newyorker--2020-01-27--The Fight to Preserve African-American History

No one knows what happened to Gabriel ’ s body .
Born into slavery the year his country declared its freedom , he trained as a plantation blacksmith and was hired out to foundries in Richmond , Virginia , where he befriended other enslaved people .
Together , they absorbed , from the revolutionary spirit of the era , ideas of independence that were never meant for them .
Gabriel kept hammering out whatever his masters demanded , but in secret he began to forge a network of thousands of enslaved and free blacks who planned to rally under a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Death or Liberty.
” But a terrible thunderstorm flooded the roads on what was to be the day of their revolt , in August , 1800 , and during the delay two of the conspirators betrayed the rest .
Within a few weeks , twenty-six of them were hanged .
Gabriel was executed less than a mile from the church where Patrick Henry spoke the words that inspired what would have been their battle cry .
Some historians believe that Gabriel ’ s body was left in the burial ground beside the gallows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of other black bodies that , consigned to the bottomland of the city , washed into Shockoe Creek whenever it rained .
Shockoe Bottom , as that valley is known , was the center of Richmond ’ s slave district .
In the three decades before the Civil War , more than three hundred thousand men , women , and children were sold in Richmond , the second-largest slave market in the United States .
Not every enslaved person who passed through left the city ; many were made to work in its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mills .
Between 1750 and 1816 , most of the African-Americans who died in Richmond were interred in what was known as the Burial Ground for Negroes .
After that , the graves at Shockoe Bottom were abandoned , and residents claimed more and more of the land for themselves , ignoring the coffins and bones .
The city turned what was left into a jail , and then a dog pound ; later , state and federal officials carved I-95 through its center .
“ I remember thinking there was nothing left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of his first encounter with Shockoe Bottom .
Leggs , the director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund , at the National Trust for Historic Preservation , is typically contacted to help preserve something , even if it is only a crumbling foundation .
But in Richmond he was called on to help save what no longer exists .
The first wave of protests began in 2002 , when Shockoe Bottom was still a parking lot .
Community groups like the Defenders for Freedom , Justice & Equality organized to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s connections to the slave trade .
The Defenders held walking tours , educational forums , and vigils at the site .
Activists demanded that the city “ get your asphalt off our ancestors , ” and , although it took a decade , the pavement was eventually cleared .
In 2013 , the group helped launch another wave of protests after the city proposed building a minor-league baseball stadium at Shockoe Bottom , which would have destroyed what archeological evidence remained and would have desecrated the burial ground .
That was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A year later , Leggs and his colleagues declared Shockoe Bottom one of America ’ s most endangered historic places , a designation that the Trust assigns to about a dozen sites annually , fostering public pressure to halt development that would destroy them .
The city withdrew its plans for the stadium in 2015 ; the Defenders then proposed a large memorial park , one that would connect Gabriel ’ s rebellion with the war that divided the country and also with the one that founded it .
For now , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ afford a park of that size , and Shockoe Bottom remains in limbo .
The struggle over the physical record of slavery and uprising in Richmond is part of a larger , long-overdue national movement to preserve African-American history .
Of the more than ninety-five thousand entries on the National Register of Historic Places—the list of sites deemed worthy of preservation by the federal government—only two per cent focus on the experiences of black Americans .
Preservationists like Leggs are working with activists , archeologists , and historians to change those numbers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ such sites as 1520 Sedgwick Avenue , in the Bronx , known as the apartment building where hip-hop was born ; the Pauli Murray Family Home , in Durham , North Carolina , the birthplace of the queer civil-rights lawyer ; and Fort Monroe , in Hampton Roads , Virginia , an Army base on the spot where African captives first arrived in this country , in 1619 , which became known as Freedom ’ s Fortress after five hundred thousand slaves emancipated themselves there during the Civil War .
One site at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are changing not only what history we preserve but what we think it means to preserve it .
Historic preservation has its own history .
The first preservation laws in the United States protected the land itself , beginning with Ulysses S. Grant ’ s designation of Yellowstone National Park , in 1872 .
But , with the Civil War barely over , battlefields , cemeteries , and burial sites quickly became a priority for preservation .
The passage of the Antiquities Act of 1906 gave Presidents the right to create national monuments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protect both the terrain and the artifacts of indigenous cultures found there .
Ten years later , the creation of the National Park Service ( N.P.S . )
granted federal lawmakers more power “ to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wild life therein.
” In subsequent years , the category of “ historic objects ” broadened , and the N.P.S .
got involved in preservation efforts at places like Jamestown ; eventually , the agency set national policies for surveying historic and archeological sites , protecting significant properties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1949 , Harry Truman signed legislation creating the National Trust , and in 1966 Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act ( N.H.P.A . )
, which , among other things , established the National Register of Historic Places and the standards of the National Historic Landmarks Program , provided federal funding for the National Trust , and opened preservation offices in all fifty states .
Since its founding , the N.H.P.A .
has identified nearly two million locations worthy of preservation and has engaged tens of millions of Americans in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has helped to generate an estimated two million jobs and more than a hundred billion dollars in private investments .
But , because many biases were written into the criteria that determine how sites are selected , those benefits have gone mostly to white Americans .
One of the criteria for preservation is architectural significance , meaning that modest buildings like slave cabins and tenement houses were long excluded from consideration .
By the time preservationists took notice of structures like those , many lacked the physical integrity to merit protection .
Destruction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neighborhoods were actively erased—deliberately targeted by arson in the years after Reconstruction or displaced in later decades by highway construction , gentrification , and urban renewal .
While state and federal institutions were largely neglecting these areas , communities of color began protecting them on their own .
Leggs dates the formal beginning of African-American historic preservation to 1917 , when the National Association of Colored Women organized a campaign to pay off the mortgage on Cedar Hill , a Gothic Revival house in Washington , D.C. , that had belonged to Frederick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t called ‘ preservation , ’ this work was already happening , ” Leggs told me on a visit to Cedar Hill in December .
The estate sits high above the neighborhood of Anacostia , offering a clear view of the Capitol and the Washington Monument .
Leggs , who is forty-seven , bounded up the hundred brick steps from the visitors ’ center to the house as though it were his first time there , eager to show me Douglass ’ s bookshelves and writing desk , his portraits of Elizabeth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the table where he dined with Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells-Barnett .
“ It ’ s a tangible way of learning about his life , of interacting with all that he accomplished , ” Leggs said of the site , which is now managed by the N.P.S .
We talked about the dumbbells in Douglass ’ s bedroom , and how he liked to lift weights ; Leggs , who is roughly the same height as the six-foot-tall abolitionist , wondered why the bed was so short ( a question apparently asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

