Up First from NPR - School Shooting Investigation, Trump Trial, Swing States, Russian Propaganda In US

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Authorities are investigating the fatal shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, where a 14-year-old is charged with killing four people and wounding nine others. Donald Trump's legal team heads to court today, with key decisions about his January 6th trial expected ahead of the November election. Candidates are heavily focusing on swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia as the 2024 election nears its final stretch. And, two Russian nationals are accused of using U.S. influencers to secretly spread Kremlin propaganda online, already reaching millions ahead of the election.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhananov, Roberta Rampton, Brett Neely, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Jan Johnson.It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Lindsay Totty.We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis and our technical director is Hannah Gluvna.A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that the FBI visited the alleged shooter's home in 2023. In fact, it was local law enforcement that visited the suspect.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Investigators say a 14-year-old is responsible for killing four people at Appalachee High in Georgia. This is everybody's worst nightmare. What happened when investigators questioned the suspect last year before the attack? I'm Steve Inskeep with A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Today, a judge considers whether an indictment of former President Trump can move forward. The judge is responding to a Supreme Court ruling that puts some of the former president's actions beyond prosecution. What will she make of a revised indictment for Trump's effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat? Also, what do the presidential candidates' travel schedules reveal about the election?

And two Russians are charged with secretly pushing Kremlin propaganda to millions of Americans online. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. One year ago, the event that changed a region. Heavily armed Palestinian militants in Gaza flew across the border. The October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel. Do you feel like there's more on your to-do list than you can accomplish? Or maybe the world's problems feel extra heavy these days. We can't eliminate stress,

but we can manage it. It's almost like I have a new operating system now. Like I tend to live more in this light. Stress Less, a quest to reclaim your calm. A new series from NPR's Life Kit. Hey, it's Mike and Ian.

We're the hosts of How to Do Everything from the team at Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Every week we take your questions and find someone much smarter than us to answer them. Questions like, how do I safely jump out of a moving vehicle? How do I dangerously jump out of a moving vehicle? We can't help you, but we will find someone who can. Listen to the How to Do Everything podcast from NPR. The investigation of a mass shooting in Georgia has revealed an especially painful detail. Back in 2023, local law enforcement visited a father and his 13-year-old son. They were

investigating online threats and photos of guns online. The father and son denied everything and the father said the guns in the house were secure. Now the FBI says the son is the same person accused of killing four people yesterday. Grant Blankenship of Georgia Public Broadcasting has some sounds of the aftermath. Wednesday night, Georgia Bureau of Investigation head Chris Hosey revealed the accused was known to law enforcement. Last year, the FBI passed concerns about the alleged shooter to the sheriff in the neighboring county where the family then lived. They conducted an investigation at that time and there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action. Investigators say yesterday he used an AR-15-style rifle to kill in Maine.

This hits home for us. That's Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Being from Athens just down the road, Marty and I having a daughter that taught first grade just a few years ago, this is everybody's worst nightmare. He insisted now is not the time to ask policy questions. Today is the day for an investigation to mourn these precious Georgians that we have lost. Earlier, community residents gathered to remember the dead and pray for the recovery of survivors. And so today we pray for him that somehow... They also prayed for the 14-year-old boy accused of killing two other classmates and two teachers at Appalachee High School.

And the hold that evil has on him will be released. And for some cure to whatever ill led this shooter and others to violence. Earlier at the neighboring elementary school, Tina Rongi worried about her grandchildren and their classmates. These poor kids aren't going to be the same. They're not going to be the same. How can you be, she asked, after witnessing something like that? For NPR News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Winder, Georgia.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department appear in a federal courtroom today. It might be the last hearing before the November election in a case that accuses Trump of interfering with the peaceful transfer of power back in 2021. Because of the timing, voters may soon decide both the winner of the White House and Trump's legal fate. NPR Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson has been following the prosecution. Kerry, this summer, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to this January 6th case against Trump when it ruled that he had some immunity.

