President Trump and ZTE

There has to be an explanation for President Trump’s interest in saving jobs at ZTE.

In Concession, Trump Will Help China's ZTE 'Get Back Into ... photo

Could it be part of a trade issue with China to ensure China continues pressure on North Korea? Could it be to keep American intellectual property protected in some obscure plot where China continues to steal intelligence to eventually control all 5G?

The 2019 NDAA includes a provision to prohibit ZTE and Huawei use in the United States.

Reuters: “I hope the administration does not move forward on this supposed deal I keep reading about,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. Bilateral talks between the world’s two biggest economies resume in Washington this week.

The Wall Street Journal has reported Beijing would back away from threats to slap tariffs on U.S. farm goods in exchange for easing the ban on selling components to ZTE.

“They are basically conducting an all-out assault to steal what we’ve already developed and use it as the baseline for their development so they can supplant us as the leader in the most important technologies of the 21st century,” Rubio said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Asia policy.

Trump had taken to Twitter on Sunday with a pledge to help the company, which has suspended its main operations, because the penalties had cost too many jobs in China. It was a departure for a president who often touts “America First” policies.

The Commerce Department in April found ZTE had violated a 2017 settlement created after the company violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and banned U.S. companies from providing exports to ZTE for seven years.

U.S. companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of components used in ZTE’s equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks.

The suggestion outraged members of Congress who have been pressing for more restrictions on ZTE. Some U.S. lawmakers have alleged equipment made by ZTE and other Chinese companies could pose a cyber security threat.

“Who makes unilateral concessions on the eve of talks after you’ve spent all this time trying to say, correctly in my view, that the Chinese have ripped off our technology?” Senator Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade policy, told Reuters.

Wyden, who is also on the Intelligence Committee, was one of 32 Senate Democrats who signed a letter on Tuesday accusing Trump of putting China’s interests ahead of U.S. jobs and national security.

The company has denied wrongdoing.

Republican Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday he did not expect lawmakers would seek to remove a ban on ZTE technology from a must-pass annual defense policy bill making its way through Congress.

“I confess I don’t fully understand the administration’s take on this at this point,” Thornberry said. “It is not a question to me of economics, it is a question of security.”

Consider:

Axios: President Trump’s desire to help save ZTE could set the tone for the treatment of another Chinese telecom company that’s under investigation for sanctions violations, Axios’ Erica Pandey writes.

The backdrop:

  • ZTE has been found guilty of breaking U.S. law three times, including violating sanctions by selling equipment with American parts to Iran and North Korea.
  • The Pentagon has banned the sale of ZTE and Huawei phones at retail stores on military bases, citing concerns that the companies are using their devices to spy on military personnel.
  • ZTE and Huawei are both key players in China’s race to dominate 5G and the future of mobile communication. The Chinese Communist Party is painting U.S. moves against the Chinese phone makers as efforts to knock China out of the 5G race.

Between the lines: “Ross had a color wheel of approaches [on ZTE] ranging from a handslap to breaking them as a company,” says Chris Johnson, a former CIA China analyst who’s now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

  • The Chinese might have stomached a slap on the wrist, but by banning American companies from selling parts to ZTE, Ross served up a punishment harsh enough to halt operations. China in turn made ZTE a top trade priority and used its massive leverage to potentially sway the president.

Why it matters: China could use Trump’s apparent pivot on ZTE as a stepping stone to free Huawei. Or the ZTE case could be a lesson for the U.S. in negotiating with China.

How the ZTE deal could fare:

  • “The U.S. and China are closing in on a deal that would give China’s ZTE Corp. a reprieve from potentially crippling U.S. sanctions in exchange for Beijing removing tariffs on billions of dollars of U.S. agricultural products, said people in both countries briefed on the deal,” the Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei and Bob Davis report.
  • Steven Mnuchin is leading the U.S. in negotiating a deal that puts the brakes on actions against ZTE in exchange for China buying down its trade surplus, reports Axios’ Jonathan Swan.
  • China’s trade negotiator, Liu He, is in DC today. Axios contributor Bill Bishop hears that Liu will arrive “with an open checkbook to buy down the deficit but that progress on anything structural will be much harder.”

The bottom line: Taking the toughest possible approach to China might not be the smartest when the Asian power is stronger than ever and prepared to fight back.

