New Delhi: Delhi BJP has said that the AAP is “frustrated” after its defeat in Delhi Haj Committee election.
“It is strange that the Delhi Haj Committee was constituted by the Lt. Governor of Delhi on January 6 and Ms Atishi has today – after 40 days – reacted on it, calling the constitution of the Committee illegal,” Delhi BJP spokesperson Syed Yaseer Jilani said.
“The problem with AAP is that it can never digest defeat, and that too at the hands of a woman,” he added.
The BJP spokesperson further said that Arvind Kejriwal “does not believe in giving any position of authority to women, and he and his party are shocked to see that the BJP has given an opportunity to a woman to serve at Delhi Haj Committee”.
Jilani asserted that there is widespread “joy” amongst Muslim community especially the youth after the election of young Kausar Jahan as Chairperson of Delhi Haj Committee and “this is bothering AAP leaders”.
The future of transgender rights in Scotland remains in limbo, as SNP politicians warn that a leadership contest must not become dominated by ongoing rows on gender recognition reform.
Meanwhile, Scottish Greens sources suggest that any rowback on reform could lead to the collapse of the party’s power-sharing agreement with the SNP.
A key challenge for whoever replaces Nicola Sturgeon is whether to continue with her plan to challenge the UK government’s decision to block Holyrood’s gender bill through the courts.
Scottish government sources confirmed on Thursday that ministers were still taking legal advice on the prospect of challenging the section 35 order that was announced by the UK government in January, which prevents the bill from going for royal assent. They said a decision was unlikely to be reached until much closer to the 16 April deadline.
On Thursday evening, the SNP’s national executive committee confirmed that the results of its leadership contest would be announced on 27 March, giving the new leader just over three weeks to decide.
A number of SNP politicians, both supportive of and opposed to the bill, raised concerns that the leadership election could become mired in the increasingly toxic debate that has dogged the party for several years, leaving voters unclear whether the party shares their priorities.
One MP said: “People on the doorstep are not talking to me about GRR [gender recognition reform] but about the cost of living crisis.
“The leadership contest shouldn’t become all about the bill. The contest must concentrate on what to do to unify the party and lead us to independence.”
While Sturgeon was an unapologetic defender of the legislation, which would simplify how an individual may legally change their gender, Scottish equalities campaigners have raised concerns that a new leader less committed to reform – as at least one potential contender is known to be – might offer concessions to the UK government rather than formally challenge section 35.
Another SNP MSP who was closely involved in the bill’s progress through Holyrood said that while they expected at least one candidate to emerge who was opposed to the reforms, they would be surprised if the new leader did not continue with the legal challenge.
“This is about much more than gender reform, it’s about whether the Scottish parliament can pass its own legislation. I’d be surprised if a nationalist leader didn’t challenge that, and I’m much more concerned about winning that challenge,” they said.
A Scottish Green party source said the party’s joint leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, would almost certainly resign from their ministerial posts if the new SNP leader either delayed or rewrote the gender recognition bill.
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That would lead to the collapse of the formal cooperation deal brokered by Sturgeon and Harvie in 2021, which led to the SNP sharing power for the first time. “It’s a red line for the party,” he said. “There’s no compromise on this.”
Sturgeon’s successor would almost certainly see that threat as another significant argument in favour of fighting to keep the bill on track. “I think they would walk if a new SNP leader didn’t do everything in their power to get that bill on to the statute book,” the source said.
He also suggested that if the government watered down or dropped the bill, SNP MSPs would revolt in far greater numbers than the nine SNP backbenchers who voted against it.
Senior SNP sources suggest the successful leadership candidate must offer a robust defence of the bill itself but also open up dialogue, while shifting focus to other pressing domestic concerns such as heating and healthcare.
The SNP MP Joanna Cherry, a vocal critic of the changes, tweeted immediately after Sturgeon’s resignation announcement that a leadership contest must “restore the SNP’s tradition of internal party democracy, open respectful debate and intellectual rigour”.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The bulk of the report, including recommendations about potential criminal charges for Trump and his allies, remains under seal.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who opposed release of any portion of the report at this time, said during a court hearing about three weeks ago that her decisions about potential prosecutions were “imminent.” She has not provided a further update.
Trump has denounced the investigation as a political vendetta.
“The long awaited important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump’s name, have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” a spokesperson for the former president said Thursday.
The report underscores the extensive investigation that Willis undertook, noting that the panel heard from 75 witnesses, as well as investigators who helped them comb through voluminous documents related to the probe.
The partial release also makes clear that many grand jurors believe that some of the testimony they heard from witnesses subpoenaed to discuss election-related issues and incidents was false.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report says. “ The Grand Jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
Willis has spent the last year investigating Trump and his allies’ bid to reverse the election results in Georgia, despite losing the state by 11,000 votes. Willis’ probe focused on Trump’s Jan. 2 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” just enough votes to put Trump ahead of Joe Biden in the state.
