Police raid Paris 2024 Olympics HQ in corruption probe

Cops ‘collecting documents,’ according to email seen by POLITICO.

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Biden rolls out red carpet for Modi despite concerns over human rights

President Joe Biden will roll out the glitziest of welcomes for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week. It will be a nod to New Delhi’s rise that masks the complications it brings, including what critics charge is an administration’s prioritization of traditional geopolitics over human rights.

Though he leads the world’s largest democracy, Modi has ruled as an autocratic-leaning Hindu nationalist whose government has overseen a crackdown on everyone from journalists to political opposition leaders as part of a larger targeting of Indian Muslims.

For Biden, this is more than a mere inconvenience. Human rights advocates have criticized him not just for hosting Modi, but for throwing him a state dinner, a prestigious honor bestowed upon only two other foreign leaders since Biden took office.

In private, White House officials concede they are bound by realpolitik. India is viewed as a crucial partner in the United States’ rivalry with China. More broadly, the global contest between democracies and autocracies has defined Biden’s foreign policy and the president has made the decision to cozy up to the region’s democracy, even if it is a deeply flawed one.

White House officials pledge Biden will privately take Modi to task over human rights. But that carries far less symbolism than a public rebuke. More generally, foreign policy excerpts agree that the U.S. doesn't have much to gain in shunning the Indian leader.

“The United States needs India as a strategic partner to balance against China both in South Asia and in the Indo-Pacific and India needs the United States as it develops a more prosperous and green future,” said Caroline Grey of the Eurasia Group, a foreign affairs think tank. “U.S.-India relations have never been better, which might come as a surprise given India's reluctance to impose sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the war in Ukraine likely reminded the Biden administration of the importance of India to its interests.”

Modi is set to arrive in Washington this week after a stop at the United Nations. His itinerary includes an address to Congress and meetings with Biden at the White House.

But the showiest moment will be a state dinner on Thursday, an honor normally reserved for close allies. So far, only French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol have been feted by the Biden administration in such an extravagant fashion.

The dinner will further illustrate a Modi ascendant. India just became the world’s most populous nation, his nation’s economy is surging, and he will host the world’s leaders at the G-20 in New Delhi this fall.

“It signals that the Biden administration wants to accord India the distinction of being seen as one among the closest U.S. partners and allies — even though India is not a U.S. ally, and does not seek to become one,” said Alyssa Ayres, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of State for South Asia during the Obama years. “India places a high priority on its own independence.”

While White House officials view Modi with wariness, the U.S. continues to court him as an essential bulwark on the far side of the globe. Biden has leaned on Modi not to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While India has not offered Moscow any direct assistance, it has continued to purchase its gas, helping Russian President Vladimir Putin fund his war efforts.

But India’s biggest role, the administration believes, could be providing a check on China. The U.S. has elevated India as part of the Quad alliance — along with Australia and Japan — to reinforce democracy’s position in the Pacific and has pushed New Delhi to act as a buffer against the economic and territorial ambitions of Xi Jinping.

Biden administration officials have said they are not blind to India’s faults and troubles. Instead, they say in dealing with a geo-strategically vital country of 1.4 billion people, they prefer to level their criticisms behind the scenes.

But doing so, human rights activists argue, means offering a tacit blessing to the abuses taking place under Modi’s watch — and it forfeits an opportunity to improve the situation.

“The U.S. government has been far too quiet about India’s deteriorating human rights situation under Modi,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, “including India’s slide toward authoritarianism and the increasing hate speech and persecution of religious minorities.”

Sifton believes that only a public upbraiding may enact change.

“Saying nothing publicly will be seen as a green light by Modi and his leadership,” he said, “signaling that they can continue down the path they have taken towards authoritarianism and vilification of Muslims.”

When Modi came into power in 2014, former President Barack Obama largely kept him close, despite his record of anti-Muslim sentiment. In fact, nearly a decade earlier, Modi had been denied a U.S. visa on religious freedom grounds after being accused of tacitly supporting Hindu extremists who attacked Muslims years earlier in the Indian state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister.

Former President Donald Trump also sought to curb China’s influence, but he made little pretense of caring about human rights. He warmly embraced Modi at a 2019 “Howdy, Modi!” rally in Houston. The following February, Trump visited Modi in New Delhi and attended a massive rally in his honor just days before the world came to a halt at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Hindu nationals backed Trump, who publicly also displayed an antipathy toward Muslims.

Human rights advocates cite a litany of abuses by the Modi government, including the passage of a law that discriminates against Muslims by making religion a basis of citizenship and the revocation of the autonomy granted to the majority-Muslim Jammu and Kashmir region. Some Indian states also passed “anti-conversion” laws that appear to target Muslim men who marry Hindu women. These and other moves have played out against a backdrop of more violence against religious minorities and crackdowns on government critics and journalists.

