03 January 22
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Rep. Scott Perry was a key player in the Trump-induced crisis following the 2020 contest.
"I stand with immense respect for our Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the Americans I represent who know that this entity is illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives," Perry wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. "I decline this entity's request and will continue to fight the failures of the radical Left who desperately seek distraction from their abject failures of crushing inflation, a humiliating surrender in Afghanistan, and the horrendous crisis they created at our border.”
The problem is that every court that has studied the situation has ruled that the committee’s purpose is legitimate and that its requests are well within the rights of legislative inquiry. Ever since January, as the New York Times reported, Perry’s role in the events of January 6 has been a topic of interest to anyone investigating how the insurrection came about. Indeed, according to the NYT, Perry played a key role in the previous administration*’s last-minute attempt to corrupt the Department of Justice by enlisting it in the effort.
It was Mr. Perry, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, who first made Mr. Trump aware that a relatively obscure Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, the acting chief of the civil division, was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s view that the election had been stolen, according to former administration officials who spoke with Mr. Clark and Mr. Trump. Mr. Perry introduced the president to Mr. Clark, whose openness to conspiracy theories about election fraud presented Mr. Trump with a welcome change from the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who stood by the results of the election and had repeatedly resisted the president’s efforts to undo them.
Perry figured prominently in the NYT’s landmark reporting about how he and other members of the House “Freedom” Caucus were back-channeling information to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows throughout the Trump-induced crisis following the 2020 election.
Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry…
…On Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.
You will note that none of the real wingnut show-ponies of the House were at this meeting. Boebert et al. are good for political dumbshow, but it was people like Perry—“The General”—who were the serious congressional moles for people like Meadows and Miller. He was entrusted with, or assumed, the job of finding a willing apparatchik who could carry the administration*’s poisonous case right into the Justice Department. If I were investigating January 6, and I already wanted to grill Jeffrey Clark, I certainly would also want to talk to the guy who tried to get him a gig. Perry may “stand with immense respect for our Constitution,” but he’s going to do so without a leg to stand on.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks at a news conference on the "Women's Health Protection Act" outside the US Capitol on September 24, 2021. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
At that point, Pelosi had led the House Democratic caucus since 2003 — and had previously served as speaker from 2007 to 2011 — and despite the pushback, she still had broad support from most members.
In December 2018, Pelosi came to an agreement that would limit her tenure to four years as speaker, and she went on to earn the support of many of the moderate and newly-elected lawmakers who were initially resistant to her leadership.
The speaker can point to many consequential pieces of legislation that she shepherded through the House, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Affordable Care Act, along with muscling President Joe Biden's domestic agenda through a closely-divided House.
However, with the 2022 midterm elections in sight, Pelosi, 81, is expected to leave her post at the end of the current Congress, with Democrats anticipating a huge leadership shift that will define their party for years to come as a new generation takes hold, according to The Washington Post.
For as long as Pelosi has led the caucus, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, 82, has served as both the majority leader and minority whip, while Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, 81, has been the majority whip and the party's assistant Democratic leader.
In the coming years, though, the party's House leadership team is set to be dramatically different.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, seen pledging his vows to the party during the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party, is shaking up Chinese society. (photo: Ng Han Guan/AP)
China maintains a countrywide network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online.
The software primarily targets China’s domestic Internet users and media, but a Post review of bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other Western social media.
The documents, publicly accessible through domestic government bidding platforms, also show that agencies including state media, propaganda departments, police, military and cyber regulators are purchasing new or more sophisticated systems to gather data.
These include a $320,000 Chinese state media software program that mines Twitter and Facebook to create a database of foreign journalists and academics; a $216,000 Beijing police intelligence program that analyzes Western chatter on Hong Kong and Taiwan; and a cybercenter in Xinjiang, home to most of China’s Uyghur population, that catalogues the mainly Muslim minority group’s language content abroad.
“Now we can better understand the underground network of anti-China personnel,” said a Beijing-based analyst who works for a unit reporting to China’s Central Propaganda Department. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their work, said they were once tasked with producing a data report on how negative content relating to Beijing’s senior leadership is spread on Twitter, including profiles of individual academics, politicians and journalists.
These surveillance dragnets are part of a wider drive by Beijing to refine its foreign propaganda efforts through big data and artificial intelligence.
They also form a network of warning systems designed to sound real-time alarms for trends that undermine Beijing’s interests.
“They are now reorienting part of that effort outward, and I think that’s frankly terrifying, looking at the sheer numbers and sheer scale that this has taken inside China,” said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who has conducted extensive research on China’s domestic public opinion network.