Raffensperger declined the request and told Trump that investigators found his claims of fraud to be baseless.
The Trump spokesperson on Thursday defended that call as “perfect” and stressed that there were “many officials and attorneys on the line, including the Secretary of State of Georgia, and no one objected, even slightly protested, or hung up.”
The report underscores the wide-ranging investigation that Willis undertook, noting that the panel heard from 75 witnesses, as well as investigators who helped them comb through voluminous documents related to the probe.
Willis has also pursued evidence about Trump’s broader national effort to subvert the election, calling before the special grand jury top aides like his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, attorney John Eastman and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Those issues are also the subject of an ongoing federal investigation based in Washington now being headed by special counsel Jack Smith. No charges have yet been brought in that probe.
Under Georgia law, the special grand jury which was sworn in last May could subpoena witnesses and documents, but could not return indictments. Willis would have to seek such charges another, regular grand jury, but can present the evidence and testimony gathered by the special panel.
Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in a ruling Monday that state law compelled him to publicly release the special grand jury’s findings, although he agreed to defer publishing portions of the report that discuss potential charges against individuals. The special grand jurors had urged the court to make their findings public.
The special grand jury also seemed in its report to seek to assert some independence from Willis’ prosecutors. “That Office had nothing to do with the recommendations contained herein,” the report says, signed by the foreperson and deputy foreperson. The signatures and names of the jury’s leaders were redacted from the excerpts released Thursday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Four weeks before a pivotal presidential election in Nigeria, an Israeli private operative specialising in political “black ops” was preparing his trip to the country. On 17 January 2015 the man, who used the alias “Jorge”, emailed Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy he was coordinating with on a covert plan to manipulate Africa’s largest democracy.
“Friends, hi, I will be on the ground tomorrow for couple days … Who is best to meet there[?]” he asked. “Low profile as we came in on a special visa and we are watched closely (which is part of our plan 🙂 anyway we need better understanding of the current status, improve communication and coordinate plans, we want to run by you a couple things that we might execute if the stars align. so plz, in very limited circulation, who is best to meet, and whats his/her position, and contact info.”
Jorge, or “J”, as he signed off many of his emails, was operating separately to Cambridge Analytica. But his group was coordinating with, and working alongside, the British political consultancy, which shared a secret mission to help re-elect Nigeria’s then president, Goodluck Jonathan.
On Wednesday, Jorge was unmasked by the Guardian and its media partners as Tal Hanan, a hacking and disinformation specialist operating from an industrial park 20 miles outside Tel Aviv. He calls his group “Team Jorge”, and claims it has worked covertly on more than 33 “presidential-level” election campaigns on behalf of clients.
The reply to Hanan’s email asking who to meet in Nigeria was sent by Brittany Kaiser, a young Cambridge Analytica employee who later featured prominently in the Netflix documentary The Great Hack, about the company’s Facebook data scandal.
She copied in the firm’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, and several other internal and external partners who would be coordinating with one another on the covert campaign to re-elect Jonathan and discredit his rival, the then opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari. “If you are on the ground please meet with SCL [Cambridge Analytica] Nigeria team,” she told Hanan.
Kaiser, who was 26 and based in London, was far from the only person at Cambridge Analytica involved in email exchanges with Team Jorge over the Nigeria campaign. She told the Guardian that her “sales” role at the company meant that she was not involved in any “operational matters with Jorge” in Nigeria in 2015.
Cambridge Analytica and Team Jorge were, she said, working “separately but in parallel” in Nigeria for the same client. “I sent some emails to put everyone in contact with each other and sort out who was doing what as time was short.”
The exchange was one of dozens of emails leaked to the Guardian and Observer that shed light on the covert coordination between Cambridge Analytica and Team Jorge in Nigeria. There is no suggestion that Jonathan knew of either Cambridge Analytica or Team Jorge’s ultimately failed attempts to get him re-elected.
But the emails reveal the covert methods that were used to boost his electoral fortunes and the ways in which two teams specialising in the dark arts of political persuasion liaised with one another, with meetings in London, the Swiss resort of Davos and the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Communications appear to have occurred on encrypted Hushmail accounts, or special devices used for secure phone calls.
Perhaps most significantly, they provide the answer to a mystery that has endured since 2018, when the Guardian and Observer first reported how an “Israeli contractor” had supplied Cambridge Analytica staff working on the Nigerian election with confidential material apparently stolen from the Buhari campaign.
The report was subsequently discussed at length during a UK parliamentary inquiry. The identity of the unnamed Israeli contractor who purloined Buhari’s confidential data has – until now – remained unknown.
‘Team Jorge’ unmasked: the secret disinformation team who distort reality – video
Dark arts of political persuasion
Hanan appears to have been involved in the dark arts of political persuasion since 1999 without being detected. That changed on Wednesday, when the Guardian and other media outlets published undercover footage filmed by three reporters who met Hanan while posing as potential clients.