Many presidents have had to deal with unsavory foreign elements to advance U.S. political interests. Biden, when he ran for president, trashed Trump’s seeming indifference to suffering around the world, promising to put human rights at the “center” of his foreign policy. But he and his team have also made deals with nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Modi was among the first leaders with whom Biden held a virtual meeting. Biden elevated the Quad and he spent time with Modi on the sidelines of the G-7 in Japan last month. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was in India in recent days to finalize the details of the summit, which White House aides preview will include new economic agreements, climate commitments, and deals on semiconductors and other technologies.

“As we do with other nations around the world, we regularly engage with Indian government officials at senior levels on human rights concerns, including freedom of religion or belief and media freedom,” said Adam Hoge, a National Security Council spokesperson. “Our view is that a secure, prosperous, democratic, and pluralistic India, one that is capable of reinforcing shared values abroad, is a natural partner for the United States.”

Aides defend the decision to hold the state dinner, suggesting it is a representation of the administration’s appreciation of India’s new engagement with the world and, they say, its commitment to be a good global citizen. And Biden aides say the White House has previously chided allies about bad behavior — including, recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his court reform plan — but has tended to do so out of the spotlight.

“With the emphasis the president has placed on democracy as a central pillar of U.S. policy,” said Ayres, now dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, “I can't see how he would not have a private conversation about U.S. concerns.”

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Trump: I was too busy to sort through the boxes I took to Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump on Monday said he did not hand over government records to the federal officials when they asked him for it because he was too busy to sift through the boxes of contents.

In an interview with Fox News, the former president said that the documents that the National Archives and Records Administration insisted he return were intermingled with personal materials in containers stored at his estate in Mar-a-Lago. He added that he did not have the time to separate the personal from the governmental.

“Before I send boxes over,” Trump told host Bret Baier, “I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”

“I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen,” he explained.

The comments from Trump are an admission that he did not move to satisfy the federal government’s demands that he comply with their requests to hand over the documents. It is also the fullest he has addressed the matter since being indicted for his mishandling of those documents, which allegedly included classified material.

Upon leaving office, Trump took down troves of files and documents from his time as president. NARA eventually requested a full accounting of what had been taken to Mar-a-Lago. And when it was eventually discovered that some of the boxes Trump had taken included classified documents, the agency requested that the Justice Department look into the matter. The FBI eventually opened a criminal investigation, and the DOJ ultimately issued a subpoena for the records.

According to the special counsel’s indictment, Trump is alleged to have moved the materials around Mar-a-Lago in order to hide the full extent of the boxes he kept from both the feds and even his own lawyers. Pressed by Baier, Trump did not deny that he told his lawyers to say he fully complied with the subpoena when he hadn’t. Instead, he said once more that he needed time to sort through the boxes to take out personal items like “golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes.”

The special counsel also says Trump openly discussed on two occasions the fact that some of the materials remained classified even as he held on to them. In his Fox News interview, Trump denied that, insisting that “everything was declassified.” He said he did not “know” if the materials he took contained military plans for a prospective strike on Iran, though he is reportedly on tape acknowledging that he kept a classified Pentagon document detailing as much.

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US China pledge to stabilize deteriorating ties resume high-level talks after Blinken visit

The United States and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It remains to be seen whether the two countries can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.

The two sides expressed a willingness to keep talking, but there was little indication that either is prepared to bend from its positions on issues ranging from trade, to Taiwan, to human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

At the meeting with Blinken, Xi pronounced himself pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with two top Chinese diplomats, and said the two countries had agreed to resume a program of understandings that he and President Joe Biden agreed to at a meeting in Bali last year.

“The Chinese side has made our position clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.

That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy in recent months, notably after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Combined with disputes over human rights, trade and opiate production, the list of problem areas is daunting.

But Xi suggested the worst could be over.

“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. “This is very good.”

“I hope that through this visit, Mr. Secretary, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-U.S. relations,” Xi added.

In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, which was not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said “the United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.”

“The United States is committed to doing that,” Blinken said. “It’s in the interest of the United States, in the interests of China, and in the interest of the world.”

Blinken described his earlier discussions with senior Chinese officials as “candid and constructive.”

Despite his presence in China, Blinken and other U.S. officials had played down the prospects for any significant breakthroughs on the most vexing issues facing the planet’s two largest economies.

Instead, these officials have emphasized the importance of the two countries establishing and maintaining better lines of communication.

