responded to the group’s request and was looking into its recommendations. 

But some experts aren’t convinced that making the case that certain cyberattacks could fall under war crimes is necessary, because there’s already evidence showing that the Russians did commit war crimes using conventional warfare. 

“I’m not sure we need to reach into cyber to figure that out,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. 

“I think there’s plenty of other stuff to chase down,” he said, adding that there are other types of war crimes that the Russians have committed that can be proven more easily in court than cyberattacks.

Although he agrees that the Russians have improved the way they coordinate their land and air warfare with their cyber operations, he said a lot of assessment and analysis must still be conducted to determine whether destructive cyberattacks targeting civilians and critical infrastructure could be classified as war crimes. 

“[Cyberattacks] are more of a novel application of war crimes, which you can still do and go through and figure out, but there are so many other very clear violations of the laws of war,” Jaffer said. 

“If the goal is to prosecute the Russians for their war crimes, you don’t need to go through the cyber analysis, you need to look at what they’re doing on the battlefield,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Is helping Ukraine reducing US preparedness, security?

Questions are mounting as to how long the United States can continue to supply Ukraine from its own weapons stockpiles without hindering its own security.  

With more than $27 billion in weapons committed to Kyiv since the start of Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, attack on the country, Washington shows no sign of slowing down on shipping munitions and other lethal aid overseas. 

But experts question what that might mean for U.S. military readiness should another conflict arise with China in the near future, with a U.S. defense industry that is far behind where it needs to be to account for a major war. 

That concern is merited, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which found that the U.S. defense-industrial base is ill-prepared for Washington to enter a fight with Beijing over Taiwan’s independence, in addition to aiding Kyiv.  

Among the most alarming points in the report was the estimate that the U.S. military would run out of critical long-range, precision-guided munitions within a week should China start a fight in the Taiwan Strait.  

The war in Ukraine has “exposed serious deficiencies in the U.S. defense industrial base,” according to Seth Jones, the report’s author.  

“Given the lead time for industrial production, it would likely be too late for the defense industry to ramp up production if a war were to occur without major changes,” he said. 

The estimate as to how long the U.S. can continue to pull from its own weapons stocks and how fast defense firms can refill them has been a topic of discussion since shortly after the war began. 

Since nearly a year ago, Washington has pledged to send Ukraine everything from helmets to high-tech systems, including a Patriot air defense battery, Bradley fighting vehicles, various types of missiles and now M1 Abrams tanks. The military aid, along with that of other Western allies, has been credited with helping the Ukrainian troops beat back Russian forces in the largest land war in Europe since World War II. 

But the war, which currently has no end in sight, has exposed weaknesses within the U.S. defense industry.  

With the U.S. withdrawal of the Afghanistan War in August 2021, the nation found itself not directly involved in a conflict for the first time in 20 years. The end of that American chapter meant a drop in the U.S. of manufactured material needed to produce weapons and ammunition for a war. 

Further hampering the weapons supply chain were production delays and worker shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic, defense firms claimed.

What’s more, Jones said defense manufacturers have for decades been working under the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as other counterterrorism operations in the Middle East, which as the years went on became less demanding for major war-fighting weapons and ammunition. 

The Pentagon, however, has remained steadfast in its insistence that there’s no cause for concern. 

In May, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asserted that the U.S. military would not go below its readiness requirements after being pressed by Senate lawmakers over how it would replenish munitions being sent overseas. 

“It’s very critical to ensure that we maintain what we consider to be our minimum required stockage levels, and you can rest assured that I will not allow us to go below that in critical munitions,” Austin told Senate lawmakers at the time.  

And just this week, Defense Department press secretary Big. Gen. Pat Ryder brushed off questions over the numbers of munitions being expended in Ukraine and what it means for U.S. stockpiles in the event of another conflict, telling reporters the U.S. military won’t “do anything that’s going to affect our readiness or our ability to meet our national security requirements.” 

But the fears are not unwarranted. 