 

Hey, How About Assigning an IG to the JCPOA?

There is still much dispute over the Iranian nuclear deal, the P5+1, the money, the players and the inspections. There were side deals too, do we really know all there is to know?

Iran in parallel nuclear talks in Vienna, Istanbul - Daily News Egypt photo

Perhaps it is past time that an Inspector General is assigned to the whole deal and talks. How much did the United States really pay to Iran? How many other countries participated in the deal beyond those of the P5+1? Who took bribes? Who is getting kickbacks? What is Ben Rhodes doing these days for a living? Were there really any inspections to confirm Iran’s compliance?

A little known fact is the UN’s top nuclear inspector resigned immediately when President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA.

The International Atomic Energy Agency didn’t give a reason for the sudden resignation of Tero Varjoranta, stating Saturday that it doesn’t comment on confidential personnel matters.

Varjoranta, who was in the role for almost five years, will be replaced temporarily by Massimo Aparo, an Italian nuclear engineer who was most recently the agency’s top inspector for Iran.

The move comes just days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord designed to keep Tehran’s atomic weapons program in check.

The Vienna-based nuclear agency says it has no indications Iran is in breach of the accord.

*** What does Iran know now that could incriminate Western officials? If there is real evidence of international corruption by Western officials, will that affect snap-back sanctions on Iran? Will that affect relations with Britain, France or Germany? Susan Rice admitted to 2 side deals and those documents would not be published or provided.

After passing a 90-day mark on Aug. 6, the following sanctions will snap back on Iran, according to the Treasury Department:

  • Sanctions on Iran buying or acquiring U.S. dollars
  • Sanctions on Iran trading gold and other precious metals
  • Sanctions on Iran’s sale, supply or trade of metals such as aluminum and steel, as well as graphite, coal and certain software for “integrating industrial processes”
  • Sanctions on “significant” sales or purchases of Iranian rials, or the maintenance of significant funds or accounts outside the country using Iranian rials
  • Sanctions on issuing Iranian debt
  • Iranian auto sanctions

The U.S. will also revoke certain permissions, granted to Iran under the deal, on Aug. 6. These include halting Iran’s ability to export its carpets and foods into the U.S., as well as ending certain licensing-related transactions.

At the end of the 180-day interval on Nov. 4, another set of sanctions will once again be clamped down on Iran:

  • Sanctions on Iran’s ports, as well as the country’s shipping and shipping sectors
  • Sanctions on buying petroleum and petrochemical products with a number of Iranian oil companies
  • Sanctions on foreign financial institutions transacting with the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian financial institutions
  • Sanctions on the provision of certain financial messaging services to Iran’s central bank and other Iranian financial institutions
  • Sanctions on the provision of underwriting services, insurance, or reinsurance
  • Sanctions on Iran’s energy sector

The following day, on Nov. 5, the Trump administration will disallow U.S.-owned foreign entities from being allowed to engage in certain transactions with Iran. Sanctions on certain Iranian individuals will also be re-imposed on Nov. 5.

Read the Treasury’s full guide to the re-imposition of Iran nuclear deal sanctions here.

*** Why are we only focusing on Iran regarding the nuclear deal? Why not their global reign of terror?

Iran, a State Sponsor of Terrorism, continues to invest in proxy terrorist and militant organizations that threaten the Homeland and US interests and engage in activities that impede US counterterrorism goals. This hearing will examine trends in Iran’s external operations and capabilities and consider the near-term and long-term security implications of Iranian support for Shia militants and terrorist groups operating in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Latin America.

 

Yes, it is for sure time for a full set off committee hearings and for subpoena power along with an Inspector General.

Omar Mateen to Larry Nasser, Can the FBI be Fixed?

When agents fail 4 polygraphs and are still on the payroll with security clearance, is the FBI working well? When agents create fake Facebook accounts to leak information, are things working well at the Bureau? When agents fail to stop Omar Mateen, the San Bernardino, California terrorist, are things broken at the FBI? What about the early complaints by parents to the FBI about the rapist/molester Larry Nasser and not getting a call for over a year? Conditions are the Bureau good?

