On China's Massive Hacking Campaign Targeting The US

 by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

China has dramatically increased its cyberattacks against the United States since Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

From espionage to intellectual property theft to sabotage, here is a look at 20 of the largest Chinese cyberattacks against the United States in the last 10 years.

August 2014: Community Health Systems Hack 

A state-backed hacking group in China—referred to as APT18—launched an advanced malware attack against Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, one of the nation’s largest hospital health care services.

The group succeeded in exfiltrating the sensitive personal information of more than 4.5 million patients, including their Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, names, and birth dates.

(Left) FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell addresses the media from the National Hurricane Center in Miami on May 31, 2023. (Right) United States Postal Service trucks in Farmingdale, N.Y., on April 12, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images, Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

November 2014: NOAA and USPS Hacks

State-backed hackers in China launched malware and DDOS attacks against several government entities, including the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Office of Personnel Management.

The personal information of more than 800,000 employees at USPS, as well as that of customers who had called customer services, was exfiltrated. NOAA officials reported that they were immediately able to restore service to four affected websites but had not reported the incident for months, which was a violation of U.S. policy.

The entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building that houses the Office of Personnel Management headquarters in Washington on June 5, 2015. U.S. investigators have said that at least four million current and former federal employees might have had their personal information stolen by Chinese hackers. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

June 2015: Office of Personnel Management Hack

The federal government’s primary hiring agency was hacked by state-backed cyber actors in China. More than a million users’ personal information, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, were stolen.

Those affected included current and former federal employees and contractors, as well as applicants for federal jobs and individuals listed on background check forms.

The attack was the third and largest of its kind in a matter of weeks and appeared to have specifically targeted data and applications related to U.S. security clearances. As such, the data stolen also included the financial histories and family information of those undergoing federal background checks at the time.

A Belgian plant of the U.S. chemicals group DuPont de Nemours in Mechelenon on April 13, 2004. Herwig Vergult/AFP via Getty Images

January 2016: Dupont Chemical Hack 

Pangang Group, a Chinese state-owned steel manufacturer, was charged by the U.S. government for stealing trade secrets from DuPont, a major chemical corporation. The group had obtained access to information on the U.S. company’s computers.

Pangang worked with unidentified hackers to purchase trade secrets from a long-time DuPont employee, who stole the company’s method for manufacturing titanium dioxide, a white pigment used in many applications, including semiconductors and solar panel cells.

The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) logo is seen in during the International Paris Air Show in Le Bourget on June 25, 2017. Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images

April 2017: FAA, NASA Spearfishing Campaign 

Song Wu, an employee for China’s state-owned aerospace and defense corporation AVIC, allegedly began a multiyear spearfishing campaign against targets in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army.

Wu was later charged in 2024 for creating email accounts impersonating U.S.-based researchers and engineers to obtain restricted software used for aerospace engineering and computational fluid dynamics.

The U.S. government alleged that the software obtained could be used to develop advanced tactical missiles and aerodynamic designs for other weapons.

A sign depicting the four members of China's military indicted on charges of hacking into Equifax Inc. and stealing data from millions of Americans is on display shortly after Attorney General William Barr held a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Feb. 10, 2020. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

May 2017: Equifax Hack

Chinese military hackers breached the Equifax credit bureau in the largest-known theft of personal information.

More than 145 million Americans’ sensitive personal data, including Social Security and driver’s license numbers, were stolen. The hackers also obtained roughly 200,000 American credit card numbers.

The hackers routed traffic through approximately 34 servers located in nearly 20 countries to obfuscate their true location.

The United States later indicted four members of China’s military for the hack in 2020. As in most such cases, the hackers remain in China and have never been arrested.

January 2018: Navy Personnel, Technology Hacks

Chinese state-backed hackers allegedly compromised the computers of a U.S. Navy contractor and stole a large amount of highly sensitive data on undersea warfare, including U.S. plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile known as “Sea Dragon” for use on submarines, The Washington Post reported.

The hacked material also included signals and sensor data, information about submarine cryptographic systems, and electronic warfare documents from the Navy’s primary submarine development unit.

