China’s Sway in N.Y. Elections, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s D.O.J. Interview

0:00This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close, and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.

0:37Today's Monday, August 25th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45Today marks two weeks since President Trump announced he was sending more than a thousand National Guard members and federal law enforcement agents into the streets of D.C. to fight what he called out-of-control crime. Soldiers have been patrolling the National Mall. Are you proud of what you're doing? Protests have sprung up at improvised security checkpoints where agents have been stopping and searching cars. And videos have spread online of people being pulled from their vehicles or wrestled to the ground and detained. The White House has celebrated this operation as producing hundreds of arrests.

1:23So last week, I went to the federal courthouse to see exactly what types of cases are being created by this crackdown. Devlin Barrett covers federal law enforcement for The Times. He says that most of the arrests have been immigration-related, and those go to immigration court, where reporters aren't allowed to observe. But the cases he could see suggest things are operating very differently than they did before Trump's crackdown. Sitting in federal court, I was struck by how many federal agents and cops are being used to make single arrests for relatively minor crimes. In some cases, it appears that they're having 12 agents and cops arrest a single individual who's either, you know, sitting in a car with an open container of alcohol or who's vandalizing a streetlight.

2:13That's not something that a federal agent would normally get involved in. But when you send, for example, a dozen federal agents to arrest a guy for an open container of beer, and then while he's in handcuffs, he supposedly resists arrest and he's charged with a felony assault or resisting of a federal officer, what started as a pretty mundane arrest is now a case that carries a possible eight-year prison sentence. Devlin says that to many defense lawyers and even some prosecutors, the push to charge what might have been low-level misdemeanors as serious federal crimes may artificially inflate the effectiveness of the crackdown.

2:56Trump recently said he wants to use his show of force in D.C. as a model for what he'll do in other parts of the country, including Chicago and New York City.

3:10Now, a few other quick updates on the Trump administration. Good morning, Ms. Maxwell. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. The Department of Justice has released a recording of the Deputy Attorney General's recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, who's behind bars for helping him traffic underage girls. The meeting, which took place last month, came as the administration was trying to tamp down a surge of allegations that it wasn't being transparent enough in the Epstein case. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.

3:46In the interview, Maxwell claimed that there were no dark secrets about President Trump, who once considered Epstein a close friend. She also said there was no so-called client list of powerful people who could be implicated in the trafficking. Epstein's victims and their families objected to the interview happening at all, saying Maxwell had a strong incentive to tell the government what it wanted to hear. She's been lobbying to get her 20-year sentence reduced or overturned altogether. And shortly after the interview, Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp. Also, you're saying there's no meeting planned right now.

4:23Kristen, Kristen, I am awfully sorry you're not listening. There is no meeting planned. In an interview on NBC on Sunday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, dealt a blow to President Trump's efforts to end the war in Ukraine, saying there is no current plan for Russia to sit down with Ukraine. Trump had suggested that a Russia-Ukraine summit was imminent after he met with both Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky separately. But Lavrov's comments underscore just how far the two sides are from reaching any kind of peace deal. Last week, for example, Russia insisted that it needs to play a role in keeping Ukraine secure after the war is over, a condition many Ukrainian and European officials see as absurd.

5:08And the Transportation Department put out a directive last month that all crosswalks in the U.S. should be kept free of, quote, distractions. The department didn't specify what that meant, but last week in Orlando, Florida, officials painted over a rainbow crosswalk commemorating the 49 people killed in a mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in 2016. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy then wrote on social media, quote, taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks. Orlando's mayor condemned the move as callous and cruel. Protesters have since repainted the memorial crosswalk, though it's not clear how long that will last.

6:00Over the past few decades, China has developed a vast influence network around the world, which is aimed at swaying public opinion. This has played out in countries like Canada and Australia. And my colleagues and I were surprised to find that it's actually here in New York City as well, where the Chinese government and people working at their behest have influenced elections. Michael Forsyth is an investigative reporter at The Times. He's been tracing how the Chinese government has specifically leveraged a network of ethnic Chinese community groups in the city. The groups host dinners and parades and welcome newcomers to the U.S., just like Irish or Italian community groups have always done.

6:40But the Chinese consulate has become increasingly involved with dozens of these organizations, sometimes putting pressure on their leaders to back Beijing's political agenda, and even going so far as to have them take oaths to defend Chinese interests. And while many countries, including the U.S., have meddled in foreign elections, Michael says the Chinese effort is one of the most expansive and effective. Consular officials will often meet with the leaders of these groups and sometimes pass the word on about supporting or opposing certain candidates. And our investigation focused on three candidates at three levels of government, the city council level, the state senate level, and the U.S.

7:22Congress. In all these instances, the candidates held positions that were counter to the Chinese government positions, such as more civil liberties in Hong Kong or sympathy for Taiwan and its democracy. And in each of those three instances, the Chinese government influenced community groups in New York City to defeat those candidates. Experts tell us there's two reasons why the Chinese government does this. One is to control the narrative in the diaspora community, quashing dissent so that any opposition does not spread back home into China. Another reason is to cultivate officials in the Chinese American community who someday might have a future in higher levels of government.

8:04Maybe one of these candidates that they support on the local level can someday rise to Congress, Senate, or even the presidency. A spokesman for the Chinese consulate general denied it had influenced U.S. elections and said it strongly rejected, quote, any malicious accusations and smears. You can find the full investigation at nytimes.com.

8:32And finally, an anonymous prankster put up a website recently claiming he'd gotten access to some truly high-level intel. Some very personal stuff.

8:45Like that Vice President J.D. Vance puts on the Backstreet Boys when he's making dinner.

8:54or that House Speaker Mike Johnson loves a little Cyndi Lauper

9:01and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is an Ed Sheeran fan. The website claimed all of this data could be easily scraped from Spotify, that you could find the listening habits there of not just politicians, but billionaire CEOs, celebrities and other public figures. The music pics of two New York Times tech reporters were even included on the site. Now, not all of the leaked playlists have been confirmed as accurate. A dozen or so of the tech and media figures listed on the site told the Times they were real, but most of the politicians didn't respond. The Times has since talked with the prankster, the man behind the site.

9:36He's a 23-year-old engineer who said he used bots to collect the data. He said it was simple. You just type someone's name into the search bar, and there you go. Many users, especially with older accounts, may not realize their real name or email can be publicly attached to their account. Overall, the playlist dust-up has underscored how many people don't know what they're really sharing. A Spotify spokeswoman said all playlists have always been public, by default. To hide your past playlists, you'd have to go to each one and flick the switch to private, one by one. Those are the headlines today on The Daily.

10:16Inside the AI hiring war that has companies offering quarter of a billion dollar packages to snap up top talent. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

10:34This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close, and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size.