“It really shows that they now feel it’s their responsibility to defend China overseas and fight the public opinion war overseas,” she said.
Some of the Chinese government’s budgeting includes buying and maintaining foreign social media accounts on behalf of police and propaganda departments. Yet others describe using the targeted analysis to refine Beijing’s state media coverage abroad.
The purchases range in size from small, automated programs to projects costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that are staffed 24 hours a day by teams including English speakers and foreign policy specialists.
The documents describe highly customizable programs that can collect real-time social media data from individual social media users. Some describe tracking broad trends on issues including U.S. elections.
The Post was not able to review data collected by the systems but spoke to four people based in Beijing who are directly involved in government public opinion analysis and described separate software systems that automatically collect and store Facebook and Twitter data in real time on domestic Chinese servers for analysis.
Twitter and Facebook both ban automated collection of data on their services without prior authorization. Twitter’s policy also expressly bars developers from gathering data used to infer a user’s political affiliation or ethnic and racial origin.
“Our API provides real-time access to public data and Tweets only, not private information. We prohibit use of our API for surveillance purposes, as per our developer policy and terms,” said Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokesperson, referring to the company’s Application Programming Interface (API), which allows developers to retrieve public data from the platform among other functions.
Facebook did not respond to requests for comment about whether it is aware of the monitoring or whether several companies, universities and state media firms listed as supplying the software were authorized to collect data on its platform.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
'Public opinion guidance'
China’s systems for analyzing domestic public opinion online are a powerful but largely unseen pillar of President Xi Jinping’s program to modernize China’s propaganda apparatus and maintain control over the Internet.
The vast data collection and monitoring efforts give officials insight into public opinion, a challenge in a country that does not hold public elections or permit independent media.
The services also provide increasingly technical surveillance for China’s censorship apparatus. And most systems include alarm functions designed to alert officials and police to negative content in real time.
These operations are an important function of what Beijing calls “public opinion guidance work” — a policy of molding public sentiment in favor of the government through targeted propaganda and censorship.
The phrase first came to prominence in policymaking after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations, when officials began exploring new ways to preempt popular challenges to the Communist Party’s power, and has since become integral to the underlying architecture of China’s Internet, where users are linked by real name ID, and Internet services are required by law to maintain an internal censorship apparatus.
The exact scope of China’s government public opinion monitoring industry is unclear, but there have been some indications about its size in Chinese state media. In 2014, the state-backed newspaper China Daily said more than 2 million people were working as public opinion analysts. In 2018, the People’s Daily, another official organ, said the government’s online opinion analysis industry was worth “tens of billions of yuan,” equivalent to billions of dollars, and was growing at a rate of 50 percent a year.
That surveillance network system is expanding to include foreign social media at a time when global perceptions of Beijing are at their lowest in recent history.
A Pew Research survey released in June showed that perceptions of China among 17 advanced economies had dipped to near historic lows for a second year in a row in the aftermath of the U.S. trade war, the Xinjiang human rights crisis, Hong Kong and the coronavirus pandemic.
In May this year, Xi called on senior officials to portray a more “trustworthy, lovable and reliable” image of China abroad, calling for the “effective development of international public opinion guidance.”
His comments reflect Beijing’s growing anxieties over how to control China’s image abroad.
“On the back of the Sino-US trade talks and the Hong Kong rioting incident, it’s becoming clearer day by day that the public opinion news war is arduous and necessary,” China Daily said in a July 2020 bidding document for a $300,000 “foreign personnel analysis platform.”
The invitation to tender lays out specifications for a program that mines Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for data on “well known Western media journalists” and other “key personnel from political, business and media circles.”
“We are competing with the US and Western media, the battle for the right to speak has begun,” it said.
The software should run 24 hours a day, according to the specifications, and map the relationships between target personnel and uncover “factions” between personnel, measuring their “China tendencies” and building an alarm system that automatically flags “false statements and reports on China.”
Warning systems like the one outlined in the China Daily document are described in over 90 percent of tenders that list technical specifications, The Post’s review of the documents show.
Two people who work as analysts in public opinion analysis units contracted by government agencies in Beijing told The Post that they receive automated alarms via SMS, email and on dedicated computer monitors when “sensitive” content was detected. Both of the people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to foreign media.
“Having responsibility for [the monitoring] is a lot of pressure,” said one of the people. “If we do our work poorly, there are severe repercussions.”
Highly sensitive viral trends online are reported to a 24-hour hotline maintained by the Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC), the body that oversees the country’s censorship apparatus, the person said of their unit.