A sign depicting Chinese government hackers who allegedly targeted scores of companies in a dozen countries, at a press conference about Chinese hacking at the Justice Department in Washington on Dec. 20, 2018. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

June 2019: APT10 Utility Spearfishing Campaign 

APT10, a hacking group directed by China’s Ministry of State Security, began a massive spearfishing and hacking campaign targeting U.S. aerospace, engineering, and telecommunications firms.

By using stolen passwords and malware, the hackers were able to steal records related to 130,000 Navy personnel.

Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest builder of U.S. military ships and nuclear-powered submarines, acknowledged that it was targeted in the attack, and that computer systems owned by one of its subsidiaries were discovered connecting to a foreign server controlled by APT10.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael R. Sherwin speaks to the media about charges and arrests related to a computer intrusion campaign tied to the Chinese government by a group called APT 41, at the Department of Justice in Washington on Sept. 16, 2020. Tasos Katopodis-Pool/Getty Images

August 2019: APT41 Hacks Revealed 

China-based hacking group APT41 penetrated and spied on global tech, communications, and health care providers for China’s Ministry of State Security.

The group deployed rootkits, granting itself hard-to-detect control over computers, by compromising millions of copies of a utility called CCleaner. APT41 also hijacked a software update pushed by Asus to reach 1 million computers, targeting a small subset of those users.

A nurse prepares a dose of the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19, donated by the United States, at a vaccination center in San Juan Sacatepequez, Guatemala, on July 15, 2021. Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

May 2020: Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Espionage 

Chinese regime-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna as it conducted research to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

The effort involved conducting reconnaissance in order to steal proprietary research needed to develop a vaccine for the disease, which Moderna received nearly half a billion dollars to create from the U.S. government.

A U.S. indictment alleged that the China-based hackers probed public websites for vulnerabilities and scouted accounts of key personnel after gaining access to a network used by Moderna.

Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency, looks at a hearing with the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on May 14, 2021. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

February 2021: Chinese Access to NSA Hacking Tools Revealed

Israeli researchers discovered that Chinese spies had stolen and deployed code first developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to support their hacking operations.

The NSA hacking tools were leaked online in 2017. Still, cyber investigators found evidence that the Chinese communist-backed APT31 hacking group had deployed an identical tool as early as 2014. This suggests that China-based hackers had persistent access to the nation’s best national security cyber tools for years.

People walk by a Microsoft store in New York City on July 26, 2023. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

March 2021: Silk Typhoon 

A cyber-espionage group associated with China’s Ministry of State Security stole emails and passwords from more than 30,000 organizations by exploiting flaws in Microsoft Exchange Servers.

The group, dubbed Silk Typhoon by Microsoft, worked closely with China-back APT40, leveraging a flaw in Microsoft’s software to gain full access to emails hosted on more than 250,000 servers in the United States.

Among the organizations most affected by the hack were American pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, and think tanks.

Attendees pass by an Alibaba.com display at a consumer technology trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas on Jan. 8, 2019. David Becker/Getty Images

December 2021: Log4j Hacks 

APT41 returned to action, leveraging a previously unknown vulnerability in commonly used open-source logging software Log4j. The group used the vulnerability to hack into at least six unspecified U.S. government agency networks over a nine-month period.

The vulnerability allowed APT41 to keep track of user chats and clicks and follow user link clicks to outside sites, allowing hackers to control a targeted server.

The hackers then used the hijacked networks to mine cryptocurrency, create botnets, send spam, and establish backdoors for future malware attacks.

Notably, the China-based company Alibaba first discovered the security flaw and privately reported it to Apache Software, which created the affected software. The Chinese Communist Party afterward punished Alibaba by revoking an information-sharing deal, as Chinese law requires security flaws to be reported to the regime.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) sets up a sign alongside a bipartisan group of Democrat and Republican members of Congress as they announce a proposal for a COVID-19 relief bill on Capitol Hill on Dec. 1, 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

December 2022: COVID-19 Relief Fund Theft 

APT41 stole millions of dollars worth of U.S. COVID-19 relief benefits, which were intended to help Americans who were negatively impacted by the government’s economic shutdowns during the 2020 pandemic.

