Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries

Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries
FBI Director Kash Patel was not part of a Signal chat in which other Trump administration national security officials discussed detailed attack plans, but that didn't spare him from being questioned by lawmakers this week. (AFP/File)
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Updated 27 March 2025
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Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries

Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries
  • FBI and Justice Department for decades have been responsible for enforcing Espionage Act statutes governing the mishandling of national defense information
  • Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled at an unrelated news conference on Thursday that she was disinclined to do so

WASHINGTON: FBI Director Kash Patel was not part of a Signal chat in which other Trump administration national security officials discussed detailed attack plans, but that didn’t spare him from being questioned by lawmakers this week about whether the nation’s premier law enforcement agency would investigate.
Patel made no such commitments during the course of two days of Senate and House hearings, declining to comment on the possibility and testifying that he had not personally reviewed the text messages that were inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic who was mistakenly included on an unclassified Signal chat.
That Patel would be grilled on what the FBI might do was hardly surprising.
Even as President Donald Trump insisted “it’s not really an FBI thing,” the reality is that the FBI and Justice Department for decades have been responsible for enforcing Espionage Act statutes governing the mishandling — whether intentional or negligent — of national defense information like the kind shared on Signal, a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications but is not approved for classified information.
The Justice Department has broad discretion to open an investigation, though Attorney General Pam Bondi, who introduced Trump at a Justice Department event this month, signaled at an unrelated news conference on Thursday that she was disinclined to do so. She repeated Trump administration talking points that the highly sensitive information in the chat was not classified, though current and former US officials have said the posting of the exact launch times of aircraft and times that bombs would be released before those pilots were even in the air would have been classified.
She also quickly pivoted to two Democrats, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden, who found themselves under investigation but never charged for allegedly mishandling classified information. Indeed, the department has conducted multiple high-profile investigations in recent years, albeit with differences in underlying facts and outcomes.
Multiple high-profile figures have found themselves under investigation in recent years over their handling of government secrets, but the differences in the underlying facts and the outcomes make it impossible to prognosticate what might happen in this instance or whether any accountability can be expected. There’s also precedent for public officials either to avoid criminal charges or be spared meaningful punishment.
“In terms of prior investigations, there were set-out standards that the department always looked at and tried to follow when making determinations about which types of disclosures they were going to pursue,” including the sensitivity of the information exposed the willfulness of the conduct, said former Justice Department prosecutor Michael Zweiback, who has handled classified information investigations.
A look at just a few of the notable prior investigations:
Hillary Clinton
The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee was investigated but not charged for her use of a private email server for the sake of convenience during her time as secretary of state in the Obama administration. There appear to be some parallels with the Signal chat episode.
The politically fraught criminal investigation was initiated by a 2015 referral from the intelligence agencies’ internal watchdog, which alerted the FBI to the presence of potentially hundreds of emails containing classified information on that server. Law enforcement then set out to determine whether Clinton, or her aides, had transmitted classified information on a server not meant to host such material.
The overall conclusions were something of a mixed bag.
Then-FBI Director James Comey, in a highly unusual public statement, asserted that the bureau had found evidence that Clinton was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information but recommended against charges because he said officials could not prove that she intended to break the law or knew that the information she and her aides were communicating about was classified.
The decision was derided by Republicans who thought the Obama administration Justice Department had let a fellow Democrat off the hook. Among those critical were some of the very same participants in the Signal chat as well as Bondi, who as Florida’s attorney general spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention and mimicked the audience chant of “Lock her up!”
David Petraeus
Among the biggest names to actually get charged is Petraeus, the former CIA director sentenced in 2015 to two years’ probation for disclosing classified information to a biographer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
That material consisted of eight binders of classified information that Petraeus improperly kept in his house from his time as the top military commander in Afghanistan. Among the secret details in the “black books” were the names of covert operatives, the coalition war strategy and notes about Petraeus’ discussions with President Barack Obama and the National Security Council, prosecutors have said.
Petraeus, a retired four-star Army general who led US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, wound up pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor count of unauthorized retention and removal of classified material as part of a deal with Justice Department prosecutors. Some national security experts said it smacked of a double-standard for its lenient outcome.
Comey himself would later complain about the resolution, writing in a 2018 book that he argued to the Justice Department that Petraeus should have also been charged with a felony for lying to the FBI.
“A poor person, an unknown person — say a young black Baptist minister from Richmond — would be charged with a felony and sent to jail,” he said.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump
These investigations don’t bear much parallel to the Signal episode but nonetheless serve as examples of high-profile probes launched by the department into the mishandling of classified information.
Both found themselves investigated by Justice Department special counsels, with Trump being charged with hoarding top-secret records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Trump had taken those records after leaving office. He was also accused of showing off a Pentagon attack plan to a visitor at his Bedminster golf club.
The case was dismissed by a Florida-based judge who concluded that special counsel Jack Smith had been improperly appointed. Prosecutors abandoned the case after Trump won in November.
Biden, too, was investigated for his retention of classified information in his home following his tenure as vice president. A special counsel found some evidence that Biden had willfully retained the records but concluded that criminal charges were not merited.
Jeffrey Sterling
A former CIA officer, Sterling was convicted of leaking to a reporter details of a secret mission to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions by slipping flawed nuclear blueprints to the Iranians through a Russian intermediary.
He was sentenced in 2015 to 3 1/2 years in prison, a punishment whistleblower advocates and other supporters decried as impossible to square with Petraeus’ misdemeanor guilty plea just a month earlier.
The details of the operation disclosed by Sterling were published by journalist James Risen in his 2006 book “State of War.”
Sterling was charged in 2010, but the trial was delayed for years, in part because of legal wrangling about whether Risen could be forced to testify. Ultimately, prosecutors chose not to call Risen as a witness, despite winning legal battles allowing them to do so.