The trio captured Hanan as he gave presentations, slideshows and pitches about the election-influencing services that Team Jorge could deliver to people wealthy enough to afford them. The undercover footage records Hanan demonstrating hacking techniques to access Gmail and Telegram accounts to gain intelligence that could be used against a political adversary.
Quick Guide
About this investigative series
Show
The Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay.The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.
The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”
The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.
Investigative journalism like this is vital for our democracy. Please consider supporting it today.
Hanan did not respond to detailed requests for comment but told the Guardian: “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”
The undercover footage recorded him talking about having worked extensively in Africa, and his presentations included brief references to the 2015 Nigerian election.
In a slideshow called “What we do” he showed a slide with the heading “Wrecking havoc during African election day”, followed by a screengrab from a newspaper article that appeared in Vanguard, a reputable media outlet, which reported how, on election day, leaders in Buhari’s All Progressives Congress party (APC) discovered their phones were rendered useless because they were bombarded with calls.
Lai Mohammed, who was the opposition APC chief spokesperson during the 2015 election, appears to have been a target. Now a minister for information in the Nigerian government, his aide recalled the incident.
“We were at the party’s situation room in the morning of the presidential election, only to discover that his phone line had been blocked,” the aide said. “He could neither receive nor make calls, and that was very serious because he was the live wire of the opposition.”
During his presentation, Hanan showed the undercover reporters another slide featuring an image of women in Muslim attire who were sitting outside a Nigerian polling station. Suggesting Team Jorge had secured the publication of a story about women being excluded from the polling station, Hanan told the reporters he had “created a big scandal”, adding: “They extended the election, which was our objective.”
The Nigerian presidential election, which had been due to be held on 14 February, was indeed postponed. The six-week delay was linked to alleged security concerns over the Boko Haram insurgency. The announcement about the delay was made by Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission on 8 February.
One of the leaked emails between Hanan and Cambridge Analytica suggests he had advance information about that postponement.
“I have received strong indication that the elections will not take place on the 14th, and that plans are made to postponed them in few weeks,” Jorge wrote on 7 February, the day before the official announcement, saying the information came from “a top source” and adding: “Plz be carful circulating it.”
Other emails suggest Team Jorge produced YouTube video content to support Jonathan’s campaign and shared it with Cambridge Analytica, which in turn asked the Israeli outfit to help promote its videos on the platform.
However, it is the elliptical references to Team Jorge sourcing “information” for use by Cambridge Analytica that raise most questions.
‘Our clients must see results’
The different roles for Cambridge Analytica and Team Jorge in Nigeria are laid out in the emails. The British consultancy was tasked with securing coverage by international media during the election that would benefit Jonathan’s election campaign, and discredit Buhari.
Team Jorge was responsible for “opposition research”, or finding the material that could be leveraged to undermine Buhari. When one staffer met “Joel”, another Team Jorge operative, in Switzerland in January, the imminent poll in the west Africa country was apparently on the agenda.
They emailed Joel: “We can meet in our apartment or a restaurant here to discuss what we can accomplish for Nigeria in the short term.”
In another exchange, Joel said he would be the main point of contact to Cambridge Analytica and suggested the two sides “synchronise on a regular basis”, adding: “There will be a lot of info which we’ll have to share.” Cambridge Analytica provided Joel with a Hushmail account – projectliaison@hushmail.com – and introduced him to the consultancy’s staff in Abuja.
Cambridge Analytica, which worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the White House, would later be forced to close amid the fallout over revelations it had harvested 87m Facebook user profiles to help target political advertising. But in 2015, the company was much more low-profile – one of many western political consultancies that sought to monetise its services on developing world elections.
Team Jorge and Cambridge Analytica were not the only forces seeking to help get Jonathan re-elected. One leaked email lists “Jorge’s Team” among four entities working in partnership on the Nigeria project: “We are working separately but must collaborate together in order to maximise our effectiveness. Our clients must see results.”
Two days later, some at Cambridge Analytica appeared to harbour concerns about whether Hanan’s team was pulling its weight.
One staffer asked: “What are Jorge and Joel doing? Now is the time to deliver, I am now led to believe by Jorge that we would not get anything from them until a few days before the election. This is too late for our client … As you are aware they are being paid to do opposition research, and as of yet we have received nothing of substance.”
The same staffer added: “The two secure phones that we are to purchase from Jorge (have not seen invoice) do not work and we spoke to them about this last week, these are very expensive and so far we have had no use from them at all.”
It is not clear from the emails what exactly Cambridge Analytica expected Team Jorge to do on the campaign or how the Israelis would do it. What is clear is that staff at the British consultancy anticipated the Israelis would be providing a package of information.