“A lot of our work is to balance America’s collective memory,” Leggs said. But that work can’t be accomplished without rebalancing something else. To diversify historic preservation, you need to address not just what is preserved but who is preserving it—because, as it turns out, what counts as history has a lot to do with who is doing the counting.
Leggs told me that he has long felt like “one of one” in his field, and for good reason. African-Americans constitute less than six per cent of the more than twenty thousand employees of the National Park Service, and they are underrepresented in most other careers related to historic preservation, accounting for not quite four per cent of academic archeologists, five per cent of licensed architects and engineers, and less than one per cent of professional preservationists.
Leggs came to the field by chance. He grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, a small city on the Ohio River, where he watched his church raise funds to repair its roof, and attended annual family reunions that always found their way to cemeteries, where they cleaned, mowed the grass, and landscaped the graves. After studying marketing at the University of Kentucky, he received a master’s degree at the business school there. Leggs has a twin brother, who went to work at a now defunct uranium-enrichment plant in Paducah; his younger sister stayed in the area, too. Leggs had been so focussed on getting his degrees that he didn’t know what to do with them after graduation. He was interested in design, and thought about taking a furniture-making class at the University of Kentucky’s School of Architecture, but when he went to enroll a dean recruited him for the graduate program in historic preservation, partly by telling him that he could be the program’s first black graduate. “I had no idea about architectural history, no formal understanding of preservation, but it felt right,” Leggs said.
His first field assignment was to inventory Rosenwald schools. Devised by Booker T. Washington and funded by the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the schools served black children during the era of segregated education. Almost five thousand of them were built in fifteen Southern states between 1912 and 1932, and they educated more than six hundred thousand students, including some of the very civil-rights leaders who later helped to make them obsolete. In the years after Brown v. Board of Education, while the schoolhouses that had served rural whites were romanticized and preserved, ninety per cent of the Rosenwald schools were demolished or allowed to fall into disrepair.
Leggs’s task was to find and document those that remained in Kentucky. While walking through them, “I had this multisensory experience,” he recalled. “I could see, touch, smell, hear the creaking floorboards when I stepped inside.” That strange feeling made sense, Leggs said, when he learned, later, that his parents had both attended Rosenwald schools. His mother had died when he was a teen-ager, but the school visits prompted conversations with his father about the family’s history, convincing Leggs of the power that physical places have in shaping cultural memory.
As a graduate student, Leggs received one of the National Trust’s Mildred Colodny diversity scholarships, and since then he has concentrated on bringing new people into his field. Doing so involves credentialling new colleagues, and also convincing community organizers, artists, real-estate developers, and other professionals that they are already doing the work of preservation. “I think part of what we want to do is to reconstruct the identity of traditional preservationists,” Leggs told me. As an assistant clinical professor at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Leggs sometimes interacts with students who have never met a preservationist of color, or whose portfolios would never have included sites of African-American history if not for his encouragement. He also meets regularly with students who are taking part in the Action Fund’s campus events or preservation fieldwork.
Last fall, Leggs met with Monique Robinson, an undergraduate at Morgan State University, in Baltimore—one of a hundred and four operating historically black colleges and universities around the country, and one of several where the National Trust is working to promote historic preservation, in part by protecting buildings on campus, including some designed by pioneering black architects like Leon Bridges and Albert Cassell. Robinson, a senior who came to Morgan to study architecture, had learned about preservation through a National Trust course. “I always thought I would just go join a firm and work my way up,” she said. “But then I met Brent, and I saw how preservation can look at what was there before and understand what’s important to a community.”
“No, Al, you can’t just ‘stake your reputation’ on it.” Cartoon by Zachary Kanin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Robinson and Leggs stood talking in the long, light-filled atrium of the school’s Center for the Built Environment and Infrastructure Studies. Leggs had to leave that afternoon to catch a train to New York, for a meeting at the Langston Hughes House, in Harlem; Robinson was preparing for exams and finishing grad-school applications. But they got to talking about Old Jenkins, a building at Morgan State that was slated for demolition. To its detractors, the building, a brutalist behavioral-science headquarters, looks like a fortress that swallowed a ziggurat. Worse, its blocky façade obstructs the view from Carnegie Hall, one of the most distinguished buildings on campus. “Oh, Jenkins,” Robinson said, smiling as if she’d been asked about her first crush. “I really just love it.”
Leggs, who feels the same, tried to convert me to the cause. During a tour, he pointed out how Jenkins reflects not only the global history of design but the history of Morgan State. Named for one of the university’s former presidents, the building was designed by Louis Edwin Fry, Sr., the first African-American to receive a master’s degree in architecture from Harvard. Its hidden amphitheatre has seen forty-five years of lectures, homecomings, and commencements. Yet any effort to preserve Jenkins would face serious difficulties: decades of deferred maintenance have made it extraordinarily costly to restore. And, even setting aside the question of money, it suffers from a problem that often haunts historic preservation—to the general public, some important places just seem too ugly, insignificant, or inconvenient to keep around.
Take the Hill, a historically black neighborhood in the town of Easton, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that is the site of a preservation project that even a decade ago might have been met with confusion. It is not immediately obvious why this area of several blocks is historically significant, but the collection of black churches, black businesses, and dozens of single-family homes is thought by some archeologists to be the oldest continuously occupied free-black community in the country—perhaps two decades older than Treme. With the backing of the National Trust, academics at Morgan State have led an effort to research and reconstruct the Hill, unearthing the stories of early residents, like Grace Brooks, a midwife who freed herself and her family in 1788 and became one of the first black homeowners in town, and Joseph Chain, a black businessman who opened his own barbershop and grocery store after his arrival in 1810. The Hill also sheds new light on the story of Frederick Douglass, who watched those lives unfold in freedom while he was enslaved in the same county and imprisoned in the same town.
For Leggs, the Hill offers a compelling demonstration of all that historic preservation can accomplish in communities of color. In keeping with the early history of homeownership there, organizers and local officials are using tax breaks and development funds to help renters become homeowners, hoping to forestall developer-led gentrification and insure that the neighborhood will continue to be occupied by descendants of the original free blacks who settled it. At the same time, Morgan State is addressing the pipeline problem in the field of preservation by recruiting college students and young people from the neighborhood for research, analysis, and archeological digs.
The town of Easton has embraced the Hill, supporting not only the effort to document its history but also initiatives to retain minority families. Historical maps are available online and in the county tourism office, and local schoolchildren now go on field trips to see a historically black community that dates back to the Revolutionary War era, following a walking tour that brings to life what they might not otherwise have been taught, in situ or at all.
Not all sites move from the margins to the mainstream so smoothly. At Shockoe Bottom, the Defenders are still fighting to commemorate the legacy of Gabriel’s rebellion and the memory of all the other African-Americans who were sold and buried there. Economic development and historic preservation seem at odds, and even many community stakeholders who agree about the importance of the site disagree about how best to memorialize it. After the Trust included Shockoe Bottom on its most-endangered-places list, the city proposed preserving a single small area, the so-called Devil’s Half Acre, on which the slave trader Robert Lumpkin ran a jail. The Defenders are advocating for a nine-acre memorial park centered on the burial ground. They point to an economic study commissioned by the Trust, which found that an $8.7-million investment in that park would generate $11.5 million in jobs.
Ana Edwards, an artist and a historian, moved to Richmond in the late eighties and learned that two of her ancestors had been sold out of the city. She has co-chaired the Sacred Ground Project with her husband for the last fifteen years, some of those while working on a master’s degree in history. Her research focusses on the life of a free black man accused but ultimately exonerated of participating in Gabriel’s rebellion. Edwards believes that Shockoe Bottom should be a site of reflection and remembrance but also of resistance, offering visitors an alternative to the history that Richmond has long revered. Four of this country’s more than seventeen hundred public memorials to the Confederacy stand not far from Shockoe Bottom, on Monument Avenue—statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart. As in Charlottesville, white supremacists have rallied to protect those Confederate monuments, a reminder of how necessary African-American historic preservation is. “I don’t know if this space can do all the work our society needs it to,” Edwards told me one night, while walking through Shockoe Bottom, shouting to be heard over the sound of eighteen-wheelers passing on the interstate overhead. “But we need this place.”
Mayor Levar Stoney, who was elected in 2016, agrees that Shockoe Bottom is an important site for the city and for the country. “Our history in Richmond is good, bad, and ugly,” he told me. “And I think we owe it to our ancestors and the descendants of these slaves to tell the complete story, no matter how bad or ugly it might have been.” More than a year ago, his administration established a working group called the Shockoe Alliance, which includes people from the Sacred Ground Project, the Slave Trail Commission, and Preservation Virginia, and also from the Shockoe Neighborhood Association and the Shockoe Business Association. To date, they have reached no agreement on Shockoe Bottom’s future. But Leggs, who has the patience of someone who spends his time thinking in centuries, is optimistic that, through the Shockoe Alliance, the city will agree on an appropriate plan for the site. He knows that the arc of history is long and unpredictable, and he is used to doing his work one donation and one student at a time. He has seen that patience rewarded with more recognized sites and with the involvement of more people who have the knowledge and commitment to save them. He has also seen how slowly a project can unfold. His career began nearly two decades ago with the Rosenwald schools, and now he is involved in an effort to create a discontinuous national park that could include Rosenwald’s childhood home, in Springfield; the corporate headquarters of Sears, Roebuck and Company, in Chicago; and a number of the schools throughout the South.
Yet Leggs also knows that some stories are more widely cherished than others. The interracial and interfaith friendship between Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington; the entrepreneurism of Madam C. J. Walker and A. G. Gaston; the audacity and courage of the self-emancipated Frederick Douglass—it is comparatively easy to rally public support for preserving these inspiring legacies. It is a very different matter to persuade a municipality to memorialize its deep economic dependence on slavery. Shockoe Bottom is not just a more expensive place to preserve financially; it’s more expensive emotionally and morally as well. “It should be a site of conscience,” Leggs said. “A place where the truth is told, and visitors reflect, and where reconciliation can happen.” Even if Leggs and the National Trust succeed in helping the Defenders for Freedom realize their vision in Richmond, as they have with so many other grassroots organizations in so many other cities and towns around the country, all they can do is preserve the past. The future is up to the rest of us. ♦


Cartoon Caption Contest

Each week , we provide a cartoon in need of a caption .
You , the reader , submit your @ @ @ @ @ three finalists , and you vote for your favorite .
Anyone age thirteen or older @ @ @ @ @ To read the complete rules , click here .