Poles vote for a new president as security concerns loom large

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Poles vote for a new president as security concerns loom large

Poles vote for a new president as security concerns loom large
WARSAW: Poles are voting Sunday in a presidential election at a time of heightened security concerns stemming from the ongoing war in neighboring Ukraine and growing worry that the US commitment to Europe’s security could be weakening under President Donald Trump.
The top two front-runners are Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a liberal allied with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian with no prior political experience who is supported by the national conservative Law and Justice party.
Recent opinion polls show Trzaskowski with around 30 percent support and Nawrocki in the mid-20s. A second round between the two is widely expected to take place on June 1.
The election is also a test of the strength of other forces, including the far right.
Sławomir Mentzen, a hard-right candidate who blends populist MAGA rhetoric with libertarian economics and a critical stance toward the European Union, has been polling in third place.
Ten other candidates are also on the ballot. With such a crowded field and a requirement that a candidate receive more than 50 percent of the vote to win outright, a second round seemed all but inevitable.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500GMT) and close at 9 p.m. (1900GMT). Exit polls will be released when voting ends, with results expected by Tuesday, possibly Monday.
Polish authorities have reported attempts at foreign interference during the campaign, including denial-of-service attacks targeting parties in Tusk’s coalition on Friday and allegations by a state research institute that political ads on Facebook were funded from abroad.
Although Poland’s prime minister and parliament hold primary authority over domestic policy, the presidency carries substantial power. The president serves as commander of the armed forces, plays a role in foreign and security policy, and can veto legislation.
The conservative outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, has repeatedly used that power over more than the past year to hamper Tusk’s agenda, for example blocking ambassadorial nominations and using his veto power to resist reversing judicial and media changes made during Law and Justice’s time in power from 2015 to late 2023.
A Trzaskowski victory could be expected to end such a standoff. He has pledged to support reforms to the courts and public media, both of which critics say were politicized under Law and Justice. Tusk’s opponents say he has also politicized public media.
Nawrocki, who leads a state historical institute, has positioned himself as a defender of conservative values and national sovereignty.

Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle

Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle
Updated 18 May 2025
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Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle

Indian space agency’s satellite mission fails due to technical issue in launch vehicle
  • The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Sunday morning

NEW DELHI: The Indian space agency’s mission to launch into orbit a new Earth observation satellite failed after the launch vehicle encountered a technical issue during the third stage of flight, officials said Sunday.
The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Sriharikota space center in southern India on Sunday morning.
“During the third stage ... there was a fall in the chamber pressure of the motor case, and the mission could not be accomplished,” said V. Narayanan, chief of the Indian Space Research Organization.
Active in space research since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014.
After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole in 2023 in a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold reserves of frozen water. The mission was dubbed as a technological triumph for the world’s most populous nation.


