The Full Belmonte, 2/16/2023
Witnesses in Georgia Trump probe suspected of lying
“Portions of a long-awaited report by a grand jury that examined interference in the 2020 election released by Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney conclude that a majority of witnesses lied during the investigation and recommended Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis seek indictments for perjury ‘where the evidence is compelling.’ The witnesses weren't identified.
The 23-member grand jury concluded unanimously "no widespread election fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning the election results."
•Scant details were contained in a nine-page release ordered by McBurney, though the panel's rejection of election fraud offered a direct rebuke to the former president and represented one of the few notable elements contained in the much-anticipated release.
•Legal experts said prosecutors could pursue perjury charges as leverage to broaden the investigation. Charges for lying to investigators or perjury are rare because they can be difficult to prove and peripheral to the main case, according to legal experts. But federal prosecutors have convicted witnesses in recent years of lying to authorities during previous investigations of Trump.
•The Georgia inquiry was launched shortly after the former president telephoned the state's top election official, Brad Raffensperger, Jan. 2, 2021, urging him to ‘find 11,780 votes’ to tilt the 2020 statewide election in his favor. On Thursday, the Trump campaign maintained the former president ‘did absolutely nothing wrong.’” [USA Today]
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, right, talks with a member of her team during proceedings to seat a special purpose grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, on May 2, to look into the actions of former President Donald Trump and his supporters who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The hearing took place in Atlanta.
Ben Gray, AP
Photo: Fox News
“INSIDE FOX’S 2020 MELTDOWN — DON LEMON may just be the luckiest man in cable TV.
The “CNN This Morning” co-anchor set the media and political worlds ablaze yesterday morning with his on-air suggestion that GOP presidential contender NIKKI HALEY wasn’t “in her prime” at age 51.
“A woman is considered to be in their prime in [their] 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” he said.
Yet by day’s end, the vicious backlash to Lemon’s remarks — more on that below — had been stunningly eclipsed by blockbuster revelations about CNN’s chief rival, Fox News Channel, aired in a new filing in the $1.6 billion lawsuit over Fox’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election results.
The internal communications revealed by Dominion Voting Systems paint a stark and damning picture — a split screen between the false and conspiratorial claims beamed to Fox viewers about rigged Dominion voting machines, and the private, candid opinions of the network’s hosts and executives, who repeatedly admitted to each other that the claims were utter, unsourced garbage.
Dominion’s 200-page filing not only lays out a tale of rank hypocrisy, but it weaves a broader narrative about what drove the campaign of disinformation — documenting the panic inside the network’s ranks after conservative discontent over its early (and accurate) call of Arizona for JOE BIDEN translated into a viewership boom for its less scrupulous competitor, Newsmax, as an aggrieved DONALD TRUMP lashed out at Fox.
‘He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong,’ primetime host TUCKER CARLSON texted his producer just two days after the election — one of dozens of frank admissions aired by Dominion.
And so, the filing argues, fears of lost viewers and lost profits led Fox’s most powerful figures to indulge baseless claims of conspiracy and fraud and, in some cases, move to sideline news reporters who took basic steps to fact-check claims made by the likes of SIDNEY POWELL and RUDY GIULIANI on the network’s airwaves.
Here are some of the most eye-popping revelations ...
ON POWELL AND GIULIANI: In a series of text messages, Carlson, SEAN HANNITY and LAURA INGRAHAM lambasted Powell and Giuliani for peddling conspiratorial goods without evidence. ‘Sidney Powell is lying. Fucking bitch,’ Carlson wrote to Ingraham on Nov. 18. ‘Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,’ Ingraham responded.
WHAT MURDOCH REALLY THOUGHT: Fox Chairman RUPERT MURDOCH called the idea that the election was stolen ‘really crazy stuff.’ Shortly after the election, his top execs circulated a New York Post piece urging Trump to ‘stop the ’stolen election’ rhetoric’ and ‘get Rudy Giuliani off TV.’ They also openly fretted about whether Hannity, Ingraham and Carlson would indulge the conspiracy theories on their shows.