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit your caption here, we choose three finalists, and you vote for your favorite. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. To read the complete rules, click here.
Hartley Lin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop


newyorker--2020-01-27--The Hacker Connecting Luanda Leaks to Corruption in European Soccer

Earlier this month , news organizations around the world , including the Times , the BBC , and Le Monde , began publishing stories about corruption involving Isabel dos Santos , Africa ’ s richest woman .
Dos Santos has always maintained that she is a self-made billionaire , but her father , José Eduardo , was the President of Angola between 1979 and 2017 , and the bulk of dos Santos ’ s fortune derives from stakes in Angolan banks , diamond companies , a telecom company , and a cement business .
From 2016 to 2017 , dos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Angola ’ s state-owned oil company .
The revelations this month , known as “ Luanda Leaks , ” stem from a cache of more than seven hundred thousand documents , including e-mails , spreadsheets , bank transfers , and organizational charts .
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists ( I.C.I.J . )
, which handled the data , described it as “ a tale of insider dealing on an epic scale.
” Prosecutors have reacted swiftly .
The Angolan authorities have accused dos Santos and her husband of embezzling more than a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thirty-eight million dollars in fees , which she authorized during her final hours in charge of Sonangol .
Last week , the country ’ s Attorney General , Helder Pitta Groz , travelled to Portugal , where dos Santos has conducted much of her business , to explore seizing her assets .
A banker in Lisbon who worked closely with dos Santos has committed suicide .
On Monday , lawyers for Rui Pinto , a thirty-one-year-old Portuguese hacker , revealed that he was the source of Luanda Leaks .
Until now , Pinto @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Football Leaks , a monumental data set—harvested in the course of more than three years—describing the previously unknown financial side of European soccer .
I wrote about Pinto and Football Leaks for The New Yorker last year .
I spent time with Pinto in Budapest , where he was based for several years .
Pinto defies the conventional definition of an activist , a whistle-blower , or a cyber criminal .
He worked as an antiques dealer .
The soccer clubs , lawyers , and agents that Pinto targeted during Football Leaks portray @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sophisticated phishing techniques to trick his way into their servers and download confidential information .
On the other hand , the data that he uncovered has led to dozens of prosecutions for tax evasion and investigations , by UEFA , into some of Europe ’ s leading clubs .
Only a small proportion of Pinto ’ s data hoard—four of twenty-nine terabytes—was ever systematically processed for Football Leaks .
He struck me as clever and anarchic , with an absolute moral distaste for wrongdoing in the real world , but not so bothered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leaks appears to have been a side project .
During the weekend , I spoke to William Bourdon , Pinto ’ s lead lawyer .
Bourdon has represented Edward Snowden and campaigns for whistle-blowers and transparency around the world .
In 2017 , Bourdon helped to found the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa ( PPLAAF ) , an N.G.O .
based in Paris that helped bring down Jacob Zuma , the former South African President .
In the summer of 2018 , when Pinto asked Bourdon to be his lawyer , Bourdon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understood what I did with my new N.G.O.
, and he could see he could be useful for PPLAAF to get this , ” Bourdon said , of Luanda Leaks .
Bourdon didn ’ t specify how or when Pinto came across the dos Santos documents , only that he found them during his forays into Portuguese soccer .
“ It was not his target ; it was not his purpose , ” Bourdon said .
“ It happened more or less by random , because of the common community between Angolan circles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same people , same banks , same lawyers.
” In either late 2018 or early 2019 , Pinto handed Bourdon a hard drive .
“ He didn ’ t know exactly what was in the disk .
He knew it was to do with the criminal world , ” Bourdon said .
PPLAAF subsequently shared the data with the I.C.I.J .
Pinto is currently in prison in Lisbon , awaiting trial on ninety-three charges , including cybercrime and extortion , for offenses allegedly committed during the collection of the Football Leaks data .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ years .
Portugal has some of Europe ’ s weakest protections for whistle-blowers , and Pinto ’ s supporters believe that he is being prosecuted so severely in part because he exposed potential corruption at Benfica , the country ’ s biggest soccer club .
Bourdon told me that he hoped the Luanda Leaks will help to change the perception of Pinto in his home country , where he is a household name .
“ It ’ s clear that it will be more and more a public-opinion battle , ” Bourdon said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cards.
” Pinto ’ s Portuguese lawyer , Francisco Teixeira da Mota , who will represent him when he goes on trial this spring , said that Luanda Leaks would strengthen Pinto ’ s claim to be acting in a wider public interest .
“ It is clear that he is not someone who is seeking profit from his information , ” da Mota told me .
“ And it is clear that his information has great , great value in a civic way , in exposing illegal and very serious things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” When I was reporting on Football Leaks , Bourdon told me that all citizens should have the right to whistle-blower protections if they obtain evidence of illegal behavior in any field .
“ I understand that it is a source of anxiety , of trouble and interrogation , ” he said .
He predicted that the next generation of whistle-blowers would not necessarily have any ties to the industry or political administration that they sought to expose—just the digital savvy to unlock their secrets .
“ This kind of whistle-blower , these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the worst enemies of the oligarchy , ” Bourdon said .
“ They are the most dangerous , because they can come from nowhere.
” During the weekend , he returned to the theme .
“ Pinto is the Snowden of international corruption now , ” Bourdon said .
“ This young , smart guy , he has this skill .
And he is in jail in a democratic country .
”

Earlier this month, news organizations around the world, including the Times, the BBC, and Le Monde, began publishing stories about corruption involving Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman. Dos Santos has always maintained that she is a self-made billionaire, but her father, José Eduardo, was the President of Angola between 1979 and 2017, and the bulk of dos Santos’s fortune derives from stakes in Angolan banks, diamond companies, a telecom company, and a cement business. From 2016 to 2017, dos Santos was the chair of Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company.
The revelations this month, known as “Luanda Leaks,” stem from a cache of more than seven hundred thousand documents, including e-mails, spreadsheets, bank transfers, and organizational charts. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (I.C.I.J.), which handled the data, described it as “a tale of insider dealing on an epic scale.” Prosecutors have reacted swiftly. The Angolan authorities have accused dos Santos and her husband of embezzling more than a billion dollars from the state, including thirty-eight million dollars in fees, which she authorized during her final hours in charge of Sonangol. Last week, the country’s Attorney General, Helder Pitta Groz, travelled to Portugal, where dos Santos has conducted much of her business, to explore seizing her assets. A banker in Lisbon who worked closely with dos Santos has committed suicide.
On Monday, lawyers for Rui Pinto, a thirty-one-year-old Portuguese hacker, revealed that he was the source of Luanda Leaks. Until now, Pinto was known only as the man behind Football Leaks, a monumental data set—harvested in the course of more than three years—describing the previously unknown financial side of European soccer. I wrote about Pinto and Football Leaks for The New Yorker last year. I spent time with Pinto in Budapest, where he was based for several years. Pinto defies the conventional definition of an activist, a whistle-blower, or a cyber criminal. He worked as an antiques dealer. The soccer clubs, lawyers, and agents that Pinto targeted during Football Leaks portray him as a rogue hacker who used sophisticated phishing techniques to trick his way into their servers and download confidential information. On the other hand, the data that he uncovered has led to dozens of prosecutions for tax evasion and investigations, by UEFA, into some of Europe’s leading clubs. Only a small proportion of Pinto’s data hoard—four of twenty-nine terabytes—was ever systematically processed for Football Leaks. He struck me as clever and anarchic, with an absolute moral distaste for wrongdoing in the real world, but not so bothered about infiltrating your Gmail account.
Luanda Leaks appears to have been a side project. During the weekend, I spoke to William Bourdon, Pinto’s lead lawyer. Bourdon has represented Edward Snowden and campaigns for whistle-blowers and transparency around the world. In 2017, Bourdon helped to found the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF), an N.G.O. based in Paris that helped bring down Jacob Zuma, the former South African President. In the summer of 2018, when Pinto asked Bourdon to be his lawyer, Bourdon told him about PPLAAF. “He understood what I did with my new N.G.O., and he could see he could be useful for PPLAAF to get this,” Bourdon said, of Luanda Leaks.
Bourdon didn’t specify how or when Pinto came across the dos Santos documents, only that he found them during his forays into Portuguese soccer. “It was not his target; it was not his purpose,” Bourdon said. “It happened more or less by random, because of the common community between Angolan circles and the Portuguese football industry. The same people, same banks, same lawyers.” In either late 2018 or early 2019, Pinto handed Bourdon a hard drive. “He didn’t know exactly what was in the disk. He knew it was to do with the criminal world,” Bourdon said. PPLAAF subsequently shared the data with the I.C.I.J.
Pinto is currently in prison in Lisbon, awaiting trial on ninety-three charges, including cybercrime and extortion, for offenses allegedly committed during the collection of the Football Leaks data. He faces a maximum sentence of twenty-five years. Portugal has some of Europe’s weakest protections for whistle-blowers, and Pinto’s supporters believe that he is being prosecuted so severely in part because he exposed potential corruption at Benfica, the country’s biggest soccer club. Bourdon told me that he hoped the Luanda Leaks will help to change the perception of Pinto in his home country, where he is a household name. “It’s clear that it will be more and more a public-opinion battle,” Bourdon said. “I hope it will reshuffle the cards.” Pinto’s Portuguese lawyer, Francisco Teixeira da Mota, who will represent him when he goes on trial this spring, said that Luanda Leaks would strengthen Pinto’s claim to be acting in a wider public interest. “It is clear that he is not someone who is seeking profit from his information,” da Mota told me. “And it is clear that his information has great, great value in a civic way, in exposing illegal and very serious things against the people of Angola and Portugal.”
When I was reporting on Football Leaks, Bourdon told me that all citizens should have the right to whistle-blower protections if they obtain evidence of illegal behavior in any field. “I understand that it is a source of anxiety, of trouble and interrogation,” he said. He predicted that the next generation of whistle-blowers would not necessarily have any ties to the industry or political administration that they sought to expose—just the digital savvy to unlock their secrets. “This kind of whistle-blower, these are the ones who are perceived as the worst enemies of the oligarchy,” Bourdon said. “They are the most dangerous, because they can come from nowhere.” During the weekend, he returned to the theme. “Pinto is the Snowden of international corruption now,” Bourdon said. “This young, smart guy, he has this skill. And he is in jail in a democratic country.”


