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08 July 21
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ook around the world right now. Just last week, temperatures in Portland, Oregon reached a record-breaking 116 degrees. Much of the West Coast is experiencing severe drought that could trigger another unprecedented wildfire season. In the Midwest, record rainfall overwhelmed Detroit’s ability to handle the storm which resulted in cars being abandoned on flooded highways. In New York City an emergency alert was sent to all cell phones asking people to conserve energy or risk blackouts. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic Ocean, we have the earliest fifth-named storm ever in Tropical Storm Elsa.
There is no longer any doubt: failure to act on climate change and cut carbon emissions will mean more heatwaves, more drought, more rising sea levels, more flooding, more extreme weather disturbances, more failing electrical grids, more blackouts, more mass migrations, more disease, more acidification of the oceans and more human suffering.
So you will forgive me for not having a lot of patience when some of my colleagues in the Senate tell me that we can’t afford to act on climate change. Really? The question that we must be asking, as loudly as possible, is how can we afford not to act?
That is one of the reasons I say there will be no bipartisan bill on infrastructure unless there is also major legislation that addresses the existential threat to our planet of climate change. The bad news is that addressing the climate crisis cannot simply be done with a few tweaks around the edges. The good news is that we can meet the challenges of this moment, create millions of good-paying jobs in the process and help lead the world in a new energy direction.
Blackwater founder Erik Prince. (photo: Melissa Golden/Redux)
n the second night of his visit to Kyiv, Erik Prince had a dinner date on his agenda. A few of his Ukrainian associates had arranged to meet the American billionaire at the Vodka Grill that evening, Feb. 23, 2020. The choice of venue seemed unusual. The Vodka Grill, a since-defunct nightclub next to a KFC franchise in a rough part of town, rarely saw patrons as powerful as Prince.
As the party got seated inside a private karaoke room on the second floor, Igor Novikov, who was then a top adviser to Ukraine’s President, remembers feeling a little nervous. He had done some reading about Blackwater, the private military company Prince had founded in 1997, and he knew about the massacre its troops had perpetrated during the U.S. war in Iraq. Coming face to face that night with the world’s most prominent soldier of fortune, Novikov remembers thinking: “What does this guy want from us?”
It soon became clear that Prince wanted a lot from Ukraine. According to interviews with close associates and confidential documents detailing his ambitions, Prince hoped to hire Ukraine’s combat veterans into a private military company. Prince also wanted a big piece of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, including factories that make engines for fighter jets and helicopters. His full plan, dated June 2020 and obtained exclusively by TIME this spring, includes a “roadmap” for the creation of a “vertically integrated aviation defense consortium” that could bring $10 billion in revenues and investment.
The audacity of the proposal fit with Prince’s record as a businessman. For nearly a quarter century, the former Navy SEAL has been a pioneer in the private military industry, raising armies in the Middle East and Africa, training commandos at his base in North Carolina and deploying security forces around the world for the State Department and the CIA. Under the Trump Administration, Prince’s family—a powerful clan of right-wing Republican donors from Michigan—saw their influence rise. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Secretary of Education, while Prince himself leveraged contacts in the White House to chase major deals around the world.
The ones he pursued in Ukraine were among the most ambitious of his long career. But with Trump out of office, the Ukrainian government has slowed the process and invited more competition for the assets Prince coveted. “Had it been another four years of Trump, Erik would probably be closing the deal,” says Novikov, one of its lead Ukrainian negotiators.
This account of Prince’s ambitions in Ukraine is based on interviews with seven sources, including current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials as well as people who worked directly with Prince to try to realize his aspirations in Ukraine. Those business plans, which have not been previously reported, were confirmed by four of the sources on both sides of the negotiations, all of whom recalled meeting in person with Prince last year to discuss them. The documents describe a series of ventures that would give Prince a pivotal role in Ukraine’s military industry and its ongoing conflict with Russia, which has taken more than 14,000 lives since it began seven years ago.
The documents detail several previously unreported ventures that Prince and his partners wanted the Ukrainian government to approve. One proposal would create a new private military company that would draw personnel from among the veterans of the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. Another deal would build a new munitions factory in Ukraine, while a third would consolidate Ukraine’s leading aviation and aerospace firms into a consortium that could compete with “the likes of Boeing and Airbus.”
At least one of Prince’s offers to Ukraine appeared to be in line with U.S. geopolitical interests. As the Wall Street Journal first reported in Nov. 2019, Prince has been competing against a Chinese firm to buy a Ukrainian factory called Motor Sich, which produces advanced aircraft engines. China sought those engines to develop its air force. The U.S., concerned about the rapid growth of the Chinese military, has long urged Ukraine not to complete the sale. Prince emerged as the American alternative, offering to save the factory from China’s clutches.