In another email, a staffer working on the campaign asked a colleague for “an email address for Jorge”, whom she wanted to contact “for some assistance in sourcing information for the campaign”. The reply copied “Jorge and Joel for coordination” and added: “I believe the package will arrive this coming week for you.”
In the end, it appears that Team Jorge’s information was transferred to Cambridge Analytica at a meeting at the London office.
An account of what happened next was given by Kaiser to a parliamentary committee three years later. She told MPs that the Israeli contractor – now known to be Team Jorge – visited Cambridge Analytica’s offices in Mayfair.
“They came to the office for maybe an hour one day, and plugged something into a computer to show some pieces of information that they had obtained from the opposing campaign,” she said.
That included, she added, a video from inside Buhari’s campaign meetings, apparently filmed by a mole planted by the Israeli team. She recalled being “shocked” and “surprised”, “because they were actually sitting there with the candidate campaign manager and other high-level individuals on the campaign. I had never seen that before from campaign consultants.”
The Israeli contractors had also obtained documents, some of which Kaiser told the MPs were then leaked to the press. She told the parliamentary committee that she had found the activities of the Israeli contractor “concerning” but stressed: “I did not know what they were up to until it had already been done.” When asked for the name of the Israeli team behind the black ops campaign, she replied: “I don’t remember, to be honest.”
Tal Hanan.
Get in touch
Two months after Jonathan lost the presidential election in Nigeria, Cambridge Analytica was again considering working with its Israeli partners.
Nix, the Cambridge Analytica chief, emailed Kaiser a question. “What is Jorge’s (from Israel black ops co) surname please and also the name of his company[?],” he asked. Kaiser replied: “Tal Hanan is CEO of Demoman International.”
Nix did not respond to questions from the Guardian, other than to say the newspaper’s “purported understanding is disputed”.
Kaiser told the Guardian that her parliamentary testimony had been a “daunting experience”, adding: “I didn’t remember the name of the Demoman company when asked.” She said that she had no prior knowledge of the methods Team Jorge would end up using in Nigeria.
“Clearly, the making of a political sausage is not pretty in many of its aspects, and I understand how those who have not seen and experienced it at close quarters could look at what are regarded as ordinary political behaviours in democracies around the world and hold a position of moral criticism,” Kaiser added. “But I do not believe that criminality (with some notorious exceptions) is rampant.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
New Delhi: With the mission to win the Assembly elections in Karnataka scheduled this year with 150-plus seats, the BJP is going to launch its mega election campaign in the southern state on March 1.
BJP national General Secretary and Karnataka in-charge Arun Singh informed that the party has planned to take out four separate Yatras in Karnataka from March 1 which will continue for the next 20 days.
Singh said that during this campaign called ‘Vijay Sankalp Yatra’, the party will communicate with the people through roadshows, public meetings and public relations exercises.
The four Yatras will start from different parts of Karnataka and after 20 days, they will culminate at one place. The BJP also plans to hold a big rally on the occasion of the closing.
Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP President J.P. Nadda and former Karnataka Chief Minister Yeddyurappa along with many other national and state leaders of the BJP will join the mega campaign to reach out to the voters of the state.
The BJP is preparing election strategy with the aim of winning more than 150 seats in the state. To achieve this goal, the BJP had earlier launched two big campaigns in Karnataka – ‘Booth Vijay Abhiyan’ and ‘Vijay Sankalp Abhiyan’.
The shame of the Labour party – the Labour party! – being put into special measures by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for racism shocked most members to the core in 2020. To be released from that disgrace now is hardly a moment for celebration, after the EHRC’s original finding that Labour acted unlawfully in failing to rein in antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
His refusal to accept the overall findings set Corbyn on an inevitable path out of the parliamentary Labour party. He maintains “The scale of the problem was dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.” But a party can’t be a little bit racist: the damning findings had to be swallowed whole.
Keir Starmer’s confirmation today that Corbyn cannot stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election is hardly surprising. Cleansing the party of antisemitism is deeply personal for Starmer, as his wife is Jewish and they keep Jewish festivals. But Corbyn’s obstinacy was convenient, too, his expulsion an opportunity to demonstrate Starmer’s mission to get a grip on the party. Rishi Sunak’s feeble jibes at Starmer for serving in Corbyn’s cabinet bounce off him now.
Of course, as Starmer said yesterday today, it’s a job not quite done: when the Labour MP Kim Johnson got up at PMQs to call the Israeli government fascist, she had to apologise to the house promptly, under threat from the chief whip.
Taking over the leadership during the Covid crisis, Starmer devoted his time to fixing the party internally as he slowly made progress with voters. Asked his mission, he declared it was “winning”. It has paid off handsomely as he soars in the polls. I am told that many reports from local meetings speak of the Corbynite influence fading, with some of his supporters leaving altogether or changing their mind as the party inches towards power. Starmer has been lucky in the total implosion of the Tories and lucky again with the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon: polling for all her likely successors is unimpressive, aiding Labour’s chances in Scotland.