In November, CNN reported that the Pentagon’s stockpiles of certain systems including 155mm artillery shells and some missiles were “dwindling.” 

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser also with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, earlier this month also identified 155 mm artillery rounds as part of six categories of weapons and ammunition that won’t be restocked for at least three years, forecasting that some might not be rebuilt for up to 18 years. 

Cancian, who pulled from Defense Department documents and sources for his report, said certain artillery shells could eventually run low enough to reach a crisis point for Ukraine. 

“What will happen is that they will have to prioritize targets as the flow of ammunition slows,” he said of Ukrainian forces. “They can’t fire at everything, they’ll only fire at the highest priority.” 

Pentagon Undersecretary for Policy Colin Kahl told reporters in November that “there’s no question” the constant flow of weapons to Ukraine has “put pressure” on U.S. stockpiles and the industrial base. 

“We’re seeing the first example in many decades of a real high intensity conventional conflict and the strain that that produces on not just the countries involved but the defense industrial bases of those supporting, in this case supporting Ukraine,” Kahl said.  

He insisted, however, that the U.S. military has not been put “in a dangerous position as it relates to another major contingency somewhere in the world” due to the constant flow of lethal aid given to Ukraine. 

Still, the heads of several military services have recently acknowledged that they’re keeping a close eye on their own weapons stocks to ensure they have enough to keep up readiness should the U.S. be pulled into a conflict. 

If “you draw that down too much, now the risk is on you,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger told reporters in December. “Your own readiness might suffer if you didn’t monitor it closely. So we have to do that and we have.” 

And Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro earlier this month told reporters that if defense contractors can’t increase production in the next six to 12 months, Washington could find it “challenging” to help Ukraine and arm itself at the same time.  

“With regards to deliveries of weapons systems for the fight in Ukraine … yeah, that’s always a concern for us,” Del Toro said, as reported by Defense One. “And we monitor that very, very closely. I wouldn’t say we’re quite there yet, but if the conflict does go on for another six months, for another year, it certainly continues to stress the supply chain in ways that are challenging.” 

But there is a cause for optimism. 

Jones said the Pentagon is aware of its industrial base issue and could address it by awarding multiyear contracts with defense manufacturers to produce munitions, something that has typically not been done in the past. 

The Pentagon, meanwhile, revealed on Wednesday that it is set to place a number of large orders in the next two months to replenish the drained U.S. stockpiles. 

“There are going to be several big awards coming in February and March that will just move us further down that path,” said Doug Bush, assistant Army secretary for acquisition, logistics, and technology.

Defense production companies also have publicly said they are working to increase production supply. Two of the largest defense manufacturers, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said during an investor call this month the company has the capacity to meet demand, but still needs more materials, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Lockheed Martin pointed The Hill toward a quarterly earnings call with CEO Jim Taiclet this week in which he noted several ways to increase production. 

Taiclet said the Defense Department should fix multiyear contracts, ease the burden of auditing and regulation on smaller companies in particular, and bolster supply chains to ensure there are multiple sources of components. 

“This issue of restocking raised an important industry issue that we’re going to try to work with government to solve,” he said in the call. 

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

Source: TEST FEED1

What recession? Inflation, GDP offer hope for 'soft landing'

Perhaps a 2023 recession can be avoided after all.

Consistently falling prices alongside a stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) and next week’s anticipated less aggressive interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve are changing economists’ tune and renewing hopes about the overall health of the economy.

The personal consumption expenditures price index (PCE) cooled to 5 percent annually last month from 5.5 percent in November, Commerce Department data showed Friday, mirroring a drop in the consumer price index (CPI) from 7.1 percent to 6.5 percent over the same period. The CPI has dropped every month since June, when it peaked at 9.1 percent annually.

The day before, data came down showing that the U.S. economy grew at an expectation-beating rate of 2.9 percent in the last three months of the year, down slightly from 3.2 percent in the third quarter but high enough to result in annual growth of 2.1 percent. The GDP contracted in the first and second quarters of 2022 following the huge recovery of 2021.