The Michael Horowitz Inspector General report is due at any time. What is unclear is how the FBI will be summarized and why? Was there a full mission change to find domestic terrorists over robbery cases? Did RICO cases get sidelined for the sake of sex traffickers or narcotic cases?

Inspector General reports provide the reason for the investigation and the recommendations to cure the systems. Will that be the case when it comes to hacking over locating foreign spies in our country? Is crime in America so overwhelming that the FBI cannot keep pace and local law enforcement is lagging behind as well including the fact that technology is advancing such that cases should be easier?

You be the judge as you read the following:

The FBI Is in Crisis. It’s Worse Than You Think

TIME: In normal times, the televisions are humming at the FBI’s 56 field offices nationwide, piping in the latest news as agents work their investigations. But these days, some agents say, the TVs are often off to avoid the crush of bad stories about the FBI itself. The bureau, which is used to making headlines for nabbing crooks, has been grabbing the spotlight for unwanted reasons: fired leaders, texts between lovers and, most of all, attacks by President Trump. “I don’t care what channel it’s on,” says Tom O’Connor, a veteran investigator in Washington who leads the FBI Agents Association. “All you hear is negative stuff about the FBI … It gets depressing.”

Many view Trump’s attacks as self-serving: he has called the renowned agency an “embarrassment to our country” and its investigations of his business and political dealings a “witch hunt.” But as much as the bureau’s roughly 14,000 special agents might like to tune out the news, internal and external reports have found lapses throughout the agency, and longtime observers, looking past the partisan haze, see a troubling picture: something really is wrong at the FBI.

The Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, will soon release a much-anticipated assessment of Democratic and Republican charges that officials at the FBI interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. That year-long probe, sources familiar with it tell TIME, is expected to come down particularly hard on former FBI director James Comey, who is currently on a high-profile book tour. It will likely find that Comey breached Justice Department protocols in a July 5, 2016, press conference when he criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State even as he cleared her of any crimes, the sources say. The report is expected to also hit Comey for the way he reopened the Clinton email probe less than two weeks before the election, the sources say.

The report closely follows an earlier one in April by Horowitz, which showed that the ousted deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, had lied to the bureau’s internal investigations branch to cover up a leak he orchestrated about Clinton’s family foundation less than two weeks before the election. (The case has since been referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for potential prosecution.) Another IG report in March found that FBI retaliation against internal whistle-blowers was continuing despite years of bureau pledges to fix the problem. Last fall, Horowitz found that the FBI wasn’t adequately investigating “high-risk” employees who failed polygraph tests.

There have been other painful, more public failures as well: missed opportunities to prevent mass shootings that go beyond the much-publicized overlooked warnings in the Parkland, Fla., school killings; an anguishing delay in the sexual-molestation probe into Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar; and evidence of misconduct by agents in the aftermath of standoffs with armed militias in Nevada and Oregon. FBI agents are facing criminal charges ranging from obstruction to leaking classified material. And then there’s potentially the widest-reaching failure of all: the FBI’s miss of the Russian influence operation against the 2016 election, which went largely undetected for more than two years.

In the course of two dozen interviews for this story, agents and others expressed concern that the tumult is threatening the cooperation of informants, local and state police officials, and allies overseas. Even those who lived through past crises say the current one is more damaging. “We’ve seen ups and downs, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Robert Anderson, a senior official at the FBI who retired in 2015.

The FBI’s crisis of credibility appears to have seeped into the jury room. The number of convictions in FBI-led investigations has declined in each of the last five years, dropping nearly 11% over that period, according to a TIME analysis of data obtained from the Justice Department by researchers at Syracuse University. “We’ve already seen where the bad guys and witnesses look at those FBI credentials, and it might not carry the same weight anymore,” says O’Connor.

Indeed, public support for the FBI has plunged. A PBS NewsHour survey in April showed a 10-point drop–from 71% to 61%–in the prior two months among Americans who thought the FBI was “just trying to do its job” and an 8-point jump–from 23% to 31%–among those who thought it was “biased against the Trump Administration.”