So how has the Justice Department responded since? This case has actually been on pause for eight months while we waited for the Supreme Court to act. And the court ruled former President Trump and future presidents have at least presumptive immunity from criminal liability for their official acts. That's why the special counsel in this case, Jack Smith, obtained a new indictment just in the last week. Smith scrapped part of the case that accused Donald Trump of leaning on the Justice Department to advance bogus theories of election fraud, and prosecutors also removed some references to what

Trump's White House aides told him about the election in late 2020, all to respond to the Supreme Court ruling. But Trump has called these new charges election interference. He claims they violate DOJ policy about taking big steps too close to an election. I asked the Attorney General Merrick Garland about that. He stood up for his prosecutors. The special counsel is required by the regulations to follow the policies of the Justice Department, including the election sensitivities policies, and I'm quite confident that he did so. So, Kerry, now it's up to the judge in Washington to figure out which parts of this

January 6th case against Trump can move forward. Any clues on how she might proceed? This judge, Tanya Chutkin, has been firm but fair in this case so far. She's a former public defender. She's also handed out some tough sentences against the lower-level people involved in the Capitol riot. Now she's got to figure out how to draw this line, which of Donald Trump's actions in the White House were part of his job as president, and which were more about personal gain in his behavior as a candidate for office. Now, there's no way this gets resolved before the election, and it might not even go to trial next year in 2025 because the Supreme Court might get involved again. Law professor Randall Eliason says one of the big fights will be about former Vice President Mike Pence. The vice president is kind of a gray area, so that will be a major

source of contention. Smith is arguing that what Mike Pence did here was not in his role as vice president, but in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, the legislative role. And prosecutors say there's no role for the president or the vice president in counting the votes. So the prosecutor's argument is that testimony about pressuring Mike Pence should be in bounds for this case. If the judge agrees and the case survives the election, a jury might someday hear from Mike Pence or at least see some of the notes he took. Prosecutors also say they have other evidence they want to introduce, perhaps things we don't even know about yet, but we may not read or hear about them before November. One more thing really quick. A different federal court today in Los Angeles where I'm at, another high-profile case. Tell us about that. Jury selection starts today in LA in

the tax fraud case against the current president's son, Hunter Biden. He's pleaded not guilty, but prosecutors have developed a pile of evidence about the salacious ways he spent money while hooked on drugs and while they say he failed to pay his taxes. NPR Justice Correspondent, Carrie Johnson, thanks. My pleasure. In the race for president, there is one way to tell which states are the most competitive. Just look at where the candidates are going. A candidate's time is the campaign's most limited resource. You can raise more money, but you can't raise more time. And

in this final stretch of 2024, seven states are getting almost all the traffic. Oh, it's good to be back in Georgia. Back in the great state of Michigan. Nevada. North Carolina. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin. So Arizona. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith has been looking at their schedules and crunching the numbers joins us now. Tam, what did you find? Well, since Vice President Harris entered the race, she and former President Donald Trump have made trips to each of those swing states at least once. Today, she's off to Pittsburgh, which of course is in Pennsylvania.

She's hunkering down there for debate prep. That's something she could have done at home, but she chose to do it in a key swing state. And she was just there earlier this week with President Biden. So hard not to notice that Trump and Harris have been to Pennsylvania a lot. A lot. This is a state that has been getting extra love from both Harris and Trump. Harris and her running mate Tim Walz held a rally in Philadelphia, did a campaign bus tour in western Pennsylvania. They're also spending big on television and digital advertising there. Trump has visited the state five times just since July,

with more stops planned. This is a state that helped him win the presidency in 2016. And in 2020, he narrowly lost the state. He wants to win it back. In addition to all the rallies, Trump and his allies have booked more than $70 million worth of television ad time in Pennsylvania between now and election day. That's according to the tracking firm Ad Impact. And just to put that into perspective, that's more than Team Trump has reserved in all the other battleground states combined. Yeah, seven of those. So why so much time and money in Pennsylvania? I called up David Urban to talk about this.

He ran Trump's Pennsylvania operation in 2016, and he thinks the race there will be very tight again. And there's a big return on investment for going there. Pennsylvania carries a lot of votes in the Electoral College. And Urban says there's also a practical reason both campaigns are spending so much time there. It's close to home. Geographically, it's easy, right? Arizona and Nevada, you've got to go all the way across America to go to Pennsylvania, both for Harris and for Trump.