No opposition leader has ever scored as low in Ipsos’s polling as Corbyn’s -60 personal approval rating, with Michael Foot at -56, and Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague tied at -37. Corbyn benefited from his opponents’ disastrous campaign in 2017, though his personal rating trailed far behind both Theresa May’s and his own party’s popularity – Labour won 40% of votes to the Tories’ 42.4%. Yet there are those who still see him as a saviour rather than a drag anchor: as the one who brought flocks of enthusiastic new members into the party, and prompted delighted chants of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” at Glastonbury. He was betrayed by rightwingers in the party and brought down in 2019 by those who should have backed him, they say.
The Guardian is often their chief villain. Whenever I write criticism of the government I am guaranteed Twitter and thread responses claiming that if only I, my colleagues and the paper had backed him, we wouldn’t be suffering this Tory era. A brief check in the archive would show that the only thing wrong with this analysis is that I, other columnists and the Guardian’s leader all urged voters to back Corbyn’s Labour party. How could we not, after a decade of brutal austerity, and given Boris Johnson’s unfitness for power? I backed just about every individual item in Labour’s 2019 manifesto: it was nothing like Michael Foot’s “longest suicide note in history”, which pledged to leave both the EU and Nato. Its obstacle was its implausible costings, with extra billions added during the campaign.
But Labour’s worst problem was Corbyn himself, as voters feared his perceived lack of patriotism (prompted by, for example, his failure to sing the national anthem at a remembrance event) and told focus groups and pollsters they felt he was “not concerned about their issues” or “people like them”. Most voters never joined that misleading Glastonbury chorus.
My own greatest anger with Corbyn him was over his refusal to campaign seriously against Brexit in the referendum. “Where is he?” I asked his advisers a couple of months before the vote. “He thinks the local elections more important,” was the unforgivable reply, when in truth he was a lexiter – a Bennite Brexiter.
But because our monstrous election system offers only a binary choice, of course progressives of every hue had to back Labour against a nightmarish, sociopathic Tory leader. I never doubted that Corbyn would be a preferable prime minister to Johnson – the lowest of bars – but in 2019 he led Labour to its worst result since 1935. Now, Corbyn’s remaining believers cling to that last resort of all failed ideologues, the same refrain as the failing Brexiters’: we were betrayed.
Corbyn seems likely to stand as an independent for Islington North, where Labour has an array of good would-be candidates. Groups within Labour such as Momentum may face a quandary, as they would automatically be expelled from the party if they campaigned for him against Labour. But in the present golden polling climate, it hardly matters who wins that one seat. What matters is that Labour has expunged the shame of the EHRC’s special measures. What matters, too, is that in its haste to escape the failure of Corbynism, Labour doesn’t overreach and purge anyone with anything original or interesting to say.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Chennai: The AIADMK on Wednesday alleged that the Election Commission is acting like DMK’s poll wing and that the police and all other departments are under the control of the DMK.
AIADMK MP CVe Shanmugham alleged that the DMK had erected temporary sheds at all the booth areas in East Erode — where Assembly bypoll will be held on February 27 — and voters are confined in these sheds all through the day. He also claimed that food is being served to the voters along distribution of cash.
AIADMK leaders are being prevented from meeting the voters, he claimed.
Shanmugham also demanded that the Chief Electoral Officer and the District Election officer should intervene and get the people released.
Shanmugham, who was the Law Minister in the previous AIADMK government, said that party leaders and functionaries are being intercepted by the police under the guise of vehicle checks.
He claimed the police are doing this deliberately to prevent the crowd from gathering at the public rallies of AIADMK interim General Secretary, Edappadi K. Palaniswami.
Islamabad: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court here on Wednesday rejected the bail of former prime minister Imran Khan for failing to attend the court hearing of a case linked to protests outside the election commission, a ruling which could lead to his arrest.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) activists staged a protest after Khan was disqualified by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the prohibited funding case last year.
In October last year, Police launched a case under the anti-terrorism laws and the former premier was on interim bail in the case.
On Wednesday, Judge Raja Jawad Abbas of Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) in Islamabad remarked that Khan had been given enough time to appear before the court but he had failed to do so while his lawyer Babar Awan in his arguments urged the court to grant a one-time exemption from in-person appearance as Khan had not recovered from a gun attack of last year.
The judge refused to accept the plea and ordered that Khan should appear by stating that the court cannot give any relief to a “powerful person” like Khan which is not given to a common person.
Finally, the judge refused to extend the interim bail, leaving the 70-year-old cricketer-turned-politician, who survived an assassination attempt in November last year, vulnerable to police arrest.
The PTI leadership had asked party workers to stage protests across the country, including near the ECP, after Khan was disqualified over hiding details of party funding.