The sum was part of a staggering estimated $280 billion in stolen COVID-19 relief, which was illicitly intercepted by foreign hackers and domestic fraudsters who used the Social Security numbers and personal information of deceased and incarcerated Americans to claim benefits illegally.

To date, the Justice Department has only successfully recovered about $1.5 billion of the stolen funds.

May 2023: Antique Typhoon 

Antique Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed hacking outfit, forged digital authentication tokens to access the webmail accounts of 25 organizations, including numerous U.S. government agencies.

The hackers were able to obtain the emails of government officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and members of Congress, including Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). The hackers used persistent access to the email accounts only for exfiltrating data, suggesting that their purpose was primarily espionage.

Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te gives a speech at the CommonWealth Semiconductor Forum in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 16, 2023. Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

August 2023: HiatusRAT 

China-backed hackers began targeting U.S. and Taiwanese military procurement systems, as well as semiconductor and chemical manufacturers.

The hackers leveraged a remote access tool to breach the system used to coordinate arms shipments from the United States to Taiwan. International open-source reporting suggests that the hackers’ goal was to gain intelligence on future defense contracts between the two powers.

September 2023: BlackTech Router Attack 

China-backed hacking group BlackTech began targeting major corporate headquarters throughout the United States. The group appeared to focus its attacks on gaining access to American and Japanese companies working in the defense sector.

U.S. and allied intelligence agencies announced that having penetrated the international subsidiaries of major companies, BlackTech was now using its access to grant itself entry to major corporate networks within the United States in order to exfiltrate data.

January 2024: Volt Typhoon 

U.S. intelligence agencies announced that Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed hacking group, was pre-positioning malware in critical infrastructure throughout the United States, including water, gas, energy, rail, air, and port infrastructure.

Unlike most other Chinese hacking efforts that focus on espionage or intellectual property theft, Volt Typhoon sought to position malware in U.S. infrastructure in order to sabotage it in the event of a conflict between the two nations. Such sabotage would result in mass casualties among American citizens.

U.S. intelligence agencies said that they have removed Volt Typhoon malware from thousands of systems but that it remains embedded in some privately owned infrastructure and has been present since at least 2021.

(Left) A sign is posted in front of an AT&T retail store in San Rafael, Calif., on May 17, 2021. (Right) A man on his cell phone walks past a Verizon Wireless store in Washington on Dec. 30, 2014. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

November 2024: Salt Typhoon 

U.S. intelligence agencies acknowledged that Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed hacking group, has compromised the infrastructure used by eight major telecommunications companies, including AT&T, CenturyLink, and Verizon.

Salt Typhoon appeared to have gained access to the backend infrastructure used to accommodate the U.S. government’s own wiretapping efforts and thus gained access to virtually all calls and texts made using the affected networks.

Despite the wide-ranging access, China-based hackers appeared to have used the persistent access to target high-profile individuals, including President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Congressional leaders have described the hack, which likely began in 2022, as among the most significant breaches in history. It is unclear how Salt Typhoon will be evicted from the infrastructure. The group retained access to U.S. telecommunications until late December.

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen delivers remarks at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on April 20, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

January 2025: US Treasury Department Hack 

The Treasury Department revealed that Chinese state-backed hackers had breached the department’s networks, gaining access to the servers of an office responsible for administering international sanctions.

The hackers also gained access to the department’s networks by compromising third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust, stole an as-of-yet unknown number of unclassified documents, and targeted the accounts of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/chinas-massive-hacking-campaign-targeting-us

On The March, School Choice Takes Its Fight From Red, Right To Blue

 by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

Private school choice advocates expect that 2025 will be the year that they finally bring the last big red state, Texas, into the fold. The likely victory would, in turn, pose the next big challenge for the controversial movement: Can it win in enemy territory -- that is, blue states -- too?

Inspired by free-market ideology and Christian faith, advocates aim to give families more educational choices by providing them with public funds that they mostly use for private instruction at religious schools. Although the movement now has a foothold in almost all red states, to become an influential force in education, it needs to make deeper inroads into densely populated blue states, where Democrats, teachers’ unions, and rural Republicans have built a formidable wall of opposition to protect public schools.