But the Ukrainians had serious concerns about working with Prince, according to three people involved in the negotiations. Prince’s choice of allies in Kyiv—two men with ties to Russia—raised particular alarm. His Ukrainian business partner is Andriy Artemenko, who made headlines in 2017 by offering the Trump Administration a “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine that envisioned ways for the U.S. to lift sanctions against Russia. Another Prince ally in Kyiv was Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator whom the U.S. has accused of being an “active Russian agent.” Both Artemenko and Derkach worked to advance Prince’s business ventures in Ukraine last year.
“We had to wonder: Is this the best sort of partnership we can get from the Americans? This group of shady characters working for a close ally of Trump?” says Novikov, the former aide to Ukraine’s president. “It felt like the worst America had to offer.” Those concerns only heightened when, at a pivotal moment in negotiations, one of Prince’s associates proferred in writing a “participation offer” that Novikov considered an attempted bribe.
As the deals ran into resistance from the government in Ukraine, Prince’s allies faced bigger problems in New York City, where both Artemenko and Derkach are now under criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment on the investigation, which is reportedly focused on whether the two men were involved in a suspected Russian plot to sway the 2020 presidential election.
Prince does not appear to be a focus of that investigation. But Artemenko tells TIME that federal investigators have questioned him about his relationship with Prince. In interviews with TIME in April and May, both Derkach and Artemenko denied wrongdoing and described the investigation as part of a political witch hunt against Trump’s allies. Prince did not respond to numerous requests for comment, including a detailed list of questions about the documents outlining his proposals for Ukraine.
Among the guests at the Vodka Grill was Prince’s business partner, Artemenko, a tall, clean-shaven lobbyist in his early 50s. Artemenko says he has worked with Prince in the air-cargo industry for at least six years, transporting everything from weapons to vaccines around the world. Born and raised in Kyiv, he now resides mostly in the Washington area. In text messages obtained by TIME, he refers to Prince as “the boss.”
Their relationship began not long after Prince emerged from the Blackwater scandal of 2007. That fall, a group of Prince’s soldiers-for-hire shot up a crowded square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians and wounding 20 others. Several of the gunmen were sentenced to decades in U.S. prisons for their roles in the massacre. (Trump pardoned four of them in his final weeks in office.) Prince’s testimony in Congress about the incident drove a national debate about the privatization of war, turning him, at the age of 38, into the defiant face of the modern-day mercenary.
In the wake of those killings, Blackwater lost a $1 billion contract to guard U.S. diplomats and officials in Iraq. But the company rebranded and continued to thrive. The Obama Administration granted major contracts to Prince’s firm to provide security in conflict zones. Prince’s interests expanded well beyond the military sector. He traded oil and minerals in Africa. He assembled a private army for his friend, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. He prepared a force in Somalia to combat pirates in the Gulf of Aden. He helped train a hit squad for the CIA. When Trump took office, Prince called on the new Administration to privatize the war effort in Afghanistan, publicly pitching a plan that would let contractors handle many of the U.S. military’s functions.
Over the years, one of Prince’s most reliable lines of business has been wartime logistics: moving people and supplies into areas of conflict. Starting in 2006, the aviation arm of Blackwater air-dropped food and weapons for U.S. troops on the front lines in Afghanistan. “If you need to transport stuff in and out of a war zone, you’re not going to call UPS,” says a person familiar with Prince’s business operations. “His company does that.”
After working as a cargo broker in the 2000s, Artemenko had founded his own transport company in 2010, AirTrans LLC, which frequently flew cargo for Prince’s operation, he tells TIME. In 2015, Artemenko says, AirTrans officially became a part of Prince’s company, Frontier Resource Group.
Around that time, Artemenko says, the partners began discussing a venture in Ukraine’s weapons industry. Russia and Ukraine had been at war since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, leading the one-time allies to stop selling weapons to each other. The hardware Russia needed most were engines for its helicopters and fighter jets, many of which are still produced at Soviet-era plants in eastern Ukraine.
Apart from the potential to earn billions of dollars in profit, Artemenko says he saw these factories as a way to broker an end to the war in Ukraine. “The Russians need the full complex of aviation technology, starting with the engines,” he says. “This is a reason to force them to the negotiating table and make a peace deal. We can say: ‘OK, you need these spare parts, engines and everything else from Ukraine? Fine, but we want a deal for [eastern Ukraine], and then we want an agreement on Crimea.'”
The idea did not get much traction. Ukrainian officials recoiled at the notion of lifting their arms embargo against Russia in the middle of a war. Another one of Artemenko’s peace plans gained notoriety in 2017, when a draft of it reportedly landed on the desk of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. That plan, like the first, went nowhere.