newyorker--2020-01-27--The Kobe Bryant Grammys Brought a Lesson in Grief

The tumultuous weeks leading up to the Grammys on Sunday included the dismissal of the Recording Academy president and chief executive , Deborah Dugan , who went on to make bombshell allegations of behind-the-scenes harassment and assault , along with accusations that the integrity of the awards had been compromised by insider self-dealing .
The swirling drama was slated to be the dominant undercurrent of music ’ s biggest night , but the sudden death of Kobe Bryant proved far more shattering .
In the hours following the news that Bryant , his daughter Gianna , and seven other people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disbelief coupled with a hollow sadness came in waves .
Before the Grammys kicked off at the Staples Center , affectionately known as the House that Kobe Built , crowds descended to the arena to pay homage and collectively mourn .
That afternoon , watching N.B.A .
stars play through their tears amid calls for the games to be cancelled , the idea that the show must go on seemed more cynical and capitalistic than ever .
Still , sports and music—and particularly basketball and hip-hop—have always been kindred , and there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the superstars of both worlds .
The loss of an icon such as Bryant ripples , much the way the death of another beloved Los Angeles figure , Nipsey Hussle , less than a year ago , shook up the N.B.A .
Pick any major rapper of the last decade , and chances are high that they have a Kobe Bryant lyric : Kendrick Lamar , Travis Scott , Meek Mill , Nicki Minaj , Drake , Kanye West , Chance the Rapper , Young Thug , Rick Ross , J. Cole , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so , in a room no doubt filled with heavy hearts , and with Bryant ’ s illuminated jerseys hanging from the rafters like angels ’ wings , the Grammys commenced .
The show arrived with a peculiar kind of duality—immense sorrow juxtaposed against the hard-earned wins of artists hoping to leave the kind of mark that Bryant did .
( Lil Nas X felt compelled to apologize for even being excited that he ’ d picked up his first Grammy during the pre-show . )
Every victory came burdened with the weight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t take with you—how the trophies , like stat lines , will be only a tiny part of your story in the end .
The ceremony had its usual shortcomings .
There was the general out-of-touch disconnect—the self-congratulating “ Fame ” -themed tribute to the outgoing executive producer Ken Ehrlich ( who is named in Dugan ’ s suit ) and an overabundance of ballads—redeemed by those songs that came alive with double meanings : Camila Cabello ’ s performance of “ First Man , ” a daughter paying homage to her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart , followed by Tanya Tucker ’ s “ Bring My Flowers Now ” to remind us to appreciate the living .
There were also moments that , on a day when the full weight of our fragility came crashing down upon us , reminded us of our strength .
Demi Lovato ’ s wrenching performance of “ Anyone , ” a cry for help that she wrote days before an overdose , in 2018 , was a highlight of the evening .
Her voice soared , aching but stronger than ever , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by doing the thing that she was put here to do , against the odds .
Lizzo , Lil Nas X , and Rosalía brought delight , and Tyler , the Creator summoned fire—each one offering a snapshot of an alternative future in which the Grammys overcomes its commitment to upholding the status quo to actually become the standard of excellence it aspires to be .
Those musicians deserved the gravity of being recognized on music ’ s biggest stage .
In “ Muse , ” a Showtime documentary from 2015 , Bryant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ If you want to be great at something , there is a choice you have to make .
We can all be masters at our craft , but you have to make a choice , ” he says .
“ What I mean by that is , there are inherent sacrifices that come along with that.
” And who knows better the sacrifices that it takes to realize a dream or become bigger than you are than these artists .
And who knows better what it is to suddenly lose a complicated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have done more than their fair share of mourning complicated , seminal giants .
Beyond the tributes and the performances , there still remained the question of what it means to win a Grammy .
The competition , the idea that greatness is to be debated rather than celebrated ( and , in the wake of troublesome revelations , that it may all be rigged anyway ) , created an existential concern : on the one hand , those who spend their lives working for something deserve to be championed , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , wins , and losses that drive so many of our conversations cease to mean anything once we ’ ve returned to dust .
One of Kobe ’ s final acts , enshrined in his last tweet , was a passing of the torch to LeBron James , the man who ’ d so often been pitted against him .
Next week , next year , next decade , few will remember anything about who emerged victorious the night of the 2020 Grammys , just that the band played on the day that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were reminded how one of the only things that unites us more than culture—more than music and sports , movies or television—is profound grief , and the flashes of joy we manage to find anyway .

The tumultuous weeks leading up to the Grammys on Sunday included the dismissal of the Recording Academy president and chief executive, Deborah Dugan, who went on to make bombshell allegations of behind-the-scenes harassment and assault, along with accusations that the integrity of the awards had been compromised by insider self-dealing. The swirling drama was slated to be the dominant undercurrent of music’s biggest night, but the sudden death of Kobe Bryant proved far more shattering.
In the hours following the news that Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven other people had died in a helicopter crash, a disbelief coupled with a hollow sadness came in waves. Before the Grammys kicked off at the Staples Center, affectionately known as the House that Kobe Built, crowds descended to the arena to pay homage and collectively mourn. That afternoon, watching N.B.A. stars play through their tears amid calls for the games to be cancelled, the idea that the show must go on seemed more cynical and capitalistic than ever. Still, sports and music—and particularly basketball and hip-hop—have always been kindred, and there’s an especially strong connection between the superstars of both worlds. The loss of an icon such as Bryant ripples, much the way the death of another beloved Los Angeles figure, Nipsey Hussle, less than a year ago, shook up the N.B.A. Pick any major rapper of the last decade, and chances are high that they have a Kobe Bryant lyric: Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, Meek Mill, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Kanye West, Chance the Rapper, Young Thug, Rick Ross, J. Cole, Chief Keef, Nipsey himself.
And so, in a room no doubt filled with heavy hearts, and with Bryant’s illuminated jerseys hanging from the rafters like angels’ wings, the Grammys commenced. The show arrived with a peculiar kind of duality—immense sorrow juxtaposed against the hard-earned wins of artists hoping to leave the kind of mark that Bryant did. (Lil Nas X felt compelled to apologize for even being excited that he’d picked up his first Grammy during the pre-show.) Every victory came burdened with the weight of mortality and all that you can’t take with you—how the trophies, like stat lines, will be only a tiny part of your story in the end.
The ceremony had its usual shortcomings. There was the general out-of-touch disconnect—the self-congratulating “Fame”-themed tribute to the outgoing executive producer Ken Ehrlich (who is named in Dugan’s suit) and an overabundance of ballads—redeemed by those songs that came alive with double meanings: Camila Cabello’s performance of “First Man,” a daughter paying homage to her father, was a dagger through the heart, followed by Tanya Tucker’s “Bring My Flowers Now” to remind us to appreciate the living. There were also moments that, on a day when the full weight of our fragility came crashing down upon us, reminded us of our strength.
Demi Lovato’s wrenching performance of “Anyone,” a cry for help that she wrote days before an overdose, in 2018, was a highlight of the evening. Her voice soared, aching but stronger than ever, in a display of being transcendent simply by doing the thing that she was put here to do, against the odds. Lizzo, Lil Nas X, and Rosalía brought delight, and Tyler, the Creator summoned fire—each one offering a snapshot of an alternative future in which the Grammys overcomes its commitment to upholding the status quo to actually become the standard of excellence it aspires to be. Those musicians deserved the gravity of being recognized on music’s biggest stage.
In “Muse,” a Showtime documentary from 2015, Bryant talks about the cost of mastery. “If you want to be great at something, there is a choice you have to make. We can all be masters at our craft, but you have to make a choice,” he says. “What I mean by that is, there are inherent sacrifices that come along with that.” And who knows better the sacrifices that it takes to realize a dream or become bigger than you are than these artists. And who knows better what it is to suddenly lose a complicated but no less seminal giant than musicians who have done more than their fair share of mourning complicated, seminal giants.
Beyond the tributes and the performances, there still remained the question of what it means to win a Grammy. The competition, the idea that greatness is to be debated rather than celebrated (and, in the wake of troublesome revelations, that it may all be rigged anyway), created an existential concern: on the one hand, those who spend their lives working for something deserve to be championed, but, on the other, the rivalries, wins, and losses that drive so many of our conversations cease to mean anything once we’ve returned to dust. One of Kobe’s final acts, enshrined in his last tweet, was a passing of the torch to LeBron James, the man who’d so often been pitted against him. Next week, next year, next decade, few will remember anything about who emerged victorious the night of the 2020 Grammys, just that the band played on the day that we lost a superhero, and we were reminded how one of the only things that unites us more than culture—more than music and sports, movies or television—is profound grief, and the flashes of joy we manage to find anyway.


newyorker--2020-01-27--What Would a World Without Prisons Be Like?