“Once we finish with the low-hanging fruit, Texas and a few other red states, this movement will go to a blue state strategy,” said Robert Enlow, CEO of the national advocacy group EdChoice. “It has to figure something out. Let’s be honest.” 

The political battles over school choice have been fierce, with critics such as American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claiming that programs will “defund public schools.” In Nebraska, where voters killed a new program in November, an attack ad from choice opponents depicted supporters dressed in suits storming into a public school classroom and intimidating children, drawing protests from state senators who called it ridiculous and insulting.

Despite the warnings from opponents, most choice programs launched in the last three decades have been too small to significantly threaten enrollment-based school funding.

They have been restricted mainly to lower-income parents who may be dissatisfied with lax discipline and lackluster instruction – problems exacerbated by the pandemic – at their public schools. All told, private choice programs enroll only about 2% of all K-12 students.

The stakes are getting higher, however, as the movement – national advocacy groups, wealthy donors, and grassroots Christian activists – wins legislative battles for “universal” programs designed to expand enrollment. In universal programs now in 12 red states, all families, rich and poor, are typically eligible for public funds, even for children already in private school. 

Patrick Wolf, a prominent school choice researcher at the University of Arkansas, says universal programs are a smart strategy for the movement. Advocates hope they will improve upon the earlier programs for disadvantaged kids that produced mixed academic results and failed to build much political momentum even in some red states like Kentucky. 

Under universal eligibility, families that struggle financially to keep their kids in private school are joining the programs for tuition relief. And wealthier families that participate have added social and political capital to the movement, giving it stronger legs. 

“Strategically the advantage is clear,” Wolf said. “Universal eligibility creates a bigger tent of beneficiaries. That’s good for the programs and everyone in them.”

But universal programs are even more contentious with Democratic lawmakers because of the costs to pay for private education, essentially creating a second publicly funded school system. While the early restricted programs actually save money – since the cost of a choice scholarship is typically much less than a public-school education – universal programs create a new taxpayer expense: the funding of students already in private schools.

“School choice would subsidize some of the wealthiest families in my state who already send their kids to private schools,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro told RealClearInvestigations in explaining his opposition to a universal bill in his state of Tennessee. “It’s bad economics because we are not changing activity or improving outcomes. We are just pushing dollars from one group of people to another.”

In Arizona, the first state to adopt a universal program in 2022, the costs have ballooned. Almost half of the 80,000 students getting funding were already in private school, driving up the price tag of the program to $800 million last year, according to the Department of Education. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs wants to rein in the program that contributed to the state’s $1.3 billion budget deficit last year, forcing big cutbacks in funding water infrastructure projects to cope with droughts. 

“It’s just not possible for these states to fund two separate educational systems, the public and the private,” said Professor Josh Cowen, whose new book, “The Privateers,” is critical of school choice programs. “The scholarships are an interest group subsidy that states have to make hard choices to pay for.”

Hardball Politics in Texas 

In Texas, the cost of a universal program, a top priority of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, prompted a revolt among rural Republican lawmakers. The $500 million proposed program would escalate over time, they feared, forcing cutbacks in funding for public schools that also serve as community centers and major employers in rural areas.

To win over rural Republicans, the bill contained a large $7 billion increase in public school funding on top of an approved $6 billion boost earlier in 2023. Texas school districts stood to gain far more money than they might lose in per-pupil funding when students left for private schools, says Mandy Drogin, who focuses on school choice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

But rural Republican lawmakers turned down the $7 billion sweetener by voting to kill the universal program, spurring an unbending Abbott to play hardball, targeting his own party members for defeat in March primaries. To fund these efforts, Abbott received a $6 million donation from school choice advocate and billionaire donor Jeff Yass, an example of the big money behind the movement. 

Eleven of the challengers Abbott endorsed and funded won in the primaries on a school choice platform and then sailed to victory in November, providing the votes for a universal program this year. 

One of the newly elected legislators is Hillary Hickland, a stay-at-home mom and conservative Christian activist who, like several other challengers, had never run for public office. The victory of Hickland and the other 10 Republican candidates supported by Abbott underscored the potency of school choice in a state where a recent poll shows 69% of voters support it.