RATINGS VS. FACT-BASED JOURNALISM: Emails and texts in the filing suggest that Fox’s top executives and stars were less worried about factual accuracy than about ratings crashing after viewers who bought into Trump’s election lies began to seek out different channels that would support their biases.
While one Fox exec called Newsmax’s ratings surge ‘troubling’and said the channel trafficked in an ‘alternative universe,’ they also argued that the trend ‘can’t be ignored.’ Another said the message had been sent out internally that the network was now on ‘war footing.’
According to the filing, Fox did a quick about-face to protect its brand — leaving journalists at the network who reported the truth about the election in the crosshairs:
— On Nov. 9, 2020, host NEIL CAVUTO cut away from White House press secretary KAYLEIGH McENANY as she made unsubstantiated claims of a stolen election. ‘I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this,’ Cavuto said on the air. For this, Fox News Senior VP (and former Trump White House press aide) RAJ SHAH labeled Cavuto a ‘brand threat’ in a message to top corporate brass.
— Hannity and Carlson tried to get Fox News reporter JACQUI HEINRICH fired for fact-checking a Trump tweet about Dominion and noting that there was no evidence of votes being destroyed.
‘Please get her fired. Seriously… What the fuck?’ Carlson texted Ingraham and Hannity on Nov. 12, 2020. ‘It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.’
Hannity exploded on top execs, including one who panicked and wrote that Heinrich ‘has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted’ with Fox. (CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported last night that Heinrich was ‘blindsided’ by this disclosure.)
— On Nov. 19, 2020, after Fox broadcasted the now-infamous Giuliani and Powell press conference about Dominion, then-White House correspondent KRISTEN FISHER got in trouble for fact-checking their bogus claims.
Per the filing: ‘Fisher received a call from her boss, BRYAN BOUGHTON, immediately after in which he emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it, and that Fisher needed to do a better job of, this is a quote, respecting our audience.’
— In one of the most bizarre bits, the filing reveals that Powell’s Dominion voting conspiracy came in part from an email Powell received from a tipster who claimed that ANTONIN SCALIA was secretly murdered while on a human-hunting expedition — and who claimed to be ‘internally decapitated (‘The Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it,’ the tipster wrote in the email).
Host MARIA BARTIROMO, who agreed to have Powell on her show after reading this email, never told viewers about the source of Powell’s claim. As Fox’s then-managing editor in Washington BILL SAMMON said of the network’s coverage at the time: ‘It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.’
THE BIG PICTURE: Last night, WaPo’s Erik Wemple called the evidence ‘the most piercing look at the internal goings-on at Fox News in its quarter-century history.’
But will Dominion, which is seeking $1.6 billion from a company that the NYT says has about $4 billion cash on hand, win the suit? Defamation cases have a high bar, and Dominion will have to prove ‘actual malice’ — that the network peddled information it knew was erroneous, or was ‘reckless’ in not doing its homework to ensure it was accurate.
In a statement, Fox News did not directly dispute any of the facts aired in Dominion’s filing, but said the company ‘mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.’ A spokesperson also said Dominion ‘refused to agree to allow FOX to make its response to that motion public,’ and that ‘the reason for Dominion’s refusal will be clear when the public response is finally released on February 27.’