The FBI, of course, continues to do good work. On April 25, local authorities in Sacramento and the FBI announced the dramatic arrest of the Golden State Killer. That same day it helped bust 39 people in Pennsylvania in a cocaine-trafficking investigation, 14 prison employees in South Carolina in a bribery case and two men in New Jersey in a $5.3 million tax-evasion probe. Assistant FBI Director William F. Sweeney Jr., who runs the New York field office and oversaw the April 9 raid against Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, says his agents’ response to the turmoil has been to “double down and [say], ‘Hey, we’re gonna keep on moving.’”

Some question whether the FBI has gotten too big and has been asked to do too many things. After 9/11, then FBI director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel leading the Russia probe, made massive new investments in counterterrorism and intelligence, shifting resources and investigative focus from white collar crime and bank robberies.

Many of the bureau’s woes developed on Comey’s 3½-year watch. They extend beyond the most visible controversies, like the Clinton email and Russia investigations, to his costly confrontation with Apple over unlocking an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting in 2015, and beyond. Critics say Comey’s penchant for high-profile moral fights has, ironically, undermined the bureau’s reputation. Trump himself has used that line of argument to challenge the FBI.

Democrats have questioned the integrity of the bureau as well, with Clinton and her aides claiming Comey and the FBI helped tip the election to Trump. But the biggest difference between past crises and the current one, according to virtually everyone interviewed for this article, is the President. Trump has continually attacked the integrity of the institution and its leaders, alleging not just incompetence but bad faith in the commission of justice. Ronald Hosko, who retired in 2014 after 30 years at the bureau, compares the moment to a wildfire, saying Trump “is either the spark that creates the flames, or he’s standing there with a can of gas to stoke the flames.”

The bureau’s current director, Christopher Wray, recently said his first priority is to “try to bring a sense of calm and stability back to the bureau.” But the FBI is facing one of the greatest tests of its 110 years. In the coming months, it must fix a litany of internal problems, fend off outside attacks on its trustworthiness and pursue investigations touching on a sitting President, at the same time a growing number of Americans are asking themselves: Can we trust the FBI?

Last May, McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, sat down at the table in his seventh-floor office for a meeting with two agents from the inspections division. The agents had some questions about the Clinton Foundation leak just before the election. It was a quick meeting. McCabe, an FBI veteran who rose through the ranks over a 21-year career, told them he had “no idea” where the leak came from. The agents left after just five minutes or so, according to the Inspector General’s April 13 report.

McCabe had offered that same basic assurance months earlier to his boss, then director Comey, investigators said, and had angrily lit into FBI officials under him, suggesting the Clinton leak had come from their offices and telling one senior agent in Washington to “get his house in order.” But as it turned out, McCabe knew exactly where the leak had come from. He personally authorized it, Horowitz’s investigators found, to counter charges that he favored Clinton. (His wife received $467,500 from the PAC of a Clinton ally, then Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, in a failed 2015 bid for state office.)

The McCabe findings have shaken the FBI. The bureau has massive power, and as a result, it has strict rules. Lying to investigators is considered a dire breach in an organization built on trust. The referral to the U.S. Attorney’s office, which emerged a week after the report was released, could result in charges against McCabe of making a false sworn statement. He has challenged the findings, disputing even the most basic elements, like how many people were in the room. The IG said it did not find many of his objections credible, with some elements contradicted by notes taken contemporaneously by an agent. McCabe previously called his firing part of a “war on the FBI” and the Russia investigation. But viewed against the backdrop of other Horowitz reports, McCabe’s alleged rule-breaking looks like part of a much larger problem.

In September, Horowitz found that bureau investigators had allowed employees with dubious polygraph results to keep their top-secret clearances for months or even years, posing “potential risks to U.S. national security.” In one instance, an FBI IT specialist with top-secret security clearance failed four polygraph tests and admitted to having created a fictitious Facebook account to communicate with a foreign national, but received no disciplinary action for that. In late 2016, Horowitz found that the FBI was getting information it shouldn’t have had access to when it used controversial parts of the Patriot Act to obtain business records in terrorism and counterintelligence cases.

Just as troubling are recent FBI missteps not yet under the IG’s microscope. At 2:31 p.m. on Jan. 5, the FBI’s round-the-clock tip center in West Virginia received a chilling phone call. The caller gave her name and said she was close to the family of an 18-year-old in Parkland, Fla., named Nikolas Cruz. Over 13 minutes, she said Cruz had posted photos of rifles he owned and animals he mutilated and that he wanted “to kill people.” She listed his Instagram accounts and suggested the FBI check for itself, saying she was worried about the thought of his “getting into a school and just shooting the place up,” according to a transcript of the call.