The person added that most of the alarms were related to domestic social media but that foreign social media had also been included in the units’ monitoring since the middle of 2019.
The person’s account is supported by four bidding documents for unrelated systems that mention direct hotlines to the CAC.
“In case of major public opinion, directly contact the staff on duty of the CAC by telephone to ensure that notifications are in place through various communication tools,” said one December 2020 tender for a $236,000 system purchased by the municipal propaganda department in eastern China’s Fuzhou city for monitoring Facebook and Twitter alongside domestic social media.
It specifies that reports to the CAC should include the details of individual social media users.
State media-led data mining
Suppliers of the systems vary. The China Daily awarded its contract to Beijing’s Communications University, one of a half dozen Chinese universities that have launched specialized departments to develop public opinion analysis technology.
However, some of the most prolific public opinion monitoring services are provided to police and government agencies by state media themselves.
The documents provide insight into the scope of foreign social media data collection done by China’s major state media outlets, which maintain offices and servers abroad, and their key role in providing Beijing with publicity guidance based on increasingly sophisticated data mining analysis.
The growing clout of Beijing’s propaganda efforts abroad, spearheaded by state media, has triggered alarms in Washington.
In 2020, the State Department reclassified the U.S.-based operations of China’s top state media outlets as foreign missions, increasing reporting requirements and restricting their visa allocations, angering Beijing.
The People’s Daily Online, a unit of the state newspaper the People’s Daily, which provides one of the country’s largest contract public opinion analysis services, won dozens of projects that include overseas social media data collection services for police, judicial authorities, Communist Party organizations and other clients.
The unit, which recorded $330 million in operating income in 2020, up 50 percent from 2018, says it serves over 200 government agencies, although it is not clear how many request foreign social media data.
In one tender won by the People’s Daily Online, the Beijing Police Intelligence Command Unit purchased a $30,570 service to trawl foreign social media and produce reports on unspecified “key personnel and organizations,” gathering information on their “basic circumstances, background and relationships.”
It also calls for weekly data reports on Hong Kong, Taiwan and U.S. relations. Issued shortly before the 2020 U.S. presidential election results were ratified on Jan. 6, it also called for “special reports” on “netizens’ main views” related to the election.
“The international balance of power has been profoundly adjusted,” said the request for tenders. “Through the collection of public Internet information we can keep a close eye on the international community, analyze sensitivities and hot spots, and maintain the stability of Chinese society.”
In an April 2020 article, the chief analyst at the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Data Center, Liao Canliang, laid out the ultimate goal of public opinion analysis.
“The ultimate purpose of analysis and prediction is to guide and intervene in public opinion,” Canliang wrote. “… Public data from social network users can be used to analyze the characteristics and preferences of users, and then guide them in a targeted manner.”
In the article, Liao points to Cambridge Analytica’s impact on the 2016 U.S. election as evidence of social media’s ability to mold public opinion.
“The West uses big data to analyze, research and judge public opinion to influence political activities. ... As long as there is a correct grasp on the situation, public opinion can also be guided and interfered with,” he wrote.
People’s Daily subsidiary Global Times, a firebrand newspaper known for its biting coverage of China’s critics, also has a unit gathering foreign social media data for China’s Foreign Ministry, Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Office and other government agencies.
In late 2019, the Global Times Online won a three-year contract worth $531,000 to provide a “China-related foreign media and journalist opinion monitoring system” that monitors overseas social media on behalf of China’s Foreign Ministry and produces comprehensive regular reports, as well as special briefings in “urgent circumstances.”
Documentation accompanying the project says that close to 40 percent of the Global Times monitoring unit’s staffers are senior Global Times reporters and that the publication maintains large overseas social media monitoring platforms.
A description on the website of the Global Times’s public opinion research center says the group conducts “overseas monitoring and overseas investigation services” and provides “comprehensive response plans” to government and private clients.
Both the People’s Daily and the Global Times were among the outlets designated as foreign missions in the United States.
The increase in China’s monitoring of foreign public opinion on social media coincides with efforts by Beijing to boost its influence on Twitter and other U.S. social media platforms.
In June 2020, Twitter suspended 23,000 accounts that it said were linked to the Chinese Communist Party and covertly spreading propaganda to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This month, Twitter said it removed a further 2,048 accounts linked to Beijing and producing coordinated content undermining accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Experts say those accounts represent a small fraction of China’s efforts to boost pro-Beijing messaging on foreign social media.
'Extreme chilling effect'
Just under a third of the public opinion analysis systems reviewed by The Post were procured by Chinese police.
