Elections and Media

Sinclair Broadcast Group is expanding its conservative-leaning television empire into nearly three-quarters of American households — but its aggressive takeover of the airwaves wouldn’t have been possible without help from President Donald Trump's chief at the Federal Communications Commission. Sinclair, already the nation’s largest TV broadcaster, plans to buy 42 stations from Tribune Media in cities including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, on top of the more than 170 stations it already owns. It got a critical assist this spring from Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who revived a decades-old regulatory loophole that will keep Sinclair from vastly exceeding federal limits on media ownership. The FCC and the company both say the agency wasn’t giving Sinclair any special favors by reviving the “UHF discount,” which has long been considered technologically obsolete.

With the regulatory path eased, and Republicans in control of Congress, Sinclair has focused its bare-bones lobbying effort on tamping down Democratic opposition. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-FL) recounted the broadcaster’s charm offensive, noting that Executive Chairman David Smith “was in my office” in June discussing the Tribune deal. Following the meeting, Sen Nelson said he saw no need for great congressional objection on his part. “I really haven’t gotten into that and I don’t intend to. That’s an issue that is in front of the various administrative agencies. So I’m going to let them use their expertise.” Sinclair’s PAC cut a $1,500 check for Sen Nelson on June 13, around the time of that meeting, following one for $1,000 in March. Republicans show general confidence in the deal’s federal approval. “I don’t know why it shouldn’t go forward,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Apparently, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase. The grand jury, which began its work in recent weeks, signals that Mueller’s inquiry will likely continue for months. Mueller is investigating Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign or associates colluded with the Kremlin as part of that effort. Grand juries are powerful investigative tools that allow prosecutors to subpoena documents, put witnesses under oath and seek indictments, if there is evidence of a crime. Legal experts said that the decision by Mueller to impanel a grand jury suggests he believes he will need to subpoena records and take testimony from witnesses.

A group of former Obama staffers, Higher Ground Labs, is taking a note from Sand Hill Road and applying venture-capital tactics to progressive politics. On Aug 2, Higher Ground is disclosing investments totaling nearly $1.5 million in 10 startups and enrolling them in a five-month accelerator program, during which they’ll work with mentors from the political-tech space to build their businesses. Higher Ground, whose founders also include former Obama-administration staffers Shomik Dutta and Andrew McLaughlin, debuted in May. Since then, some 150 groups have applied to participate in the accelerator program and a related fellowship program.

Higher Ground has raised $2.5 million from investors spanning politics and the tech industry. The companies receiving funding include Qriously, which uses programmatic online ads instead of phone calls to gauge public opinion, Victory Guide, a so-called “digital campaign manager” that gives local candidates a day-by-day agenda of campaign goals, and Tuesday Strategies, which helps volunteers send personalized text and social media messages to friends the campaign wants to reach.

The Republican National Committee counsel's office asked employees to preserve all documents regarding the 2016 presidential election. The memo stresses that the RNC has not been contacted in any of the investigations into possible ties between President Trump's campaign or allies and Russia. The move is instead framed as a proactive step. “Given the important role that the RNC plays in national elections and the potentially expansive scope of the inquiries and investigations, it is possible that we will be contacted with requests for information,” says a July 28 memo to staff from the RNC counsel’s office. "Therefore, we must preserve all documents potentially relevant to these matters until they are resolved or until we are informed by all necessary parties that preservation is no longer necessary."

[Commentary] The American people are far greater than the sum of our political parties. It is time for us to rise above our broken politics and renew the spirit that enabled us to achieve the seemingly impossible. This is why I am running for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

Our government is hamstrung by excessive partisanship. We are letting critical opportunities to improve the country pass us by. And we are not even talking about the most important thing: the future. The victims of this leadership failure are the good people we are sworn to serve, and we are leaving our country ill-prepared for dramatic changes ahead. The current administration is making us less prosperous and less secure. I’m running because I have an original approach to governing and economic policy that can put us on a different course.

President Donald Trump’s voting commission, given a judge’s approval to resume seeking voter data, has issued another request asking states for information and vowing to keep the details confidential. The voting panel has come under intense scrutiny and faced a wave of lawsuits since making a sweeping request in June for reams of “publicly-available voter roll data,” including names, addresses, dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. State leaders from both parties have expressed privacy concerns about potentially revealing personal information, while some officials and voting experts also have pushed back against the commission, which was formed by Trump after he repeatedly claimed — without evidence — that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote in last year’s presidential election.

Facebook is sponsoring the efforts of former Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney campaign managers to combat hacking and disinformation campaigns designed to interfere with elections. Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos announced the company’s $500,000 investment in the effort, called Defending Digital Democracy, today during a keynote at the security conference Black Hat. The project was launched last month by a Harvard University group and Stamos is a member of the group’s advisory committee.

“Our goal is to build an information sharing organization that includes political parties, campaigns, state and local election officials, and tech companies,” Stamos said. The information sharing unit will be modeled on similar efforts within the tech industry to share threat intelligence. Facebook and other major tech companies like Microsoft and Twitter use these kinds of partnerships to share information on terrorist threats, revenge porn, and child exploitation. “If one company detects an attack they can immunize others very quickly,” Stamos said. But Defending Digital Democracy plans to incorporate data not just from participating tech companies—executives from Google and the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike are also on the advisory board—but from election officials as well.

Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with then-Sen Jeff Sessions (R-AL) during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former US officials.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sen Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by US spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials in the United States and in Russia. Attorney General Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign. One US official said that AG Sessions — who testified that he had no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that AG Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for US-Russia relations in a Trump administration.

On the anniversary of the ouster of the most influential man in conservative politics, who died in May, a legacy is revealed in Trump's anti-media venom, Rupert Murdoch's unrest and a vision that has jumped cable news to become the dominant historical current. It was Roger Ailes' tacit support of Trump that, in part, made his removal from Fox all the more urgent for the Murdochs. And it was not just the liberal sons who were agitated by Ailes' regard for Donald Trump, but also the father, whose tabloid, the New York Post, helped create Trump, but who found him now, with great snobbery, not of "our" conservative class. ("When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?" Murdoch senior tweeted the day after Trump officially declared himself a candidate.)

Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was fired, even Hillary. (Ailes, for his part, characterized Murdoch's periodic efforts at interference as similar to Nixon's instructions to bomb this or that country — best ignored.) After the election, a confounded Murdoch had to call on his ex-wife Wendi's friends, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, to broker a rapprochement with the disreputable Donald. Now, to Trump's great satisfaction, a humbled Murdoch is a constant caller.

The former managers of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns are leading a new initiative called “Defending Digital Democracy” in the hopes of preventing a repeat of Russia’s 2016 election interference. Robby Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign chief, and Matt Rhoades, who managed the 2012 run of GOP nominee Romney, are heading up the project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in one of the first major efforts outside government to grapple with 21st century hacking and propaganda operations — and ways to deter them.

“The Russian influence campaign was one of the most significant national security events in the last decade, and it’s a near-certainty that all the other bad guys saw that and will try to do something similar in the United States in 2018 and 2020,” said Eric Rosenbach, co-director of the Belfer Center, which launches the initiative July 18. The bipartisan project aims to develop ways to share key threat information with political campaigns and state and local election offices; create “playbooks” for election officials to improve cybersecurity; and forge strategies for the United States to deter adversaries from engaging in hacks and information operations, among other things.