Month: January 2023

President Biden announced Wednesday that the United States will send 31 M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, which will provide a major boost to Ukrainian firepower over the coming months. Flanked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the President said at the White House: “Today, I’m announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion.”  The Pentagon said the security package is worth roughly $400 million. The delivery of the Abrams tanks will take several months, given the time needed to procure them and train Ukrainian troops on their use.

The move comes after Germany said it is providing 14 of its own Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and allow Western partners to re-export their own. Biden noted that France, the U.K., Finland, the Netherlands and other nations are also sending key security assistance, and said that the United States’ move is part of a concerted effort by Western allies: “Today’s announcement builds on the hard work and commitment from countries around the world, led by the United States of America, to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity. That’s what this is about, helping Ukraine protect and defend Ukrainian land. It is not an offensive threat to Russia. There is no offensive threat to Russia. If Russian troops return to Russia … where they belong, this war would be over today.”

Biden said the M1 Abrams is the U.S. military’s main tank system and “the most capable tanks in the world.”  The Abrams tanks and other armored vehicles are key to helping Ukraine fight the Russians on open terrain, like that found in the mostly flat Donbas region, which has seen intense fighting between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists since 2014.

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Social media giant Meta announced Wednesday that former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are being reinstated, over two years after he was suspended from the platforms over incendiary posts on the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.  Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) said Trump’s accounts will be reinstated “in the coming weeks … with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.” Clegg said on the company’s website that those guardrails will include “heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol. In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.”

The move comes weeks after the timeframe Facebook gave itself to re-evaluate the 2021 decision. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to “rein in big tech power over our speech” after Facebook announced the duration of Trump’s suspension in 2021.  Additionally, Trump’s presidential campaign officially petitioned Meta to allow Trump back on to the platform earlier this month, writing in a letter dated Jan. 17th: “We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse.”

Facebook announced in June 2021 that it was banning Trump from Facebook and Instagram until at least January 2023 for a “severe violation of our rules” stemming from his role in the Jan. 6 riot. The ban was initially slated to last 24 hours, but was extended until the end of his term by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who said the “risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great … therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”  Trump was also permanently banned from Twitter at the time, but his account was reinstated on Nov. 19 by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.  About a year after leaving office, Trump launched his own social media site called ‘Truth Social.’  Trump’s reach on Truth Social is not nearly as large as it was on the other platforms. He has slightly more than 4.8 million followers on Truth Social, compared to nearly 88 million on Twitter and 34 million on Facebook.

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The U.S. Justice Department filed its second antitrust lawsuit against Google in just over two years.  The Justice Department, along with the attorneys general of multiple states, filed an antitrust suit Tuesday against Google “for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products.” The Department’s earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 under the Trump administration, accused Google of using its alleged monopoly power to cut off competition for internet search through exclusionary agreements. That case is expected to go to trial in September.

The second lawsuit, filed in the District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia. is focused on Google’s online advertising business, and seeks to make Google divest parts of the business. The Department of Justice said in a news release Tuesday: “As a result of its illegal monopoly, and by its own estimates, Google pockets on average more than 30% of the advertising dollars that flow through its digital advertising technology products … Google’s anticompetitive conduct has suppressed alternative technologies, hindering their adoption by publishers, advertisers, and rivals.”  The DOJ emphasized that the search advertising market addressed in the 2020 suit is different from the digital advertising technology market addressed in Tuesday’s lawsuit.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Google has been “wielding its dominance across digital advertising markets to force more publishers and advertisers to use its products; and thwarting the ability to use competing products … Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.” 

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A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence told the National Archives and Records Administration that a “small number” of documents with classified markings were discovered last week at Pence’s Indiana home, and turned over to the FBI. Attorney Greg Jacob, who served as Pence’s top lawyer in the White House, told an official with the Archives in a letter dated Jan. 18 that a Pence aide conducted searched the home last week, following the discovery of classified documents at President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and former office at a Washington, D.C., think tank. Jacob wrote that “the additional records appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former Vice President at the end of the last Administration … Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence.”

Jacob added that Pence engaged outside counsel ‘with experience in handling classified documents’ and it was during the search that the documents that could “potentially contain sensitive or classified information interspersed throughout the records” were found.  Jacob added: “Vice President Pence’s counsel, however, is unable to provide an exact description of the folders or briefing materials that may contain sensitive or classified information because counsel did not review the contents of the documents once an indicator of potential classification was identified. Vice President Pence immediately secured those documents in a locked safe pending further direction on proper handling from the National Archives.”

In a second letter dated Jan. 22, Jacob said the FBI went to Pence’s Indiana home the night of Jan. 19 to collect the documents, and the transfer was facilitated by Pence’s personal attorney, Two additional boxes were found containing “courtesy copies” of papers from Pence’s vice presidency.  Pence offered to transfer the four boxes to the Archives for a review to ensure they did not contain original documents that qualified as presidential records and therefore had to be turned over to the agency under federal law.  Pence also informed the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Tuesday of the discovery, and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, said “he [Pence] has agreed to fully cooperate with congressional oversight and any questions we have about the matter. Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people.”

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