U.S. production levels are now basically in line with where they were prior to the pandemic, using seasonally adjusted measurements and correcting for inflation.

The positive numbers have some economists chiding market commentators for being overly pessimistic in their characterizations of the economy over the course of 2022, a year in which many Americans believed a recession had already begun.

“Worst. Recession. Ever,” University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers joked online after the release of the GDP data.

“There’s a lot to be said about these latest GDP data, but I think the thing it underscores is that it’s now official: There was no recession in 2022. All that talk, all that energy, all that bluster, was nonsense all along,” Wolfers added.

Harvard Kennedy School economist Jeffrey Frankel, a former member of the committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research that officially designates recessions, told The Hill that he’s still hearing sentiment about the prospects of a recession this year, but he doesn’t think it’s accurate.

“Many economists have gone way overboard in talking as if a 2023 recession is all but inevitable. I would put the odds of a recession this year at something like 35 percent,” Frankel said in an email to The Hill.

The strong U.S. recovery along with the rapid drop in consumer prices is leading some commentators to revisit the characterization of inflation as “transitory” — a notion that had been disavowed by economists over the summer as annual price increases climbed above 9 percent, leading even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to say that she had been wrong about inflation and didn’t fully understand what was causing it.

“At this point the burden of proof lies on anyone claiming that we had more than a, well, transitory inflation spike that’s mostly behind us,” New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman wrote online last week.

Former Federal Reserve banker Claudia Sahm said the same thing in December, writing that “the burden of proof is on the inflation hawks now.”

“With the steady stream of more optimistic data on inflation and a path to a soft landing taking form, it is time for the hawks to explain themselves,” she wrote in a weekly newsletter. “Reality shows a ‘soft landing’ in 2023 in the United States taking shape. We avoid a recession, we keep the job-full recovery, and inflation moves back down. Hawks, it’s time to join us in reality.”

University of Massachusetts economist Arin Dube pointed the finger at “public-facing economists” for failing to accurately convey the strength of the economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s not just politicians and the press,” Dube wrote online Thursday. “Too many public-facing economists have downplayed the recovery over the past two years.”

Perhaps the most vocal of those economists has been former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who made the case time and again that inflation was a much more persistent problem than the Fed was making it out to be and would require years of high unemployment in order to correct.

During a speech in London last year, Summers said the economy needed five years of unemployment above 5 percent to contain inflation properly. 

“In other words, we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or 5 years of 6 percent unemployment, or one year of 10 percent unemployment,” he said.

In fact, inflation has been falling even as unemployment has remained around a 50-year low of 3.5 percent, suggesting that price spikes during the pandemic have less to do with the labor market than with other factors including supply shocks and profit maximization tendencies among firms.

The reason that so many of these estimates have been off is outdated modeling and economic thinking, according to investor and founder of Westwood Capital Dan Alpert.

“The people who have their academic careers and their business forecasting careers based on economic modeling and macroeconomics that grew up from micro-fundamentals over the 30 years from, say, the late 1970s until the end of the century — they’re heavily invested in a way of looking at the world that ties into … labor’s impact on prices,” Alpert told The Hill in an interview.

“But those models don’t really apply to a fully fiat world where you really don’t have constraints on currency and you’ve got credit developing through multiple channels and you have massive asset inflation without having a lot of goods and services and wage inflation,” he said.

But even amid all the positive data, there are some potential signs that the U.S. economy could be slowing down. 

Friday’s PCE numbers showed a drop of 0.2 percent in consumer spending in December, larger than the 0.1 percent drop in November. The drop in spending was confined mostly to the goods sector.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve anticipates more sluggish growth in 2023, at a rate of 0.7 percent for the year, as the Fed continues with its program of monetary tightening.

