$6B Prisoner Swap Was ‘Just a Drop in the Bucket’ for Iran.​

The administration’s previous record already has translated to an extra $70 billion flowing to Iran’s ruling mullahs.

Matt is on the scene for us tonight so I can focus on football stories and editing podcast for tomorrow morning …

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Matt will have a full photo gallery and probably more clips afterward.

HAPPY HOLLOWEEN!!!

America's love of costumes is driving Halloween spending to new highs, Axios' Kelly Tyko writes from the National Retail Federation's holiday survey.

• Why it matters: Halloween participation is expected to break a record this year and drive up spending overall.

By the numbers: Total spending on costumes is expected to reach $4.1 billion — up 14% from last year and 28% from five years ago.

• 69% of people celebrating Halloween plan to buy a costume, the highest in the survey's history.

Zoom in: Consumers are expected to spend a record $108.24 each this year.

By JORDAIN CARNEY, SARAH FERRIS and OLIVIA BEAVERS
10/17/2023 07:18 PM EDT
Updated: 10/17/2023 08:59 PM EDT

Jim Jordan’s allies attempted to badger House Republicans into making him speaker. Those tactics backfired on Tuesday, and could soon doom his speakership push outright.

The Ohio Republican’s most vocal GOP defectors during Tuesday’s failed speaker vote said they were pressured to back Jordan by party bosses back home and national conservatives with big megaphones. Most of those skeptics viewed it as a coordinated push with a threatening theme: Vote for Jordan — or else.

The arm-twisting campaign, which in many cases included veiled threats of primary challenges, was meant to help rally support behind Jordan’s candidacy. Instead, it has put the Judiciary chair’s bid on life support and threatened to plunge House Republicans deeper into turmoil with no clear way out.

“Jim’s been nice, one-on-one, but his broader team has been playing hardball,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told POLITICO about Jordan’s network of supporters, adding that he’s been getting calls from party chairs back in Nebraska. He added that his wife even received multiple anonymous emails and texts saying: “your husband better support Jim Jordan.”

He’s not the only one who faced significant pressure. Other Republicans, too, told POLITICO they have received a barrage of calls from local conservative leaders. They blame the onslaught on his backers even though, by all accounts, he isn’t directly involved. Even some of Jordan’s supporters acknowledge that the aggressive moves have set him back ahead of a potential second speaker ballot.

“I think some of it did backfire … and I think it was to the detriment of Jim,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a Freedom Caucus member who voted for Jordan, told reporters.

Acknowledging that his speaker bid is in limbo, Jordan punted his plan to hold a second vote on Tuesday after Republicans privately warned he was at risk of seeing his opponents’ numbers grow. Instead, he is expected to huddle with allies and make calls in an attempt to get his bid back on track before a second vote as soon as Wednesday.

“We’re going to keep working, and we’re going to get the votes,” Jordan said on Tuesday night, saying that Republicans were having “great conversations.”

But one House Republican, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about private conversations, said that Jordan and his lieutenants are “calling people who voted for him trying to stop the bleeding.” And they warned that those calls are “pissing off” members rather than winning them over, noting Jordan has failed to strongly and publicly disavow the attacks against his detractors.

While Republicans acknowledge the pressure tactics aren’t coming from Jordan directly — and others do credit him for keeping his distance from the hardball maneuvering — some don’t believe he’s done enough to tell allies to knock it off.

Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) told POLITICO that the broader pressure campaign on social media had sparked discussions between the two Ohioans throughout the weekend. He added that he appreciated that “Jim didn’t necessarily support the strategy.”

And Jordan said in a tweet on Tuesday night that Republicans “must stop attacking each other and come together. There’s too much at stake.”

Some Republicans chalked up the frustration to a lack of understanding, on the part of both Jordan and high-profile conservatives off the Hill, about how less conservative colleagues operate. Some Jordan opponents said they hadn’t received a call from him directly about their concerns with his potential leadership, particularly on government funding.

That camp includes senior Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who said flatly: “I haven’t talked to him.” (Others like Bacon and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) have had multiple talks with Jordan.)

Jordan has made one-on-one calls and deputized allies throughout the conference to have conversations with holdouts or potential defectors from his side. But he also advised his colleagues to reach out to him if they had problems — which Republicans privately warned was a bad choice, depriving him of the chance to see the breadth of the resistance he would face.