Separately, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) barred a banking court from passing any direction on Khan’s bail plea in the Federal Investigation Agency’s prohibited funding case against the PTI.
Last year, the ECP in the funding case against the PTI ruled that the party had received prohibited funding.
Later, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered a case against Khan and other party leaders as signatories/beneficiaries of the PTI account where the funds were parked.
At the previous hearing, the banking court had rejected Khan’s request for a virtual hearing and asked him to appear in person on February 15.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the court once again rejected the exemption request and instructed him to appear before the judge in person on Wednesday.
But Khan had approached the IHC with a request for virtual proceedings which in its order instructed the PTI chief to submit fresh medical reports and stopped the banking court from taking further action in the case till February 22.
Khan has been facing a raft of cases and once he jokingly remarked that the only case he was not booked so far was the “crime of dipping rusk in tea before eating them”.
An Israeli disinformation specialist hired to run covert dirty tricks campaigns in African elections hacked political advisers close to Kenya’s president, William Ruto, in the run-up to last year’s election, an investigation can reveal.
The interference did not prevent Ruto winning the poll, nor the peaceful transfer of power in Kenya, but the revelation highlights the growing risks posed by the involvement of bad actors and paid operatives in the relatively new democratic systems and institutions across Africa.
Tal Hanan, a self-described “chairman” of “Team Jorge”, an Israeli operation run from an industrial park 20 miles north of Tel Aviv, boasted to undercover reporters that he was able to disrupt elections through black ops and disinformation services.
Days before Kenya’s 2022 election, he gave a demonstration of his capabilities, showing how he could use hacking techniques to infiltrate the messages of political advisers.
Hanan’s operations were exposed on Wednesday by the Guardian and an international consortium of reporters led by the French nonprofit Forbidden Stories. In a statement about the investigation, Hanan said: “I deny any wrongdoing.”
Quick Guide
About this investigative series
Show
The Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay.The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.
The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”
The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.
Investigative journalism like this is vital for our democracy. Please consider supporting it today.
During his meetings with undercover reporters, Hanan never explicitly confirmed he had been hired to work in Kenya and, if so, who his client might be. However, when demonstrating Team Jorge’s capabilities to the journalists, who were posing as prospective clients, Hanan appeared to show them “live” demonstrations of hacks targeting three aides close to Ruto, who was a presidential candidate at the time.
One involved an apparent infiltrationof Gmail; the other two involved Telegram accounts.
“So just to give you an example, it’s in the news in recent days, we are now … involved in one … elections [sic] and … in Africa,” Hanan told the reporters on 25 July last year. The vote in Kenya took place on 9 August.
Tal Hanan, the leader of Team Jorge, a hacking and disinformation unit. Photograph: Haaretz/TheMarker/Radio France
During the same meeting, Hanan claimed to have “completed 33 different campaigns, presidential-level campaigns” and suggested a significant proportion of these were in Africa.
The demonstration by Hanan raises questions about whether his meddling in the Kenyan election was more widespread than the brief examples shown to the undercover reporters. There is no evidence of who may have been behind any interference or that the political advisers were aware of the hacks.
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Hanan, a 50-year-old former explosives specialist in Israel’s military, showed how, once he had gained access to an account, Team Jorge could send messages without the user’s knowledge or consent. His aim was often “to create confusion” during a campaign, he said, explaining that “the biggest thing is to put sticks between the right people”.
One Telegram account Hanan infiltrated before the Kenyan election belonged to a strategist who isnow an aide to the president. Scrolling through the Telegram account and personal chats during a demonstration to the undercover reporters, Hanan showed how, once the hackers had access to accounts, they could send messages to their contacts.
To illustrate this, he sent an oblique message – the number 11 – before deleting it.
Hanan showed how, once the hackers had access to accounts, they could send messages to their contacts. Photograph: Telegram
However, Hanan made a critical mistake and did not fully delete the message. An examination of the recipient’s phone confirmed the falsified message was received. Hanan also seemed to search the files of the hacking victim, appearing to retrieve internal polling data related to the forthcoming election.
In other demonstrations, he appeared to enter the Gmail account and the Telegram account of two other close advisers to Ruto. It is unclear which of these tactics, if any, Hanan deployed in the Kenyan election and what their effect may have been.
Google, which runs the Gmail service, declined to comment.
Telegram said: “Accounts on any massively popular social media network or messaging app can be vulnerable to hacking or impersonation unless users follow security recommendations and take proper precautions to keep their accounts secure.”
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The undercover footage
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What is this undercover footage?
Disinformation operatives work under the radar. To find out more about ‘Team Jorge’, an Israel-based unit selling hacking and social media manipulation services, three journalists went undercover. They posed as consultants, working on behalf of a client in a politically unstable African country who wanted to delay a forthcoming election. The reporters secretly filmed several meetings with the group’s leader, Tal Hanan, who uses the alias ‘Jorge’, and his associates between July 2022 and December 2022.