The FBI specialist checked Cruz’s name against a database and found that another tipster had reported 3½ months earlier that a “Nikolas Cruz” posted a comment on his YouTube channel saying, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” But neither tip was passed on to the FBI field agents in Miami or local officials in Parkland. After Cruz allegedly killed 17 people with an AR-15 rifle at his old school just six weeks later, the bureau admitted that it had dropped the ball and ordered a full review. “You look at this and say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” says Anderson, the former FBI official.

The Parkland shooting was only the latest in a string of devastating misses. After Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people at the nightclub Pulse in Orlando in June 2016, the FBI said it had investigated him twice before on terrorism suspicions, but shut the inquiries for lack of evidence. The year before, after Dylann Roof shot to death nine African-American parishioners at a South Carolina church, the FBI acknowledged that lapses in its gun background-check system allowed him to illegally buy the .45-caliber handgun he used in the massacre. And in 2011, the FBI received a tip from Russian intelligence that one of the Boston Marathon bombers had become radicalized and was planning an overseas trip to join radical Islamic groups. The FBI in Boston investigated him but found no “nexus” to terrorism.

FBI agents at the damaged rear wall of the Pulse nightclub, where Omar Mateen killed 49 people in June 2016

FBI agents at the damaged rear wall of the Pulse nightclub, where Omar Mateen killed 49 people in June 2016
Joe Raedle—Getty Images

The Orlando shooting provoked more second-guessing in late March, when the shooter’s widow, Noor Salman, was acquitted on charges of aiding and abetting him and obstructing justice. The jury foreman pointed to inconsistencies in the FBI’s accounts of the disputed admissions that agents said Salman had made, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The judge also scolded the government after an FBI agent contradicted the government’s earlier claims that Salman and Mateen had cased the club.

The concerns about FBI testimony in a major terrorist prosecution underscore a larger question: Are people less likely to believe what the bureau says these days? In January, a federal judge threw out all the criminal charges against renegade Nevada cattleman Cliven Bundy, his two sons and a supporter who had been in an armed standoff over unpaid grazing fees. Judge Gloria Navarro accused the government of “outrageous” and “flagrant” misconduct, citing failures by both prosecutors and the FBI to produce at least 1,000 pages of required documents. The judge said the FBI misplaced–or “perhaps hid”–a thumb drive revealing the existence of snipers and a surveillance camera at the site of the standoff.

A related case in Oregon, growing out of the 2016 takeover of a wildlife refuge by Bundy’s sons and their followers, has not gone well for the FBI either. An agent at the scene, W. Joseph Astarita, is now charged with five criminal counts after prosecutors say he falsely denied shooting twice at an occupation leader who was fatally shot by police, who said he appeared to be reaching for his handgun during a roadside encounter. The Bundy sons and five supporters who helped in the takeover were found not guilty of conspiracy and weapons charges, in another jarring setback for the government.

Some legal experts and defense advocates see the string of recent not guilty verdicts as a sign that jurors and judges are less inclined to take what the FBI says in court at face value. Data examined by TIME support that conclusion. The number of convictions in FBI-led investigations dropped last year for the fifth consecutive year–from 11,461 in 2012 to 10,232, according to Syracuse University data, which was obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests.

Moreover, TIME’s analysis shows a surprisingly low rate of success for the thousands of cases the FBI investigates and sends to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. Over that same time period, the Justice Department has ultimately won convictions in fewer than half the cases the FBI referred for prosecution, with a conviction rate of 47% last year, the data showed. That fell well below the average of 72% for all agencies. Prosecutors themselves have rejected many of the FBI’s referrals before they ever got to court. The bureau’s low success rate in these cases has remained largely unchanged in recent years.

Federal prosecutors still win the bulk of the thousands of cases they choose to bring based on FBI investigations. Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior says a variety of factors could play into the drop in prosecutions and convictions over the last five years, including “de-emphasizing” some crimes under Obama-era policies and cutbacks in prosecutors in recent years. Prior says that “judging the performance of the FBI based on a minuscule sample of cherry-picked cases” ignores its thousands of annual convictions.