Indian vets to be re-deployed as security guards in Kashmir, says Delhi

Indian vets to be re-deployed as security guards in Kashmir, says Delhi
Updated 18 May 2025
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Indian vets to be re-deployed as security guards in Kashmir, says Delhi

Indian vets to be re-deployed as security guards in Kashmir, says Delhi
  • Around 70 people were killed in violence last week in worst India-Pakistan fighting in decades
  • Around 4,000 veterans have been “identified” as non-combatant volunteers, says Indian government

Srinagar, India: Military veterans will be redeployed as security guards in Indian-administered Kashmir, New Delhi said on Saturday, a week after it reached a ceasefire with Pakistan to end their most serious conflict in decades.

Around 70 people were killed in the violence, which was sparked by an attack on tourists by gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir last month that New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing — a charge it denies.

The government of Jammu and Kashmir approved a “proposal for mobilizing Ex-Servicemen (ESM) to safeguard vital infrastructure across the Union Territory,” according to a government press release.

Around 4,000 veterans have been “identified” as non-combatant volunteers, out of which 435 have licensed personal weapons, it said.

This will help by “significantly enhancing the capacity to respond effectively to localized security situations,” the government added.

Veterans will work in “static guard” roles, focusing on “presence-based deterrence and local coordination.”

India already has an estimated half a million soldiers permanently deployed in the contested region that has been at the heart of several wars between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who administer separate portions of the divided territory.

Rebels in India’s Jammu and Kashmir have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.

Fighting had decreased since 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the territory’s partial autonomy and imposed direct control from New Delhi.

But last year, thousands of additional troops, including special forces, were deployed across the territory’s mountainous south following a series of deadly rebel attacks that had left more than 50 soldiers dead in three years.

A similar veteran volunteer program took place with 2,500 veterans during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the government.


Trump claims the US is the only country with birthright citizenship. It’s not

Trump claims the US is the only country with birthright citizenship. It’s not
Updated 18 May 2025
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Trump claims the US is the only country with birthright citizenship. It’s not

Trump claims the US is the only country with birthright citizenship. It’s not
  • As enshrined in the US Constitution, citizenship is granted to anyone born in the US, regardless of the parents’ immigration status
  • Most countries with unconditional birthright citizenship are concentrated in the Americas. The rest are in Africa and Asia

As the Supreme Court prepared to hear arguments Thursday on whether to allow President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship to take effect, he falsely claimed on Truth Social that the United States is the only country that offers such a right.
Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20, the first day of his second term, that would deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the US illegally or temporarily. It has been put on nationwide holds by lower court orders.
The administration is now appealing, on an emergency basis, the authority of individual judges to issue these rulings, known as nationwide, or universal, injunctions. The constitutionality of the executive order itself is not yet before the court.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
Trump, discussing birthright citizenship in a Truth Social post: “The United States of America is the only Country in the World that does this, for what reason, nobody knows.”
The facts: This is not true. About 30 countries, including the US, offer unconditional birthright citizenship, according to the CIA World Factbook and the Library of Congress. Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the Constitution after the Civil War to ensure that formerly enslaved people would be citizens.

“The statement is pretty obviously wrong,” said Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University who is an expert on constitutional law and migration rights. “Many countries have birthright citizenship, though in some of them the rules are different from those in the US.”
Birthright citizenship is a principle known as jus soli or “right of the soil.” It bases citizenship on a person being born within a country’s territory. In contrast, the principle of jus sanguinis or “right of blood” determines citizenship based on the citizenship of one’s parents or other ancestors.
Citizenship is granted to anyone born in the US, regardless of the parents’ immigration status. Only children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government, and of enemies present in the US during hostile occupation do not qualify. Those born to parents of sovereign Native American tribes were also excluded until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
Most countries with unconditional birthright citizenship, among them Canada and Mexico, are concentrated in the Americas. The rest are in Africa and Asia. Some countries offer citizenship to those born in their territory to noncitizen parents only under certain conditions, such as the legal status of their parents or the age of the person applying for citizenship based on place of birth.

These are: Antigua & Barbados, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, El Salvador, The Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Venezuela.