In 14 instances, the analysis systems included a feature requested by the police that would automatically flag “sensitive” content related to Uyghurs and other Chinese ethnic minorities. An additional 12 analysis systems included the police-requested capability of monitoring individual content authors over time.
“It must support information monitoring of overseas social media … and provide for targeted collection of designated sites and authors,” said one invitation to tender released by the Fuzhou city police in October that lists coverage of Facebook and Twitter as a requirement.
The monitoring of social media abroad by local police throughout China could be used in investigating Chinese citizens locally and abroad, as well as in flagging trends that stir domestic dissent, experts say.
“The public security monitoring is very much about stability maintenance, tracking people down and finding people’s identity, and when they monitor overseas social media, it’s also often with an eye to monitoring what news could cause trouble at home in China,” said the German Marshall Fund’s Ohlberg.
Companies providing overseas public opinion monitoring to police include a mix of private and state-owned firms, including the People’s Daily Online.
Six police contracts awarded since 2020 stated that the People’s Daily was chosen to conduct monitoring on the basis of its technical ability to gather data abroad.
“It’s the only one in the industry that deploys overseas servers. It is a public opinion service organization that can monitor and collect more than 8,000 overseas media without ‘overturning the wall,’ ” said the Guangdong Police Department in a $26,200 contract offer posted in July 2020. That refers to the ability of the People’s Daily unit to collect overseas data outside China’s Great Firewall, a name for the vast legal and technical infrastructure that blocks access to most foreign news outlets and social media within China.
Experts say the increasingly advanced social media surveillance technology available to Chinese police could worsen the targeted harassment of Beijing’s critics.
“The Chinese government is one of the worst offenders when it comes to targeting individuals outside of the country,” said Adrian Shahbaz, the director for technology and democracy at the think tank Freedom House.
“It has an extreme chilling effect on how Chinese citizens outside of China are using social media tools, because they know that back home, their information is very easily monitored by Chinese authorities,” he said.
The Public Security Bureau, China’s police, did not respond to a request for comment.
A police bureau in southern China’s Nanping city purchased a $42,000 system that “supports collection, discovery, and warning functions for ... Twitter and Facebook social media data according to different classifications and keyword groups, as well as overseas information lists,” according to bidding documents released in July 2020.
Other procurements for public opinion services outline programs purchased by Chinese police and Xinjiang government bodies to track “sensitive” ethnic language content abroad. (China’s mainly-Muslim Uyghurs are concentrated in Xinjiang.)
A $43,000 system purchased by police in central China’s Shangnan county included a “foreign sensitive information” collection system that requested Uyghur and Tibetan staff translators, according to the contracts.
Military procurement documents — less detailed than other types — did not offer much detail on the purpose of the foreign data collection but alluded to vague categories of data including “key personnel.”
One heavily redacted June 2020 contract issued by the People’s Liberation Army described a system that would trawl foreign sites and categorize data on the basis of affiliation, geography and country.
Source Data Technology, the Shanghai-based company that won the contract, says on its website that it uses “advanced big data mining and artificial intelligence analysis technology” to cover more than 90 percent of social media in the United States, Europe and China’s neighboring countries.
The No Surprises Act is intended to stop surprise medical bills. It could also slow the growth of health insurance premiums. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The No Surprises Act, passed by Congress in 2020 as part of the coronavirus relief package, takes effect Jan. 1.
It generally forbids insurers from passing along bills from doctors and hospitals that are not covered under a patient's plan — such bills have often left patients to pay hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars in outstanding fees. Instead, the new law requires health care providers and insurers to work out a deal between themselves.
Here's how the law will work and how it might affect insurance premiums and the health care industry.
It may slow premium growth
Some observers have speculated that the law will have the unintended consequence of shifting costs and leading to higher insurance premiums. But many policy experts told KHN that, in fact, the opposite may happen: It may slightly slow premium growth.
The reason, said Katie Keith, a research faculty member at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, is that a new rule released Sept. 30 by the Biden administration appears to "put a thumb on the scale" to discourage settlements at amounts higher than most insurers generally pay for in-network care.
That rule, which provides more details on the way such out of network disputes will be settled under the No Surprises Act, drew immediate opposition from hospital and physician groups. The American Medical Association called it "an undeserved gift to the insurance industry," while the American College of Radiology said it "does not reflect real-world payment rates" and warned that relying on it so heavily "will cause large imaging cuts and reduce patient access to care."