Gina Nichols, a nurse in Minnesota, says she never had strong impressions one way or the other about the FBI until her daughter Maggie Nichols, who was a member of the national gymnastics team, reported three years ago that team physician Larry Nassar had molested her. Gina waited anxiously for the FBI to contact her and interview Maggie. But no one did so for nearly a year as the case languished among different FBI field offices in Indianapolis, Detroit and Los Angeles. Nassar is believed to have molested dozens of additional victims over the course of that year. “It makes you sick,” Gina tells TIME. “I have a child who was sexually abused for 2½ years by an Olympic doctor, and the FBI did nothing.”

The FBI has opened an internal inquiry to determine why the Nassar investigations appear to have dragged on for so long. John Manly, a Southern California lawyer representing many of the women, says he is angry that no one from the FBI has contacted the victims to explain the delay. “Knowing that the best law-enforcement agency in the world knew exactly what he was up to and did nothing–I can’t explain that to them,” Manly says. “You’ve got people who were really hurt here, so fix it,” he says.

Perhaps the easiest problems to address are the internal lapses. Experts say putting assets and management attention back to work on cyber, counterintelligence and traditional crime after Mueller shifted them to counterterrorism would help. “There’s an overextension of the mission,” says Brian Levin, a professor of criminal justice at California State University, San Bernardino, who has worked with the FBI. Most of Horowitz’s reports include measures the FBI can take to address their problems, including stricter rules for investigating polygraph test failures and training to protect whistle-blowers.

A failure of imagination is harder to fix. Mueller’s Russia probe has found that Moscow’s operation against the 2016 election first got under way in 2014, but the FBI failed to grasp the scope and danger of what was unfolding. The bureau missed the significance of the damaging 2015 hack of the DNC database. And when the Russian operation began to heat up in the summer of 2016, the FBI was always a step behind the Russians, struggling to understand intelligence reports they were getting about possible connections between Moscow and Trump aides. The bureau also sat on the disputed “dossier” prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

A report released on April 27 by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee found that the FBI was slow to confront the election meddling, especially in its failure to notify U.S. victims of Russian hacking quickly enough. The committee also charged that the bureau’s decision to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was influenced by politics. At the same time, the GOP has pointed to text messages between FBI special agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, which were critical of Trump–as well as many Democrats–to argue the bureau is fundamentally biased.

FBI Director Wray says the bureau has started “specific activities” to prevent election meddling by Moscow, but outsiders worry that the U.S. remains vulnerable this fall and beyond.

The most important thing the FBI can do to fix itself? Follow its own rules. In his handling of the Clinton email probe ahead of the 2016 election, Comey acted without telling the Justice Department what he planned to do. Comey is expected to come under fire in the upcoming IG report for breaking with Justice Department rules and norms by assuming authority usually held by prosecutors and speaking in public about a case that did not produce criminal charges, sources with knowledge of the report tell TIME. He will likely also be criticized for weighing in so close to the election in a way that could impact the outcome, sources familiar with the investigation say.

On his book tour, Comey has defended his decisions as the best way out of a bad situation. Facing what he called “a series of no-win decisions,” Comey says he did what he thought was necessary and transparent to protect the integrity of both the FBI and the legal process in such a high-profile case.

As he faces the crises at the FBI, Wray has told his senior aides to “keep calm and tackle hard.” Asked if recent misconduct cases concern Wray, FBI spokeswoman Jacqueline Maguire said the bureau’s 36,000 employees “are held to the highest standards of conduct–but as in any large organization, there may be occasions when an employee exercises poor judgment or engages in misconduct.” While she declined to discuss specific cases, Maguire said claims of misconduct are “taken seriously [and] investigated thoroughly,” leading to discipline when needed.

At FBI headquarters, agents and supervisors say they are keeping their heads down and focusing on their investigations. But the building is literally crumbling around them–Comey kept in his office a slab of concrete that had fallen off the side. Designs for a new complex were scrapped in February. Visible across Pennsylvania Avenue from the main entrance, with J. Edgar Hoover’s tarnished name above it, is the gleaming, gold-plated sign on the newly renovated Trump International Hotel.