“A grassroots movement based on issues affecting families propelled several of us who are first-timers to victory,” Hickland told RCI. “We have the votes in the House to pass it and the overwhelming support of Texans who have been working to advance school choice for over three decades.” 

Shapiro’s 'Unfinished Business' 

Advocates say the stars are aligned to turn Pennsylvania into a blue state win. It already has a limited tax credit program to incentivize private donations for choice scholarships. What’s more, Gov. Josh Shapiro is one of the few Democratic state leaders who supports school choice, as do Pennsylvania voters by a wide margin.

The issue came to a head in 2023 when a Shapiro-backed non-universal voucher proposal targeting students in low-performing schools was met with stiff opposition from House Democrats and the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. Shapiro was forced to line-item veto the voucher proposal to get the budget approved, calling school choice “unfinished business.”

In November, Pennsylvania swung to the right by backing President-elect Donald Trump and sending Republican challenger Dave McCormick to the U.S. Senate. The cheers of school choice advocates were muted because Democrats held on to a one-seat majority in the state House. 

The fate of another voucher bill expected in 2025 may depend on whether a few Democrats are willing to break with House leadership and risk political payback, according to a veteran of the Pennsylvania battles. Leaders reportedly threatened to take away committee assignments and staff from Democrat Amen Brown, a black representative who crossed the aisle to back the voucher bill. 

“Governor Shapiro has a chance to deliver on his promise to expand educational opportunity for underserved children,” said Tommy Schultz, CEO of the advocacy group American Federation for Children. “It will require bold leadership to bring House leadership to the table and get it done.” 

EdChoice policy director Ed Tarnowski also sees Virginia as fertile blue state ground after a decade of defeated choice bills, including one in 2023, at the hands of Democrats. Since taking office in 2022, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been shaking up public education, introducing a system of accountability and higher academic standards lst year while also pushing school choice. 

Still, advocates will need the support of Democrats who control the General Assembly to create a state-funded program. Grassroots activists with the Virginia Education Opportunity Alliance are using a bottom-up strategy, educating low-income families throughout the state about school choice and encouraging them to pressure lawmakers into backing the program. It’s the type of campaign that led to the approval of vouchers in Washington, D.C., says Craig DiSesa, executive director of the alliance. “We plan to replicate that model.”

Illinois Backpedals 

Illinois shows how fragile school choice laws can be in blue states. Myles Mendoza, a liberal Democrat and former social worker, spearheaded a campaign for a program in Illinois after seeing the personal harm that failing Chicago Public Schools inflicted on students. 

As president of Empower Illinois, he built a coalition of Republicans, moderate Democrats, and trade unions to pass a $100 million tax credit scholarship program for disadvantaged kids in 2017. It was part of a deal that also boosted funding for high-poverty public schools.

The program was a hit, with three times more demand than supply of about 10,000 scholarships, many of them awarded to kids in Catholic schools. But the election of Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, beating Republican Bruce Rauner with the help of an endorsement by the Illinois Federation of Teachers, shattered the bipartisan coalition behind the program. Pritzker let it sunset in 2023. 

For school choice to get a permanent foothold in blue states like Illinois, Mendoza says, advocates need to rally more blue-collar, Latino, and Jewish families that are troubled by public schools. “These groups could pressure Democrats to support private school choice over time,” Mendoza said. “But currently there are no votes in Illinois to pass school choice.”

Professor Wolf also sees external pressures forcing blue states like Illinois to get with the program. With school choice now in a majority of states, he says, Illinois will come under pressure to adopt it or risk losing residents to four of its neighbors with choice programs. Such peer pressure explains why public charter schools are now in 46 states.

“Illinois is losing population, so Democratic legislators might consider that they could hold on to more of their families if they return to offering at least the low-income ones support for private school enrollment,” Wolf said. 

No Choice of Good Private Schools 

Politics isn’t the only drag on the movement’s ambitions. Another is academic. Many higher quality private schools don’t accept school-choice students because of the state rules, such as reporting test scores, that come with participation in the programs.  