Who is in the footage?
The footage captures Hanan, as well as his brother, Zohar Hanan, and other associates of Team Jorge. Faces of reporters have been blurred. The meetings took place on video calls, when Hanan and his colleagues gave slideshow demonstrations of their services, and in person, at Team Jorge’s office in an industrial park 20 miles outside Tel Aviv.
Who did the secret filming?
It was secretly filmed by three reporters from media outlets working in a consortium investigating disinformation: Gur Megiddo (TheMarker), Frédéric Métézeau (Radio France) and Omer Benjakob (Haaretz). The video was then shared with more than 25 other media outlets in the consortium, including the Guardian and Observer. While the Guardian and Observer were not involved in the undercover filming, they are publishing the material because of the strong public interest justifications for doing so.
What is Team Jorge’s response?
Tal Hanan did not provide a detailed response to questions from the Guardian. He said: ‘To be clear, I do deny any wrongdoing.’
Hanan’s presentation to the undercover journalists underlines how an international cast of “consultants” has exploited growing social media use and internet penetration in Africa to manipulate and interfere with democratic processes in strategically important countries.
In recent years, dozens of polls across the continent have been marred by allegations that political actors have hired foreign companies to provide a variety of services, from legitimate polling and public relations work to voter suppression.
Documents leaked to the Guardian confirm Team Jorge was involved in the 2015 elections in Nigeria. An analysis of thousands of bots associated with his disinformation software also suggests the team was involved in spreading disinformation in the 2019 presidential election in Senegal.
Hanan also showed the undercover reporters screenshots that suggested he could access the email inboxes of senior government officials elsewhere on the continent, and described employees posing as journalists to gather useful information during election campaigns in Africa.
Though both sides in the 2022 poll in Kenya were accused of manipulation, disinformation and dirty tricks, the elections in the east African country were seen as a significant achievement for its democratic institutions and important for reinforcing regional stability.
Election observers described the most recent poll as “largely peaceful and transparent”. Previous elections in Kenya have been marred by widespread violence. In 2007, polls triggered a crisis and led to more than 1,000 deaths.
Raila Odinga, the veteran politician whose Azimio la Umoja coalition lost the 2022 election by less than 2%, has repeatedly claimed the results of the poll were fraudulent. Kenya’s supreme court rejected his allegations and said they were based on “falsified evidence” in a judgment in September. Independent analysts have also said the claims are unfounded.
Odinga continues to claim the poll was rigged, citing statements by an unidentified former election commission official and a dossier that is still causing controversy in Kenya. He did not respond to requests for comment.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“He thinks that the ‘speech or debate’ clause is a core protection for Article I, for the legislature,” said one of the two people familiar with Pence’s thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his legal strategy. “He feels it really goes to the heart of some separation of powers issues. He feels duty-bound to maintain that protection, even if it means litigating it.”
Pence’s planned argument comes on the heels of an FBI search of two of his homes after his attorney voluntarily reported classified material in his home last month — drawing him into a thicket of document-handling drama that’s also ensnared Trump and President Joe Biden. While Pence aides say he’s taking this position to defend a separation of powers principle, it will allow him to avoid being seen as cooperating with a probe that is politically damaging to Trump, who remains the leading figure in the Republican Party.
Pence is preparing to launch a presidential campaign against his onetime boss. Aides expect the former vice president to address the subpoena — and his plans to respond it — during a visit to Iowa on Wednesday.
But regardless of its political consequences, the argument from Pence’s camp means Smith could be in for a legal mess.
That’s because the legal question of whether the vice president draws the same “speech-or-debate” protections as members of Congress remains largely unsettled, and constitutional scholars say Pence raising the issue will almost certainly force a court to weigh in. That could take months.
“It is admittedly a constitutionally murky area with no clear outcome,” said Mark Rozell, a George Mason University political scientist who specializes in executive privilege. “Since there is a legislative function involved in the vice president presiding over the Senate, a court very well could decide that it must address the scope of the speech or debate privilege and whether it would apply in this case.”
Although vice presidents aren’t technically senators, they are charged with breaking tie votes in the upper chamber. And every four years, on Jan. 6, they lead the electoral vote count that facilitates the transfer of power from one administration to the next. Trump’s months-long crusade to pressure his vice president to derail Biden’s win — which is central to Smith’s investigation — focused entirely on Pence’s duties as Senate president, which legal scholars say lends credence to Pence’s case.
“I do think there’s a plausible [speech or debate] argument here,” echoed Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown University constitutional law professor. “And I’d be surprised if Pence doesn’t eventually make it. After all, a lot of the action here took place in terms of arguments about how he should rule from the chair.”