When Jordan did take his nomination to the floor on Tuesday, some of his own supporters were shocked by the 20 no votes. One Republican aide compared it to a “doomsday” situation.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), who voted against Jordan on Tuesday despite outreach on Sunday, vowed after the first ballot on Tuesday that he wasn’t switching his position — ”especially now, in the light of these pressure tactics.”

”He supposedly said ‘stand down’ and they haven’t stood down. Leaders are followed,” Gimenez said, lamenting that ”some friends of mine [are] actually believing” conservative claims that he’s prepared to vote for a Democratic speaker.

Another Floridian who also opposed Jordan was more blunt: “The one thing that will never work with me — if you try to pressure me, if you try to threaten me, then I shut off,” GOP Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart said.

It’s not just the outside pressure tactics that are raising eyebrows within the conference. A meeting between Jordan and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Tuesday — which has sparked competing narratives about what happened — is renewing a public feud between the two men and their respective camps.

For governing-minded Republicans and centrists with a long memory, it was a throwback to the strong-arming that Jordan has publicly avoided in recent years as he’s climbed the ranks within the House GOP. For others, it amounted to a preview of the tactics that the ultraconservative Ohioan could employ if he claimed the top gavel — a readiness to unleash online wrath from the GOP base and its favored conservative pundits.

One of those Jordan-friendly commentators on the right, Benny Johnson, spent the day of the speaker’s race singling out Jordan’s possible opponents. In a move that is likely to further rankle already wary Republicans, Fox News host Sean Hannity’s staff posted a list of the 20 Republicans who didn’t vote for Jordan along with their office phone numbers.

“He’s lost support because of this,” said another House Republican who was granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations, pointing to a barrage of complaints from GOP lawmakers about Jordan allies’ tactics. “Constant smears — it’s just dishonesty at its core.”

Jordan and his allies spent the hours after the failed vote phoning his opponents. But privately, centrist Republicans predicted the more likely outcome as soon as Wednesday was empowering acting speaker Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) — not electing Jordan.

“I’ll go one more. But that is it,” said one centrist GOP member, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, threatening to oppose Jordan after the second ballot.

Following what’s likely to be a second ballot failure by Jordan, this member said, talks needed to pivot to giving McHenry more room to run the House. McHenry himself declined to answer if he thought Jordan should drop out: “That’s not a question I’m going to answer.”

Across the conference, Jordan’s near-collapse was met with shock by many who saw the Freedom Caucus co-founder as essentially the inevitable victor in the speaker race after two straight weeks of chaos. The Ohio Republican was the only one in McCarthy’s inner circle who’d earned the trust of those same hardliners who forced the Californian out — and Jordan pitched himself as able to control conservatives through the rest of the 118th Congress.

“He’s saying all the responsible things,” argued one House GOP aide who has been part of conversations between Jordan and some more skeptical members.

Jim Jordan's allies launched "a right-wing pressure campaign" to win over Republican skeptics. Violent threats soon followed — but they're not working.


Oct. 19, 2023, 7:00 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

Late last week, Jim Jordan received some good news and some bad news. The good news was that the House Republican conference formally nominated him to be the next House speaker. The bad news was that several dozen GOP members said they had no intention of supporting Jordan’s bid during a floor vote.

The far-right House Judiciary Committee chairman had a few days to work with allies, win over skeptics, and execute a strategy to succeed. True to form, Jordan relied on the kind of tactics that have helped define his political career.

The New York Times reported on Monday that the Ohio congressman and his supporters “have begun a right-wing pressure campaign against Republicans opposed to electing him speaker, working to unleash the rage of the party’s base voters against any lawmaker standing in the way of his election.” The report added that Jordan’s allies had shared contact information online for lawmakers who appeared skeptical of his candidacy.

This approach had a predictable outcome. NBC News reported:

A Republican congresswoman who initially supported Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker before she backed another GOP lawmaker said she received death threats and threatening phone calls after she cast her vote Wednesday. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, revealed the death threats in a statement just hours after Jordan failed to secure enough votes in the second round of balloting for House speaker.

Click to expand...

“Since my vote ... I have received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls. The proper authorities have been notified and my office is cooperating fully,” Miller-Meeks explained in a statement posted to social media.

The Iowa Republican added, “One thing I cannot stomach, or support is a bully.”

Miller-Meeks was not alone. Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told reporters this week that his wife had received multiple anonymous messages with warnings about Jordan’s bid for speaker. Overnight, Republican Rep. Nick LaLota released a copy of a violent threat he received.

