Tag: immunity
Former President Donald Trump

Normalizing Trump, Network News Shows Ignore His Dictatorial 'Immunity' Claim

Donald Trump on January 18 gave political reporters plenty to talk about: threats of “bedlam” if the Supreme Court doesn’t overrule state decisions and place his name on state ballots and a claim that “total immunity” gave him free rein to subvert the results of the 2020 election. All three major broadcast outlets’ evening news shows failed to cover these incendiary remarks.

In a legal brief filed to the U.S. Supreme Court on January 18, Trump attorneys implored justices to keep Trump’s name on state ballots for the 2024 presidential election, writing that disqualifying Trump “promise[s] to unleash chaos and bedlam.” The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments regarding Colorado’s removal of Trump from its primary and general election ballots beginning February 8. Trump himself echoed the language in the brief while speaking to reporters: “It’ll be bedlam in the country. … It’s the opening of a Pandora’s box."

Earlier that day, in an all-caps post on Truth Social, Trump railed against the federal prosecutions related to his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection. “A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY,” Trump wrote. “EVEN EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’ MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD.”

Even Trump’s right-wing media sycophants have disputed his outlandish claims of “total immunity” in the past.

Instead of covering Trump’s unhinged social media rant or his threats of “bedlam,” evening network news broadcasts took a business-as-usual approach. Election segments framed the upcoming New Hampshire primary as a two-person horse race between Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, with NBC Nightly Newsdiscussing “how the crisis at the border is impacting the race." NBC also chose to include a Truth Social post from Trump urging Republicans not to compromise on a border security deal but failed to mention his post arguing the law doesn’t apply to him as president. This editorial decision is particularly baffling since NBC News was the only broadcast outlet that covered Trump’s “total immunity” claim on its website.

Meanwhile, ABC World News Tonight aired a segment on the New Hampshire primary that mostly focused on Haley and Trump accusing each other of being bigger drags on the Republican ticket. The program also aired a report on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ alleged misconduct regarding a relationship with a special prosecutor working on Trump’s election interference case, followed by a brief mention of Hunter Biden’s upcoming deposition. Indeed, all three networks favored mentioning Hunter Biden’s legal woes instead of Trump’s threatening and undemocratic claims.

CBS Evening News also had a banal segment on the New Hampshire primary, and rounded out its coverage with a two-minute story about the world’s largest cruise ship, effectively a commercial.

Failing to report on Trump’s threats and incendiary remarks – effectively sanitizing Trump for a mass audience – is exactly the sort of coverage decision that spurred Media Matters to name legacy media our Misinformer of the Year for 2023. If these major news outlets continue this trend, we’re in store for a repeat of 2016.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

#EndorseThis: Seth Meyers Takes A Closer Look At Flynn Immunity Bid

#EndorseThis: Seth Meyers Takes A Closer Look At Flynn Immunity Bid

“I wish somebody would tell us straight up, what does it mean when you’re given immunity?” says Seth Meyers innocently as he opens a discussion of disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s failed attempt to win exemption from prosecution by offering testimony about the Trump campaign’s Russian contacts.

Naturally, he turns to Flynn himself, who spoke up forthrightly on this very topic last year. “When you’re given immunity,” the Trump adviser barked, “that means that you’ve probably committed a crime…” To which Donald Trump himself added, in demagogic rally style, “If you’re not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for?”

Not quite fair, but fair enough in this instance. And funny.

As Meyers points out, Trump could clear up some suspicions about his ties to Russia by finally releasing his own tax returns. But reporters who asked Sean Spicer about the president’s 2016 returns — which don’t fall under that phony “I’m being audited” — got an audaciously absurd response.

Meanwhile, America has learned that House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) gleaned his classified information about the “unmasking” of Trump associates during NSA surveillance of foreign nationals from a secret source at…the White House. The next day, Nunes brought that information back to the White House, which in Meyers’ estimation makes him the political equivalent of “a golden retriever.”

 

A Cybersecurity Turf War At Home And Abroad

A Cybersecurity Turf War At Home And Abroad

By Shawn Zeller, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The House passed not one, but two, bills last week to provide immunity from consumer lawsuits to companies that share with each other, and with the government, information about cyberthreats and attacks on their networks.

It’s clear that majorities of both parties believe greater cooperation between business and government is needed to fight the hackers who have stolen data from some of America’s biggest companies.

What’s less clear is how the process is going to work. In passing two bills, instead of one, House leaders gave an ambiguous answer.

The differences between the bills are significant. The first bill, a product of the Intelligence Committee, would allow companies to share data with any federal agency, except the Defense Department, and receive liability protection.

The second bill, drafted by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas, would require that companies go to the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, a new division within the Homeland Security Department, if they want immunity.

Both McCaul and Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of California, who sponsored his committee’s bill, had only praise for each other last week. But normally committee chairmen who both have a stake in an issue and want to produce the best possible bill work together to reconcile differences in advance of a vote. In this case, they didn’t.

It’s no surprise that McCaul wants the new Homeland Security Department cybersecurity center to play a critical role. He sponsored the bill that created it last year and he was annoyed earlier this year when President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, to coordinate the government’s cybersecurity response. McCaul wrote to Obama in protest. He said the two centers appeared to be duplicative.

But the Intelligence Committee bill passed last week would give the new White House cybersecurity center, known as the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, Congress’ blessing by authorizing it.

“Because there seems to be some kind of turf war between the Intelligence Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, we’re actually voting on two overlapping bills that in several respects contradict one another,” Democratic Representative Jared Polis of Colorado said during the floor debate last week.

The measures differ in another significant way. McCaul’s bill would allow the Homeland Security Department to share cyberthreat information it receives from companies with other government agencies, but they’d be barred from doing anything with it except fight hackers.

The Intelligence Committee bill would allow the government to use the data to respond to, prosecute, or prevent “threats of death or serious bodily harm,” as well as “serious threats to minors, including sexual exploitation and threats to physical safety.”

Polis, whose view was clearly in the minority, argued that might allow the feds to go after him for failing to babyproof his house.

The bills have other differences. Their definitions of what qualifies as cyberthreat information varies, as do their definitions of the “defensive measures” the bill authorizes companies to take to combat hackers.

Both bills aim to ensure that personal information about consumers that’s irrelevant to a cybersecurity threat isn’t distributed. They do that by requiring both the companies sharing data and the government agencies receiving it to erase it.

But McCaul’s bill would task the Homeland Security Department’s chief privacy officer and its officer for civil rights and civil liberties, in consultation with an independent federal agency known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, with ensuring that happens. The Nunes bill, by contrast, would place responsibility for writing privacy guidelines in the hands of the attorney general.

House leaders will get to decide what happens next. A House leadership aide said Nunes will get his way on at least one of the big issues: Companies will be able to provide cyberthreat information to any non-Defense Department agency and receive liability protection. It’s not yet clear how the leaders will come down on the other differences.

It is clear that privacy advocates, as well as House members, prefer McCaul’s bill. It passed with 355 yeas compared to 307 for Nunes’ bill. But if only one of them is to become law, it’s more likely to be the Nunes bill.

The Senate’s companion measure is an Intelligence Committee bill sponsored by Republican Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, who’s well-known for stressing security over privacy. Burr last week introduced a bill to extend the authorization for the National Security Agency’s controversial phone record collection program to 2020. His cybersecurity bill hews more closely to the Nunes version than McCaul’s.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky hasn’t set a date for considering Burr’s bill, but it is expected to pass easily. The Intelligence Committee approved it in March on a fourteen-one vote. Only civil liberties advocate Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, objected.

Photo: Michael McCaul via Facebook