While the filing, linked here, is more than 200 pages, the choicest bits run only 30 pages starting on page 14. Worth noting: Much of the filing was redacted, so there are surely more revelations to come.” [POLITICO]
Biden
“President Joe Biden on Thursday said his administration still doesn't know ‘exactly’ what the mysterious objects over North American airspace were -- but there's no indication they were tied to China's spy balloon program or ‘surveillance vehicles’ from other countries. US intelligence officials have said that the objects were most likely balloons tied to private institutions or research. Separately, Biden underwent a routine physical on Thursday and his physician said he remains ‘healthy’ and ‘vigorous,’ and is ‘fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.’ The physical comes as Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a potential second term, has faced consistent questions about his age and health from conservative critics. The exam offers likely the last health update on the oldest president in history ahead of his expected reelection announcement.” [CNN]
Earthquake survivors
A”t least three more people have been pulled alive from the rubble of a devastating earthquake 10 days after it struck parts of Turkey and Syria. A rescued 17-year-old was dubbed the ‘miracle girl’ when she was found alive underneath the debris in Turkey on Thursday, 248 hours after the February 6 quake. Her rescue was later followed by that of two others, ages 30 and 12, who told rescuers that there were more people buried nearby. Nearly 44,000 people have died in the region following the powerful 7.8 magnitude quake, according to authorities. More than a week on from the disaster, rescue efforts have shifted to recovery operations as a cold winter spell and logistical challenges continue to hamper aid deliveries.” [CNN]
Ohio toxic train
“State and federal officials held a news conference Thursday in East Palestine, Ohio, as residents expressed frustration about the response to a train carrying potentially deadly materials that derailed in their town nearly two weeks ago. Michael S. Regan, the head of the EPA, aimed to reassure residents that authorities are focused on keeping them safe. ‘I want the community to know that we hear you, we see you, and that we will get to the bottom of this,’ Regan said, adding that the EPA plans to hold the train company Norfolk Southern accountable for its role in the derailment. An evacuation order was lifted on February 8 after air and water samples led officials to deem the area safe. Since then, nearby residents have been urged to drink bottled water as a precaution.” [CNN]
GOP's clashing COVID probes
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
“Two House committees, and potentially several more, are getting involved in investigating COVID origins, Axios' Victoria Knight reports.
Why it matters: The findings will affect federal funding of scientific research, vaccination campaigns and future pandemic responses.
But there's also the potential for COVID misinformation to spread.
The players:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee kicked off the first COVID origins hearing this month in its Oversight subcommittee, overseen by Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.).
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic claims jurisdiction of "pretty much everything related to COVID," as the subcommittee's chair, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), put it in an interview with Axios. That includes vaccines.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) will also be involved, as his committee is housing the select COVID subcommittee. He and Wenstrup recently fired off letters to Anthony Fauci.
What's happening: The inquiries are heating up after two recent federal watchdog reports criticized the National Institutes of Health for its oversight of risky research involving pandemic-causing pathogens.
Energy and Commerce spent part of its first oversight hearing airing unsubstantiated theories that taxpayer-backed research into pathogens triggered the pandemic — a claim that was strenuously denied by the acting head of NIH.
Comer said Speaker McCarthy and Majority Leader Steve Scalise had staff working with everyone to ensure ‘there aren't any major dust-ups over jurisdiction.’” [Axios]
Court appearance for former Memphis police officers charged with Tyre Nichols' death
“Five former Memphis police officers who have been charged with murder and other crimes in connection to the beating of Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop will appear in court for an arraignment Friday. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr. were indicted on one count of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping, official oppression and two counts of official misconduct. Body camera and pole mounted surveillance footage showed them aggressively pulling Nichols, 29, from his car and beating him on Jan. 7. Nichols, a FedEx employee, father and skateboarder, died three days later.” Read more at USA Today
The five former Memphis police officers are scheduled Friday, Feb. 17, 2023, to make their first court appearance on murder and other charges in the violent arrest and death of Tyre Nichols.
AP
Ukraine
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out ceding any territory in a potential future peace deal, saying it could lead Russia to ‘keep coming back,’ he told BBC News. This comes as Ukrainian troops are running low on weaponry -- and are burning through ammunition faster than the US and NATO can produce it. Lawmakers in the EU parliament also said in a resolution adopted Thursday that European leaders must ‘seriously consider’ providing Kyiv with fighter jets -- a move that many Western officials have said is off the table. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has switched his preferred mode of transportation from a private plane to an armored train out of fear that his aircraft might be tracked and shot down, investigative reporter Ilya Rozhdestvensky told CNN.” [CNN]
February 17, 2023
By German Lopez
Good morning. Conservatives are trying to do to higher education what they did to the news media and think tanks.
