On any other day, Wednesday’s government funding vote would be our biggest story. But this morning we’ll focus on two major stories from late Wednesday night: A spy scandal we broke and the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
On Adams. The New York Times scooped Wednesday night that the 64-year-old Adams will be charged as part of a federal corruption probe that’s engulfed his administration. Adams would be the first sitting NYC mayor to face criminal charges.
What Adams is alleged to have done is still unclear. The City reported that Adams “is being charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for taking actions in his official capacity after receiving donations from foreign sources.”
Other members of Adams’ inner circle could also be charged, according to multiple reports from the Big Apple.
Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — who also just indicted rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs — will hold a press conference on the Adams case today.
Adams quickly released a video claiming the allegations “will be entirely false, based on lies. But they would not be surprising.”
Here’s Adams with a very Trumpian line:
Adams also said he wouldn’t resign. However, New York Governor Kathy Hochul could remove him from office. But it wouldn’t be easy.
The reverberations from this blockbuster story will play out on Capitol Hill and across official Washington. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — two New Yorkers as well as being the top Democrats in Congress — didn’t have any comment last night.
And just before news of the indictment broke, Hizzoner was with President Joe Biden at a Metropolitan Museum of Art reception. Perfect.
However, we’ll note that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called on the scandal-plagued Adams to resign hours before the indictment story broke.
Influence Ops: We scooped the news that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) was the target of a highly sophisticated deepfake operation that impersonated a top Ukrainian official.
Cardin released a vague statement saying that “a malign actor engaged in a deceptive attempt to have a conversation with me by posing as a known individual.”
But our reporting reveals alarming details of what happened during the conversation.
An individual pretending to be recently-resigned Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought and ultimately secured Zoom call with Cardin, likely by recreating Ukrainian domain names.
The FBI is investigating the incident, which occurred last week. Senior Senate leadership aides were alerted via email about the incident Monday morning. The email, which we reviewed, states that the impersonation effort had “technical sophistication and believability.”
Stepping back: It should be no surprise that members of Congress are targeted with these kinds of influence operations. They regularly take meetings with foreign diplomats and world leaders eager for face time with power players on Capitol Hill. This includes Cardin, who as SFRC chair has veto power over important administration decisions like weapons sales.
Foreign officials are always looking for inside information about what could happen on a variety of issues, including what lawmakers hear from the White House, Pentagon or intelligence agencies.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-N.H.) office was contacted in 2018 by an individual posing as a Latvian diplomat. That person was seeking privileged information about U.S. sanctions against Russia that Congress had recently approved.
That same year, Russian hackers targeted then-Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) office with a phishing operation intended to infiltrate the senator’s email networks.
But what happened to Cardin was different — and light-years more advanced. The “malign actor” was able to generate a fake but believable Zoom invitation. They also used AI to recreate Kuleba’s voice and a video feed that looked exactly like him.
Even if the on-screen elements weren’t perfect, what likely made Cardin and his staff suspicious at first was the nature of the questions being asked.
As we reported, the Monday memo to senior leadership aides stated that the person impersonating Kuleba was asking “politically charged questions in relation to the upcoming election… likely trying to bait the senator into commenting on a political candidate.”
This appears to be the goal of these influence operations. Foreign adversaries want to goad U.S. officials into saying things that can be used for propaganda purposes.
While the Cardin incident hasn’t officially been attributed to Russia, aides briefed on the ongoing FBI investigation believe Moscow is the most likely culprit — especially because of this question that “Kuleba” asked Cardin, per the memo:
If Cardin said yes, it would be very valuable propaganda for Moscow. They could accuse the United States of seeking to escalate the war with Russia even further.