Trump’s attacks on the FBI have been filled with inaccuracies and innuendo, wrongly claiming on Twitter, for instance, that McCabe was in charge of the Clinton email investigation. Trump makes a point of praising rank-and-file agents, but his punches have landed inside the FBI and out. Some worry the damage may take years to repair. “I fear Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution are having an effect on the public’s confidence in the FBI,” says Matthew S. Axelrod, a senior Justice Department official in the Obama Administration.

Mueller may play an outsize role in how his old agency gets through the current crisis. If the special counsel finds that Russia did collude with members of the Trump campaign–the central question in his investigation–and any perpetrators are charged and found guilty in court, it would rebut Trump’s charges of a “witch hunt.” If Mueller finds no evidence of collusion, or declines to make it public, it would open the door for Trump and his campaign to paint the FBI as a band of partisan hacks with a reputation, as he has tweeted, “in tatters.”

There may be no immediate way to fix a place with as many missions and masters as the FBI. One official, asked what it would take for the FBI to move past all the controversy, paused and said simply, “Time.” Many hope that the extraordinary confluence of events that drew the FBI into the 2016 election will prove to be, as Comey called it, “a 500-year flood” that won’t repeat itself anytime soon.

Others are doubtful. Jeffrey Danik, a retired FBI agent in Florida who now works with whistle-blowers at the bureau, blames the state of affairs on “a severe lack of leadership” and transparency at headquarters in owning up to recent mistakes. Those damaging failures, he says, “have just about pushed our incredible organization over the brink.” For now, everyone inside and out who cares about the reliability of law enforcement in America is left hoping that the bureau has at least started on the road back.

Law Enforcement can Find your Cell Phone in Seconds

Lots of applications here, some rather scary, others real terrifying while others are rewarding. Make your own decision(s). As an aside, we can only hope there is no Chinese technology involved or data is sold without knowledge or permission.

The service provided by Securus reveals a potential weakness in a system that is supposed to protect the private information of millions of cellphone users. With customers’ consent, carriers sell the ability to acquire location data for marketing purposes like providing coupons when someone is near a business, or services like roadside assistance or bank fraud protection. Companies that use the data generally sign contracts pledging to get people’s approval — through a response to a text message, for example, or the push of a button on a menu — or to otherwise use the data legally.

But the contracts between the companies, including Securus, are “the legal equivalent of a pinky promise,” Mr. Wyden wrote. The F.C.C. said it was reviewing the letter.

Courts are split on whether investigators need a warrant based on probable cause to acquire location data. In some states, a warrant is required for any sort of cellphone tracking. In other states, it is needed only if an investigator wants the data in real time. And in others no warrant is needed at all.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/aplus/detail-page/B0079SR572_securus_201304294_4627.jpg photo

The Justice Department has said its policy is to get warrants for real-time tracking. The Supreme Court has ruled that putting a GPS tracker on a car counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment, but this was because installing the device involved touching a person’s property — something that doesn’t happen when a cellphone is pinged.

Phone companies have a legal responsibility under the Telecommunications Act to protect consumer data, including call location, and can provide it in response to a legal order or sell it for use with customer consent. But lawyers interviewed by The New York Times disagreed on whether location information that was not gathered during the course of a call had the same protections under the law.

As long as they are following their own privacy policies, carriers “are largely free to do what they want with the information they obtain, including location information, as long as it’s unrelated to a phone call,” said Albert Gidari, the consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and a former technology and telecommunications lawyer. Even when the phone is not making a call, the system receives location data, accurate within a few hundred feet, by communicating with the device and asking it which cellphone towers it is near.

Other experts said the law should apply for any communications on a network, not just phone calls. “If the phone companies are giving someone a direct portal into the real-time location data on all of their customers, they should be policing it,” said Laura Moy, the deputy director of the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology.

***

Thousands of jails and prisons across the United States use a company called Securus Technologies to provide and monitor calls to inmates. But the former sheriff of Mississippi County, Mo., used a lesser-known Securus service to track people’s cellphones, including those of other officers, without court orders, according to charges filed against him in state and federal court.

The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show.

Between 2014 and 2017, the sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used the service at least 11 times, prosecutors said. His alleged targets included a judge and members of the State Highway Patrol. Mr. Hutcheson, who was dismissed last year in an unrelated matter, has pleaded not guilty in the surveillance cases.