“Overtightening of monetary policy would drive the world economy into an unnecessarily harsh slowdown, an outcome that could be avoided,” the United Nations economists warned in their World Economic Situation and Prospects report released Wednesday.

“While it is still too early to determine whether central banks in developed countries, in particular in the United States and European countries, have overtightened monetary policy, this risk should not be ignored. The ‘taper tantrum’ in 2013 remains fresh in memory, where the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would taper bond purchases immediately led to sharp increases in government bond yields. Treasury bond sell-offs spilled into corporate bond markets and disrupted equity markets,” they wrote.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump heads to South Carolina amid growing headwinds in state

Former President Trump is facing intensifying political headwinds in South Carolina, a key early primary state that will play host over the weekend to one of the first high-profile stops of his 2024 White House campaign. 

While he’s already racked up endorsements from prominent South Carolina Republicans like Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham, both of whom are expected to attend Trump’s event at the state Capitol in Columbia on Saturday, others are keeping their distance. 

The state’s junior senator, Tim Scott (R), hasn’t backed Trump’s 2024 campaign and is said to be seriously considering a presidential bid of his own. Likewise, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, another influential South Carolina Republican, has hinted that she’s weighing a run for the White House.

There are also growing rumblings of support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), according to several Republicans in the state, who warned that Trump’s grip on South Carolina’s GOP voters is far more tenuous than it used to be.

“The reason that Donald Trump is coming to South Carolina is because it’s an important state, but he’s trying to really lock up some of that support,” said Alex Stroman, a former executive director of the South Carolina GOP. “And I think that support is fairly soft.” 

“I know people who have endorsed him who have felt like they were kind of pressured into it and had to do it, but don’t plan on being with him when the election happens early next year in South Carolina,” he said. 

The visit could also give the former president the opportunity to build momentum in an early primary state that has played a consequential role in choosing presidential nominees in the past. 

“South Carolina was really the divisive blow for him in terms of winning the 2016 Republican presidential primary,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. 

And national polls show that while Trump’s support has softened since leaving office, he is still in good standing with voters inside out and outside of the GOP. 

An Emerson College survey released earlier this week showed Trump leading President Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up by 3 points. The same poll also showed Trump holding a 26-point lead over DeSantis in a hypothetical Republican primary. 

“You see that he is gaining steam, and now it’s time to cash in on that,” O’Connell said. 

Trump’s appearance at the state Capitol on Saturday is expected to be a smaller affair than his typical rallies, which tend to draw thousands of supporters. One South Carolina Republican said that the former president’s allies have been calling around in the state in recent weeks in an effort to secure endorsements and attendees for the event.

“I think for now you have a lot of people hedging their bets,” the person said. “Some of the folks you would expect to show aren’t going to show, I don’t think. I’ve talked to several people in the last few days, and not a lot of them are saying ‘I’m going to see the former president on Saturday, come out and show support.’” 

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, pushed back on the notion that the former president’s support among the grassroots may be softening.

“President Trump will unveil his leadership teams, which will show the significant support he has from grassroots leaders to elected officials,” Cheung said. “He has continued to dominate in the polls and there is no one else who can generate enthusiasm and excitement like President Trump.”

A poll released this week by the conservative South Carolina Policy Council provided some early evidence for Trump’s struggles. Only 37 percent of likely South Carolina Republican primary voters said that the GOP should nominate Trump in 2024, while nearly half — 47 percent — said they would prefer someone else.

That someone else may be DeSantis. The poll showed the Florida governor leading Trump by a staggering 19-point margin in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up.

Dallas Woodhouse, a longtime Republican operative and the executive director of the South Carolina Policy Council, said that there’s a growing desire for change among voters in both parties, noting that 54 percent of voters in his group’s recent poll said that the country would be better off if neither Trump nor President Biden is elected next year.

“It’s not to say these people wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were the nominee,” Woodhouse said. “But they certainly desire the option to choose somebody else at this time.”