Blinken is the highest-level U.S. official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office, and the first secretary of state to make the trip in five years. His visit is expected to usher in a new round of visits by senior U.S. and Chinese officials, possibly including a meeting between Xi and Biden in the coming months.

Blinken met earlier Monday with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi for about three hours, according to a U.S. official.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement that Blinken’s visit “coincides with a critical juncture in China-U.S. relations, and it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict,” and blamed the “U.S. side’s erroneous perception of China, leading to incorrect policies towards China” for the current “low point” in relations.

It said the U.S. had a responsibility to halt “the spiraling decline of China-U.S. relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track” and that Wang had “demanded that the U.S. stop hyping up the ‘China threat theory,’ lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of China’s technological development, and refrain from arbitrary interference in China’s internal affairs.”

The State Department said Blinken “underscored the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the United States and the PRC through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”

In the first round of talks on Sunday, Blinken met for nearly six hours with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, after which both countries said they had agreed to continue high-level discussions. However, there was no sign that any of the most fractious issues between them were closer to resolution.

Both the U.S. and China said Qin had accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington but Beijing made clear that “the China-U.S. relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment.” That sentiment is widely shared by U.S. officials.

Blinken’s visit comes after his initial plans to travel to China were postponed in February after the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the U.S.

A snub by the Chinese leader would have been a major setback to the effort to restore and maintain communications at senior levels.

And Biden said over the weekend that he hoped to be able to meet with Xi in the coming months to take up the plethora of differences that divide them.

In his meetings on Sunday, Blinken also pressed the Chinese to release detained American citizens and to take steps to curb the production and export of fentanyl precursors that are fueling the opioid crisis in the United States.

Xi had offered a hint of a possible willingness to reduce tensions on Friday, saying in a meeting with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates that the United States and China can cooperate to “benefit our two countries.”

Since the cancellation of Blinken’s trip in February, there have been some high-level engagements. CIA chief William Burns traveled to China in May, while China’s commerce minister traveled to the U.S. And Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi in Vienna in May.

But those have been punctuated by bursts of angry rhetoric from both countries over the Taiwan Strait, their broader intentions in the Indo-Pacific, China’s refusal to condemn Russia for its war against Ukraine, and U.S. allegations from Washington that Beijing is attempting to boost its worldwide surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.

And, earlier this month, China’s defense minister rebuffed a request from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting on the sidelines of a security symposium in Singapore, a sign of continuing discontent.

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How U.S.-made sniper ammunition ends up in Russian rifles

A POLITICO investigation finds that Russian companies have declared hundreds of thousands of rounds obtained from Western suppliers.

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Boris Johnson fumbles the Trump playbook

The former British prime minister doesn’t enjoy the same support as his blonde counterpart.

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Parking lot shooting leaves 1 dead and at least 22 people hurt in suburban Chicago

WILLOWBROOK, Ill. — At least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday during a gathering in a suburban Chicago parking lot that drew hundreds of people to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.

TV news video showed the strip mall lot in Willowbrook filled with debris and police tape, about 20 miles southwest of Chicago. The DuPage County Sheriff’s Office described it as a “peaceful gathering” to celebrate Juneteenth that suddenly turned violent as a number of people fired multiple shots into the crowd.

“We know of 22 victims injured and one victim killed by gunfire. Several other victims were also injured while attempting to flee the area,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. Authorities didn’t immediately release the conditions of those injured.

A motive for the attack wasn’t immediately known, and no one was arrested by early afternoon. Sheriff’s spokesman Robert Carroll said authorities were interviewing “persons of interest” in the shooting, the Daily Herald reported.

Police were at the strip mall before the shooting to monitor the gathering, but were called away because of a nearby fight, the sheriff’s office said. “They heard gunshots and immediately returned to the scene,” the sheriff’s office said.

“We transported numerous victims from the scene. Others just walked into area hospitals,” said Eric Swanson, deputy chief at the sheriff’s office.

Rick Wagner, who lives nearby, said there were at least 300 people in the lot by 10:30 p.m. “We’ve had multiple conversations with police” about large groups meeting there, Wagner told the Daily Herald.

A witness, Markeshia Avery, said it was a Juneteenth celebration. Monday is the federal holiday commemorating the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

“We just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down until they stopped,” Avery told WLS-TV.

Another witness, Craig Lotcie, said: “Everybody ran, and it was chaos.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation.

“Gathering for a holiday gathering should be a joyful occasion, not a time where gunfire erupts and families are forced to run for safety,” Pritzker said.

The White House released a statement Sunday afternoon, saying that the “President and First Lady are thinking of those killed and injured in the shooting in Illinois last night. We have reached out to offer assistance to state and local leaders in the wake of this tragedy at a community Juneteenth celebration.”

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