In early December, the AMA, joined by the American Hospital Association, filed a lawsuit challenging a part of that rule that outlines the factors that arbitrators should consider in determining payment amounts for disputed out-of-network bills. The case does not seek to halt the entire law, but does want changes to that provision, which it says unfairly benefits insurers. Later in the month, groups representing emergency physicians, radiologists and anesthesiologists filed a similar lawsuit.
Such tough talk echoes comments made while Congress was hammering out the law.
Unsettled bills will go to arbitration
The No Surprises Act takes aim at a common practice: large, unexpected "balance bills" being sent to insured patients for services such as emergency treatment at out-of-network hospitals or via air ambulance companies. Some patients get bills even after using in-network facilities because they receive care from a doctor there who has not signed on with an insurer's network.
Patients were caught in the middle and liable for the difference in what their insurer paid toward the bill and the often-exorbitant charges they received from the provider.
Once the law takes effect next year, patients will pay only what they would have if their care had been performed in network, leaving any balance to be settled between insurers and the out-of-network medical providers. The law also gives insurers and providers 30 days to sort out discrepancies.
After that, unsettled bills can enter "baseball-style" arbitration in which both sides put forth their best offer and an arbitrator picks one, with the loser paying the arbitration cost, which the rule sets for next year as $200 to $500.
Uninsured patients who are billed more than $400 over an upfront estimate of the cost of their care may also bring cases to arbitration for a $25 administrative fee.
Businesses, like government services companies or those that review coverage disputes, can start applying now for certification as arbitrators. The new rule estimates that about 50 will be selected by the three agencies overseeing the program (the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury) after showing "expertise in arbitration, health care claims experience, managed care, billing and coding, and health care law."
The rule also spells out that either party can object to a chosen arbitrator, and the one that is selected cannot be associated with an insurer or medical provider.
Prices may be driven to the middle
But here's how all this could end up affecting insurance premiums. In the process of arbitration, a decision must be made about which price to pick.
The new rule specifies that the arbitrator generally should pick the amount closest to the median in-network rate negotiated by insurers for that type of care. Other factors, such as the experience of the provider, the type of hospital or the complexity of the treatment, can be considered in some circumstances, but not given equal weight.
By contrast, some of the more than a dozen state laws taking aim at surprise bills allow arbitrators to consider higher rates, such as billed charges set by hospitals or doctors, rather than negotiated rates, which potentially drive up spending.
One recent study, for example, found that in New Jersey — which has different arbitration rules than what is being set up for the federal program — cases were settled at a median of 5.7 times higher than in-network rates for the same services.
Unlike New Jersey, the federal government is specifically barring consideration of the highest amounts — the billed charges — and the lowest payment amounts, including those from Medicaid and Medicare programs.
"This seems likely to reduce premiums in addition to protecting patients from surprise bills," said Loren Adler, associate director of the University of Southern California-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, who co-authored the New Jersey study.
Still, the law's impact on premiums is open to debate. Keith doubts they will change either way, although Adler thinks the slowdown in premium growth would be small.
Even the rule says "there is uncertainty around how premiums will be ultimately affected" with much depending on how often disputed bills go to arbitration.
It cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate that provisions in the No Surprises Act could reduce premium growth by 0.5% to 1% in most years, but also noted an estimate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that premiums could slightly increase. Neither study isolated the effect of the arbitration guidelines from the rest of the statute.
Adler noted that relying heavily on the median in-network price likely means lower payments compared with other measures but, still, "by definition a median is what half of what doctors get paid, so this could, in theory, raise that for the other half."
Providers pushed to join insurance networks
What's likely, health policy experts said, is that the new law will prompt more providers to join insurer networks.
Some physicians — most often, emergency room doctors, anesthesiologists and radiologists — have avoided signing contracts with insurers. Instead, they typically have set charges above the level of insurers' reimbursement and have sent surprise bills to patients for the difference.
The rule undercuts the incentive to use this business model.
It makes it "pretty clear" that hospitals, physicians, air ambulances and other medical professionals "should not count on staying out of network and then trying to use the federal process to capture higher reimbursement," said Keith.
Some medical societies and advocacy groups predicted the law could have the opposite effect.
Insurers will use the disputes to "drive down payment to the point that it is no longer feasible for many providers to take that, or any insurance," warned Katie Keysor, senior director of economic policy for the American College of Radiology, in an emailed statement.
Adler said that argument doesn't fly when looking across the experience of states with similar laws. (Those state rules don't apply to many types of job-based health insurance, but the federal rule will.)
"Every single surprise billing debate has done the opposite and pushed more people into the network," he said.
Whether a group signs a contract with an insurer may matter less going forward, he said.