Catholic schools have enrolled most students in many of the programs, with other religiously affiliated schools taking students, too, according to researchers. A study of Washington D.C., Louisiana, and Indiana found that private schools that are smaller, less expensive, and more diverse – features associated with a less rigorous education – are more likely to participate in programs. An examination of the Milwaukee program underscored the instability of participating schools, particularly startups: 41% of all the schools failed over a 25-year period. 

It's not surprising, then, that school-choice students are not typically posting stellar academic gains. Wolf says rigorous studies of the early small programs showed some positive academic results on standardized tests, while more recent examinations of bigger programs revealed some negative outcomes. Researchers did find more consistently positive effects for students with graduation rates and college entrance and completion. Wolf calls the results “mixed.”

Professor Cowen, who was optimistic about the programs early on, is now a critic. He says the negative academic results from the larger programs are significant, on par with the learning loss students recently suffered during the pandemic.

“Twenty years ago, there were only a small number of private schools participating in programs and they were pretty decent,” said Cowen. “But many more schools are involved now, some of them located in church basements, and many of them are not interested in academic outcomes. That’s not their main mission.” 

Advocates are putting their faith in the expansion of universal programs across the country to raise the academic bar. As more children from wealthier families get scholarships, the theory goes, it will encourage higher-quality private schools to participate in the programs, lifting the performance of all students, including low-income kids.

Will Congress Act?

Facing uphill battles in blue states, the movement has a Plan B. With Republicans taking control of Congress this year, John Schilling at Invest in Education says advocates are cautiously optimistic about the chances of a federal tax credit bill to privately fund school choice scholarships for students nationwide. Such an approach would provide a wedge into blue states where groups would collect donations to start scholarship programs that otherwise might not get off the ground. 

“We see this law as creating opportunity in blue states where there is entrenched opposition to school choice,” said Schilling. “The only way states like New York, California, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts can get school choice now is through a federal tax credit.”

The Educational Choice for Children Act, which has 180 Republican co-sponsors, is hardly a sure bet. Democrats are solidly opposed to it, and many rural Republicans don’t like it either. The bill probably won’t get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid a filibuster, which means Republicans may try to push it through budget reconciliation, a difficult undertaking but one that requires only a majority to pass a bill. 

Cowen at Michigan State University sees hypocrisy in the movement’s turn to Washington. Republicans are banking on federal legislation while also calling for a reduction in Washington’s influence on education and even the dismantling of the Department of Education. But the chance to open up blue states to school choice is apparently too good an opportunity to pass up.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/march-school-choice-takes-its-fight-red-right-blue

In The Jan 6 Killing Of Ashli Babbitt, A Leftist Double-Standard On Cop Misconduct

 Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Contrary to exaggerated, partisan rhetoric that frames the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot as a “deadly insurrection,” the truth is that only one homicide occurred that day. The victim, an unarmed Trump supporter, was shot and killed by a police officer with a history of irresponsible handling of firearms, who opted against a nonlethal response to an act of trespassing, and who fired his weapon in the absence of any imminent threat of death or serious injury to himself or others in his vicinity.

US Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd’s killing of Ashli Babbitt came just six months after George Floyd’s death under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, an incident that sparked outrage, widespread calls for police reform, and nationwide rioting. In the case of Babbitt’s killing, however, the collective reaction from the American left and major media at best amounted to an indifferent shrug. Worse, many reflexively heralded Byrd as a hero and viewed Babbitt as a deserving recipient of the bullet that perforated her trachea and lung.

The contrast illustrates how partisan framing short-circuits people’s ability to uniformly and objectively apply principles to the facts before them. Put another way, an intellectually honest person can reject Babbitt’s politics, condemn her unlawful conduct on Jan. 6 and rightly conclude that she was the victim of an unjustified police shooting.

Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021

In 2021, the Department of Justice announced it had completed an investigation of the shooting and found “insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.” The DOJ did not, however, assert that Byrd’s use of deadly force was warranted. Last year, Babbitt’s husband filed a civil suit against the federal government, seeking $30 million in damages; the trial is slated to commence in July 2026.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego who operated a pool business with her husband, attended the “Save America” rally in Washington on Jan. 6 before joining others who proceeded to the Capitol grounds. After things escalated and rioters breached the Capitol building, she entered it, and a female police officer reportedly instructed her to walk toward the House side of the complex.

