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CNN
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday released a slew of documents that she said implicate members of the Obama administration for “treasonous” behavior during the 2016 election.

The claims confuse the allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the idea that Russia actively tried to change results by hacking into voting systems. CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Katie Bo Lillis went through them and talked to people who worked on a bipartisan Senate review of the 2016 election.

“Wildly misleading” is how the information was described by one source in their report.

But that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from accusing former President Barack Obama of treason, a crime punishable by death in the US, when he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Trump made the accusation while appearing at an event to discuss trade with Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Trump’s very long, meandering answer is a window into how his mind works. All roads lead back to immigration and his 2020 election loss.

Obama’s office issued a rare statement in response:

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” said spokesman Patrick Rodenbush. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

Here’s a look at what Trump said, along with some context from CNN reporting.

(Trump said all of this in the Oval Office, which he has bedecked with gold filigree, portraits from the White House vault and a copy, behind a curtain, of the Declaration of Independence.)

(From CNN’s report: The new allegations from Gabbard lean on assessments before the election and statements from Obama-era intelligence officials finding that Russia did not alter the election results through cyber-attacks aimed at infiltrating voting systems. But the January 2017 intelligence community assessment never concluded that Russian cyberattacks altered the outcome of the 2016 election or compromised any election infrastructure in the first place, though state voting systems were probed.

Instead, the assessment focused on Russia’s influence campaign ordered by President Vladimir Putin and cyber operations against US and Democratic Party officials, including the hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.)

(Treason, the crime of trying to overthrow the government, could be punishable by death in the US. Even when the Department of Justice during the Biden administration accused Trump of election interference for trying to upend the 2020 election, it did not accuse him of treason.)

(We anticipate seeing them, although previously promised document dumps have failed to live up to expectations.)

(The Steele dossier has been discredited, but the larger conclusion of the US intelligence community that Russia tried to meddle in the US election has stood. So has the Mueller report’s conclusion that there were interactions between Trump’s campaign and Russians during the 2016 campaign. Mueller’s report did not conclude that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russians or that Trump committed a crime. It also did not exonerate him.)

(At the time, few organizations published the full Steele dossier in large part because it could not be corroborated, unlike Russia’s election meddling, which was documented by US intelligence agencies.)

(Related: Read CNN’s 2021 report, The Steel Dossier: A reckoning)

(There’s no evidence for this type of conspiracy.)

(There’s still no evidence the 2020 election was rigged. There’s plenty of evidence that Trump tried to subvert the results. The inflation problem is not necessarily solved, especially if Trump’s tariffs go into effect.)

(Trump frequently tries to claim a large portion of undocumented immigrants are murderers. There’s no evidence for that. Read one of CNN’s Fact Checks of Trump’s claims about undocumented immigrants).

(Trump did win in 2024. It was far from a landslide.)

Hong Kong
CNN
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As the two biggest economic targets in Donald Trump’s trade war, some analysts thought the European Union and China could move closer together and stake out common ground.

But a summit between the two sides in Beijing on Thursday is instead expected to showcase the deep-seated frictions and mistrust that are widening a rift between the two heavyweights.

European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are set to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping and hold summit talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing.

The meeting comes as both countries have faced heightened tariffs on their exports to the US – with uncertainties in US trade relations driving Beijing to look to tighten ties with the EU and other major economies.

But a list of grievances between the two sides are setting that goal out of reach.

The EU was far from shy about its concerns in the lead up to the summit. Officials in recent weeks have reiterated their long-standing concerns over what they say are inexpensive Chinese goods “flooding” European markets, raised alarms about Beijing’s move to squeeze the rare earths supply chain, and decried its ongoing backing for Russia as it wages war in Ukraine.

Beijing has lashed out against those concerns, including the 27-member bloc’s move last year to raise tariffs on its electric vehicles, launching a range of its own trade probes in apparent retaliation.

After the EU last month announced it was barring Chinese companies from participating in public tenders for medical devices over a certain value, Beijing hit back with its own curbs on government purchases of Europe-made devices.

On Monday, China’s Ministry of Commerce slammed the EU decision to include two Chinese banks and a handful of other firms in its latest sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. It claimed the move would have a “severely negative impact on China-EU economic and trade relations.”

All this sets the stage for a contentious summit, ostensibly meant to celebrate 50 years of relations, that’s already been whittled from a planned two days to a single-day event.

“We should expect a very difficult moment and not a deal making moment,” said Abigaël Vasselier, head of the Foreign Relations team at MERICS think tank in Germany, during a media briefing this week.

And in some ways that mirrors frictions between the China and the US, she added: “China has created leverage over Europe, has gone into a tit-for-tat escalation with Europe, and has linked all issues. You could almost say this looks like a Trump playbook used by China on Europe.”

Trump’s trade war – and his negotiations with both major economies – is also casting a long shadow over the summit.

There were signs earlier this year that Beijing hoped shared adversity in the face of tariff threats from the US could push China and Europe together. And earlier this month, Beijing granted a reprieve for Europe’s major cognac makers following an anti-dumping probe widely seen as retaliation for the bloc’s imposition of up to 45% tariffs on its electric vehicles last year.

But in separate addresses to G7 leaders and European lawmakers in recent weeks, von der Leyen made clear the bloc’s deep concerns about Beijing had been unresolved.

“China is using this quasi-monopoly (on rare earths) not only as a bargaining chip, but also weaponizing it to undermine competitors in key industries,” she said to G7 leaders meeting in Canada in June.