Some of the other GOP members who’ve balked at Jordan’s candidacy have pointed to related incidents of harassment from the Ohioan’s supporters.

Stepping back, there are a few dimensions to this that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that the threats appear to be having the opposite of the intended effect: None of Jordan’s Republican opponents have wobbled in response to the intimidation tactics.

“Threatening us does not work,” Bacon told Newsmax. Similarly, Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida told CBS News, “What you’ve done now is you’ve cemented my position.”

The second is that Jordan appears to realize how significant this problem has become, and roughly 12 hours ago, the right-wing congressman condemned the threats. It was, however, a little late in the process for such a statement — and the damage was already done.

Finally, it’s worth appreciating the significance of tactics like these in the larger context of the evolving Republican Party. As a Washington Post report summarized overnight, “It’s perhaps one of the most important but least-understood facets of the MAGA movement’s dominance of the Republican Party: the role of threats and intimidation.”

In case this isn’t painfully obvious, if the threats have the intended effect, we’ll see more of them. If they fail, we’ll see less of them.

Update: Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia also said that he received death threats after voting for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, instead of Jordan, for speaker.

Video interviews with Josh Henson, Caleb Williams, Austin Jones, Jonah Monheim and Michael Jackson III.

Caleb had some interesting responses tonight, including this about the Notre Dame fan who came up to him on the field after the game.

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Trump Insists He ‘Has’ to Attend Trial—Then Admits He’ll Skip It for Golf​

"I HAVE TO BE HERE!!!"

Alex Nguyen​

Breaking News Intern
Updated Oct. 19, 2023 1:55PM EDT / Published Oct. 19, 2023 1:45PM EDT

Brendan McDermid/Reuters​

Donald Trump openly made a false statement outside the courtroom of his fraud trial on Wednesday and then contradicted himself just minutes later. The former president claimed that his New York trial was preventing him from campaigning for the 2024 election. “I have to be here instead of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, lots of other great places,” Trump complained. “They want me to be here.” But in actuality, Trump is voluntarily attending his trial.

To make matters worse, he then told reporters that he would skip court on Thursday because he had “a very big professional golf tournament at Doral”—meaning the only person keeping Trump off the campaign trail is the former president himself.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of overvaluing his assets in order to get better deals on loans and insurance. Judge Arthur Engoron, who has given Trump a gag order for attacking a clerk on social media, ruled late last month that Trump had committed fraud. The trial is now focused on allegations of falsifying business documents.

AXIOS

• Zachary Basu
• Juliegrace Brufke

Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-Ohio) endorsement of a plan to empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) until January has set off a furious reaction among House conservatives.

Why it matters: The McHenry resolution — which Jordan backed Thursday after it became clear he was bleeding GOP support ahead of a planned third ballot — will require support from Democrats in order to alleviate the speaker crisis that has paralyzed Congress for more than two weeks.

Behind the scenes: Reps. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), Lance Gooden (R-Texas) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) said in a closed-door GOP conference that Jordan should step aside, according to a source in the room.

• Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), meanwhile, advocated for empowering McHenry while Jordan stays on as the GOP's speaker designee, according to two sources.
• McCarthy screamed at Gaetz to sit down when he went to speak at the mics, a source said.

What they're saying: Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), an influential conservative running for Senate, called the escape hatch an "historic betrayal" and "the biggest 'F you' to Republican voters."

• "We don't deserve the majority," Banks told reporters, predicting that "more than half of Republicans" would oppose the resolution.
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called Jordan's decision "disappointing" and vowed to vote against the resolution.
• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Jordan supporter who led the charge to oust McCarthy, called the plan a "constitutional desecration" and vowed to "do everything possible to stop it."
• Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), chair of the largest bloc of House conservatives, also opposes the resolution: "We need to work every day until we get a speaker," he told reporters.

Zoom in: Empowering McHenry could allow the House to vote on emergency measures such as short-term government funding and aid to Ukraine and Israel.

• McHenry has taken a limited interpretation of his role as speaker pro tem thus far, and it's unclear what concessions Democrats might demand in exchange for empowering him until January.
• Jordan plans to remain the GOP's speaker nominee in the interim — a dynamic that could trigger Democratic backlash as well, given their view that the Trump loyalist would be a uniquely dangerous speaker.

Between the lines: It's highly unusual for Jordan, a founding co-chair of the House Freedom Caucus, to be in the crosshairs of the hardline conservatives who generally comprise his most vocal supporters.