Woodhouse and other Republicans said that GOP voters in South Carolina and elsewhere “want to win and see some fresh ideas,” and especially after the party’s lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections, there are lingering concerns about whether Trump is the candidate best positioned to recapture the White House.

“I get a sense that Republicans are being just walloped by inflation, that they have a desire to get back to debating issues,” Woodhouse said. “The issue with Trump is can you debate real issues? Or is Trump himself always the issue? And I think some voters are coming to think the latter.”

Trump’s Saturday visit to South Carolina marks his first real campaign swing since launching his third presidential bid in November. But he’s not the only Republican to make a foray into the Palmetto State.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo headlined a major Republican fundraiser in the state last year and has been running digital ads there as he weighs a bid for the 2024 GOP presidential nod. Likewise, former Vice President Mike Pence has made several trips to the state in an effort to bolster his support among evangelical voters.

Haley and Scott — both South Carolina natives — also remain “very, very popular” in the state, Woodhouse said. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, has been particularly aggressive in positioning herself for a 2024 run, telling Fox News earlier this month that it’s “time for new generational change.”

And that sentiment appears to be resonating within the GOP ecosystem.

“Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin — these are folks that really represent ways of winning over a broad coalition of voters as Ron DeSantis did in Florida,” Stroman said. 

But it’s DeSantis who many South Carolina Republicans say is the party’s must-see attraction. 

“I think if Ron DeSantis showed up in South Carolina on Saturday that his popularity and the number of people clamoring to see him would be larger than that of Donald Trump’s,” Stroman said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Lawmakers condemn 'brutal and violent killing' of Tyre Nichols, call for justice after video of arrest released

Lawmakers condemned the “brutal and violent killing” of Tyre Nichols on Friday night, after Memphis authorities released graphic footage of the traffic stop that resulted in Nichols’ death earlier this month.

“The brutal and violent killing of Tyre Nichols by officers sworn to protect the community is unconscionable,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a tweet. “Justice for Tyre Nichols must be swift and complete.”

The video of Nichols’ arrest on Jan. 10 showed the responding officers deploying pepper-spray and a stun gun against and repeatedly kicking and punching the 29-year-old Black man. Nichols can be heard yelling for his mother throughout the beating.

Five officers involved in Nichols’ death, all of whom are Black, were fired from the Memphis police department last week and charged on Thursday with second-degree murder and other crimes.

“A dangerous culture of violence has permeated far too many police departments in this country. Time and time again, it is lethal,” Sen. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) wrote on Twitter in response to the footage. “Tyre Nichols should still be here today. We must change the culture that perpetuates these tragedies and bring those accountable to justice.”

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), the head of the caucus’s Policing, Constitution, and Equality Task Force, said the “vicious murder” of Nichols has left them “shaken to the core.”

“The utter lack of humanity on display in the video defies even the worst expectations,” they said in a statement. “As mothers, seeing Tyre call out for his mother is deeply painful.” 

“People are rightfully furious by what we’ve seen,” Jayapal and Coleman added. “That anger is justified, and must be directed toward demanding accountability and reform of law enforcement and the criminal legal system, including an end to the police culture of use of force.”

Many other lawmakers similarly responded to the footage with horror and a version of the refrain “Tyre Nichols should be alive today.” 

“Tyre Nichols should be alive today,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “My heart aches for his family, friends, and loved ones, who are dealing with an unimaginable loss. His death is a grave injustice. Those responsible must be held accountable, and we can’t stop there.”

“You do not need to see the video to know that Tyre Nichols should be alive today,” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) said in a tweet. “I applaud the swift actions taken to hold those responsible for his killing to justice. However, police accountability must be the rule, not the exception.”

Many Democrats, including President Biden, called for the passage of police reform, particularly the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, in the wake of videos’ release.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden 'outraged and deeply pained' by Tyre Nichols video

President Biden said he was “outraged” by video released Friday night showing police officers beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, and he called for those upset by the footage to protest peacefully.