Around the same time, Prince held a meeting on an island in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian official. The Washington Post reported their aim was to create a “back channel” from the Kremlin to the White House, an allegation both men denied. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report published in April 2019 devoted a few pages to the Seychelles meeting. According to the report, Prince told his Russian interlocutor that he was “looking forward to a new era of cooperation and conflict resolution.”
By the time Prince set his sights on the Ukrainian military industry, the nation’s conflict with Russia had settled into a kind of stalemate, with sporadic shelling and sniper fire along the front lines. Peace talks had stalled, and Ukraine’s government was increasingly desperate for a way out of the impasse.
The Trump Administration did little to help. Trump’s priority in Ukraine was not to make peace; it was to advance his own political fortunes. Amid his campaign for re-election, Trump asked Ukraine to investigate his opponent, Joe Biden, and held up military aid to Ukraine as a means of pressure. The campaign of coercion caused a breakdown in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.
Some advisers to President Volodymyr Zelensky saw Prince as a way to repair the damage. They wanted him to help arrange a meeting with someone in Trump’s inner circle, ideally Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, says Novikov, who was Ukraine’s liaison to the Americans at the time.
Prince was unwilling to make that connection, says a person familiar with his thinking on the matter. “Erik made it very clear that he didn’t have the keys to Trump’s White House, and that he didn’t want to play that game.”
As an alternative, Prince’s team offered to line up an American lobbyist for Ukraine named Joseph Schmitz. A former Blackwater executive, Schmitz had been a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and had contacts in the Administration. He was ready to represent Ukraine for a fee of $500,000 plus expenses, according to a proposed lobbying agreement obtained by TIME. (Schmitz did not respond to emails seeking comment.) Ukrainian officials received that agreement early last year from Artemenko’s lobbying firm but did not sign it.
Prince had sought some local assistance of his own. Among the people he met with in Kyiv was Derkach, the Ukrainian member of parliament whom the U.S. later accused of being a Russian agent.
Derkach, who confirmed to TIME that the meeting took place, was well positioned to help Prince understand the terrain. He had worked in Ukraine’s aviation sector after graduating from an elite university for spies in Moscow, the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB. In the early 2010s, when Derkach served as an adviser to Ukraine’s prime minister, one of his tasks had been to develop the aviation and machine-building sectors of the nation’s economy.
Derkach says he was intrigued by Prince’s vision for these industries. One major advantage Prince brought to the table was his list of contacts in the developing world. He had worked for many years in the Middle East and Africa, dealing with warlords and autocrats who could become new clients for Ukrainian weapons and aircraft. The main flaw in the plan, Derkach says, was the cooperation it required from Ukraine’s local factory bosses and oligarchs, who control much of the military-industrial complex.
“That’s not so much an issue with Erik,” he says. “It’s a problem of corruption in Ukraine, where you have the factory directors who do not want to sign documents and give up power.” Derkach recalled telling Prince: “‘You’ve worked everywhere. But Ukraine is special. It’s very hard to get any traction here. You have to gather a serious team of people who will move the process along.'”
Derkach says he did not join this team, and declines to say whether he was ever paid for the advice he gave Prince. But after their meeting in Kyiv, Derkach began urging Ukrainian authorities to support the deal Prince wanted. In March 2020, he invited Novikov, the presidential adviser, to a meeting to discuss the plans. “Derkach said, ‘We already have everyone on board, and still the deal is stalling,'” Novikov recalls. Derkach wanted to know who in the President’s administration was standing in Prince’s way. “That was the only thing he wanted to discuss with me,” Novikov says.
In the early summer of 2020, Ukraine moved to cement its partnership with Prince, whose intentions had become far more detailed and ambitious. In one message to Ukrainian officials, Artemenko provided Prince’s passport information along with a summary of their agenda for an upcoming trip. In a follow-up message, he noted Prince would be in Kyiv for several days during the week of June 15, 2020, and requested meetings with senior officials in the defense and intelligence agencies, adding cryptically: “There will be no official calls to government officials, as this visit is strictly private and apolitical.”
Arriving in Kyiv on a chartered flight from Minsk, Prince held a meeting that week with Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, according to messages obtained by TIME between the people who arranged Prince’s travels. (Yermak confirmed to TIME that the meeting took place but declined to discuss it in detail.)
Things appeared to move quickly from there. The President’s office put Prince in touch with a law firm in Kyiv that frequently works for the Ukrainian government. The firm prepared a legal framework for completing the deal Prince wanted. The work was complex, especially when it came to acquiring Motor Sich, says the person familiar with Prince’s thinking.