Mass incarceration is now widely regarded as a prejudiced and deeply harmful set of policies .
Bipartisan support exists for some degree of criminal-justice reform , and , in some circles , the idea of prison abolition is also gaining traction .
Kai Wright , the host of the WNYC podcast “ The United States of Anxiety , ” spoke about the movement with Paul Butler , a law professor and former federal prosecutor who saw firsthand the damage that prosecution causes , and sujatha baliga , a MacArthur Foundation fellow and a survivor of sexual violence who leads the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice .
“ Prison abolition doesn ’ t mean that everybody who ’ s locked up gets to come home tomorrow , ” Butler explains .
Instead , activists envision a gradual process of “ decarceration , ” and the creation of alternative forms of justice and harm reduction .
“ Abolition , to my mind , isn ’ t just about ending the prisons , ” baliga adds .
“ It ’ s about ending binary processes which pit us as ‘ us , them , ’ ‘ right , wrong ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somebody ’ s telling the truth .
That is not the way that we get to healing .
”

Photograph by Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis / Getty
Mass incarceration is now widely regarded as a prejudiced and deeply harmful set of policies. Bipartisan support exists for some degree of criminal-justice reform, and, in some circles, the idea of prison abolition is also gaining traction. Kai Wright, the host of the WNYC podcast “The United States of Anxiety,” spoke about the movement with Paul Butler, a law professor and former federal prosecutor who saw firsthand the damage that prosecution causes, and sujatha baliga, a MacArthur Foundation fellow and a survivor of sexual violence who leads the Restorative Justice Project at the nonprofit Impact Justice. “Prison abolition doesn’t mean that everybody who’s locked up gets to come home tomorrow,” Butler explains. Instead, activists envision a gradual process of “decarceration,” and the creation of alternative forms of justice and harm reduction. “Abolition, to my mind, isn’t just about ending the prisons,” baliga adds. “It’s about ending binary processes which pit us as ‘us, them,’ ‘right, wrong’; somebody has to be lying, somebody’s telling the truth. That is not the way that we get to healing.”


newyorker--2020-01-27--Billie Eilish and the New Musical Consensus at the Grammys

On Sunday , just hours after the news of Kobe Bryant ’ s tragic death , the 62nd Grammy Awards began at Staples Center , the building where Bryant forged his legacy .
“ We ’ re literally standing here , heartbroken in the house that Kobe built , ” Alicia Keys , who was hosting , said in her opening monologue , a sombre tribute to Bryant and his family .
Throughout the evening , Keys , in the tone of earthy maternalism that she ’ s offered for two consecutive years as Grammy host , returned to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the face of tragedy .
Music , she insisted , brings us together .
Music may be unifying , but the Grammys are not .
Usually , the show supplies a document of generational rifts and institutional rot .
On Sunday , however , it edged surprisingly close to cultural consensus , though not because of Bryant .
The show was a full-bore coronation of Billie Eilish , the eighteen-year-old avant-pop star who ’ s become a commercial and cultural powerhouse , and who won Album of the Year , Record of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Best New Artist .
Eilish is the first artist to sweep the major categories since the singer-songwriter Christopher Cross , nearly forty years ago .
She has been described as a genre-melting prodigy , a teen sensation , and the future of music .
She is also , evidently , someone we can all agree on .
Agreement is likely a welcome sensation within the Recording Academy , which is at something of a crossroads .
In 2018 , in the face of critique about the dearth of female Grammy nominees and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Neil Portnow said after the awards telecast that women needed to “ step up ” in order to achieve parity , a comment that roiled artists and fans .
Portnow left his post in 2019 , but his replacement , Deborah Dugan , was placed on administrative leave earlier this month , after just five months on the job .
( The Academy said that it is investigating “ a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team , ” though Dugan denies any wrongdoing .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ claims in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint about the “ rigged ” Grammys voting system and the Academy ’ s “ boys ’ club ’ mentality ” ; she also alleged that Portnow had been accused of raping a musician .
( Portnow has vehemently denied these claims . )
This latest fracas comes amid a broader reckoning , in which the Academy , historically known for favoring white artists and the rock tradition , has made several gestures toward change .
It ’ s begun to televise hip-hop categories and to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s also expanded the nominee pool for top categories and announced new initiatives to foster diversity .
As a result of these gestures—and in lockstep with the steady global march toward monoculture—this year ’ s nominees were younger , more diverse , and more culturally relevant than ever before .
The leading nominees included the Internet virtuoso-turned-viral-country-music-star Lil Nas X , Lizzo , and Eilish .
The indie mainstays Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend snagged nominations in the Best Album category , but their presence felt spectral , as though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Women—one woman in particular—dominated the winners ’ list .
And yet , in spite of the spiritual makeover , Sunday ’ s ceremony was curiously dull , in part because of a dearth of star power in last year ’ s album-release cycle .
There were no new solo albums from Adele , Beyoncé , Rihanna , Frank Ocean , or Kendrick Lamar , leaving the field wide open for newcomers like Lizzo and Eilish .
( Taylor Swift and Kanye West , two other ghost-like presences , did release albums but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) In the absence of marquee moments , the ceremony often vacillated between the flat and the awkward .
At one point , Usher performed a tribute to Prince alongside FKA twigs , who was asked not to sing but to be a sort of glorified backup dancer .
At another point , the Cuban-American pop singer Camila Cabello serenaded her father with the song “ First Man , ” adding perhaps more Freudian overtones to the show than was intended .
The only moment of true invigoration came from the art-rap auteur @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his hit “ Earfquake ” with Boyz II Men and Charlie Wilson , before being joined onstage by a legion of young black men in blond wigs .
( They were dressed as his alter ego , Igor . )
Thrashing with adrenaline , they briefly turned the evening into a pleasurable spectacle , and Tyler later took home the award for Best Rap Album .
Lizzo and Eilish , along with Lil Nas X , represent a new class of music royalty , and they shouldered outsized responsibility for the show ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stars have been lauded for their innovation .
Lizzo brings a brassy and inclusive energy to power pop ; Lil Nas X erodes genre convention ; Eilish deploys a Gothic sensibility and striking musical arrangements .
But the Grammys also laid bare their conventionality .
Lil Nas X performed a super-medley of his inescapable hit , “ Old Town Road , ” inviting an army of guest stars—Diplo , BTS , Mason Ramsey , Billy Ray Cyrus , and Nas—to join him in a heavy-handed genre mashup that the Grammy programmers might have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opened the show with “ Truth Hurts ” ( a song that also won Best Pop Solo Performance ) , embraced the ceremony with such gamely showmanship that she already seemed like an Academy fixture .
And Eilish , for her live performance , chose a stripped-down piano version of her single “ When The Party ’ s Over , ” exposing the song ’ s traditionalist bones .
In theory , the Academy proved that it ’ s made strides in embracing new talent .
The talent , for their part , @ @ @ @ @ @ @

On Sunday, just hours after the news of Kobe Bryant’s tragic death, the 62nd Grammy Awards began at Staples Center, the building where Bryant forged his legacy. “We’re literally standing here, heartbroken in the house that Kobe built,” Alicia Keys, who was hosting, said in her opening monologue, a sombre tribute to Bryant and his family. Throughout the evening, Keys, in the tone of earthy maternalism that she’s offered for two consecutive years as Grammy host, returned to a single idea—the healing power of music in the face of tragedy. Music, she insisted, brings us together.
Music may be unifying, but the Grammys are not. Usually, the show supplies a document of generational rifts and institutional rot. On Sunday, however, it edged surprisingly close to cultural consensus, though not because of Bryant. The show was a full-bore coronation of Billie Eilish, the eighteen-year-old avant-pop star who’s become a commercial and cultural powerhouse, and who won Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. Eilish is the first artist to sweep the major categories since the singer-songwriter Christopher Cross, nearly forty years ago. She has been described as a genre-melting prodigy, a teen sensation, and the future of music. She is also, evidently, someone we can all agree on.
Agreement is likely a welcome sensation within the Recording Academy, which is at something of a crossroads. In 2018, in the face of critique about the dearth of female Grammy nominees and voters, then Academy President and C.E.O. Neil Portnow said after the awards telecast that women needed to “step up” in order to achieve parity, a comment that roiled artists and fans. Portnow left his post in 2019, but his replacement, Deborah Dugan, was placed on administrative leave earlier this month, after just five months on the job. (The Academy said that it is investigating “a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team,” though Dugan denies any wrongdoing.) In response, Dugan made explosive claims in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint about the “rigged” Grammys voting system and the Academy’s “boys’ club’ mentality”; she also alleged that Portnow had been accused of raping a musician. (Portnow has vehemently denied these claims.)
This latest fracas comes amid a broader reckoning, in which the Academy, historically known for favoring white artists and the rock tradition, has made several gestures toward change. It’s begun to televise hip-hop categories and to broaden voting criteria to accommodate streaming releases. It’s also expanded the nominee pool for top categories and announced new initiatives to foster diversity. As a result of these gestures—and in lockstep with the steady global march toward monoculture—this year’s nominees were younger, more diverse, and more culturally relevant than ever before. The leading nominees included the Internet virtuoso-turned-viral-country-music-star Lil Nas X, Lizzo, and Eilish. The indie mainstays Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend snagged nominations in the Best Album category, but their presence felt spectral, as though they were the ghost of Grammys past. Women—one woman in particular—dominated the winners’ list.
And yet, in spite of the spiritual makeover, Sunday’s ceremony was curiously dull, in part because of a dearth of star power in last year’s album-release cycle. There were no new solo albums from Adele, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Frank Ocean, or Kendrick Lamar, leaving the field wide open for newcomers like Lizzo and Eilish. (Taylor Swift and Kanye West, two other ghost-like presences, did release albums but were largely overlooked by the Academy.) In the absence of marquee moments, the ceremony often vacillated between the flat and the awkward. At one point, Usher performed a tribute to Prince alongside FKA twigs, who was asked not to sing but to be a sort of glorified backup dancer. At another point, the Cuban-American pop singer Camila Cabello serenaded her father with the song “First Man,” adding perhaps more Freudian overtones to the show than was intended. The only moment of true invigoration came from the art-rap auteur Tyler, the Creator, who performed his hit “Earfquake” with Boyz II Men and Charlie Wilson, before being joined onstage by a legion of young black men in blond wigs. (They were dressed as his alter ego, Igor.) Thrashing with adrenaline, they briefly turned the evening into a pleasurable spectacle, and Tyler later took home the award for Best Rap Album.
Lizzo and Eilish, along with Lil Nas X, represent a new class of music royalty, and they shouldered outsized responsibility for the show’s appeal on Sunday. All three stars have been lauded for their innovation. Lizzo brings a brassy and inclusive energy to power pop; Lil Nas X erodes genre convention; Eilish deploys a Gothic sensibility and striking musical arrangements. But the Grammys also laid bare their conventionality. Lil Nas X performed a super-medley of his inescapable hit, “Old Town Road,” inviting an army of guest stars—Diplo, BTS, Mason Ramsey, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Nas—to join him in a heavy-handed genre mashup that the Grammy programmers might have cooked up themselves. Lizzo, who opened the show with “Truth Hurts” (a song that also won Best Pop Solo Performance), embraced the ceremony with such gamely showmanship that she already seemed like an Academy fixture. And Eilish, for her live performance, chose a stripped-down piano version of her single “When The Party’s Over,” exposing the song’s traditionalist bones. In theory, the Academy proved that it’s made strides in embracing new talent. The talent, for their part, seem to have met them halfway.