“Like so many, I was outraged and deeply pained to see the horrific video of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols’ death,” Biden said in a statement released shortly after the video was made public. “It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day.”

Biden earlier Friday spoke with RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, Nichols’ mother and stepfather, to express his condolences and offer admiration for their courage.

Nichols died a few days after he was beaten by police after a traffic stop on Jan. 10.

Over the course of the video, officers pepper-spray, deploy a stun gun and beat Nichols. 

Video of the arrest was taken from polecam, SkyCop and police body camera footage.

The five police officers were fired from the department last week. On Thursday, they were charged with second-degree murder and other offenses. 

“My heart goes out to Tyre Nichols’ family and to Americans in Memphis and across the country who are grieving this tremendously painful loss,” Biden said. “The footage that was released this evening will leave people justifiably outraged. Those who seek justice should not to resort to violence or destruction. Violence is never acceptable; it is illegal and destructive. I join Mr. Nichols’ family in calling for peaceful protest.”

Biden said Nichols’ family deserves a “swift, full, and transparent investigation,” and he reiterated his calls for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would enact reforms to try and curb racial profiling and tie federal aid to officer conduct.

White House officials held a call earlier Friday with mayors from 16 major cities to discuss preparations for possible protests after the footage was released and outline how the federal government could assist.

Source: TEST FEED1

Memphis authorities release graphic video of police beating Tyre Nichols during arrest

Memphis authorities on Friday evening released graphic video showing the arrest of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died after a traffic stop on Jan. 10.

Federal, state and local authorities had warned that the footage of five former police officers, who are all Black men, was horrific and appalling, bracing the Memphis community and the country for what they would see.

Over the course of the video, officers pepper-spray, deploy a stun gun and beat Nichols. 

Nichols can be heard repeatedly screaming for his mother throughout the beating. At least one officer can be heard repeatedly yelling for Nichols to “gimme your hands,” though Nichols already appeared to be on the ground.

Final video footage from a police camera mounted on a pole show Nichols surrounded by the officers, with at least three simultaneously punching and kicking him. Officers who were not physically participating in the beating did not intervene or attempt to stop those who were. At least eight officers were present at the scene.

Video of the arrest was taken from polecam, SkyCop and police body camera footage.

The five police officers were fired from the department last week. On Thursday, they were charged with second-degree murder and other offenses. 

The officers were part of the SCORPION unit of the Memphis police. Attorneys for Nichols’s family have called for that unit to be disbanded.

SCORPION, or the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, is a 50-person unit that polices particular areas of the city — which disproportionately end up in Black and brown communities, the attorneys argued. 

“What we’ve seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behavior of these units can morph into ‘wolf pack’ misconduct that takes away a person’s liberty or freedom to move, akin to a kidnapping,” attorneys Benjamin Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in an open letter.

“These often aggressive encounters flat out destruct trust between police and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve, but as we saw in the tragic and unnecessary death of Tyre Nichols, can also lead to physical injury or death when the culture of unchecked, pro-active policing overtakes common sense.”

Two unidentified firefighters have not been charged, but Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday it is possible more charges could be forthcoming.

Nichols’s family had already seen the video before its release. His stepfather, Rodney Wells, called the footage “horrific.” His mother, RowVaughn Wells, said she was unable to watch the full video. 

Crump, the famed civil rights attorney representing the family, likened the footage to that of Rodney King, a Black man brutally beaten by Los Angeles police officers during a traffic stop in 1991.

Ahead of the release, Memphis, Tenn., Police Chief Cerelyn Davis called the incident “heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

Davis on Friday said police decided to release the video on a Friday evening instead of during the workweek so any potential protests would not be as disruptive to people in school or at work. 

Officials in cities around the country are now calling for peaceful protests in response to the video.

— Updated at 7:54 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Republican Ken Buck opposes kicking Ilhan Omar off Foreign Affairs committee

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) on Friday said he is opposed to blocking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, becoming the latest GOP lawmaker to voice opposition to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) plan.