• Jordan is now at risk of alienating his closest allies in addition to the establishment Republicans and Biden-district moderates who have opposed his speaker bid.
• Several GOP holdouts say they have received death threats over the past 72 hours, further entrenching their opposition and deepening the divisions within the Republican conference.

Ex-Trump attorney takes plea deal in Georgia election interference case​

• Erin Doherty

Sidney Powell speaks to the press about various lawsuits related to the 2020 election, inside the Republican National Committee headquarters on Nov. 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell took a plea deal on Thursday in Georgia's 2020 election case, one day before jury selection in her trial was set to begin.

Why it matters: She is the first of Trump's inner circle to enter a guilty plea and admit to crimes in connection with subverting 2020 election results.

Driving the news: Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges relating to efforts to interfere with the 2020 election and agreed to testify against co-defendants in the case.

• Fulton County prosecutors recommended Powell receive six years of probation and a $6,000 fine, in addition to paying $2,700 in restitution.
• Under the terms of the deal, she is also required to write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.

The big picture: Powell helped spread baseless conspiracy theories about ballot fraud in the days after the 2020 election.

• She was indicted earlier this year along with former President Trump and 17 others in the sprawling criminal racketeering case.
• Her initial charges included violating Georgia's racketeering law and conspiracy to commit election fraud as part of the scheme to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.
• She is the second defendant to accept a plea deal in the case. Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to charges against him last month.

What we're watching: The trial for attorney Kenneth Chesebro is set to begin on Friday with jury selection.

• Chesebro, an attorney, helped devise the plan to "submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors" to Congress, according to the indictment.

As the Senate eyes a new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Republicans are still taking aim at the 2015 Iran deal. They shouldn't: The policy worked.


Oct. 19, 2023, 8:25 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

As the Israel-Hamas war continues, the United States is at a diplomatic disadvantage: There is currently no Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The Biden administration recently nominated Jack Lew for the position, and as we recently discussed, under normal circumstances Lew’s nomination would be a no-brainer. His resume is extraordinarily impressive — Lew has served as the White House budget director, White House chief of staff, and Treasury secretary — and he’s already been through the Senate confirmation process more than once, receiving bipartisan backing.

It was against this backdrop that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a confirmation hearing for Lew roughly 24 hours ago. As Roll Call reported, the nominee faced considerable skepticism from the panel’s Republican minority.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday voiced reservations about the Biden administration’s nominee to be the new ambassador to Israel at one of the most perilous times in the country’s history. ... The last time he was up for a Senate confirmation vote in 2013, to become Treasury secretary, Lew was confirmed 71-26, but his next vote could be much narrower, given how deep GOP antipathy has grown in the ensuing years to any Democratic officials who work on Iran-related policy.

Click to expand...

Indeed, much of the committee hearing focused on Lew’s role in the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

For Republicans, the calculus is simple: They opposed the JCPOA; Lew helped make the policy possible; and GOP members are therefore balking at his pending nomination.

Meanwhile, away from Capitol Hill, Donald Trump is using his social media platform to publish strange messages like this one from earlier this week: “IRAN IS RAPIDLY BUILDING A LARGE SCALE ARSENAL OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. ... Three years ago, under ‘TRUMP,’ Iran was BROKE — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS, OR PROSPECTS.”

This comes on the heels of Trump bragging in June about having “terminated the Iran nuclear deal.”

What the former president and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have failed to appreciate is that the JCPOA policy was working — and Trump made matters worse when he abandoned it.

As regular readers know, I periodically like to bang my head against this particular wall, but I think the political world should pause periodically to come to terms with just how severe the consequences of Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran have been. Let’s revisit our earlier coverage and take stock.

It was Joe Cirincione, whose expertise in international nuclear diplomacy has few rivals, who wrote a piece for NBC News two years ago explaining that the international community has been tasked with trying to “undo the damage Donald Trump caused when he left an agreement that had effectively shrunk Iran’s [nuclear] program, froze it for a generation and put it under lock and camera.”

I continue to believe this is an underappreciated truth. The international agreement with Iran did exactly what it set out to do: The policy dramatically curtailed Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and established a rigorous system of monitoring and verification. Once the policy took effect, each of the parties agreed that the participants were holding up their end of the bargain, and Iran’s nuclear program was, at the time, on indefinite hold.