The first sentence of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, often referred to as the Citizenship Clause, guarantees birthright citizenship. It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This clause effectively overturned the notorious Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the Supreme Court held that Black people, no matter whether or not they were enslaved, were not citizens. It was ratified, along with the rest of the 14th Amendment, in 1868 after it was passed by the Senate in 1866. The Civil War ended in 1865.
Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship conflicts with a Supreme Court decision from 1898 that held that the Citizenship Clause made citizens of all children born on US soil with narrow exceptions that are not at issue in the case currently before the court.
The justices are also considering appeals from the Trump administration on several other issues, many related to immigration.


Poland votes in tight election as Europe watches

Poland votes in tight election as Europe watches
Updated 18 May 2025
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Poland votes in tight election as Europe watches

Poland votes in tight election as Europe watches
  • Warsaw's pro-EU mayor Rafal Trzaskowski face off with nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki
  • Winner to succeed Andrzej Duda., who can't run again after serving two consecutive 5-year terms

WARSAW: Poles vote on Sunday in a tight presidential election that will be decisive for the future of the country’s centrist government as well as for abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Pro-EU Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski is expected to get 30 percent, ahead of nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki’s 25 percent, according to opinion polls.
That would put both through to the runoff on June 1 at a particularly fraught moment for Europe as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, far-right populists continue to rise and ties with Washington come under strain.
Polls open at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) and close at 9:00 p.m. when exit polls are to be released. There are 13 candidates in total and definitive results are expected only on Monday.
Ever since former EU leader Donald Tusk’s coalition came to power in 2023, key government initiatives have been blocked by the veto of nationalist President Andrzej Duda.
Some Poles are hoping that logjam is about to end.
“I hope that these elections will complete the change,” said Hubert Michalowski, a self-employed 50-year-old.
Michalowski told AFP he was opposed to any rightward turn for Poland and instead wanted his country to “stay in the center and reverse this trend in Europe as well.”

The electoral campaign in the European Union and NATO member has largely revolved around foreign policy, showcasing a clash of philosophies over Poland’s engagement with the EU and the United States.
But social issues have also played a major part.
Trzaskowski, 53, has promised to support abortion and LGBTQ rights — a prospect that has raised the hopes of Malgorzata Mikoszewska, 41, a tourism agency employee.
“Above all, I hope for the liberalization of the law on abortion and sexual minorities,” she said.
The Law and Justice party (PiS), which backs Nawrocki, was frequently at odds with Poland’s Western allies and EU institutions in Brussels over rule-of-law concerns. It lost power in 2023.

Karol Nawrocki, a candidate for Polish presidential election supported by Poland's main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), gestures during his rally on the final day of the campaign in Lublin, Poland, May 16, 2025. (Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS)

Nawrocki, 42, admires Donald Trump and said the US president told him “You will win” when they met at the White House earlier this month.
The key to the election could be whether supporters of Slawomir Mentzen, a far-right candidate polling in third position with around 12 percent, cast their ballots for Nawrocki in the second round.
Mentzen is a Euroskeptic libertarian staunchly against abortion and migrants. He has accused the country’s one million Ukrainian refugees of taking advantage of Poland.
Echoing some of Mentzen’s rhetoric, self-employed 25-year-old Radoslaw Wiecek said he did not want Poland to be “totally subject to the EU.”
Wiecek said he wanted “a fresh wind” to end the dominance of the two main political groups — Law and Justice and the Civic Coalition (KO) which backs Trzaskowski.
For Anna Urbanska, a 74-year-old pensioner, the key electoral issue is immigration.
“I don’t want these immigrants to be allowed in here, in Poland. I want us to be able to live more peacefully,” she said.The governing coalition is hopeful a victory by Trzaskowski would enable it to fulfil its hitherto undelivered campaign pledges.
Tusk’s administration has been stymied from easing Poland’s stringent abortion laws and introducing other changes by the head of state’s veto power, to the disappointment of some voters.
Poland’s president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, steers foreign policy and can introduce and veto legislation.
“With Nawrocki as president, the government would be paralyzed, and that could eventually lead to the fall of the ruling coalition,” said political scientist Anna Materska-Sosnowska.
His victory could mean “the return of the populists with renewed force” at the next general election, she told AFP.
The stakes are high for Europe.
Under Tusk, Poland has grown more important on the continent, reinforcing its position as a key voice on NATO’s eastern flank against Russian aggression.
Materska-Sosnowska said the ballot was fundamental for “attempts to stop the anti-democratic, populist trend running through Europe.”