Beijing has extensive control over supply chains for these critical minerals key in everything from EV batteries and cell phones to fighter jets and roiled global manufacturing after placing export controls on some such minerals amid its trade spat with the US. China agreed during a truce with the US in June to ease these controls.

Von der Leyen also called for unified G7 action to pressure Beijing as it “floods global markets with subsidized overcapacity that its own market cannot absorb.”

While von der Leyen has long been hawkish on Beijing, voices in China have seen her as pandering to the US to ease trade frictions – and are watching closely for signs that a potential US-EU trade deal could target their economy.

But China’s leaders are also joining this week’s summit in what they see as a relatively strong position relative to the EU when it comes the US talks.

Beijing sees its decision to play hardball with the US, by raising tit-for-tat levies and then showing the power of its rare earths leverage, as paying off – bringing the US to the negotiating table twice and resulting with an agreement for a trade framework.

Even as frictions remain – including China’s purchases of Russian oil and Washington’s elevated tariffs on Chinese goods – Beijing has already chalked wins, like the announced resumption of sales of Nvidia’s H20 AI chips to China, in a reversal of an April US export ban.

The EU, meanwhile, is scrambling ahead of an August 1 deadline to cut a deal with the US to avert heavy tariffs – and may see more at stake than their Chinese counterparts.

“The worst-case scenario would be for Europe to find itself in a two-front trade war with the US and China at a time when Trump is pressing for some sort of Faustian bargain with Beijing,” said Noah Barkin, a Berlin-based visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.

With this backdrop, chances for any concrete outcomes appear low to observers on both sides, who instead stress that dialogue can be a form of progress in itself.

Europe has been clear that it doesn’t want to cut ties with China, but rather “rebalance” its economic relationship, which saw a more than 300 billion Euro deficit last year. It also aims to “derisk” its supply chains, and work together with China on shared global issues like climate change – a potential area of agreement this week.

But experts say a key hold-up for Europe has been a sense that Beijing is unmoved by Brussels’ core concerns.

“We haven’t had an EU-China summit that produced real deliverables for many years and this one won’t be any different. That is a reflection of Beijing’s refusal to address the EU’s two biggest concerns: an increasingly imbalanced economic relationship that poses a growing threat to European industry and China’s ongoing support for Russia,” said Barkin.

China has rejected Europe’s concerns about industrial overcapacity leading to a flood of exports as baseless, with one state media outlet recently saying that instead of “rebalancing trade,” Europe to “needs to recalibrate its mentality.”

Instead, Beijing is expected to continue to push for setting minimum prices of Chinese-made EVs in Europe instead of tariffs, as well as unfettered access to European technology and markets. And even as Russia ramps up its assault on Kyiv, Beijing is unlikely to give any sign of a shift in that position on Moscow, its close partner.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told the European Union’s top diplomat earlier this month that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine as this could allow the United States to turn its full attention to China.

China has long claimed neutrality in the war and defended its “normal trade” with Russia, while ramping up purchases of its oil and shipping goods Western leaders say power Russia’s defense industry.

But observers in China still feel there’s room for collaboration as the two sides sit down on Thursday.

“To solve challenges from climate change to AI and global conflicts, the European Union needs China, and China needs the European Union,” according to Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing.

Alluding to the view that the EU can be a counterweight for China against US frictions and a partner in promoting globalization, he added: “If China and the European Union seek win-win cooperation, the so-called new Cold War cannot prevail.”

London
AP
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Hewlett Packard is owed more than £700 million ($943 million) by the estate of late British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his former finance director after they lost a fraud case involving Lynch’s software company, a UK High Court judge ruled Tuesday.

The court’s decision comes nearly a year after Lynch was killed when his superyacht sank off Sicily, where he had gathered with friends and family to celebrate his acquittal months earlier in a separate US criminal trial.

The US tech company, now known as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), had accused Lynch of fraud and conspiracy after it bought Lynch’s company, Autonomy Corp, for $11 billion.

HPE also took Lynch to court in the United Kingdom, seeking up to $4 billion in damages in a civil case. The High Court had ruled mostly in HPE’s favor in 2022, but the judge had said that the amount awarded would be “substantially less” than the company was seeking.

Judge Robert Hildyard was originally due to issue a draft ruling in September but delayed it after Lynch’s yacht, the Bayesian, sank in the storm off Sicily on August 19. Lynch and his daughter were among seven people who died while 15 others survived, including the captain and most of the crew.

In a written judgment, Hildyard expressed his “sympathy and deepest condolences” to Lynch’s wife and family.

Hildyard said HPE suffered a loss of £646 million based on the difference between Autonomy’s purchase price and what it would have paid had Autonomy’s “true financial position been correctly presented.”

HPE is also owed £51.7 million for “personal claims related to deceit and/or misrepresentation” against Lynch and Sushovan Hussain, the finance director, and $47.5 million for other losses.

Hussain was convicted in a 2018 US trial of wire fraud and other crimes related to Autonomy’s sale and sentenced to five years in prison.

“We are pleased that this decision brings us a step closer to the resolution of this dispute,” HPE said in a statement. “We look forward to the further hearing at which the final amount of HPE’s damages will be determined.”

A hearing to deal with interest, currency conversion and whether Lynch’s estate can appeal is set for November.

In a statement written before his death and issued posthumously, Lynch said the ruling shows that HP’s original claim “was not just a wild overstatement – misleading shareholders – but it was off the mark by 80%.”

“This result exposes HP’s failure and makes clear that the immense damage to Autonomy was down to HP’s own errors and actions,” he said.