newyorker--2020-01-27--The Evidence that Could Save Omar Ameen’s Life

Last week , I wrote about the extradition case for Omar Ameen , an Iraqi refugee whom the United States government has accused of being an ISIS commander .
Ameen has spent the past seventeen months in the Sacramento County Jail while his lawyers have sought to “ obliterate ” the claim that he killed someone in rural Iraq , by proving that he was in Turkey at the time of the murder .
The evidence is overwhelmingly in their favor .
The only person who claims to have seen Ameen carry out the murder is a mentally ill young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and is seemingly being manipulated by an Iraqi F.B.I .
informant with a decades-old tribal grudge against Ameen ’ s family .
The informant has expressed a desire to execute Ameen personally .
Meanwhile , numerous witnesses , including the victim ’ s widow and parents , have provided sworn statements supporting Ameen , and every scrap of digital and documentary evidence that the defense team has unearthed points to his innocence .
But there is one key piece of evidence that the defense team has never been able to obtain : Ameen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could establish his location on the day of the crime .
Ameen was not an avid Internet user .
Although a subpoena to Facebook revealed that Ameen had liked a lewd joke on the day of the murder—during a period when there was no Internet service in the Iraqi province where the killing took place—the company had not stored his location data .
But Ameen routinely called friends in Turkey and Iraq , and , in a sworn statement , one of Ameen ’ s brothers , Hudhayfah , said that he spoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times during the week of the murder .
During the fall of 2018 , Ameen ’ s federal defenders , Ben Galloway and Rachelle Barbour , learned that Turkcell had retained records for Ameen ’ s phone .
But Turkcell refused to share the data directly with an American legal team .
So Ameen ’ s lawyers undertook a complicated legal process to draft , translate , certify , and file to Turkey ’ s justice ministry a formal request for judicial assistance , called a letter rogatory .
The letter—which requested Ameen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and location information—was transmitted through the court in Sacramento , and sent on February 21 , 2019 .
Nine months later , I attended Ameen ’ s extradition hearing , at the federal courthouse in Sacramento .
Galloway and Barbour had gathered an incredible volume of evidence demonstrating Ameen ’ s innocence , and had managed to account for his location shortly before and after the murder , rendering his participation a logistical impossibility .
But , without the cell-phone records , they could not prove his exact location on the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unique rules of extradition proceedings—which are designed to defer all disputes over evidence and witness credibility to the criminal trial overseas—any evidence that “ contradicts ” but does not “ obliterate ” the contents of the extradition packet is typically considered inadmissible .
“ None of the evidence that the defense has amassed in the approximately fifteen months of investigation is reasonably clear-cut or obliterating of probable cause , ” Audrey Hemesath , the lead prosecutor , told the magistrate judge , Edmund Brennan .
“ I would submit it ’ s not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried to get Mr. Ameen ’ s records , as the court knows , ” Barbour said at the hearing .
“ I think I just have to give up on the Turkish government on this one.
” In fact , the Turkish government is willing to provide the records—but , for the past eight months , the Department of Justice has not shared this fact with either Brennan or the defense .
Three days after my piece was published , an attorney at the State Department forwarded to Galloway a letter from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Turkey ’ s justice ministry , offering to provide Ameen ’ s cell-phone records .
The only problem , Erdoğan wrote , was that the request had to be submitted by the D.O.J .
itself—not by the court or the defense .
Sent through proper channels , he continued , “ the request will be able to be honored.
” The letter is dated May 17 , 2019 .
It was sent to the D.O.J.
’ s Office of International Affairs .
It was logged by an employee there and never disclosed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an O.I.A .
attorney who knew about it before travelling from Washington , D.C. , to Sacramento to participate in Ameen ’ s extradition hearings .
( Prosecutors say they “ remained unaware of the contents of the Turkish letter , ” and knew only that it had arrived . )
“ Handwritten notations on the document indicate that it was routed through several people , ” Barbour wrote , in a court filing on Friday .
“ Somehow it wound up with a State Department attorney who sent it to the Defense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about this , but there really is nothing it can say to get back the months that have been wasted while Mr. Ameen is fighting for his life.
” Last spring , as Barbour and Galloway began to realize that the Iraqi extradition packet contains forgeries , inconsistencies , and lies , they filed a motion to compel the government to disclose details from the F.B.I .
investigation in Iraq .
“ This is not the usual extradition case , ” Barbour wrote .
“ The U.S. Government appears to have elected to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice system , “ to avoid having to bring charges beyond a reasonable doubt in the United States , where Mr. Ameen would be protected by trial rights and more substantial due process rights.
” Brennan rebuked them , warning that “ unfounded attacks on the credibility of the government ” would “ open the door to a conspiratorial morass.
” He added that he found it “ improper ” for the defense to imply that “ the government is simply proceeding in bad-faith and that its representatives have shirked their duty , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be truthful in their filings.
” But there is dishonesty in omission , too ; the D.O.J .
received the Turkish government ’ s letter soon after Brennan scolded the defense .
D.O.J .
lawyers said nothing when Barbour brought up the Turkcell records in subsequent filings .
And , owing to the rules governing letters rogatory , the request to the Turkish government wasn ’ t signed by Ameen ’ s lawyers—it was signed by Brennan himself .
The government has repeatedly urged Brennan to certify extradition while failing to provide access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end their case but save an innocent life .
On Monday , prosecutors filed a response , saying that the delay was “ due to a clerical error ” and “ not a purposeful attempt to withhold Turkey ’ s response.
” They added that the judge should not wait for the records to arrive before certifying extradition .
If Ameen is sent to Iraq , he is likely to be tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit , and , on the basis of that confession , sentenced @ @ @ @ @