The clash arrives at a sensitive moment in Smith’s probe, which appears to be nearing its conclusion. Typically, prosecutors wait to subpoena top officials until right before making charging decisions. In addition to the demand for Pence’s testimony, a parade of high-level Trump administration witnesses has marched into the sealed grand jury rooms of Washington’s federal courthouse in recent weeks.
And it presents a new wrinkle for Pence as he makes moves typical of a White House hopeful, including his trip to Iowa this week. After confronting the 2020 election head-on late last year with a book and op-ed, he’s largely avoided a topic that risks courting confrontation with his former boss and possible future presidential opponent.
Most commentary since Smith subpoenaed Pence has focused on whether Trump might prevent Pence from testifying by asserting executive privilege — an unwritten constitutional protection that lets presidents maintain the confidentiality of high-level conversations (a Trump attorney told CNN Sunday that Trump intends to assert executive privilege over Pence’s testimony).
But seeking congressional immunity would further help Pence avoid a Trump collision and might prove more effective — a point legal scholars say is being overlooked. That’s because unlike executive privilege, which has limits that can be overcome in criminal proceedings, “speech or debate” clause protections have remained mostly impenetrable in investigations relating to the official duties of lawmakers, their aides or other congressional officials.
DOJ has, notably, argued in civil litigation that the “speech or debate” clause protects the vice president when working on Senate business. The department explicitly asserted in 2021 that Pence was shielded by the “speech or debate” clause in a civil lawsuit related to his role presiding over Congress’ Jan. 6 session.
The Senate, too, has long maintained that vice presidential involvement in its business “would fall within the legislative sphere and be protected by the speech or debate Clause.”
Courts have never explicitly ruled on that front, but have hinted over the years that vice presidents should enjoy some level of constitutional privilege stemming from their unique role in two branches of government.
A ‘first time’ argument
Roy Brownell, former counsel to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and author of a prominent paper on vice presidential privilege, said that if Pence ultimately asserts “speech or debate” protections, it will be “the first time it’s ever been clearly expressed that the vice president is claiming his own constitutional privilege.”
Even when Dick Cheney sought to expand the powers of the vice presidency to a historically unprecedented degree — triggering numerous court battles — he never formally invoked the protection, Brownell noted.
Brownell also emphasized that court rulings have found that “speech or debate” protection applies to congressional officials performing “fact-finding” related to their jobs. Pence, he said, could characterize his pre-Jan. 6 conversations with Trump and others as research into how he might rule on matters related to the Electoral College.
It’s still unresolved whether the Jan. 6 session of Congress legally counts as “legislative” business, however. In addition, even if courts deem Pence’s role a legislative one, judges would still have to decide whether the “speech or debate” clause protects him from having to testify about his conversations with Trump world about the bid to upend the election.
“It’s a fair question,” said Stan Brand, who was general counsel of the House of Representatives under former Speaker Tip O’Neill. “Procedurally, it creates another layer of potential judicial adjudication and that will certainly complicate the effort to enforce the subpoena.”
Some experts pointed to the recent 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that paved the way for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to testify to local investigators in Georgia — who are also probing Trump’s effort to subvert the election. Graham initially protested, contending the “speech or debate” protection should shield him from testifying at all.
But the circuit ruled that Graham could be compelled to testify so long as investigators steered their questions away from anything involving his legislative responsibilities. The Supreme Court declined to step in.
Pence may ultimately land in the same place, but it’s unclear which aspects of his involvement in the Jan. 6 session of Congress would fall outside of his official duties. High-level Trump administration witnesses, as they warned the then-president not to pressure Pence over how he counted electoral votes, made clear they viewed him as occupying a uniquely legislative role on Jan. 6.
“The Vice President is acting as the President of the Senate,” former assistant attorney general Steven Engel recalled telling colleagues in testimony to the Jan. 6 select committee. “It is not the role of the Department of Justice to provide legislative officials with legal advice on the scope of their duties.”
The counterpoint
Not all legal scholars agree that vice presidents enjoy congressional privileges, however. Former White House counsel Neil Eggleston said the text of the “speech or debate” clause doesn’t apply to anyone but lawmakers.
“The literal language is that this applies to ‘senators and representatives,’” said Eggleston, who advised former President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017. “I think, by the language, this does not apply and the argument is completely frivolous.”
Still, predicting exactly how courts would handle the argument is difficult. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the executive privilege wielded by presidents, despite the Constitution making no reference to the concept.
Meanwhile, the GOP House is fighting a grand jury proceeding of its own against Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who is citing the same constitutional protections to shield his communications from Smith and his team.
Perry, a key ally in Trump’s bid to seize a second term, has contended the “speech or debate” clause should bar prosecutors from accessing his phone — which the FBI seized last year — but a federal judge ruled against him in December. An appeals court secretly put that ruling on hold last month and scheduled oral arguments on the matter for Feb. 23. The House filed a lengthy brief Monday to defend Perry’s argument.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