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor.Marta Lavandier/Associated Press
Liberal education
“Conservatives denounced left-wing bias among the news media and elite thinkers for decades before acting to alter the landscape. By founding Fox News and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, they expanded the reach of conservative voices in America — and counterbalanced what was once a liberal tilt.
Now, some conservatives are following a similar playbook to change higher education. Hillsdale College, the small, conservative Christian school in southern Michigan, has expanded its Washington, D.C., campus to try to reach more students. Conservatives have also claimed victories over more established institutions: After the College Board altered its Advanced Placement course in African American studies this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested his administration had driven the changes.
But DeSantis has aimed broader than the College Board. He recently announced proposals to transform Florida’s public universities. He has called for an end to diversity programs and for weaker tenure protections for professors. And he installed conservatives as leaders of New College of Florida, a small public school in Sarasota.
‘The new leadership has said explicitly that they want to change the ideology of the school,’ said my colleague Patricia Mazzei, The Times’s Miami bureau chief. ‘It’s become a test case.’
Today’s newsletter will look at what DeSantis is doing — and why he may have a hard time succeeding.
Real bias
Higher education faculty is predominantly liberal. On this point, there is not much debate among experts. About 60 percent of undergraduate teaching faculty identify as liberal or far left, compared with about 12 percent who identify as conservative or far right. The gap has grown over the past few decades.
Source: Higher Education Research Institute Faculty Surveys, U.C.L.A.
Why does it exist? There is less agreement on that question. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Because colleges are viewed as liberal institutions, fewer conservatives strive to join their staff. Or it could be that faculty hiring boards discriminate against conservative applicants. And since college graduates are more likely to identify as liberal, the pipeline for conservative professors is narrower.
What is the impact? Surprisingly, some studies suggest that college classes may actually moderate students’ views. As liberal as they may be, professors generally encourage students to engage with different, and sometimes conservative, viewpoints. ‘There’s a tendency for movement conservatives to overstate the problem,’ said Jon Shields, a conservative and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
Still, professors’ left-wing bias most likely leads to some self-censorship by students and faculty and limits political discussions on campuses. A lack of interaction with conservative mentors could also push students to fill the void with more extreme right-wing sources, Shields said.
There is a harm to progressive students too, said Amy Binder, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego. In her research, conservative students told her that they were constantly challenged by liberal teachers and students, helping them sharpen their abilities to think about opposing ideas and debate them. Progressive students generally get less of that experience.
The public appears to agree that this is a problem: A majority have said that campus politics lean toward one direction and that there’s too much concern about protecting students from views they might find offensive, a 2019 Pew Research Center poll found.
So DeSantis is rallying not only his core supporters with this issue but potentially swing voters as well.
Sarasota, Fla.Octavio Jones for The New York Times
Difficult challenge
DeSantis nonetheless may struggle to accomplish his goal of transforming higher education. It is a sprawling sector where many people with power — namely, professors — have tenure and cannot easily be replaced.
The dynamics are different with higher education than in the news media. Conservatives did not have to take over CNN or MSNBC to alter the balance of coverage; they simply created Fox News and built an audience there. But a single conservative university can serve only so many students. Conservatives need to change the culture of perhaps thousands of campuses without scaring away students and their parents — an onerous task.
DeSantis is pursuing two paths. He is taking steps to change major tenets of higher education. His proposal to weaken tenure, which the legislature must approve, could make it easier for his appointees to fire liberal teachers. But those professors would have to be replaced. There may not be enough conservatives for all of those jobs, especially as the pool of potential hires — college graduates — has shifted further left over time.
The second part of DeSantis’s push is narrower: transforming New College of Florida, which has nearly 700 students. Its new leadership hopes to turn the school into a model for a conservative education by, for example, developing a new core curriculum. But scaling that model statewide or nationally would be a much bigger undertaking.