And then Trump took office and got to work abandoning the policy for reasons he was never able to explain.

The West lost verification access to Tehran’s program, and Iran almost immediately became more dangerous by starting up advanced centrifuges and ending its commitment to limit enrichment of uranium.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon told Congress that Iran could make enough fissile for one nuclear bomb in “about 12 days” — as opposed to the year it would’ve taken while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in effect.

As part of his testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in March, Colin Kahl, the then-under secretary of Defense, explained that Iran’s nuclear progress since Trump abandoned the international nuclear agreement has been “remarkable.”

The testimony came about a year after Robert Malley, the then-special envoy for Iran, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that after Trump’s decision, Iranian attacks on U.S. personnel in the region got worse, Iranian support for regional proxies got worse, and the pace of the Iranians’ nuclear research program got “much worse.”

The fact that Trump did this for no reason adds insult to injury. One of my favorite stories about the Iran deal came a few months into Trump’s term in the White House, when the then-president held a lengthy meeting with top members of his team: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, White House National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford. Each of the officials told Trump the same thing: It was in the United States’ interest to preserve the existing JCPOA policy.

The Republican expected his team to tell him how to get out of the international agreement, not how to stick with it. When his own foreign policy and national security advisers told him the policy was working, Trump “had a bit of a meltdown.”

Soon after, he abandoned the JCPOA anyway, not because it was failing, but because Trump was indifferent to its success.

Now, Republicans are holding a successful policy against Lew, and the former president is pretending he didn't make a terrible mistake. Those who care about factual details know better.

AP​

A surge in wealth has boosted most US households since 2020 and helped sustain economic growth​

FILE - Macy Norman, center, serves a table of guests at Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant, on Sept. 10, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn.


BY CHRISTOPHER RUGABER
Updated 12:29 PM CDT, October 18, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The net worth of the typical U.S. household grew at the fastest pace in more than three decades from 2020 through 2022, while relatively low interest rates at that time made it easier for households to pay their debts, according to a government report Wednesday.

Wealth for the median household — the midpoint between the richest and poorest households — jumped 37% during those three years, the Federal Reserve reported, to nearly $193,000. (The figures are adjusted for inflation.) The increase reflected primarily a jump in home values and higher stock prices and a rise in the proportion of Americans who own homes and stocks.

The jump in wealth occurred even as the brief but brutal pandemic recession cost 20 million Americans their jobs in 2020. Extensive government relief aid, totaling about $5 trillion, helped spur a rapid recovery that regained the lost jobs much faster than had been true after the 2008-2009 recession. The additional spending, though, is believed to have helped fuel the worst bout of inflation in four decades.

The broad-based wealth increase helps explain the surprising durability of the U.S. economy this year and the consumer spending that powers about two-thirds of it. For at least a year, economists have been warning of a forthcoming recession. Yet the economy has kept chugging along.

Economic growth in the just-completed July-September quarter might have topped a robust 4% annual rate, boosted by strong consumer spending for physical goods as well as for services, a broad category that includes airline travel, entertainment, restaurant meals and other experiences.

Government-provided stimulus payments in the aftermath of the pandemic also boosted households’ finances. The median value of checking and savings accounts and other cash holdings surged 30%, according to the Fed’s survey, which it conducts every three years. And with borrowing rates historically low, Americans dedicated just 13.4% of their incomes to paying off debt in 2022, the lowest such proportion since the Fed survey began in 1989.

Even so, substantial wealth inequality remained in place during the survey period, reflecting decades of widening disparities between the richest households and everyone else. Among the wealthiest 10% of households, median wealth reached nearly $3.8 million in 2022.

Still, more Americans bought individual stocks after the pandemic — a likely reflection, in some way, of the “meme stock” craze that was fueled partly by stimulus checks. The proportion of families that directly owned stocks — as opposed through mutual funds — jumped from 15% to 21%, a record increase, the survey found.

The median value of individual stock holdings was $15,000, the Fed report said. The average value of direct stock ownership was much higher — $404,000 — the survey found, reflecting the holdings of richer families.

Household net worth rose more, on a percentage basis, for Black and Hispanic households than for white ones, though measured in dollar terms the disparities remained wide. The median net worth of Black households jumped 60% but remained comparatively low at $45,000. For Hispanics, the figure surged 47% to nearly $62,000. Among white households, median household net worth rose 31% to $285,000.