Here’s how the DOJ described what happened next; I’ve bolded three words I’ll address shortly:

Ms. Babbitt was among a mob of people that…gained access to a hallway outside “Speaker’s Lobby,” which leads to the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time, the USCP was evacuating Members from the Chamber, which the mob was trying to enter from multiple doorways. USCP officers used furniture to barricade a set of glass doors separating the hallway and Speaker’s Lobby to try and stop the mob from entering the Speaker’s Lobby and the Chamber, and three officers positioned themselves between the doors and the mob.

Members of the mob attempted to break through the doors by striking them and breaking the glass with their hands, flagpoles, helmets, and other objects. Eventually, the three USCP officers positioned outside the doors were forced to evacuate. As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out. An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor.

Though it’s not narrowly relevant to Byrd’s decision to pull the trigger, the DOJ’s passive-tense claim that the three officers on Babbitt’s side of the doors “were forced to evacuate” is important because it indicates an extreme inclination to put the best spin possible on officers’ decisions. Video shows those three officers failing to make any meaningful effort to stop those who were hammering the glass doors. After enduring mounting verbal abuse and violations of their personal space, they simply walked away from the doors, clearing the way for the rioters to remove the glass from a side window and for Babbitt to proceed through the opening.

According to the 32-page complaint filed in the civil suit, one of those three officers later told investigators, “I grapple with this, you know, if I should’ve stayed.” More pointedly, one of the members of the Containment and Emergency Response Team (CERT) who ascended the stairs from behind the mob told investigators, “I was thinking why, why the fuck did they leave?”

Some of the most damning information in the civil complaint comes from Byrd’s own mouth. In a 2021 NBC interview conducted by an excessively sympathetic Lester Holt, Byrd said:

• “I could not see exactly what was happening [on the other side of] the door…it’s impossible for me to see what’s on the other side because we had created such a barricade — it was high enough that the visibility was impossible.”

• “[Babbitt’s] failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

• “It was later [that] I found out that the subject did not have a weapon, but there was no way to know that at that time, and I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions [were].”

• “Of course we had our weapons drawn as part of our training. You had [false reports of] shots fired onto the House floor, you’re trained to take a tactical defensive position and prepare for the threat.”

There are many unsettling things about Byrd’s statements, chief among them his admission that he saw no weapon in Babbitt’s hands, and had “no way to know” if she was armed or what her intentions were. “Without additional information indicating that a person is likely armed, officers cannot conclude that someone has a weapon just because they cannot see definitively that the person does not have a weapon,” wrote Geoffrey Alpert, Jeff Noble, Seth Stoughton at Lawfare.

Among other incriminating elements of Byrd’s NBC interview:

• Byrd asserts that Babbitt’s mere failure to comply with orders not to proceed through the door justified the use of lethal force.

• He implies that (false) reports of shots fired somewhere else in the Capitol gave him a green light to start shooting noncompliant people in his vicinity; in other words, he seems to have made a blanket assessment that every trespasser in the building posed an imminent danger justifying deadly force.

“Officers cannot rely on generalized assumptions. They must base their conclusions on specific and individualized facts,” the Lawfare authors note.

Unsatisfied with merely defending his killing of Babbitt, Byrd used the NBC interview to declare himself as a hero, telling Holt, “I showed the utmost courage on January 6…I know that day I saved countless lives.” That latter boast is truly extraordinary, especially considering it was made with the benefit of hindsight. It would be one thing for Byrd to try attributing his deadly decision to a reliance on bad information amid the chaos of Jan. 6; it’s another to lionize himself with a baseless claim of rioters’ murderous intent.

Under USCP policy, lethal force is only authorized when “the officer perceives that the subject poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.” As Babbitt rose to awkwardly enter through the open window — where she would next have to awkwardly navigate a furniture barricade on the other side — there was no indication that she had the ability to seriously injure or kill anyone.