Last week, I wrote about the extradition case for Omar Ameen, an Iraqi refugee whom the United States government has accused of being an ISIS commander. Ameen has spent the past seventeen months in the Sacramento County Jail while his lawyers have sought to “obliterate” the claim that he killed someone in rural Iraq, by proving that he was in Turkey at the time of the murder. The evidence is overwhelmingly in their favor. The only person who claims to have seen Ameen carry out the murder is a mentally ill young man, who has never met Ameen and is seemingly being manipulated by an Iraqi F.B.I. informant with a decades-old tribal grudge against Ameen’s family. The informant has expressed a desire to execute Ameen personally. Meanwhile, numerous witnesses, including the victim’s widow and parents, have provided sworn statements supporting Ameen, and every scrap of digital and documentary evidence that the defense team has unearthed points to his innocence.
But there is one key piece of evidence that the defense team has never been able to obtain: Ameen’s Turkish cell-phone records, which could establish his location on the day of the crime. Ameen was not an avid Internet user. Although a subpoena to Facebook revealed that Ameen had liked a lewd joke on the day of the murder—during a period when there was no Internet service in the Iraqi province where the killing took place—the company had not stored his location data. But Ameen routinely called friends in Turkey and Iraq, and, in a sworn statement, one of Ameen’s brothers, Hudhayfah, said that he spoke with Ameen on his Turkish number several times during the week of the murder.
During the fall of 2018, Ameen’s federal defenders, Ben Galloway and Rachelle Barbour, learned that Turkcell had retained records for Ameen’s phone. But Turkcell refused to share the data directly with an American legal team. So Ameen’s lawyers undertook a complicated legal process to draft, translate, certify, and file to Turkey’s justice ministry a formal request for judicial assistance, called a letter rogatory. The letter—which requested Ameen’s calls, texts, data, and location information—was transmitted through the court in Sacramento, and sent on February 21, 2019.
Nine months later, I attended Ameen’s extradition hearing, at the federal courthouse in Sacramento. Galloway and Barbour had gathered an incredible volume of evidence demonstrating Ameen’s innocence, and had managed to account for his location shortly before and after the murder, rendering his participation a logistical impossibility. But, without the cell-phone records, they could not prove his exact location on the day of the crime. Owing to the unique rules of extradition proceedings—which are designed to defer all disputes over evidence and witness credibility to the criminal trial overseas—any evidence that “contradicts” but does not “obliterate” the contents of the extradition packet is typically considered inadmissible. “None of the evidence that the defense has amassed in the approximately fifteen months of investigation is reasonably clear-cut or obliterating of probable cause,” Audrey Hemesath, the lead prosecutor, told the magistrate judge, Edmund Brennan. “I would submit it’s not even close.”
“We’ve tried to get Mr. Ameen’s records, as the court knows,” Barbour said at the hearing. “I think I just have to give up on the Turkish government on this one.”
In fact, the Turkish government is willing to provide the records—but, for the past eight months, the Department of Justice has not shared this fact with either Brennan or the defense. Three days after my piece was published, an attorney at the State Department forwarded to Galloway a letter from Gökhan Erdoğan, a department head in Turkey’s justice ministry, offering to provide Ameen’s cell-phone records. The only problem, Erdoğan wrote, was that the request had to be submitted by the D.O.J. itself—not by the court or the defense. Sent through proper channels, he continued, “the request will be able to be honored.”
The letter is dated May 17, 2019. It was sent to the D.O.J.’s Office of International Affairs. It was logged by an employee there and never disclosed to the Court or the defense—not even by an O.I.A. attorney who knew about it before travelling from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento to participate in Ameen’s extradition hearings. (Prosecutors say they “remained unaware of the contents of the Turkish letter,” and knew only that it had arrived.) “Handwritten notations on the document indicate that it was routed through several people,” Barbour wrote, in a court filing on Friday. “Somehow it wound up with a State Department attorney who sent it to the Defense yesterday. Surely DOJ has more information about this, but there really is nothing it can say to get back the months that have been wasted while Mr. Ameen is fighting for his life.”
Last spring, as Barbour and Galloway began to realize that the Iraqi extradition packet contains forgeries, inconsistencies, and lies, they filed a motion to compel the government to disclose details from the F.B.I. investigation in Iraq. “This is not the usual extradition case,” Barbour wrote. “The U.S. Government appears to have elected to launder its evidence” through the Iraqi justice system, “to avoid having to bring charges beyond a reasonable doubt in the United States, where Mr. Ameen would be protected by trial rights and more substantial due process rights.”
Brennan rebuked them, warning that “unfounded attacks on the credibility of the government” would “open the door to a conspiratorial morass.” He added that he found it “improper” for the defense to imply that “the government is simply proceeding in bad-faith and that its representatives have shirked their duty, as officers of the court, to be truthful in their filings.”
But there is dishonesty in omission, too; the D.O.J. received the Turkish government’s letter soon after Brennan scolded the defense. D.O.J. lawyers said nothing when Barbour brought up the Turkcell records in subsequent filings. And, owing to the rules governing letters rogatory, the request to the Turkish government wasn’t signed by Ameen’s lawyers—it was signed by Brennan himself. The government has repeatedly urged Brennan to certify extradition while failing to provide access to information he had sought—records that could end their case but save an innocent life.
On Monday, prosecutors filed a response, saying that the delay was “due to a clerical error” and “not a purposeful attempt to withhold Turkey’s response.” They added that the judge should not wait for the records to arrive before certifying extradition. If Ameen is sent to Iraq, he is likely to be tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit, and, on the basis of that confession, sentenced to death by hanging.


newyorker--2020-01-27--Daily Cartoon: Monday, January 27th

Daily Cartoon: Monday, January 27th

© Do Not Sell My Personal Information may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our @ @ @ @ @ Affiliate Partnerships with retailers .
The material on this site may not be reproduced , @ @ @ @ @ or otherwise used , except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast .

“Do you know how hard it is to have a full-time job and also be writing a book?”


newyorker--2020-01-27--Watch Live: Donald Trump’s Impeachment Trial Continues in the Senate

On Monday , Donald Trump ’ s impeachment trial in the Senate enters its second week .
On Saturday morning , members of the President ’ s legal team began delivering their opening arguments .
In a two-hour session , the attorneys Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone repeated the message that Trump ’ s surrogates have been touting throughout the impeachment process , painting it as a partisan attempt to overturn the 2016 election .
“ They ’ re asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative—take that decision away from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Another element of their defense was trivializing Trump ’ s dealings with Ukraine , portraying both the withholding of military aid and a smear campaign against Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as minor matters .
The President ’ s lawyers will have two more days to present their opening arguments , and they have already said that they will keep their presentations shorter than the Democratic House managers did .
During the House managers ’ presentations , last week , some senators were ostentatiously bored : Richard Burr , a Republican from North Carolina , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Marsha Blackburn tweeted and read a book .
Despite these sorts of responses from some senators , John Cassidy writes , the House managers clearly proved their point : “ Nobody who watched even some of the House managers ’ presentation could be in any doubt that there was , indeed , an illicit scheme to coerce Volodymyr Zelensky , the President of Ukraine , into announcing an investigation into a Ukrainian company that employed Hunter Biden ; that this scheme was carried out with Trump ’ s knowledge , and at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and his staff did all they possibly could to prevent the details from emerging.
” The defense team , which includes the legal celebrities Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr , neither of whom spoke on Saturday , is likely to take a more bombastic approach than the House managers as the trial continues .
Jeffrey Toobin writes that “ the showmanship that ’ s likely to be on display should not obscure what ’ s really going on , ” which is that the President ’ s defenders , and the Republican leadership @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not only to contradict the House managers ’ description of events but also to insure that the trial will not include any new witness testimony or documentary evidence .
Senators agreed to vote on that question later in the week , after both sides have presented their opening arguments .
You can follow the developments on the live stream above .

On Monday, Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate enters its second week. On Saturday morning, members of the President’s legal team began delivering their opening arguments. In a two-hour session, the attorneys Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone repeated the message that Trump’s surrogates have been touting throughout the impeachment process, painting it as a partisan attempt to overturn the 2016 election. “They’re asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative—take that decision away from the American people,” Cipollone said. Another element of their defense was trivializing Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, portraying both the withholding of military aid and a smear campaign against Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as minor matters.
The President’s lawyers will have two more days to present their opening arguments, and they have already said that they will keep their presentations shorter than the Democratic House managers did. During the House managers’ presentations, last week, some senators were ostentatiously bored: Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, handed out fidget spinners to colleagues, and Marsha Blackburn tweeted and read a book. Despite these sorts of responses from some senators, John Cassidy writes, the House managers clearly proved their point: “Nobody who watched even some of the House managers’ presentation could be in any doubt that there was, indeed, an illicit scheme to coerce Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, into announcing an investigation into a Ukrainian company that employed Hunter Biden; that this scheme was carried out with Trump’s knowledge, and at his behest; and that the President and his staff did all they possibly could to prevent the details from emerging.”
The defense team, which includes the legal celebrities Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr, neither of whom spoke on Saturday, is likely to take a more bombastic approach than the House managers as the trial continues. Jeffrey Toobin writes that “the showmanship that’s likely to be on display should not obscure what’s really going on,” which is that the President’s defenders, and the Republican leadership of the Senate, will be working not only to contradict the House managers’ description of events but also to insure that the trial will not include any new witness testimony or documentary evidence. Senators agreed to vote on that question later in the week, after both sides have presented their opening arguments.
You can follow the developments on the live stream above.


newyorker--2020-01-27--Lindsey Graham Wants Hunter Biden Investigated—Just Not Right Now