Once the law takes effect, "it's completely irrelevant whether an emergency room doctor is in network or not," he said. "For all intents and purposes, that doctor is in network. The patient will pay the in-network cost sharing and there is a price the provider has to accept, and the insurer has to pay."
Donald Trump. (photo: Getty Images)
Don W. Wilson and John W. Carlin each had years-long stints as the official archivist of the United States, overseeing the massive effort of sorting through presidential records that tell the country’s story.
And they’re dismayed at former President Donald Trump’s aggressive attempts to keep his White House records locked away from the special congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection—and his potential role in it.
“Given how frantic they are... there are things in those records that are going to make real trouble. I’m talking about prison time,” Carlin mused to The Daily Beast. “It reinforces the fact that they know they’re in real trouble if these things are released—particularly if they’re released soon.”
An outgoing president’s White House records go straight to the National Archives and Records Administration, where they could be kept away from the public for up to 12 years. However, President Joe Biden waived that presidential privilege when he allowed the bipartisan House Jan. 6 Committee to request some documents about Trump’s final weeks in office. Trump sued to block that, and his odd claims of “residual” executive privilege got knocked down by a federal judge who noted “presidents are not kings” and an appellate panel that found his argument has “no basis.” This epic fight over records is now reaching the Supreme Court.
Those records could show whether the Trump White House plotted to use the Department of Justice to intimidate states to reject 2020 election results, schemed with rogue Republicans in Congress to halt certification of Electoral College votes that reflected Biden’s win at the polls, and interacted with rally organizers who brought the crowds that violently attacked the U.S. Capitol building.
“It’s important that records are used to get the truth out. Nothing highlights that more than the controversy we're going through. Records are going to have a huge impact in determining who did what, particularly as you get to the Justice Department,” Carlin said.
Carlin compares Trump’s reticence to the secrecy of Richard Nixon, who was forced to turn over White House tapes by the Supreme Court and resigned in 1974 rather than face impeachment for his crooked tactics. For perspective, Carlin points to his decade at the archives from 1995 to 2005, when he battled the Nixon family over control of records.
“Nixon knew that tapes were going to kill him, and so he obviously fought and said they weren’t records. They were, because they were created in the Oval Office,” said Carlin, a former governor who now lectures at Kansas State University.
That fight is also playing out in the case of former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who has already turned over more than 9,000 pages of material to the congressional committee but keeps holding back some communications. Meadows drew rebuke when he asserted that some of his text messages and emails were protected from disclosure because of “presidential privilege,” even though they were on his personal cellphone and two personal Gmail accounts.
Wilson, the other former national archivist, told The Daily Beast that keeping official documents on personal devices is a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act.
“You aren’t supposed to conduct personal business on your cellphone. If it is, then it’s an official record. Is this official business? If it is, then it’s technically a presidential record, even if it’s on your personal cellphone,” Wilson said. “All of it is supposed to be turned over at the end of the administration.”
And this is an issue Wilson knows well. He served as the nation’s archivist from 1987 until 1993, which he said was the first time the agency dealt with emails and other electronic messages.
Carlin concurred, saying that Meadows must recognize White House activity is official business no matter where it’s recorded.
“Maybe he thought he was somehow protected. It would be like writing a letter as a government official, then saying, ‘I wrote that on paper I bought and paid for, not federal paper.’ Baloney!” he said. “If that were allowed, you could have crooks in your administration and say, ‘Make sure you do all this on your own stuff. Don’t use any government typewriters.’”
It’s been two weeks since the House of Representatives voted Meadows “in contempt of Congress” and recommended he be prosecuted by the Justice Department, although criminal charges haven’t yet been filed. His cellphone activity appears to be the center of this storm, as he was quietly turning over evidence until he discovered that the committee had subpoenaed Verizon for his old phone’s records—at which point he cried foul and sued the committee.
Another fight over presidential records might come from former Vice President Mike Pence. In the book Betrayal by reporter Jon Karl, the ABC News chief Washington correspondent details how an official White House photographer captured images of Pence hidden for hours in the bowels of the Capitol while it was under attack. During a guest appearance on The Late Show, Karl told host Stephen Colbert, “They refused to let me publish the photographs. But I have a suspicion that the January 6th Committee is going to want to see those photos.”
“And those aren’t his photos,” Colbert responded. “We paid for those photos. Those are part of the national archives.”
Wilson and Carlin concur.
“There’s no question about that. The vice president, as he leaves office, doesn’t get to say, ‘They can’t see this.’ They’re creating records, and they’re all permanent. And they belong to the United States of America,” Carlin told The Daily Beast.