Lawyers for Babbitt’s husband and estate characterized Lt. Byrd’s positioning inside an adjacent doorway as an “ambush”

As seen in video of the shooting, Byrd’s positioning was problematic; the civil complaint characterizes it as an “ambush.” From the perspective of the rioters, Byrd was positioned on the far left, at an angle some 160 degrees from Babbitt, who was on the right side of the doors. Before stepping forward and killing Babbitt, Byrd was tucked inside another doorway, with only his pistol extending past the opening.

It’s very unlikely Babbitt saw his raised pistol and knew she was being threatened with death if she went through the window. Indeed, one of those three officers who inexplicably abandoned the doorway on Babbitt’s side told investigators, “I saw him . . . there was no way that woman would’ve seen that.” What’s more, Byrd told Holt that he repeatedly screamed “get back..stop…get back…no,” but made no claim that he verbally warned Babbitt that she was on the verge of being shot.

By all indications, Babbitt’s unarmed ascent to the window was a circumstance that called for the use of nonlethal force. That could have taken many forms — a firm shove back through the window, yanking her forward to the floor, or perhaps using pepper spray or a taser. While not clear how the various officers were equipped, note that police aren’t justified in resorting to deadly force just because it’s all they have available. It’s telling that, among multiple armed officers on that side of the doorway, Byrd was the only one who opened fire.

The civil complaint also credibly accuses Byrd of failing to handle his firearm in accordance with USCP policy, by:

• Unholstering it before any imminent threat had emerged to justify doing so

• Failing to hold his pistol at a “low ready” position and instead pointed it at people who posed no imminent threat

• Putting his finger inside the pistol’s trigger guard, “tapping it on and off the trigger for at least 14 seconds before he shot and killed Ashli.” Across law enforcement, the military and in civilian self-defense, it’s a universally-embraced principle that one’s finger shouldn’t be put inside the trigger guard until a decision to fire has been made.

Before he killed Babbitt at a nearby hallway, Byrd -- seen in the House chamber -- seems to have his finger inside his pistol's trigger guard

After shooting Babbitt, Byrd took to his radio, his voice filled with panic — and a self-serving falsehood. “We got shots fired in the lobby. We got shots, shots fired in the lobby of the House chamber. Shots are being fired at us and we’re sh… uhh, prepared to fire back at them,” he said, seemingly so desperate to justify his action that he falsely reported coming under fire himself.

In the aftermath of incidents involving excessive use of force, we often find the officer in question has a blemished service record. That’s the case with Byrd, whose checkered past includes irresponsible handling of firearms. In 2019, Byrd was suspended for 33 days after he left his loaded weapon in a Capitol Visitor Center complex bathroom for nearly an hour; it was discovered by another officer.

Even more concerning was a 2004 off-duty incident. Byrd fired his service weapon at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood — hitting it from behind. Investigators said Byrd’s claim that he fired at the car in self-defense as the driver attempted to hit him was “inaccurate.”

They also determined that Byrd put his innocent neighbor in the line of fire as he pulled the trigger. Stray rounds hit nearby homes, according to the Babbitt civil complaint. Foreshadowing Byrd’s decision-making on Jan. 6, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concluded he’d fired in a “careless and imprudent manner.” That finding was overruled, however, via an appeal to the Disciplinary Review Board.

In another off-duty incident, Byrd was given a seven-day suspension without pay in 2015 after accosting a police officer providing security at a high school football game, showering him with profanities and reportedly calling him “a piece of shit, asshole and racist” who was only concerned with policing the “black side” of the football field.

Further underscoring the double-standards at play in the Babbitt case, imagine the response from the left if there were a controversial shooting in which a white male police officer had demonstrated a similar, racially-charged loss of composure years before killing an unarmed black female trespasser.

“The ironies of Babbitt's death abound—and not just because in this case the cop with the quick trigger finger was black and his victim was a white woman,” wrote Jonathan Tobin. “Both those who are supporting Byrd and those who consider the pass he got from his superiors an injustice have probably been on the opposite side of similar controversies in the past year. Some of those who think Babbitt was the victim of a police murder have defended officers accused of killing unarmed black persons. And many who are lauding Byrd as a defender of democracy were outraged by the same killings.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jan-6-killing-ashli-babbitt-leftist-double-standard-cop-misconduct