It's a 20-minute flight. So Trump is working to drive up turnout among the state's white working class voters outside of the major cities and really aiming to win the same way he did in 2016, though he's also hoping to make gains with Black and Latino men. Now, you mentioned that bus tour that Kamala Harris did in Pennsylvania, and you were on another one with her in Georgia last week. What was the strategy there? Well, Harris's campaign is trying to boost turnout in cities and suburbs, but they're also trying to cut into Trump's margins in more rural parts of both of these states. The bus tour I was on last week was in and around Savannah. That's a city that hasn't

seen a general election candidate since the 1990s. Here's Quentin Fulks, Harris's deputy campaign manager. We're talking about some of these states that are being decided by 12,000 votes. It doesn't matter if those votes come from Atlanta, or it doesn't matter if those votes come from Savannah or Augusta, or somewhere more rural Georgia from Slot County, my hometown. The Trump and Harris teams have each reserved about $39 million in ad time in Georgia, a sign they both see it as winnable. Another state I'm watching, North Carolina, that's been getting a lot of candidate FaceTime. Wherever the candidates go, NPR's Tamara Keith will follow. Tam, thanks. Indeed, you're welcome. Federal officials accuse Russia of using unwitting right-wing influencers in the United States to spread Kremlin propaganda ahead of the November election.

The Justice Department charged two Russian media employees in this scheme. Investigators say they helped to publish online videos that received 16 million views on YouTube and other social media platforms. NPR's Shannon Bond covers foreign influence campaigns. Shannon, so walk us through the criminal case that the Justice Department is bringing. Well, officials say two employees of Russian state media broadcaster RT secretly funded and directed the production of hundreds of these videos on social media. And the videos were often consistent with Russia's goals of exacerbating domestic divisions and undermining support for Ukraine, but without disclosing that RT or Russia was behind the videos. And officials say the reason that RT did this is that after

Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, American cable distributors had dropped the channel and it actually ended up pulling out of the U.S. altogether. And so this was a way of continuing to spread pro-Russian narratives to the American public. So how did this alleged scheme work? Yeah, so the indictment says these RT employees funneled nearly $10 million to this Tennessee company that goes unnamed in the indictment. But details in the indictment are an exact match for a company called Tenant Media. This was founded by Lauren Chen. She's a conservative Canadian influencer and Liam Donovan. And they allegedly worked with the RT employees, who they knew were Russian,

to recruit influencers with large audiences to make these videos. And what are they saying? Well, Chen and Donovan did not respond to NPR's request for comment. What the indictment says is that RT employees were really pushing for these influencers to do things like share the company's videos. They got annoyed when they didn't think they were promoting them enough. They pushed for angles that echoed Kremlin narratives. So, for example, an RT staffer wanted the company to blame Ukraine for a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, even though ISIS had claimed responsibility.

Now, the influencers, Shannon, who are the influencers here and why would they do this? Right. These are some really well-known names in right-wing circles, including Tim Pool and Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin. The indictment says they did not know about these ties to Russia. The company's founders and the RT staff allegedly told some of them that there was a wealthy European banker behind the project. But these contracts that they were offered were lucrative. According to the indictment, one influencer was being paid $400,000 a month, plus an additional $100,000 signing bonus and other performance bonuses for four videos a week.

Several of these influencers, including Poole, Rubin, and Johnson, have put out statements saying they were victims here. They were deceived. Now, a couple of months away from the election, Shannon, I mean, how does this all fit in the larger pattern of foreign efforts to target American voters? That's right. I mean, these efforts are escalating, Aating. We're hearing more and more about them. Yesterday, U.S. officials also announced that they had taken down separately a set of Internet domains involved in a separate Russian influence operation. We have Iran recently

blamed for trying to hack both the Trump and Harris campaigns. We have China targeting American voters, according to the intelligence communities and researchers. And a lot of these efforts so far have not been very effective when we see these kind of influence operations. What's notable about this RT video operation, it's one of the few that's actually managed to get in front of a lot of people. And it's probably because of these influencers. That's NPR's Shannon Bond. Shannon, thanks. Thanks so much. And that's a first for Thursday, September 5th. I'm E. Martinez.

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