The Fed’s survey found that even as wealth inequality declined, income disparities worsened. Median incomes grew 3% compared with the previous survey, which covered 2017 through 2019. But average incomes, which are swollen by the earnings of the wealthiest one-tenth of households, jumped 15%. The outsize gain among the richest households was driven by profits on stock and property holdings as well as higher wages.

Yet the income data was also more complicated than usual in this report, Fed officials noted. It did not, for example, capture the effects of stimulus checks. And the report focused on incomes in 2021, when many Americans were still grappling with job losses from the pandemic recession.

Other economic research has found that since the pandemic struck in 2020, wages have actually grown faster for lower-income workers than for wealthier ones. That reflects the fact that restaurants, hotels, warehouses and many other service businesses dramatically raised pay to try to attract desperately needed workers.

A March 2023 research paper by David Autor, an economist at MIT; Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and Anne McGrew, a Ph.D. student at UMass, found that rising wages for the lowest-paid one-tenth of workers from 2019 to 2022 managed to reverse one-quarter of the increase in income inequality since 1980.

Steele: Trump Declassification Decision Led to Russian Sources’ Disappearance​

‘EGREGIOUS’

Dan Ladden-Hall​

News Correspondent
Published Oct. 18, 2023 7:31AM EDT

Andrew Kelly/Reuters​

Former British spy Christopher Steele told a court in London that Donald Trump’s decision to declassify Steele’s evidence led to the disappearance of two Russian sources. In a witness statement made public Tuesday, the ex-MI6 officer said the former president’s choice to declassify testimony given to Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged links with Russia was “one of the most egregious breaches of intelligence rules and protocol by the U.S. government in recent times.” Steele, who once ran MI6’s Russia desk, added: “Two of the named Russian sources have not been seen or heard of since.”

Trump is attempting to bring a data protection lawsuit against Steele’s Orbis Business Intelligence over the “Steele Dossier,” which made unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia and his own sexual behavior. The 2024 Republican frontrunner said in his own witness statement that he wants to prove the accusations were false.

Judge Tries to Stop Trump From Hiding His Money​

Justice Arthur F. Engoron wants to make sure Trump doesn't shift around his assets to hide them from a judgment against the Trump Organization.

​

Jose Pagliery​

Political Investigations Reporter
Updated Oct. 05, 2023 1:11PM EDT / Published Oct. 05, 2023 10:19AM EDT



The judge who doomed Donald Trump’s family business last week took an aggressive and preemptive step on Wednesday to ensure the former president can't secretly shift assets to salvage his real estate empire.

In an order that was posted on the fourth day of the former president’s bank fraud trial, Justice Arthur F. Engoron commanded that the Trumps identify any corporations they have—and come clean about any plans to move around money in an attempt to hide or keep their wealth.

It's a powerful maneuver meant to counter the sort of underhanded moves Trump has displayed so far during the three-year investigation.

Trump, sons Don Jr. and Eric, and two other top executives were ordered to tell the court about “any other entity [that] is controlled or beneficially owned” by them, “any creation of a new entity to hold or acquire the assets,” and “any anticipated transfer of assets.”

The judge also empowered a court-appointed monitor currently babysitting the Trump Organization, a former federal judge named Barbara Jones, to manage this phase until someone can be appointed to disintegrate Trump’s companies.

A civil case entering its second week in New York threatens to put on display unprecedented details about how Donald Trump’s business operated.

By Jonathan O'Connell
and
Shayna Jacobs
Updated October 10, 2023 at 10:09 a.m. EDT|Published October 10, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT



When Donald Trump needed to value his Trump Tower apartment for homeowner’s insurance in 2010, he personally showed an appraiser around the unit for 15 minutes but ushered him out before the expert could take any measurements. Trump’s company then declared that the 11,000-square-foot unit measured 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size.

A few years later, expert appraisers told Trump his 70-story office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, steps from the New York Stock Exchange, was worth $260 million. But Trump soon claimed in financial documents that it was worth nearly $530 million, more than doubling its value.

In 2018, while he was president, Trump’s company cited a seasoned New York valuation expert to claim in its financial statements that Niketown, a luxury retail store adjoining Manhattan’s Trump Tower that has since closed, was worth $445 million. The expert later told investigators he’d provided no such input and Trump’s process to arrive at the figure didn’t “make any sense.”