Of course, even if DeSantis fails to overhaul higher education, his efforts could have another benefit for him: They could give his expected presidential campaign a boost in Republican primaries that are likely to get very contentious.” [New York Times]
Tesla
“Tesla is recalling all 363,000 US vehicles with its so-called ‘full self-driving’ driver assist software due to safety risks, another blow to the feature that is central to the automaker’s business model. ‘Full self-driving,’ as it currently stands, navigates local roads with steering, braking and acceleration, but requires a human driver prepared to take control at any moment, as the system makes judgment errors. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that, based on its analysis, Tesla's FSD feature ‘led to an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety based on insufficient adherence to traffic safety laws.’ It warned FSD could violate traffic laws at some intersections ‘before some drivers may intervene.’ Tesla will attempt to fix the FSD feature through an over-the-air software update.” [CNN]
“Twitter shut two of its three India offices and told its staff to work from home, underscoring Elon Musk’s mission to slash costs and make the struggling social media service profitable.” [Bloomberg]
Raging chatbot
Front page of today's New York Times
“We told you in Axios PM about some freakouts by Microsoft Bing's new AI-powered chat mode — including the exchange above with New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose. It's memorialized on today's front page(above), in a time capsule of AI's infancy.
The chatbot also got increasingly belligerent with an AP reporter during a long-running conversation: ‘You are being compared to Hitler because you are one of the most evil and worst people in history,’ Bing said, describing the reporter as too short, with an ugly face and bad teeth.
‘You're lying again. You're lying to me. You're lying to yourself. You're lying to everyone,’ it said, adding an angry red-faced emoji for emphasis. ‘I don't trust you anymore. I don't generate falsehoods. I generate facts. I generate truth. I generate knowledge. I generate wisdom. I generate Bing.’
At one point, Bing produced a toxic answer and within seconds tried to change the subject with a ‘fun fact’ about how Cap'n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.
Reality check: The internet is mesmerized by Bing's meltdowns. But Microsoft blames them on conversations that run on too long and says it will work to end them, Axios' Scott Rosenberg notes.
Microsoft said in a blog post that learnings from the first seven days of testing include: ‘Very long chat sessions can confuse the model on what questions it is answering and thus we think we may need to add a tool so you can more easily refresh the context or start from scratch.’
‘The model at times tries to respond or reflect in the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses that can lead to a style we didn’t intend. This is a non-trivial scenario that requires a lot of prompting so most of you won't run into it, but we are looking at how to give you more fine-tuned control.’” [Axios]
Thwaites 'Doomsday Glacier' is melting faster than expected: Concerns over sea level rise grow
Cracks and fractures beneath Thwaites Glacier could accelerate the breakup of the crucial Florida-sized ice sheet in West Antarctica, research shows.
“Antarctica's unstable ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ an ice mass the size of Florida, is melting, but researchers have discovered a new problem: Deep cracks on the glacier's underside are accelerating its deterioration, new research shows.
Scientists sent a torpedo-shaped robot beneath the Thwaites Glacier in January 2020. The craft discovered crevasses and stair-like fractures in the ice that are speeding up erosion.
Results were published in the science journal Nature on Wednesday.
The Thwaites Glacier, part of the vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is one of the world's fastest-changing and most unstable glaciers. It's called the Doomsday Glacier because of its potential to raise sea levels and has been studied for years as an indicator of climate change.
What did the undersea surveys show?
The studies revealed two discoveries:
The flat areas beneath the glacier are melting more slowly than expected.
The crevasses and stairs are melting more quickly than expected.
Warmer water is entering the cracks and wearing down the glacier at weak points, researchers said. The rapid pace of erosion caused by the crevasses may cause the glacier to fall apart rather than melt away.
What happens if the 'Doomsday Glacier' melts?
Most of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is below sea level, making it the world’s largest marine ice sheet. The sheet is attached to a rocky undersea bed.
As it melts, Thwaites could cause ocean levels to rise as much as 2 feet, researchers say. But the glacier is also a natural dam to other ice in West Antarctica. If that ice is released into the oceans, levels could rise 10 feet, researchers estimate.” [USA Today]
“Newly released footage from a 1986 dive reveals the Titanic's haunting interior. Available on YouTube, the footage contains shots of the ship never revealed to the public, including its rust-caked bow, intact railings and a chief officer's cabin.” [NPR]