As location tracking has become more accurate, and as more people carry their phones at every waking moment, the ability of law enforcement officers and companies like Securus to get that data has become an ever greater privacy concern. Important to read more here.

China is Buying America with and without CFIUS

Statistics found here.

When China is not buying America, they are busy in other parts of the globe buying places like Europe. That is how China is expanding, including stealing intelligence, espionage and hacking. The parts of Britain not owned by Russia are being gobbled up by China. Russia has a long plan and China has a long plan, not too sure about the United States, Britain or other allies.

There has been many discussions in Congress to reform CFIUS, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The most widely noticed scandal with CFIUS was the Uranium One deal.

U.S. watchdog expands scrutiny to more Chinese deals ... photo

Anyway, John Carlin recently spoke with the National Law Journal about bipartisan legislation introduced in November in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-North Carolina, respectively, to overhaul the CFIUS review process. CFIUS reviews, which are voluntary, are meant to protect the nation from business transactions that pose a national security or strategic risk to the United States. The panel has the authority to require the transaction’s parties to undertake risk mitigation, such as carving out a specific location or element of the deal.

The panel can also recommend that the president block a deal entirely. President Donald Trump, for example, in September blocked the sale of Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp. to a Chinese company. A deal by Anthony Scaramucci, briefly a White House communications director, to sell his stake in SkyBridge Capital to Chinese company HNA Group Co., which is partly government-owned, appears to be in jeopardy after not yet clearing its nearly yearlong CFIUS review, according to reports in financial media including Bloomberg News in mid-December.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who chairs the panel, has urged toughening CFIUS reviews.

While leading the DOJ’s National Security Division, Carlin oversaw the indictment in 2014 of five Chinese military members for economic espionage for hacks against several big U.S. companies, among them United States Steel, Westinghouse, Alcoa Inc. and SolarWorld from 2006 through 2014. The division also investigated the cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in late 2014 that the U.S. government determined originated in North Korea; and brought charges with the FBI against seven Iranians working for computer companies under contract to the Iranian government and military that conducted cyberattacks between 2011 and 2013 against 46 financial institutions including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase & Co. More here.

The CFIUS review process also appears to be affecting efforts by China Oceanwide Holdings Group Co. Ltd. to acquire Genworth Financial Inc.

BusinessInsider: In 2016, General Electric sold its appliances business to Qingdao-based Haier. China’s Zoomlion made an unsolicited bid for heavy-lifting-equipment maker Terex Corporation, and property and investment firm Dalian Wanda announced a deal to buy a majority stake in Hollywood’s Legendary Entertainment.

On Friday, a Chinese-led investor group announced it would buy the Chicago Stock Exchange. And then there’s ChemChina’s record-breaking deal for the Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, valued at $48 billion according to Dealogic.

There have already been 82 Chinese outbound mergers-and-acquisitions deals announced this year, amounting to $73 billion in value, according to Dealogic. That’s up from 55 deals worth $6.2 billion in the same period last year.

Last year was a record-breaker for Chinese outbound deals, with 607 deals valued at $112.5 billion in total. Just over one month into 2016, and China is more than halfway to breaking that record.

So what’s going on?

One interpretation is that Chinese companies are simply hungry for growth as that country’s economy slows, and they’re feeding themselves by buying other companies.

“With the slowdown of the economy, Chinese corporates are increasingly looking to inorganic avenues to supplement their growth,” Vikas Seth, head of emerging markets in the investment-banking and capital-markets department at Credit Suisse, told Business Insider.

Last year, investment bankers earned $558 million in revenue from Chinese outbound M&A deals, according to Dealogic. This year, that number is at $121 million to date.

But there are, of course, a number of challenge these deals will face — especially in the US.

M&A deals in the US are subject to scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. It recently prevented the $3.3 billion sale of Philips’ lighting business to a group of buyers in Asia.

feb 5 total china m&a deal value
The 82 Chinese outbound deals announced so far in 2016 are worth more than half of 2015’s total Chinese outbound-deal value.
Andy Kiersz/Business Insider

“I would be very surprised if CFIUS did not have an interest in taking a look at this deal,” said Anne Salladin of law firm Stroock & Stroock, referring to the Chicago Stock Exchange deal.