Mexico’s president says its ‘position is not to close borders’ in response to Trump’s claim

(WASHINGTON) — A top government watchdog raised concerns Tuesday over the handling of leak investigations during the first Trump administration that targeted members of Congress and the media despite finding no evidence that the inquiries were politically motivated, according to a newly released report.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz initiated the investigation after public reports that prosecutors, during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, had obtained warrants to access communications records for members of Congress, congressional staffers and reporters at CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post to identify sources of apparent leaks of classified information.

The investigations were not publicly disclosed until after Trump left office, in part because prosecutors had secured court orders that prevented lawmakers, their staff and media members from learning about the searches.

The report, which comes as Trump has threatened to take action against his political rivals and the media through the DOJ and FBI, reveals the scope of the leak investigations into members of Congress and their staff was much broader than previous reports suggested.

While Rep. Eric Swalwell and now-Sen. Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, previously revealed their records had been seized as part of the investigation, Horowitz’s report revealed prosecutors also searched the records of 43 others who were congressional staffers at the time the leaked information was published.

But Horowitz’s report noted that the partisan affiliation of the staffers was not imbalanced — 21 staffers whose records were searched were Democrats, 20 were Republicans, and two worked in nonpartisan positions. The inspector general investigation determined the basis for the staffers’ records being searched was entirely due to their known ability to access the materials that were found to be leaked to the press, while the investigations into Schiff, then a congressman, and Swalwell were initially bolstered by information given to the department by an unidentified committee staffer who suspected them of leaking — but provided no evidence to support the claims.

While his name is not mentioned directly in the report, Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, was among the 43 people who were congressional staffers at the time of the Trump-era leak probe whose records were searched, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed.

Patel has also said publicly on multiple occasions that he was subject to investigation by Trump’s DOJ and was also informed by Google that the DOJ had sought information on his personal accounts.

Horowitz’s report expressed concerns regarding the congressional leak investigations largely related to a lack of existing policies at the DOJ to provide senior-level oversight over such investigations that implicate the separation of powers. Records reviewed by Horowitz said the inquiries into members of Congress were conducted by career prosecutors almost entirely without senior-level supervision or notification and that there was no evidence they were pressured to carry out the inquiries despite Trump and other Republicans repeatedly singling out Schiff and Swalwell as possible leakers.

According to Horowitz, that the department was able to carry out its sweeping investigation of the members of Congress and their staff solely on the basis of them having had access to the leaked information “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch because it exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely for conducting Congress’s constitutionally authorized oversight duties.”

As for the Trump-era leak investigations of reporters from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Horowitz found that officials in the department violated several policies that existed at the time then-Attorney General William Barr authorized the investigations. Prosecutors failed to convene a News Media Review Committee that would normally be consulted in the process of investigations of leaks to members of the media and, in one of the investigations, failed to obtain approval from the director of national intelligence, according to the report.

Upon disclosure of the news media leak investigations in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland convened several meetings with newsroom leaders across Washington, D.C., and ultimately implemented new DOJ policy that bars prosecutors from securing search warrants for reporters’ records to obtain information about their sources.

The future of that policy, however, remains very much in question — given public comments by Trump and his top allies suggesting they fully intend to use the powers of the DOJ and the FBI to target political enemies and even possibly members of the media during his second term. While Horowitz’s report offered up several recommendations for internal policy fixes to the issued identified in the report, all of which were accepted by the Biden DOJ, it will be up to leadership in the incoming Trump DOJ to determine whether those recommendations will be implemented.

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(RALEIGH, N.C.) — As North Carolinians continue to recover from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene, early voting begins Thursday in the critical swing state.

State election officials expect a majority of North Carolina voters to cast their ballot in-person over the next two weeks, with early voting concluding on Nov. 2.

More than 400 early voting sites are in operation across the state’s 100 counties.

“To have almost all early voting sites open after such a devastating storm is an effort all North Carolinians should be proud of,” North Carolina State Board of Elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell said Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remain neck-and-neck in the critical swing state, with Trump holding a 0.4% lead over Harris in 538’s polling average for the state.

Both candidates have visited North Carolina since the remnants of Hurricane Helene brought deadly floods to the state, where 95 people died and 92 remain missing. Trump has repeatedly made false claims about the federal response to the disaster, claiming that the state would be deprived of emergency aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency because of undocumented immigrants.

“They got hit with a very bad hurricane, especially North Carolina and parts of Georgia. But North Carolina really got hit. I’ll tell you what, those people should never vote for a Democrat, because they held back aid,” Trump said during an interview last week.

While visiting a church in Greenville, North Carolina, on Sunday, Harris stopped short of naming Trump while criticizing the spread of disinformation about the relief efforts in the state.

“Right now, fellow Americans are experiencing some of the most difficult moments in their lives,” Harris said. “Yet instead of offering hope, there are those who are channeling people’s tragedies and sorrows into grievance and hatred, and one may ask why, and I think, sadly, frankly, the motives are quite transparent: to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heartbreak.”

With recovery efforts ongoing, election officials have expressed optimism about the state’s early voting plans. In the 25 western counties included in the federal disaster declaration, 76 early voting sites have been confirmed — four fewer than originally planned.

“We lost just a few despite the extensive damage, loss of power, water, internet and phone service, and the washing out of roads throughout the region,” said Brinson Bell.

In past presidential elections, the majority of the state’s voters have cast their ballot during early in-person voting, with 65% using that method in 2020 and 62% in 2016. Election officials expect a similar portion of voters to vote early in person, and have enacted a series of measures to improve voting access in the counties hardest hit by Helene.

Voters in the impacted counties can drop off their absentee ballot at any early voting site throughout the state, and the state plans to deploy “multipartisan assistance teams” that can assist with absentee voting at disaster shelters.

This will also be the first presidential election where voters will need to provide photo identification to vote, after lawsuits delayed implementation of the state’s controversial voter ID law following its passage in 2018. Voters can provide a drivers’ license, student ID, or passport to vote, though exceptions are permitted in the case of natural disasters.

The only county to offer fewer early voting sites is hard-hit Buncombe County, whose officials opted to reduce their number of sites from 14 to 10 because of the ongoing emergency response.

“Our office has been preparing for the 2024 election for years, but we certainly didn’t expect this,” said Buncombe County director of election services Corinne Duncan.

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(PHOENIX) — President Joe Biden was in Arizona on Friday to apologize to Native Americans for the federal government forcing Indian children into boarding schools where the White House said they were abused and deprived of their cultural identity.

Departing the White House Thursday, Biden said he was going to Arizona “to do something that should have been done a long time ago.”

He said he would make “a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years.”

The White House called his trip to Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix — his first to Indian Country as president — “historic.”

Officials said he will discuss the Biden-Harris administration’s record of delivering for tribal communities, including keeping his promise to visit the swing state, which is happening close to Election Day.

“The president also believes that to usher in the next era of the Federal-Tribal relationships we need to fully acknowledge the harms of the past,” the White House said. 

“For over 150 years, the federal government ran boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native children from their homes to boarding schools often far away. Native children at these schools endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and, as detailed in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report by the Department of the Interior (DOI), at least 973 children died in these schools,” the White House said.

“The federally-run Indian boarding school system was designed to assimilate Native Americans by destroying Native culture, language, and identity through harsh militaristic and assimilationist methods,” it said.

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