The factory had been privatized in the 1990s, during Ukraine’s chaotic transition to capitalism. In 2016 and 2017, Chinese investors bought up shares in the factory from its private owners, paying an estimated $700 million for control of Motor Sich. They were not expected to give it up without a fight in the courts. So the lawyers had to find legal grounds for Ukraine to take control of the asset before re-selling it to a new investor. Their plan relied on a regulatory snag: Ukraine’s anti-trust agency had not granted approval to the Chinese investment. “It’s this weird situation where the Chinese bought the asset, never received approval for it, and it’s basically standing still,” says the person familiar with Prince’s thinking. That could allow the Ukrainian government to say: “‘We’re going to take control of the asset because it’s basically not being properly managed,’” the person says. “In a nutshell, that’s the argument.”
In the weeks after Prince’s visit, his associates prepared two versions of a detailed business plan and sent them to officials in Zelensky’s office. The first, dated June 23, 2020, stated that the acquisition of Motor Sich would require $50 million to purchase a minority stake, and another $950 million to buy 76% of the factory. The money was meant to come from Windward Capital, an investment vehicle that Prince has reportedly used in the past.
Another business plan for Ukraine’s military industry, dated June 29, 2020, provided new details and incentives for the government to participate. It described a planned takeover of Antonov, the state-owned airplane manufacturer, by replacing its CEO with an executive from Artemenko’s company. The proposal also called for an “ultimatum” to be issued to the Chinese investors in Motor Sich, who would be forced to either accept an “immediate sale” or face the “loss of value,” the plan stated. “If Chinese remain uncooperative,” the Ukrainian government should take over the factory and transfer control to new investors, the document says.
Another element of the business plan described a partnership between Ukraine’s main intelligence service and Lancaster 6, a private military company that has previously been involved with Prince’s deals in Africa and the Middle East. This partnership, which required approval from Ukraine’s parliament, would build a “state-of-the-art training center” and a “specialized services enterprise”—industry jargon for a private military operation—that would be involved in Ukraine’s “strategic planning, logistics, risk management, security forces training and consulting concerning security risks,” according to the plan. (The head of Lancaster 6, a longtime Prince associate named Christiaan Durrant, told TIME he was not aware of any such documents and asked for a copy; after being sent one, he stopped responding.)
Three of the projects described in the documents also include a “participation offer,” or a cut of the yearly profits. The participation offers listed in the document would be worth a total of around $35 million per year if the plan were to be executed. (The documents do not make clear who would get this money or why.) Novikov, who negotiated with Prince and studied the plan closely while serving as a presidential adviser, says he understood this as a proposal for kickbacks to government officials. “It looked like a bribe,” he says.
Paul Pelletier, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, agreed that the reference to “participation offers” looks suspicious. It would be likely to cause “alarm bells,” he says, at the Justice Department, where Pelletier served for years as a senior official overseeing foreign bribery cases. “On its face, the terms suggest some sort of kickback payments to government contracting officials—a definite no-no,” says Pelletier, who reviewed the document at TIME’s request. “No money or offers of money can flow to government officials, period.”
Artemenko insists that he and Prince never acted corruptly in their dealings, in Ukraine or elsewhere. “We never paid a bribe at the table,” he tells TIME. “We don’t want to do anything wrong. Only the transparent and legal way.” (Asked directly about the purpose of the participation offers, Artemenko’s lawyer, Anthony Capozzolo, declined to comment.)
Prince’s lawyer, Matthew Schwartz, did not respond to a detailed list of questions from TIME, including specific questions about the participation offers and the allegation that they referred to kickbacks.
As Trump’s chances in the presidential race began to look less certain in the fall of 2020, so did the prospects for Prince and his contacts in Ukraine.
In September, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Derkach, accusing him of being an “active Russian agent” involved in a plot to help Trump win a second term. About a month later, four FBI agents showed up at Artemenko’s home in the Washington area, Artemenko recalls. They wanted to know about his work in Ukraine, and his relationships with Prince, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others. “They asked me about my relationship with Erik, how we met, where we met,” Artemenko says. “Normal questions.”
Meanwhile, the dilemma with Motor Sich has only gotten more complex. The Chinese investors in the factory filed a $3.5 billion claim in December 2020 at an international court of arbitration, claiming that Ukraine’s decision to block the sale was illegal. The Ukrainian government responded by imposing sanctions against the Chinese investors, one of whom called the move “an abuse of state power and the suppression of normal business activity.”
Under the Biden Administration, the U.S. does not seem likely to throw its weight behind Prince’s projects in Ukraine. “The U.S. has not been very pro-Erik,” says the person familiar with his thinking. In a statement to TIME, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. supports Ukraine’s efforts to block the sale of Motor Sich to the Chinese firm, but avoided taking a position on who should own the factory or saying anything about Prince.
That leaves the status of Prince’s plans for Ukraine unclear. Yermak, the presidential chief of staff, says the government intends to nationalize Motor Sich and keep it under state control. Private investors, including Prince and his partners, would be welcome to bid on a stake in the factory through a competitive tender, Yermak told TIME in an interview in April. “We are interested in working with all our partners,” he says. “We are interested in there being fairness.”
