Connect with us

Published

on

A suit filed in federal court Wednesday seeks to compel the National Archives to seek assistance from the Department of Justice (DOJ) in recovering text messages from both the Secret Service and leadership of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that were apparently lost in days following the 2020 election.

The suit, filed on behalf of Ken Klippenstein, a reporter for The Intercept, turns to a provision of the Federal Records Act that requires the head of the Archives to request assistance from the attorney general if an agency does not act to recover the records.

Lawmakers were notified in July by DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari that the Secret Service had “erased” text messages from Jan. 6, 2021, something the agency said occurred as a result of a migration to a new phone software that took place just weeks after the attack on the Capitol.

Text messages from then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were also lost in a “reset” of government phones during the transmission to the Biden administration.

Together, the erasures represent a major loss for those reviewing the effort to block the transition of power after the 2020 election, both in terms of reviewing discussions around former President Trump’s movements that day, as well as his efforts to have DHS seize voting machines.

The National Archives, also known as NARA, did request the Secret Service look into the matter, but the suit alleges the agency stopped short of requesting any assistance from the Justice Department.

Kel McClanahan, the attorney in the case and the executive director of nonprofit law firm National Security Counselors, said the duty to do so under law would bring the technical resources of the FBI and DOJ to the matter.

“All NARA can really do is ask questions and wag their finger. The FBI and DOJ can subpoena and can compel answers,” he said.

“The goal of this entire regime is not just to punish people who break it, but to recover records and to recover information.”

In July, Klippenstein filed a request with the Archives, pushing the agency to seek DOJ assistance and saying the Secret Service had engaged in “obfuscation and obstruction” about the nature of the loss of records.

“Viewed through the lens most favorable to the agency, these claims demonstrate that [the Secret Service] is, at best, out of its depth, and that prompt action needs to be taken by a more competent forensic agency,” he wrote at the time. 

McClanahan said it’s now been almost a year since Klippenstein filed the request, and “by any stretch of the imagination, that’s a reasonable amount of time. And now the archivist needs to do something.”

For its part, the Secret Service has denied there was anything nefarious about the loss of the messages, maintaining that for security reasons it advises agents against texting.

Cuffari had asked for the text messages of 24 agents for his own investigation into Jan. 6, but the Secret Service produced just one responsive text — a message from the then-chief of the Capitol Police asking for assistance.

The agency ultimately turned over thousands of documents to the House Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, including other emails and communications from that day but did not provide any additional texts. It was a response members of the panel described as an overwhelming amount of information to sift through.

But the efforts to recover the messages are made all the more complex by a battle with Cuffari, who has faced numerous calls to step aside from the investigation into the missing texts.

Cuffari launched a criminal probe into the missing texts a few weeks after his letter to lawmakers. 

But the inspector general may have violated protocol by failing to swiftly notify Congress that the records were lost, as there are multiple provisions in the Inspector General Act that require notifying agency heads or Congress about “particularly serious or flagrant problems,” in some cases within seven days.

Lawmakers complained the delay compounded the difficulty of recovering the messages and were confused why months passed before they were alerted. In an anonymous letter, employees of the DHS IG office also asked President Biden to remove Cuffari.

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), a federal entity with oversight of inspectors general, has an ongoing investigation into Cuffari’s office.

Cuffari last week launched a suit against the CIGIE, noting that its Integrity Committee filed another request for information from Cuffari’s staff as recently as earlier this month.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has largely dodged questions about whether the Justice Department would get involved in the investigation into the texts.

“As a general matter, any allegations of wrongdoing about inspector generals are handled by what we call CIGIE,” he said at an August press conference, noting the review of Cuffari.

“That’s the way those kind of allegations are handled. And without commenting on this particular case, needless to say, the Justice Department’s job is to investigate allegations of violations of the criminal law, including allegations regarding matters involving the scope of inspector generals.” McConnell defends Supreme Court after Clarence Thomas revelations US citizens, Russian nationals charged in influence campaign probe

Several lawmakers have made clear, however, their preference for DOJ involvement.

