Category Archives: FBI

Judge orders DoJ to prepare redacted Trump search affidavit for possible release

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Justice department opposed release of document but Florida federal judge said portions of it ‘could be presumptively unsealed’

The Justice department must redact the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Donald Trump’s resort in Florida in such a way not to jeopardise the investigation in case he decides to unseal the document next week, a federal magistrate judge ordered on Thursday.

The surprise order from Judge Bruce Reinhart charted a middle ground between the justice department’s motion to oppose unsealing any part of the affidavit, and motions from a coalition of media outlets – and calls from the former president – to release the highly sensitive document.

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Justice Department asks not to disclose affidavit behind Mar-a-Lago search

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Unsealing the document could reveal the scope of the inquiry against Donald Trump, whose team is rattled by recent events

The US Justice Department has asked a judge not to release the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worsening distrust among top aides casting about for any insight into the intensifying criminal investigation surrounding the former president.

The affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government secrets, the Justice Department argued, days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed it referenced potential violations of three criminal statutes.

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Fears of violence grow after FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago – live

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The suicide of a man who crashed his car into barricades outside the US Capitol over the weekend underscores the tense atmosphere the search of Mar-a-Lago created, Maya Yang reports:

A man drove into a barricade near the US Capitol in Washington DC on early Sunday morning, fired several shots into the air after his vehicle ignited, and then shot himself to death, according to police.

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GOP governors rebuke party members’ ‘outrageous rhetoric’ over Trump search

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Larry Hogan describes comparisons of the FBI to Nazi Germany’s secret police, made by Florida senator Rick Scott, as dangerous

A handful of Republican governors have criticized the “outrageous rhetoric” of their party colleagues in the US Congress, who have accused federal law enforcement officers of a politicized attack on former president Donald Trump after executing a court-approved search warrant on his Florida home this week.

Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican moderate, described attacks by party members as both “absurd” and “dangerous”, after a week in which certain Republicans have compared the FBI to the Gestapo and fundraised off the slogan: “Defund the FBI”.

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Trump under investigation for potential violations of Espionage Act, warrant reveals

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Details contained in explosive search warrant show US officials investigating whether three criminal statutes violated

Donald Trump is under criminal investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act and additional statutes relating to obstruction of justice and destroying federal government records, according to the search warrant executed by FBI agents at the former president’s home on Monday.

The search warrant – the contents of which were confirmed by the Guardian – shows the FBI was seeking evidence about whether the mishandling of classified documents by Trump, including some marked top secret, amounted to a violation of three criminal statutes.

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DoJ has asked court to unseal Trump search warrant, Merrick Garland says

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US attorney general cites ‘substantial public interest in this matter’ in announcing the request

The US justice department (DoJ) has asked a court to unseal the search warrant the FBI received before searching the Florida estate of Donald Trump, Merrick Garland said on Thursday.

The attorney general cited the “substantial public interest in this matter” in announcing the request at a hastily scheduled justice department news conference.

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FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified nuclear weapons documents – report

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Suspected presence of such documents could explain why US attorney general took step of ordering FBI agents into a former president’s house

FBI agents were looking for secret documents about nuclear weapons among other classified material when they searched Donald Trump’s home on Monday, it has been reported.

The Washington Post cited people familiar with the investigation as saying nuclear weapons documents were thought to be in the trove the FBI was hunting in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. They did not specify what kind of documents or whether they referred to the US arsenal or another country’s.

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Congressman and Trump ally Scott Perry says FBI seized his cellphone

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Republican’s phone could be relevant to bid to overturn 2020 election and mishandling of official records

Federal investigators seized the cellphone of the Republican congressman Scott Perry on Tuesday, his office said, suggesting the justice department is examining the communications of a close ally of Donald Trump and person of interest to the House January 6 select committee.

The move by the FBI to take Perry’s phone came a day after federal agents executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and seized boxes of documents, though it was not clear whether the two events were connected.

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FBI seizes documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home – live reaction

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Former US president angered by ‘unannounced raid’ as part of ongoing investigation into potentially unlawful removal of White House records

Barbara McQuade at USA Today explains quite why the FBI and Justice Department might be concerned about White House documents being left lying around a Trump residence like Mar-a-Lago. It isn’t just a matter of wanting to retain a complete record of Trump’s time in office for the sake of it. She writes:

Mishandling classified information is a serious crime because it puts at risk sources and methods of information relating to national security. If the content of the documents were to end up in the wrong hands, the identity of government sources could become known and their lives put at risk. Or our methods of collecting information, such as technological capabilities, could become known, undermining their utility. You can’t leave boxes lying around when they contain the kinds of government secrets that can get people killed, even if you’re the former president.

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‘Narco of narcos’: drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero arrested in Mexico

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Co-founder of Guadalajara cartel was one of FBI’s most-wanted fugitives after being freed from prison in 2013

Rafael Caro Quintero, a drug lord known as “the narco of narcos” who was behind the killing of a US drug enforcement agent in 1985, has been captured by Mexican forces nearly a decade after walking out of prison, according to the country’s navy.

Caro Quintero was arrested after a search dog named Max found him hiding in brush in the town of San Simon in Sinaloa state during a joint operation by the navy and the attorney general’s office, a navy statement said. The site was in the mountains near Sinaloa’s border with the northern border state of Chihuahua.