“ Somebody needs to look !
” Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters on Friday—to look , that is , at Hunter Biden , the son of former Vice-President Joe Biden , and his business dealings in the Ukraine .
It was the fourth day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump , and the House managers were about to wrap up the presentation of their case .
Graham repeated the phrase a number of times , along with intimations that Joe Biden had only himself to blame for letting his “ son hook up with the most corrupt company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ukraine into an ATM machine.
” Graham noted Trump ’ s “ insistence that somebody look at what happened ” and added , “ I think he ’ s right.
” Of course , Trump wasn ’ t just insisting that “ somebody ” investigate Hunter Biden ; he was , as the evidence in the trial has shown , openly extorting the Ukrainian government to force it to announce an investigation , with three hundred and ninety-one million dollars in military aid hanging in the balance .
If the President ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or even Rudy Giuliani , to look into the matter on their own , most likely the Senate would not now be sitting in an impeachment trial .
The charge against Trump , though , is that he put a phalanx of American officials at Giuliani ’ s disposal and gave him what amounted to a working budget of close to four hundred million dollars in taxpayer money , without much regard for U.S. foreign policy or for any interests but his own .
That charge , abuse of power , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reports that John Bolton , Trump ’ s former national-security adviser , wrote in the manuscript of a forthcoming book—and would testify—that Trump had told him of the link between the demand for investigations and military aid .
More and more of Trump ’ s defenders have stopped denying that he did just that ; instead , they say , in effect , that asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden was good for America , not just for Trump , and claim that Biden is the one who should testify .
Some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ useful testimony .
But there is an obvious effort to impose a price on Democratic calls for new witnesses , such as Bolton , who could further damage the President ’ s case .
If nothing else , they could exact retribution by humiliating the Bidens .
At Trump ’ s rallies now , the chant is “ Where ’ s Hunter ?
” Indeed , on Friday , when a reporter asked Graham about calling witnesses , he said that he couldn ’ t “ answer the phone any more ” without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden .
He didn ’ t say how many of those calls came from the White House .
Graham , though , seems aware that opening the door to witnesses will likely mean closing the door on whatever defenses Trump might have left .
So , as much as Graham railed about Hunter , his message was that there would be a time to investigate the Bidens , and that he would help to do it—but not yet .
“ To my Republican friends , ” he said , “ you may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the Bidens , but this is not the venue to litigate it.
” He repeatedly referred to Hunter Biden doing business in Ukraine while his father was dealing with Ukraine issues as “ bad foreign policy , ” presumably laying the groundwork for Senate hearings into the matter .
But those would come after the impeachment trial is over .
Then , Graham said , “ I ’ m going to look at them .
You gon na impeach me ? ''
There is , it should be said , plenty to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dealings , even though there is no evidence that he broke any laws—or that his father took any official action on his behalf .
The U.S. officials who testified in the House impeachment hearings said that they didn ’ t believe that Joe Biden had acted in any corrupt way , though they acknowledged concerns about the appearance that Hunter Biden ’ s connection to Burisma , a Ukrainian company that is widely regarded as corrupt , presented .
( Graham on those witnesses : “ I bet you they haven ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , if they have , I want the report.
” ) He was paid a great deal of money by Burisma to hold a seat on its board .
Nevertheless , the House impeachment managers , in their presentation , made the decision to argue that , as Representative Sylvia Garcia put it on Thursday , there is absolutely “ no basis ” for an investigation and that “ even the Ukrainians believe that Biden ’ s son did nothing wrong.
” Yet , by spending time on him , and presenting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the House managers may well have given weight to the argument that his testimony is relevant .
Of course , the managers may be calculating that the case for calling Biden is also the case for calling witnesses in general—including Bolton—and that the more the Republicans talk about wanting anyone to testify , the better it is for the Democrats .
In any event , the President ’ s legal team hardly needs to be forced to talk about the Bidens .
The trial memorandum they submitted is full of personal attacks on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , “ just two months before joining the board , he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve for testing positive for cocaine on a drug test ” and arguing that “ House Democrats ’ accusations rest on the false and dangerous premise that Vice President Biden somehow immunized his conduct ( and his son ’ s ) from any scrutiny by declaring his run for the presidency.
” The President ’ s lawyers left him more or less alone on Saturday morning , when they briefly introduced their case , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or not Biden is a witness , he ’ ll be a Republican target , and his father will be , too .
Graham , again , had a note of caution for his side , dressed up as an attack on the Bidens .
“ I think they should tear apart the narrative presented by the House managers , ” he said .
But all the President ’ s lawyers had to do to fulfill that mandate was to raise suspicions , Graham said , “ and urge us when this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any measure , Graham ’ s demands for a Biden investigation , and those of the President ’ s legal team , are an enormous act of evasion .
Graham spoke as though the real problem was a collective failure to hold Biden to account , which Trump had needed to correct .
Graham told reporters on Friday that “ nobody in your business has spent fifteen minutes telling us about what Hunter Biden did.
” ( He must have missed the in-depth piece that Adam Entous wrote for this magazine last year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investigation he seeks should take place after the trial , “ outside of politics , ” is an extraordinary one , considering that Trump is being impeached for bringing his demands for an investigation way outside any setting where they should have been .
Graham also said that the best person to look into the case might be “ somebody like Mueller , that we could all trust.
” Robert Mueller , of course , got almost no trust from the President ’ s side when he was investigating Russian interference in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Graham ’ s protestations are , his goal remained clear : no new witnesses .
Not even Hunter Biden .
It ’ s not worth the risk .

“Somebody needs to look!” Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters on Friday—to look, that is, at Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice-President Joe Biden, and his business dealings in the Ukraine. It was the fourth day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, and the House managers were about to wrap up the presentation of their case. Graham repeated the phrase a number of times, along with intimations that Joe Biden had only himself to blame for letting his “son hook up with the most corrupt company in the Ukraine, and turn the Ukraine into an ATM machine.” Graham noted Trump’s “insistence that somebody look at what happened” and added, “I think he’s right.”
Of course, Trump wasn’t just insisting that “somebody” investigate Hunter Biden; he was, as the evidence in the trial has shown, openly extorting the Ukrainian government to force it to announce an investigation, with three hundred and ninety-one million dollars in military aid hanging in the balance. If the President’s reëlection campaign had just hired opposition researchers, or even Rudy Giuliani, to look into the matter on their own, most likely the Senate would not now be sitting in an impeachment trial. The charge against Trump, though, is that he put a phalanx of American officials at Giuliani’s disposal and gave him what amounted to a working budget of close to four hundred million dollars in taxpayer money, without much regard for U.S. foreign policy or for any interests but his own.
That charge, abuse of power, was further strengthened on Sunday night, with reports that John Bolton, Trump’s former national-security adviser, wrote in the manuscript of a forthcoming book—and would testify—that Trump had told him of the link between the demand for investigations and military aid. More and more of Trump’s defenders have stopped denying that he did just that; instead, they say, in effect, that asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden was good for America, not just for Trump, and claim that Biden is the one who should testify. Some of them may believe that he would supply useful testimony. But there is an obvious effort to impose a price on Democratic calls for new witnesses, such as Bolton, who could further damage the President’s case. If nothing else, they could exact retribution by humiliating the Bidens. At Trump’s rallies now, the chant is “Where’s Hunter?”
Indeed, on Friday, when a reporter asked Graham about calling witnesses, he said that he couldn’t “answer the phone any more” without hearing a demand that he call Hunter Biden. He didn’t say how many of those calls came from the White House. Graham, though, seems aware that opening the door to witnesses will likely mean closing the door on whatever defenses Trump might have left. So, as much as Graham railed about Hunter, his message was that there would be a time to investigate the Bidens, and that he would help to do it—but not yet. “To my Republican friends,” he said, “you may be upset about what happened in the Ukraine with the Bidens, but this is not the venue to litigate it.” He repeatedly referred to Hunter Biden doing business in Ukraine while his father was dealing with Ukraine issues as “bad foreign policy,” presumably laying the groundwork for Senate hearings into the matter. But those would come after the impeachment trial is over. Then, Graham said, “I’m going to look at them. You gonna impeach me?"
There is, it should be said, plenty to regret in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, even though there is no evidence that he broke any laws—or that his father took any official action on his behalf. The U.S. officials who testified in the House impeachment hearings said that they didn’t believe that Joe Biden had acted in any corrupt way, though they acknowledged concerns about the appearance that Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma, a Ukrainian company that is widely regarded as corrupt, presented. (Graham on those witnesses: “I bet you they haven’t spent five minutes looking at this, and, if they have, I want the report.”) He was paid a great deal of money by Burisma to hold a seat on its board. Nevertheless, the House impeachment managers, in their presentation, made the decision to argue that, as Representative Sylvia Garcia put it on Thursday, there is absolutely “no basis” for an investigation and that “even the Ukrainians believe that Biden’s son did nothing wrong.” Yet, by spending time on him, and presenting him as, essentially, blameless, the House managers may well have given weight to the argument that his testimony is relevant. Of course, the managers may be calculating that the case for calling Biden is also the case for calling witnesses in general—including Bolton—and that the more the Republicans talk about wanting anyone to testify, the better it is for the Democrats.
In any event, the President’s legal team hardly needs to be forced to talk about the Bidens. The trial memorandum they submitted is full of personal attacks on Hunter, noting, for example, that, “just two months before joining the board, he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve for testing positive for cocaine on a drug test” and arguing that “House Democrats’ accusations rest on the false and dangerous premise that Vice President Biden somehow immunized his conduct (and his son’s) from any scrutiny by declaring his run for the presidency.” The President’s lawyers left him more or less alone on Saturday morning, when they briefly introduced their case, but that won’t continue. Whether or not Biden is a witness, he’ll be a Republican target, and his father will be, too. Graham, again, had a note of caution for his side, dressed up as an attack on the Bidens. “I think they should tear apart the narrative presented by the House managers,” he said. But all the President’s lawyers had to do to fulfill that mandate was to raise suspicions, Graham said, “and urge us when this is over to look at it.”
By any measure, Graham’s demands for a Biden investigation, and those of the President’s legal team, are an enormous act of evasion. Graham spoke as though the real problem was a collective failure to hold Biden to account, which Trump had needed to correct. Graham told reporters on Friday that “nobody in your business has spent fifteen minutes telling us about what Hunter Biden did.” (He must have missed the in-depth piece that Adam Entous wrote for this magazine last year.) And his statement that the investigation he seeks should take place after the trial, “outside of politics,” is an extraordinary one, considering that Trump is being impeached for bringing his demands for an investigation way outside any setting where they should have been. Graham also said that the best person to look into the case might be “somebody like Mueller, that we could all trust.” Robert Mueller, of course, got almost no trust from the President’s side when he was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. But, however disingenuous Graham’s protestations are, his goal remained clear: no new witnesses. Not even Hunter Biden. It’s not worth the risk.