“I don’t know whether the failure to preserve these critical government texts from January 6 is the result of bad faith or stunning incompetence,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said last August.  

“But I do know that the man who has overseen the investigation of this fiasco is not the right person to continue leading it. [Cuffari] has lost whatever credibility he may have once had on this matter.  That is why I’ve asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to step in and take control of this investigation into the missing texts.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Silicon Valley’s early return on Trump investment: Plunging valuations, delayed IPOs

Published

on

By

Silicon Valley's early return on Trump investment: Plunging valuations, delayed IPOs

The Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 9, 2023.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Silicon Valley executives and financiers publicly opened their wallets in support of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run. The early returns in 2025 aren’t great, to say the least.

Following Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced Wednesday, the Nasdaq suffered steep consecutive daily drops to finish 10% lower for the week, the index’s worst performance since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

The tech industry’s leading CEO’s rushed to contribute to Trump’s inauguration in January and paraded to Washington, D.C., for the event. Since then, it’s been a slog.

The market can always turn around, but economists and investors aren’t optimistic, and concerns are building of a potential recession. The seven most valuable U.S. tech companies lost a combined $1.8 trillion in market cap in two days.

Apple slid 14% for the week, its biggest drop in more than five years. Tesla, led by top Trump adviser Elon Musk, plunged 9.2% and is now down more than 40% for the year. Musk contributed close to $300 million to help propel Trump back to the White House.

Nvidia, Meta and Amazon all suffered double-digit drops for the week. For Amazon, a ninth straight weekly decline marks its longest such losing streak since 2008.

With Wall Street selling out of risky assets on concern that widespread tariff hikes will punish the U.S. and global economy, the fallout has drifted down to the IPO market. Online lender Klarna and ticketing marketplace StubHub delayed their IPOs due to market turbulence, just weeks after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and fintech company Chime is also reportedly delaying its listing.

CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure, last week became the first venture-backed company to raise more than $1 billion in a U.S. IPO since 2021. But the company slashed its offering, and trading has been very volatile in its opening days on the market. The stock plunged 12% on Friday, leaving it 17% above its offer price but below the bottom of its initial range.

“You couldn’t create a worse market and macro environment to go public,” said Phil Haslett, co-founder of EquityZen, a platform for investing in private companies. “Way too much turbulence. All flights are grounded until further notice.”

CoreWeave investor Mark Klein of SuRo Capital previously told CNBC that the company could be the first in an “IPO parade.” Now he’s backtracking.

“It appears that the IPO parade has been temporarily halted,” Klein told CNBC by email on Friday. “The current tariff situation has prompted these companies to pause and assess its impact.”

Tech will see an 'economic armageddon' if these tariffs stay, says Wedbush's Dan Ives

‘Cave rapidly’

During last year’s presidential campaign, prominent venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen backed Trump, expecting that his administration would usher in a boom and eliminate some of the hurdles to startup growth set up by the Biden administration. Andreessen and his partner, Ben Horowitz, said in July that their financial support of the Trump campaign was due to what they called a better “little tech agenda.”

A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.

Some techies who supported Trump in the campaign have taken to social media to defend their positions.

Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, posted on X on Thursday that “Trump Derangement Syndrome has morphed into Tariff Derangement Syndrome.” He said tariffs aren’t inflationary, are effective at reducing fentanyl imports, and he expects that “most other countries will cave and cave rapidly.”

That was before China’s Finance Ministry said on Friday that it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10.

At Sequoia Capital, which is the biggest investor in Klarna, outspoken Trump supporter Shaun Maguire, wrote on X, “The first long-term thinking President of my lifetime,” and said in a separate post that, “The price of stocks says almost nothing about the long term health of an economy.”

However, Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian warned on Friday that Trump’s extensive raft of import tariffs are putting the U.S. economy at risk of recession.

“You’ve had a major repricing of growth prospects, with a recession in the U.S. going up to 50% probability, you’ve seen an increase in inflation expectations, up to 3.5%,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

Former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates, left, and Steve Ballmer, center, pose for photos with CEO Satya Nadella during an event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Microsoft on April 4, 2025 in Redmond, Washington. 

Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Meanwhile, executives at tech’s megacap companies were largely silent this week, and their public relations representatives declined to provide comments about their thinking.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in the awkward position on Friday of celebrating his company’s 50th anniversary at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Alongside Microsoft’s prior two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin for a televised interview that was planned well before Trump’s tariff announcement.

When asked about the tariffs at the top of the interview, Nadella effectively dodged the question and avoided expressing his views about whether the new policies will hamper Microsoft’s business.

Ballmer, who was succeeded by Nadella in 2014, acknowledged to Sorkin that “disruption is very hard on people” and that, “as a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good.” Ballmer and Gates are two of the 12 wealthiest people in the world thanks to their Microsoft fortunes.

C-suites may not be able to stay quiet for long, especially if the recent turmoil spills into next week.

Lise Buyer, who previously helped guide Google through its IPO and now works as an adviser to companies going public, said there’s no appetite for risk in the market under these conditions. But there is risk that staffers get jittery, and they’ll surely look to their leaders for some reassurance.

“Until markets settle out and we have the opportunity to access valuation levels, public company CEOs should work to calm potentially distressed employees,” Buyer said in an email. “And private company managements should refine plans to get by on dollars already in the treasury.”

— CNBC’s Hayden Field, Jordan Novet, Leslie Picker, Annie Palmer and Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

WATCH: Chime is reportedly delaying its IPO

Chime is reportedly delaying its IPO

Continue Reading

UK

Jaguar Land Rover to ‘pause’ US shipments over Donald Trump tariffs

Published

on

By

Jaguar Land Rover to 'pause' US shipments over Donald Trump tariffs

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has said it will “pause” shipments to the US as the British car firm works to “address the new trading terms” of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The US president has introduced a 25% levy on all foreign cars imported into the country, which came into force on Thursday.

JLR, one of the country’s biggest carmakers, exported about 38,000 cars to the US in the third quarter of 2024 – almost equal to the amount sold to the UK and the EU combined.

Follow live updates: Trump’s baseline 10% tariff kicks in

In a statement on Saturday, a spokesperson for the company behind the Jaguar, Land Rover and Range Rover brands said: “The USA is an important market for JLR’s luxury brands.

“As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans.”

The company released a statement last week before Mr Trump announced a “baseline” 10% tariff on goods from around the world, which kicked in on Saturday morning, on what he called “liberation day”.

More on Donald Trump

JLR reassured customers its business was “resilient” and “accustomed to changing market conditions”.

“Our priorities now are delivering for our clients around the world and addressing these new US trading terms,” the firm said.

Trading across the world has been hit by Mr Trump’s tariff announcement at the White House on Wednesday.

All but one stock on the FTSE 100 fell on Friday – with Rolls-Royce, banks and miners among those to suffer the sharpest losses.

Read more: A red wall on Wall Street – but Trump seems to believe it will work out

Cars are the top product exported from the UK to the US, with exports worth £8.3bn in the year to the end of September 2024, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

For UK carmakers, the US is the second largest export market behind the European Union.

Industry groups have previously warned the tariffs will force firms to rethink where they trade, while a report by thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research said more than 25,000 car manufacturing jobs in the UK could be at risk.

Continue Reading

UK

Two people die after caravan fire at holiday park in Lincolnshire

Published

on

By

Two people die after caravan fire at holiday park in Lincolnshire

Two people have died following a fire at a caravan site near Skegness, Lincolnshire Police have said.

In a statement, officers said they were called at 3.53am on Saturday to a report of a blaze at Golden Beach Holiday Park in the village of Ingoldmells.

Fire and rescue crews attended the scene, and two people were found to have died.

They were reported to be a 10-year-old girl and a 48-year-old man.

The force said the victims’ next of kin have been informed and will be supported by specially trained officers.

Officers are trying to establish the exact cause of the blaze.

“We are at the very early stages of our investigation and as such we are keeping an open mind,” the force said.

Two fire crews remain at the scene.

Continue Reading

Trending