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FBI and MI5 leaders give unprecedented joint warning on Chinese spying

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Christopher Wray joins Ken McCallum in London, calling Beijing the ‘biggest long-term threat to economic security’

The head of the FBI and the leader of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency have delivered an unprecedented joint address raising fresh alarm about the Chinese government, warning business leaders that Beijing is determined to steal their technology for competitive gain.

In a speech at MI5’s London headquarters intended as a show of western solidarity, Christopher Wray, the FBI director, stood alongside the MI5 director general, Ken McCallum. Wray reaffirmed longstanding concerns about economic espionage and hacking operations by China, as well as the Chinese government’s efforts to stifle dissent abroad.

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50 Chinese students leave UK in three years after spy chiefs’ warning

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MI5 chief says Chinese communist party targeting intellectual property across west

Fifty Chinese students have left the UK in the past three years after Britain tightened its procedures to prevent the theft of sensitive academic research, the head of MI5 said in a speech about the espionage threat posed by Beijing.

Ken McCallum, the director general of the spy agency, also said that MI5 had “more than doubled” its effort against Chinese activity over the same timeframe, as part of an unprecedented joint warning with his counterpart at the FBI.

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FBI says it foiled Islamic State sympathizer’s plot to kill George W Bush

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Bureau says in warrant that Ohio man Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab planned assassination out of revenge for Iraq war

The FBI claims an Islamic State sympathizer living in Ohio plotted to assassinate George W Bush, but confidential informants helped federal agents foil the plan, according to court records.

Details of the alleged scheme to kill the former president are laid out in a warrant that the FBI obtained in March to search the accused operative’s cellphone records, a 43-page document that was only unsealed in recent days.

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FBI seeks arrest of man claiming to be North Korea ‘special delegate’

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Spaniard alleged to have conspired with cryptocurrency expert to help Pyongyang evade US sanctions

The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for a Spanish man who claims to be a “special delegate” working for the government of North Korea, accusing him of recruiting a cryptocurrency expert in an attempt to help Pyongyang circumvent US sanctions.

Alejandro Cao de Benós, a 47-year-old Spanish national who describes himself as Pyongyang’s special delegate for the committee for cultural relations with foreign countries, is alleged to have conspired with Virgil Griffith, a US cryptocurrency expert, to “illegally provide cryptocurrency and blockchain services to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)”.

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Beanstalk cryptocurrency loses $182m of reserves in flash ‘attack’

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Raider gains voting rights over digital currency and uses them to transfer contents of treasury

The Beanstalk cryptocurrency has been stripped of reserves valued at more than $180m (£138m) in seconds, after an attacker used borrowed money to snap up enough voting rights to transfer the money away.

The lightning hostile takeover raises fresh questions about the unregulated nature of digital currencies and the lack of protections for investors.

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Biden vows to ‘ratchet up the pain’ on Putin with new Russia sanctions – as it happened

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The US and its allies are preparing to impose new sanctions on Moscow over civilian killings in Ukraine as the west makes a fresh attempt to cripple Vladimir Putin’s economy and war effort.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the atrocities in his country as “war crimes” while Ukraine authorities said close to more than 4,400 incidents were being investigated.

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Trump sues Hillary Clinton, alleging ‘plot’ to rig 2016 election against him

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Clinton, James Comey and others accused of orchestrating Russia conspiracy that makes Watergate ‘pale in comparison’

Donald Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other people and entities tied to the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016, claiming that in a bid to rig the election they orchestrated a conspiracy which made Watergate “pale in comparison”.

The suit came a day after the release of a letter from a prosecutor in New York who said he believed Trump was “guilty of numerous felony violations” in his business affairs, despite the district attorney in Manhattan choosing not to indict.

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California jogger Sherri Papini staged own violent kidnapping, FBI says

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Papini’s 2016 disappearance was long cloaked in confusion, as a friend raised funds for a ‘reverse ransom’

Sherri Papini seemed to be just another small-town northern California mom, when, a little over five years ago, she disappeared in the woods. By her own account, she was abducted, chained to a pole for three weeks, half-starved, beaten, branded and burned and then – for no apparent reason – released again by the side of a busy highway.

Now, after an exhaustive search for her captors, the US government has concluded that Papini made up the whole story.

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FBI confirms it obtained NSO’s Pegasus spyware

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Bureau says sophisticated hacking tool was never used in support of any investigation

The FBI has confirmed that it obtained NSO Group’s powerful Pegasus spyware, suggesting that it bought access to the Israeli surveillance tool to “stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft”.

In a statement released to the Guardian, the bureau said it had procured a “limited licence” to access Pegasus for “product testing and evaluation only”, and suggested that its evaluation of the tool partly related to security concerns if the spyware fell into the “wrong hands”.

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Online extremist content surged before 6 January, says US agency

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FBI and DHS flagged content that could ‘inspire violence by lone offenders against government officials’

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned of an increase in extremist content and threats against US lawmakers in the days leading up to the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

The memo, sent on Thursday to state and local law enforcement, said that DHS had no indication of a specific and credible plot, but that the agency and the FBI had “identified new content online that could inspire violence, particularly by lone offenders, and could be directed against political and other government officials, including members of Congress, state and local officials, and high-profile members of political parties, including in locations outside of [Washington DC]”.

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