“I’m really kind of glad to see the special committee and the archives’ role in the middle of this. It does bring attention to presidential records and how important they are—not just for current events but for the future of the country,” Wilson said. “Archives aren’t just a repository. It’s preserving our national history.”
The Daily Beast has filed a public records request with the National Archives seeking the Pence photographs—if they were turned over—and related material. But the agency said the photograph collection is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act until 2026.
In a televised speech, Hamdok says a roundtable discussion was needed to come to a new agreement for Sudan's political transition to democracy. (photo: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)
Abdalla Hamdok steps down as mass protests continue against a deal he signed with the military following a coup on October 25.
Hamdok’s decision, announced in a televised address late on Sunday, came six weeks after he returned to his post in a deal with the coup leaders he argued could save Sudan’s political transition. But the pro-democracy movement rejected that agreement, and Hamdok failed to name a new government as thousands of people continued to protest against the military’s power grab.
In his resignation speech, Hamdok said a roundtable discussion is needed to agree on a new “national charter” and to “draw a road map” to complete Sudan’s transition to democracy.
“I decided to give back the responsibility and announce my resignation as prime minister, and give a chance to another man or woman of this noble country to … help it pass through what’s left of the transitional period to a civilian democratic country,” Hamdok said.
The announcement throws Sudan’s future deeper into uncertainty, three years after an uprising that led to the overthrow of longtime leader Omar al-Bashir.
An economist and former United Nations official widely respected by the international community, Hamdok became prime minister in 2019 under a power-sharing agreement that promised multiparty elections in 2023.
But military-civilian ties became frayed as the army refused to cede power, and on October 25, Hamdok was removed and placed under house arrest. He was reinstated on November 21 in a deal that called for an independent technocratic cabinet under military oversight.
Sudan’s pro-democracy movement denounced that agreement, however, insisting that power be handed over to a fully civilian government.
‘Dangerous turning point’
Hamdok said on Sunday that his efforts to bridge the widening gap and settle disputes among the political forces have failed.
“Despite all that was done to bring about the desired and necessary agreement to fulfil our promise to the citizen of security, peace, justice and an end to bloodshed, this did not happen,” he said.
The prime minister also warned that the ongoing political deadlock could become a full-blown crisis and damage the country’s already battered economy.
“I tried as much as I possibly could to prevent our country from sliding into a disaster. Now, our nation is going through a dangerous turning point that could threaten its survival unless it is urgently rectified,” he said.
The prime minister’s resignation came hours after Sudanese security forces violently dispersed huge crowds protesting against the coup, killing at least three people, according to the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD).
The medical group, which is part of the pro-democracy movement, said one of those who dead was hit “violently” in his head while taking part in a protest march in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. A second person was shot in the chest in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, the CCSD said, adding that dozens of protesters were also wounded.
The protests came despite tightened security and blocked bridges and roads in Khartoum and Omdurman. Internet connections were also disrupted before the protests, according to advocacy group NetBlocs. Authorities have used such tactics repeatedly since the October coup.
Sunday’s deaths have brought the death toll among protesters since the military takeover to at least 57, according to CCSD. Hundreds have also been wounded.
Following Hamdok’s resignation on Sunday, the United States urged Sudan’s leaders to “set aside differences, find consensus, and ensure continued civilian rule”.
In a statement on Twitter, the US Department of State also called for the appointment of the next prime minister and cabinet “in line with the [2019] constitutional declaration to meet the people’s goals of freedom, peace, and justice”.
After PM Hamdok’s resignation, Sudanese leaders should set aside differences, find consensus, and ensure continued civilian rule. Sudan’s next PM and cabinet should be appointed in line with the constitutional declaration to meet the people’s goals of freedom, peace, and justice.
— Bureau of African Affairs (@AsstSecStateAF) January 2, 2022
But Cameron Hudson, a non-resident senior fellow at US-based think-tank the Atlantic Council, said Sudan’s next prime minister will most likely be under the influence of the military.
“What we’ve seen in the last two months since the coup in Sudan is virtually the re-establishment of the Bashir regime without Omar al-Bashir. We’ve seen the military undo the vast majority of the reforms, we’ve seen the economic progress halted and financial assistance from the international community suspended. We’ve seen the intelligence services re-empowered to arrest and detain people,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We’ve seen nearly 60 people killed, and more than that raped, injured and arrested and tortured throughout the course of these protests over the last month. So we have seen a wholesale re-establishment of the previous regime in the military’s effort to control the political outcome in the country.