Those details are drawn from thousands of pages of court documents prepared by New York Attorney General Letitia James as evidence in the fraud case she has filed against Trump. The documents show how accounting, banking and real estate experts repeatedly informed Trump how much his properties and businesses were really worth. But over and over again, the documents reveal that Trump, his adult sons and top executives allegedly ignored or sidelined those experts, exchanging their figures for numbers from another source: Trump’s own intuition.

Over more than four decades as a developer, Trump — now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has routinely exaggerated how much he and his assets are worth, while minimizing or omitting liabilities and debts. These self-aggrandizing boasts were central to the reputation he cultivated as a real estate mogul.
The civil trial against Trump’s business that on Tuesday enters its second week threatens to reveal the internal workings of Trump’s business in never-before-revealed detail. James, an elected Democrat, and her team arrived at trial armed after having reviewed millions of pages of documents about him and his company, a trove of legal ammunition that will be detailed in court in coming weeks.

Trump is separately facing four upcoming criminal trials: federal charges in D.C. and state charges in Georgia for allegedly trying to block the 2020 election results, federal charges in Florida for allegedly possessing classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to get them back; and state charges in New York for allegedly falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment in 2016. He has denied all wrongdoing and called the James case “a pure witch hunt with the purpose of interfering with the elections of the United States of America.”

BY LOLITA C. BALDOR
Updated 12:45 PM CDT, October 17, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has quietly delivered a small number of long-range ballistic missiles that Ukraine said it urgently needed and that President Joe Biden promised last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Tuesday, saying they were used on the battlefield against Russia and “executed very accurately.”

”Today I express special gratitude to the United States,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address, adding that the missiles “have proven themselves.”

The U.S. has refused to discuss the delivery publicly, but officials familiar with the move also confirmed it earlier in the day. Fewer than a dozen of the missiles got into Ukraine within the last few days, said officials. Their arrival at the warfront gives Ukraine a critical ability to strike Russian targets that are farther away, allowing Ukrainian forces to stay safely out of range. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter before an official announcement and spoke Tuesday on the condition of anonymity.

The delivery of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, was shrouded in secrecy, with the expectation that the first public acknowledgment would come when the missiles were used on the battlefield. That intense secrecy is a marked change from previous U.S. weapons sent by the Biden administration. In nearly all other cases, the U.S. has publicly announced its decision prior to the weapons and equipment being shipped overseas.


Because of lingering U.S. concerns about escalating tensions with Russia, the ATACMS version that went to Ukraine will have a shorter range than the maximum distance the missiles can have. While some versions of the missiles can go as far as about 180 miles (about 300 kilometers), the ones sent to Ukraine have a shorter range and carry cluster munitions, which, when fired, open in the air, releasing hundreds of bomblets rather than a single warhead. According to a U.S. official, the ones delivered to Ukraine have a maximum range of a bit more than 100 miles (roughly 160 kilometers).

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces claimed that a nighttime attack on targets in eastern and southern Ukraine destroyed nine Russian helicopters and other military equipment and personnel at two airfields in Russia-occupied regions.

The ATACMS would be key in Ukraine’s ability to hit the airfield in Berdyansk since it is just within striking distance of the shorter-range version of the missile, and the cluster munitions would be effective in hitting multiple targets. The closest Ukrainian troop positions on the western bank of the Dnieper River are just about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Berdyansk.

Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian leaders had been pressing the U.S. to provide the missiles, which have a longer range than any others provided by the U.S. But the Biden administration balked for months, worried that Kyiv could use the weapons to hit deep into Russian territory, enraging Moscow and escalating the conflict.

Biden finally greenlighted the delivery last month and told Zelenskyy during a meeting at the White House that the U.S. would finally give Ukraine the ATACMS, according to officials at the time. The U.S., however, for weeks refused to provide any details on timing or how many missiles would be delivered, although officials suggested that the plan was to send a small number.

Ukrainian forces want to use the missiles to help fuel their counteroffensive as it heads into the muddy and colder winter months, enabling troops to strike behind Russian lines while staying out of firing range.

The small number of missiles underscores the U.S. reluctance to send the powerful weapons. Sending the cluster munition version will mark the second time the Democratic administration has moved to send that type of weapon.

In July, the U.S. agreed to send thousands of cluster bombs to Ukraine. When used, the bomblets are dispersed over a large area and are intended to wreak destruction on multiple targets at once. The weapons are banned by many NATO allies because they have a track record for causing many civilian casualties. Unexploded rounds, which often litter battlefields and populated civilian areas, can cause unintended deaths.

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