“I think that we should not engage in this tit for tat,” Buck told NBC on Friday. “I am opposed to … the removal of Congresswoman Omar from committees.”

Buck’s opposition could spell trouble for McCarthy, who has long promised to remove Omar from that committee as well as block Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee.

McCarthy formally blocked Schiff and Swalwell from the Intelligence committee earlier this week, but it will take a full vote of the House to approve assignments for the Foreign Affairs panel.

“I have a little bit less certainty about Congressman Schiff and Swalwell on Intelligence, because it’s a little bit different than a regular committee, but I’m gonna think through that and make a decision,” Buck said.

Republicans say that Omar’s previous comments have crossed the line into antisemitism and should disqualify her from sitting on the committee. But it is also seen as payback for Democrats removing GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) from committees in 2021, as well as blocking two of McCarthy’s picks for the Jan. 6 Select Committee.

In a slim House majority, McCarthy will only able to spare a handful of votes in order to keep her off the panel, and the vocal opposition suggests he could have trouble getting there.

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) also said this week that she opposes removing Omar.

“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Spartz said in a statement. “As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again.”

And Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) is undecided on removing Omar, but expressed disapproval of the idea.

“I’m not going to be a hypocrite just because Republicans are in the majority now,” Mace told reporters Wednesday morning.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) also said this week that he is undecided on removing Omar, while Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) has not revealed how he plans to vote and noted that there is no official resolution on Omar’s removal yet.

Further complicating the math, though, are some Democrats who have yet to say if they will support or oppose Omar’s removal.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.Y.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), and Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) have declined to comment on the matter or not made up their minds, Jewish Insider reported. Gottheimer is waiting for resolution text before commenting, and Moskowitz said he will decide the issue when it comes up on the floor.

As some House Republicans express hesitance about punishing Omar, the Republican National Committee moved ahead on a separate rebuke on Friday. A resolution passed at the RNC’s winter meeting that condemned antisemitism specifically listed multiple figures, including rapper Kanye West, white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and Omar.

Mychael Schnell contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Pence: 'I take full responsibility' for classified documents ending up at Indiana home

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said he takes “full responsibility” for classified documents ending up at his home in Indiana and pledged to cooperate with any investigation into how it happened.

“During the closing days of administration, when materials were boxed and assembled, some of which were shipped to our personal residence, mistakes were made,” Pence told Fox News in his first public comments since his office disclosed earlier this week that classified records were found at his residence. 

“We were not aware of it at the time until we did the review just a few short weeks ago,” he continued. “But I take full responsibility for it, and we’re going to continue to support every appropriate inquiry into it.”

Pence said he’s “very confident” that he and his team were “very careful and cautious” handling classified materials during his time in Congress and as vice president.

Pence’s team disclosed Tuesday that his attorneys conducted a search of his Indiana home out of an abundance of caution following news that classified documents were found at President Biden’s Delaware home and a former Washington, D.C., office he used after leaving the White House in 2017.

Greg Jacob, an attorney representing Pence, wrote to the National Archives on Jan. 18 to notify it that Pence had directed a search two days earlier that turned up two boxes with some materials bearing classified markings.

FBI officials took possession of those two boxes on Jan. 19, as well as two other boxes with copies of administration records, Jacob said. He wrote that the documents with classified markings were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s home, and that Pence was not aware of them until they were found earlier this month.

The discovery came after Pence had repeatedly denied having classified materials in his possession as he criticized Biden over the classified documents being found at his home and office.

Pence had advocated for a special counsel to be appointed in Biden’s case after one was announced to oversee an investigation into former President Trump’s possible mishandling of classified information.

Asked Friday if he believes a third special counsel is needed to oversee his own handling of classified documents, Pence deferred to the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“And, again, I — this was an unfortunate development,” Pence said. “And I think it’s important that our office simply cooperate fully in any investigation by either the Department of Justice, the Archives, or the Congress of the United States, and we’re determined to do that.”

Source: TEST FEED1