“What we are likely to see is the military try to appoint a new prime minister, who will likely be compliant with the military and under the military’s influence,” Hudson said.
From left: Jenna Iszler and her husband, Rob Harris, embrace on Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022, on the front steps of their home on Ajax Court that was destroyed by the Marshall Fire in Superior. Residents of Superior were allowed to return Saturday to some of the areas that were evacuated during the fire. (photo: Matthew Jonas/Boulder Daily Camera)
After a half-day search effort, 40 dogs that were staying at a boarding facility in Superior, Colo., when the flames erupted were accounted for
They soon got in touch with Ellie Creasey, who works at Dog Tag, where Dexter and 39 other dogs were staying when a wind-fueled grass fire erupted outside Boulder. The blaze, called the Marshall Fire, eventually scorched nearly 1,000 buildings. As of Sunday, authorities said two people were unaccounted for and search efforts continued.
Thomson said that as his family watched news about the fire from afar, the priority was finding out whether their dog was okay. “We just wanted to know he was safe and then we would worry about our house and things like that,” he said in an interview on Sunday.
Creasey was in between shifts on Thursday, away from the day-care and boarding site, when she heard that flames were nearing the facility. She tried to get back, driving from her home in Boulder, but roads were closed. She said her boss, the owner of Dog Tag, loaded up a dozen dogs into her car but didn’t have space for any more. Creasey said the owner opened the kennels and all the doors at the facility to ensure no pet would be trapped.
Unable to get into Superior, Creasey got to work from her home, calling and updating dog owners, checking in with nearby shelters and mobilizing community members through social media pages to look out for dogs that may have run from the boarding site. In the aftermath of the devastating blaze, desperate pet owners have flooded social media with photos and descriptions of dozens of missing animals, while people from elsewhere in Colorado have driven into the area to help search on foot — eager to find the beloved cats and dogs of families that may have lost everything.
In a briefing on Sunday, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said the animal control office had been working “nonstop” since the fire began and asked for requests for animal rescues to be made through the Boulder Office of Emergency Management website.
Amy Hwang, who lives near Fort Collins, which is about an hour north of Boulder, said she jumped into action when she saw on Twitter that pet owners were trying to find their missing animals.
Hwang gathered information online and helped call around, and managed to confirm the location of some pets. Soon her efforts snowballed, and she said her Twitter account became a hub of information. Numerous people started sending her photos of missing dogs and cats, asking her to share the images widely. She posted descriptions and images of lost pets, retweeted information about veterinarians and shelters that were lending a hand, and shared updates when the animals were reunited with their families. She said she stayed at home as the new year rang in to continue to help in whatever way she could.
Hwang said she was in awe of “just how generous people are right now.”
In an interview on Sunday, Hwang said she had confirmed the location or reunification of at least 20 to 25 dogs and 10 cats, though many others remain missing. Hwang and others pointed to social media groups, including the Boulder County Fire Lost & Found Pets group on Facebook, where pet owners, veterinary groups, shelters and community members were sharing updates about located and missing animals.
One by one on Thursday, Creasey got word about the unaccounted pups from Dog Tag. Some of the dogs had been taken to Boulder’s humane society after being rescued by animal control. A couple of people had been able to reach the boarding facility, she learned, and had rounded up dogs that were still there. Another dog was found safe and hunkered down by a nearby Costco. One owner, after hearing that his dog was spotted at the boarding site but was too scared to come out, went straight there after flying in from out of town to find his dog.
Then Creasey got a call about two of the last dogs that still hadn’t been located. Two people had found Dexter, the Thomsons’ dog, along with another named Poppy. Creasey updated the owners and drove to pick up the dogs right away.
“Their eyes were covered in soot and smoke, and they were both very shaken,” Creasey said. She took them home to bathe them and keep them in for the night.
“We sat out in my living room, and I gave them food and plenty of water. They wouldn’t leave my side,” she said. The next morning, the dogs were picked up by friends and family.
It took more than 15 hours, Creasey said, but all 40 dogs had been located. She didn’t get much sleep that night, she said, but was grateful the dogs from the boarding facility were found safe and were mostly fine.
Dexter had some throat and eye irritation but is in “relatively good shape,” Thomson said. He praised and thanked Creasey, as well as Dog Tag’s owner and the people who found Dexter, who he said did everything they could to help. The family also got a second good piece of good news: Their home wasn’t destroyed by the flames.
When his family finally picked him up, Thomson said, Dexter was apprehensive at first, taking a few steps back, before realizing who they were.
“Then we couldn’t get him to stop licking us,” he said.
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