At that time, Prince’s business partner said the two were still interested in bidding for the factory. “We are ready to show the money and explain the plan,” Artemenko says.
Saudi Arabia's Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman arrives at a meeting at the Pentagon in Washington, U.S., August 29, 2019. (photo: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters)
he Biden administration welcomed to Washington this week a Saudi prince who, as ambassador to the United States, played a key role in events leading to the murder of a U.S.-resident journalist, according to U.S. intelligence. If Biden’s team is really trying to pressure Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to improve on human rights, deepening ties with his brother Khalid is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
Several top Biden officials met Tuesday and Wednesday with Prince Khalid bin Salman, the 33-year-old younger brother of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader (also known as “MBS”). Those Khalid met included Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, State Department Counselor Derek Chollet and many others. The Biden team didn’t advertise Khalid’s visit to Washington, but Khalid made sure to get photos at each stop and tweet them out.
Khalid’s official title is deputy defense minister but it’s well understood he is a direct representative of MBS. According to reports and leaked documents published by the Institute for Gulf Affairs, the Biden administration has been thwarting MBS’s personal efforts to come to Washington and meet with President Biden, who promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” during his campaign. Since taking office, Biden officials have softened their tone, describing their approach to Saudi Arabia as a “recalibration … not a rupture” of the alliance.
Yet too many questions remain unanswered about the crime that was instrumental in causing that rupture in the first place: the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Some of those questions apply with particular urgency to the role Khalid, who served as the Saudi ambassador to the United States from 2017 to 2019 during the incident. As reported by The Post, the CIA concluded that Khalid personally lured Khashoggi to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, telling him in a phone call to go there and that he would be safe (though the report also noted that Khalid may not have known that Khashoggi would be killed there). Khalid denies the allegations.
“Candidate Biden promised to change this relationship in light of the Saudi government’s wanton disregard for international law.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told me. “While I’m gratified his administration banned several individuals involved in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, far more needs to be done to show the Saudi regime that there will be consequences for its gross human rights violations.”
A declassified summary of U.S. intelligence released by the Biden administration in February assessed that Khalid’s big brother MBS personally approved a Saudi intelligence operation in which a 15-member Saudi team traveled to Istanbul, murdered Khashoggi inside the consulate, and dismembered him with a bone saw. Yahoo News reported that the team stopped in Cairo to pick up the drugs used to subdue him.
Khalid played a disturbing role in helping his government to cover up the murder. In the days after Khashoggi disappeared, then-Ambassador Khalid assured the U.S. government, Congress and the media that the kingdom had no idea what had happened to Khashoggi, and dismissed any claims to the contrary as “absolutely false and baseless.” Khalid insisted the Saudi government was earnestly searching for his “friend” Jamal.
Khalid quietly departed Washington in 2019 under a cloud of suspicion, prompting a break in trust between the kingdom and most officials and media here. Why does the Biden administration believe he can be a trusted partner now? The National Security Council and State Department didn’t offer any answer when I asked them that question.
A senior State Department official told me, “We have made crystal clear, and will continue to do so, that the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi remains unacceptable.” The NSC put out a statement saying Sullivan and Khalid “discussed the importance of coordinating efforts to ensure a strong global economic recovery, to advance the climate agenda, and to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East,” and that Sullivan “emphasized the importance of progress in advancing human rights in the Kingdom.”
Six months into the administration, it seems fair to ask if Biden’s approach is working. If anything, MBS has intensified his crackdown on activists and dissidents of all kinds. The Saudi government continues to pursue its critics abroad, even by using their children as political hostages. On Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders added MBS to their latest list of “press freedom predators,” calling the kingdom “one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists” and accusing it of using methods including "spyware, threats, abduction, torture, sexual abuse of detainees [and] solitary confinement.”
“The gruesome murder of Washington Post editorialist Jamal Khashoggi, who was hacked to pieces inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, dealt a terminal blow to any hope of being able to criticise, and exposed the extent of the brutality of the regime’s persecution of outspoken journalists, even beyond its borders,” Reporters Without Borders wrote in their report.
Simon Henderson, Saudi analyst at the Washington Institute, told me the Biden administration is trying to walk a fine line by keeping MBS at arm’s length but resuming regular business with Khalid, his closest confidant.
“The fact that he is here reflects the simply overwhelming fact that there is a lot of business to be done between Saudi Arabia and the United States on what is happening in the Middle East,” he said. “But the legacy of Jamal Khashoggi remains a dark cloud from under which it’s very difficult to see how MBS is going to exit.”
At the very least, the Biden administration should have conditioned the visit on some sign that MBS and his brother are getting the message that the kingdom’s unrestrained brutality and flagrant disregard for international laws and norms must end. That would bring Biden a step closer to fulfilling his promise to secure justice for Jamal Khashoggi and his family.
President Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
U.S. appeals court on Wednesday suspended Rudy Giuliani, a former attorney for ex-President Donald Trump, from practicing law in Washington, D.C.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals issued the order citing the suspension of Giuliani’s New York law license two weeks ago after a court found he had lied in arguing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
The New York Appellate Division, citing the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, said Giuliani’s eagerness to trumpet false claims threatened the public interest and could erode public confidence in the election process.
After the June 24 ruling, Giuliani said he would go to court to fight the New York suspension.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. (photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)
rizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs on Wednesday asked Attorney General Mark Brnovich to open a criminal investigation into possible efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to influence Maricopa County supervisors as the ballots were still being tallied.
Hobbs said some of the communications “involve clear efforts to induce supervisors to refuse to comply with their duties,” which could violate Arizona law. She cited The Arizona Republic’s reporting last week on text messages and voicemails from the White House, Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward to the Republican members of the Board of Supervisors.
“The reporting also includes firsthand statements from the victims of this potential crime,” Hobbs said. She cited at least one potential felony charge under Arizona law.
Brnovich did not immediately comment on Hobbs’ request, which was emailed directly to the attorney general shortly after 1 p.m.
Late Wednesday, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., called on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to examine the possibility of "an extremely serious crime" in what Gallago called a "pressure campaign" exerted by the Trump campaign and party officials.
Their efforts "reflect a disturbing trend following the 2020 election of Trump advisors and allies, and even former President Trump himself, committing potential crimes to overturn the election," Gallego wrote.
The U.S. Justice Department did not have an immediate response earlier Wednesday when asked whether it might look into the matter.
The request for a legal review is freighted with political overtones.
Hobbs, a Democrat, is running for governor next year. She created a national profile for defending Arizona’s election administration efforts when November presidential election results were among the closest in the country. Arizona was spotlighted by Trump and his allies as they promoted the false narrative of a stolen election.
Brnovich, a Republican, is running for the U.S. Senate next year. Trump has criticized Brnovich for not supporting the state Senate’s ongoing ballot review. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law Brnovich defended that makes voting more difficult, something he has cast as part of his commitment to preserving election integrity.
Now, he has been asked to investigate Trump and his GOP allies on that very issue.
“As you said just last week, ‘Fair elections are the cornerstone of our republic, and they start with rational laws that protect both the right to vote and the accuracy of the results,’” Hobbs wrote in her letter to Brnovich seeking an investigation. “Arizona law protects election officials from those who would seek to interfere with their sacred duties to ascertain and certify the will of the voters.”
Hobbs asked Brnovich to refer her request for an investigation to another law enforcement agency if his ethical duties prevent him from investigating the matter.
The Republic detailed two separate attempts by Trump to reach Republican Supervisor Clint Hickman in the weeks after the election as the president’s allies sought to alter the election results in a state he narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
At the time, Hickman was chairman of the Board of Supervisors, the elected body that oversees elections in the state’s most populous county.
Hickman received the first call from the White House switchboard on Dec. 31, while he was out celebrating the coming new year with his wife and friends. He let the call go to voicemail.
The second call came on the night of Jan. 3, after the Washington Post published a recording of Trump’s hourlong phone call with the Georgia secretary of state. Hickman sought to avoid talking to the president because of ongoing litigation and let the call go to voicemail.
Separately, Giuliani made calls to supervisors before and after his Nov. 30 meeting in Phoenix about the election outcome with a handful of GOP state lawmakers. The Republic obtained voicemails he left for the supervisors.
“If you get a chance, would you please give me a call,” Giuliani said in one message. “I have a few things I'd like to talk over with you. Maybe we can get this thing fixed up. You know, I really think it's a shame that Republicans sort of are both in this kind of situation. And I think there may be a nice way to resolve this for everybody."
The Republic also revealed Ward’s attempts to pressure supervisors “to stop the counting,” to delay certifying the results and to look into whether voting software added votes for Democrats. Her efforts continued as Trump’s legal challenges fell short across the country.
When those efforts did not succeed, through various texts, she said supervisors were “unAmerican” and were playing for the “WRONG team.”
In one text to GOP Supervisor Jack Sellers, Ward wrote, “We have 4 years to support you guys politically and we will. You are what stands between integrity and theft.”
Ward did not respond to The Republic’s efforts to reach her last week. On Twitter, she wrote “BS” in response to the article.
Later, she wrote, “No one can ever say that I am not doing everything I can to assure #ElectionIntegrity. And I always will! #ProudAmerican.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Ro Khanna. (photo: Scott Olson, Michael Brochstein)
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Ro Khanna call on military leadership to reform the way civilian death tolls are compiled, following significantly higher NGO counts
The US military reported last month that it was responsible for unintentionally killing 23 civilians in foreign war zones in 2020, far below figures compiled by non-governmental agencies. But it also acknowledged more civilian deaths from previous years.
The tally included civilian fatalities from operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria, according to a Pentagon report.
Most of the civilian casualties were in Afghanistan, where the Pentagon said it was responsible for 20 deaths, according to the public section of the report.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Ro Khanna wrote in a letter published Tuesday that was written on 30 June that the Department's admission of civilian deaths and injuries was a fraction of the figures compiled by independent monitors and the UN.
"The Department reported 23 civilians killed and 10 civilians injured as a result of US military operations last year, but estimates from credible civilian casualty monitors and the United Nations suggest that number is almost five times higher."
The letter called for the Pentagon to account for these discrepancies, adding that "US military investigations into civilian casualties give greater weight to external sources of information rather than relying solely on its own internal records and sources when assessing third party reports of civilian harm".
'This is unacceptable'
The US Department of Defense's report on civilian casualties is part of an annual report required by Congress since 2018 - although parts of it remain secret.
One civilian was killed in Somalia in February 2020 and another in Iraq in March. The document released to the public does not specify when or where the 23rd victim was killed.
The document also said that, although Congress allocated $3m to the Pentagon in 2020 for financial compensation to the families of civilian victims, no such compensation had been paid.
In the letter, the lawmakers criticised the Department of Defense for not using any of the $3m for condolence or "ex gratia" payments, which they say would have been more than enough for payments to every victim's family.
"This is unacceptable and not how we uphold our nation's values and advance our interests overseas. We urge you to take a more serious look at both of these issues," the letter reads.
"We need to openly consider all the costs, benefits, and consequences of military action, and that includes doing everything we can to prevent and respond to civilian harm.
"Strengthening investigations, accurately and transparently reporting on civilian harm, expressing condolences for harm when it happens, and learning from these incidents to prevent harm in the future are all essential steps that reinforce the importance of protecting civilians as a national security priority and as a moral and ethical imperative."
Non-governmental organisations frequently publish much higher civilian death tolls in areas where the US military is active around the world.
Airwars, an NGO which lists civilian victims of air attacks, said that their most conservative estimates show 102 civilians killed in US operations around the world in 2020 - five times higher than the official Pentagon figures.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) counted 89 dead and 31 wounded in operations by US-led coalition forces during the same period, Airwars said.
In Somalia, where the Pentagon recognises only one civilian death, Airwars and other NGOs estimate the death toll at seven, while in Syria and Iraq local sources report six dead, the NGO said.
A riparian woodland along the Santa Clara River in Southern California experienced almost 100 percent mortality during the state's historic drought that lasted from 2012 to 2016. (photo: John Stella)
alifornia’s perennially drought-parched Central Valley bears little resemblance to the vibrant landscape of the pre-Gold Rush days, when wild rivers sustained lush woodlands and floodplains teeming with life.
Trees at the center of these biodiversity hotspots evolved in an arid landscape sculpted by finely tuned exchanges between free-flowing rivers and the shallow aquifers below them. Streamside, or riparian, trees hitched their reproductive cycles to the rhythms of these water bodies, which ebbed and flowed through the seasons and with recurring floods and droughts.
But California’s massive system of dams and canals has robbed riparian trees of the resources they need to regenerate, recent research shows.
Every chance a tree has to spawn new life is tied to the variable flow of water on the landscape. As late-spring Sierra Nevada snowmelt sends water coursing through rivers, willows, cottonwoods and other riparian species release all their seeds at once. Spring floodwaters deposit their short-lived seeds in shallow bends in rivers or floodplains, where they germinate, and quickly send out roots to follow the water table as it drops over the summer. This reproductive strategy allowed riparian woodlands to propagate and thrive for millennia.
In theory, these adaptations should also help riparian woodlands weather unpredictable water access under a changing climate.
But some 95 percent of the Central Valley’s riparian woodlands, along with the conditions they evolved in, have already been sacrificed, mainly to make the Central Valley an agricultural powerhouse. The scattered remnants face multiple threats, including droughts and floods intensified by climate change; manipulated streamflows that favor human over ecological needs; and shrinking aquifers left critically overdrawn by decades of unregulated groundwater pumping.
Now, researchers warn, these intensively managed water flows may be undermining the resilience of the state’s remaining riparian forests to both climatic changes and the increasing water demands that will come with a warming world.
Their study, published earlier this month in PNAS, showed that managed waterways allowed riparian woodlands to stay greener later into the summer than those along natural rivers. This happened even in the driest parts of the state where groundwater overpumping has depleted aquifers. But that means the trees are relying on unnatural water flows from conveyance structures, said coauthor John Stella, a professor of sustainable resources management at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry. And that, he added, is a serious problem.
“It’s not sustainable,” Stella said. “If we ever have to change the water delivery schedule, these trees are going to be left high and dry.”
Messing with Evolution
To understand how managed surface waters affect common riparian species, such as willow, cottonwood and valley oaks, the team drew on five years of groundwater, streamflow and satellite data. Satellite images detect canopy “greenness,” a measure of tree vitality that detects reduced photosynthesis and canopy dieback in response to drought-induced water stress. These datasets allowed the researchers to determine whether greenness varied with groundwater depth across woodlands near natural and managed waterways.
Streamside woodlands should be most sensitive to receding groundwater levels in late summer, when soil is drier and rivers low. As expected, the researchers found a tight connection between canopy health and the depth of groundwater along natural streams. All three tree species showed stress responses at greater groundwater depths.
To their surprise, the researchers also found that artificial subsidies, from agricultural and municipal water deliveries and treated wastewater discharges, disrupted the dependence on groundwater of riparian forests that had been optimized over evolutionary history.
“We didn’t really appreciate how much the altered streams were influencing the seasonal growth of these riparian woodlands,” said coauthor Michael Singer, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and deputy director of the Water Research Institute at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.
“It made us think about what happens to these forest trees over the long term,” Singer said. “Are they at risk because they are defying their natural genetic programming, which was set to respond to a declining water table from spring to summer?”
While healthy canopy growth during a drought in regions where groundwater basins are perilously low might seem like a good thing, the implications are ominous.
Research indicates that faster annual growth may doom trees to an early death, Singer said. “We suspect this may be the untimely fate for these riparian woodlands along streams with altered flow regimes and along artificial canals.”
Even more troubling, decoupling the trees’ ancient reliance on groundwater from their vegetative growth means there will be no way for dying forests to regenerate.
The altered flows of water and the channels that straightjacket the rivers limit opportunities for new trees to establish, Singer said. Stream flows are decreased in the spring and elevated in the summer, the opposite of what the trees have adapted to. So when trees release their seeds in the spring, the riverbank lacks the wet sediments they need to germinate in. Plus, structures along riverbanks limit seeds’ access to soil.
Once the existing trees die off, Singer explained, they probably will not be replaced because the cycle of flows and the natural features of the landscape won’t support the recruitment of new seedlings.
That’s what has happened along the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, said Stella. Canals and other diversion structures have cut off the rivers from their floodplains, leaving nowhere for seedlings to grow.
Even when seedlings do manage to get established along the water’s edge during the summer, when water managers deliver high flows to irrigate farms, they die after those deliveries suddenly stop in the fall and the water drops below their roots.
Although natural systems can be very resilient, said Stella, we’ve undermined the processes that drive riparian forest regeneration by damming major rivers, altering their flows and shackling their banks. “If the mature trees suffer, there isn’t a backup for them to regenerate.”
Losing Biodiversity
Climate change will place even more stress on the few remaining natural woodlands. As the globe warms, earlier snowmelt may disrupt the timing of spring flooding and seed release.
And if California loses more riparian woodlands, it will also lose their capacity to absorb carbon emissions.
“The Central Valley will sequester a lot less carbon than the Sierras because you don’t have as many trees,” said Stella. “But where you do have trees is in the riparian zone, and they sequester a lot more carbon than the valley’s grasslands and shrublands.”
Stella and his colleagues showed in a 2018 study that riparian woodlands accumulate carbon faster than most other forest types over 30- and 100-year periods.
But what may be even more important, Stella said, is the role riparian trees like valley oaks, cottonwoods and willows play in the ecosystem. “These are massive trees in an ecosystem that has few species of trees,” he said. “They’re what we call a foundation species. If they’re gone, the whole ecosystem unravels because of the number of functions these trees provide.”
California’s remaining riparian woodlands provide critical habitat for scores of the state’s imperiled species, including the red-legged frog, Chinook salmon and Swainson’s hawk. They harbor so much biodiversity they’re known as the rainforests of California.
Yet for all the ecosystem services these woodlands provide, no single piece of legislation protects them from the diverse impacts that ultimately threaten their survival.
“We protect these areas piecemeal,” Stella said. “But this piecemeal approach is not deliberate nor is it effective in protecting these hotspot ecosystems.”
With more than 90 percent of California’s unique, native freshwater species vulnerable to extinction within the next 100 years, Stella and his colleagues wrote in the PNAS study, “it is imperative that groundwater and surface water are managed to protect the broad ecohydrologic niches within natural riparian environments that support biodiversity and ecosystem function.”
That means adjusting water deliveries to better mimic the natural seasonal flows of rivers and their aquifers, Singer said. “Where possible, modifications to river channels could be made to support recruitment of new riparian forests.”
And groundwater managers need to make sure water levels stay within nine to 16 feet of the surface so riparian trees survive, Stella said. “If we’re drawing the water down far below the surface, they’re not going to make it.”
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