The New York Times - USA (2020-08-01)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2020 Y A

Since Joseph R. Biden Jr. became the presumptive Democrat- ic nominee for president in April, the Trump campaign has spent $72 million in television advertising attacking the former vice president, with ads that veered rapidly on topics ranging from China to Mr. Biden’s age to policing poli- cies. None significantly slowed Mr. Biden’s rising poll numbers. On Tuesday, the messaging be- hemoth that has been the Trump campaign ground to a halt, as it temporarily suspended all television advertising nationwide in or- der to review its strategy under its new campaign manager, Bill Stepien. While the pause will likely be short-lived — in a tweet on Friday afternoon, the president said that they would be launching “a new ad campaign” on Monday — the sudden decision is yet another sign that the campaign is reckon- ing with a yawning deficit in battleground state polling and an in- ability to find a defining message against Mr. Biden. President Trump on Friday made the decision to resume television ads on Monday after a phone conversation with Mr. Stepien and Jason Miller, a senior strategist on the campaign, to dis- cuss their review. The first ad, seeking to define Mr. Biden as both a failure and a tool of the ex- treme left, was part of a national ad buy. But a campaign official said the next round of advertising would focus specifically on states that begin voting early. However brief, such a halt is un- usual within the final 100 days of a presidential election, though it is unlikely that the six-day pause will have a significant impact one way or another on the Trump campaign’s ability to persuade voters come November. And the campaign sought to downplay its sig- nificance, tying it to the arrival of Mr. Stepien, who took over from Brad Parscale earlier this month. Campaign officials noted that in 2016, Mr. Trump had not run a sin- gle television ad at this point in the race. But Mr. Trump’s first campaign was a shoestring operation, with little staff and minimal funds, while his 2020 team is sprawling, with $295 million in cash on hand and more than 1,500 staff members in the field. Indeed, the pause is noteworthy given the size of Mr. Trump’s advertising effort up till now: Since last January, the campaign has spent $202 million in television and digital advertising, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm. Mr. Biden, by com- parison, has spent about $95 million over the same period. If anything, Mr. Trump’s advertising spending has only in- creased recently: Since early July his campaign has spent over $ million on television and digital ads. Many of those ads sought to sow fear and division about the ra- cial justice protests around the country, and several falsely stated Mr. Biden was in favor of defund- ing the police (he has stated re- peatedly that he is not). The Trump campaign has been equally abundant in battleground states, spending $61 million since April across 11 states. It has also begun advertising in states that were previously considered safe for Democrats, like Minnesota, though it also has completely stopped advertising in Michigan. And even as the Trump campaign claims it is reassessing its messaging strategy, it uploaded a new ad to YouTube on Friday morning reiterating many of the messages it has been airing all spring and summer. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s main super PAC, America First Action, remains on the airwaves in four states, with $5 million reserved in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Arizona this week and next week. On Friday, the PAC added $860,000 to its buys in Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to Advertising Analytics. A second group, Restoration PAC, began a $2.5 million two-week buy in Michigan this week. The goal of the pause, officials said, was for Mr. Stepien to take a look at what television shows the campaign was advertising on and what time of day those ads were running, and then decide whether to tweak the mix to make sure the advertisements were reaching the right voters. Trump campaign officials have become concerned about when to spend the bulk of their money — they don’t want to run out, but they don’t want to be left with more than they need after mid-Oc- tober, when much of early voting is already completed. One Republican consultant close to the campaign said the best window for spending was right after the convention, when it would be in a place to go up and never have to come back down. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, still signs off on every large advertising expenditure, as he did when Mr. Parscale ran the

campaign. Mr. Kushner, a White House official said, agreed with the temporary pause, arguing that it was beneficial to the president to have fresh eyes looking at spending decisions. Some former Trump officials said it was a good move to step back in the middle of the summer, when there was still plenty of time to readjust. “Considering the curveball Covid threw into the political land- scape, it’s smart of the campaign to reassess what the most effec- tive messaging is and where and when to place their ad dollars,” said Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary who ran communications for the Republi- can National Committee in 2016. But other Republican observers questioned the wisdom of going dark so close to the election. “It’s too early to determine what impact the cancellation of TV has on the Trump campaign, but any time your opponent is running ads with no retaliation it can have significant impact,” said Sig Rogich, a Republican strategist from Nevada who worked on

George H.W. Bush’s campaigns and advised Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential bid. He recalled a moment in the 1988 presidential race when the Bush team spent an entire week between conventions as the only campaign on air, helping to erase the lead of his opponent, Michael Dukakis. But that was also before digital advertising became a major arm of a campaign’s messaging strategy, and the Trump campaign is still pouring millions into digital ads each day. It has dozens of ac- tive ads on Facebook, serving as both fund-raising ads and caustic attacks against Mr. Biden. Over the past week, the Trump campaign spent nearly $4.8 million on the platform — $575,000 on Wednesday alone, the most recent day for which spending data is available. Still, over all, the Trump campaign’s hundreds of millions in advertisements have sometimes seemed more of a show of force than a targeted buy. The campaign spent $10 million on two ads during the Super Bowl last year, and over $30 million has gone toward national advertising, a tactic criticized by some operatives as wasteful because it’s paying for time in safe states rather than targeted buys in battlegrounds. Some observers also said Mr. Trump missed an opportunity to take advantage of his incumbency and negatively define Mr. Biden as he was emerging from the pri- maries. When former President Barack Obama spent millions on ads attacking Mitt Romney during the summer of 2012, his messaging was disciplined. The Trump campaign has not had a similar focus. “It’s not just that the Trump campaign is behind, it’s that they’ve blown this historic opportunity to define an opponent, and its extraordinary,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist and former senior adviser for Mr. Romney’s campaign. “They basi- cally had the field to themselves and they still couldn’t score.” And now the Biden campaign is moving to close the gap. As Mr. Trump’s campaign goes off the air, the Biden campaign has made its biggest buys yet, targeting older voters in Nevada, Ari- zona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wis- consin with an ad on Mr. Trump’s response to the coronavirus. Mr. Biden has spent $21 million on television last week and this week, according to data from Advertis- ing Analytics, with the biggest share, $3.3 million, going to Flor- ida. Still, since taking over as campaign manager, Mr. Stepien has tried to project confidence about the president’s chances in Novem- ber. “We only need to win either Wisconsin or Michigan or Penn- sylvania to win this thing again,” Mr. Stepien told reporters last week. Mr. Stepien said he still saw the pick-up opportunities in New Hampshire and Minnesota that he had hoped for before the pan- demic shifted the race. And though it has temporarily paused its advertising, the Trump campaign still has more than $ million in television and radio ads booked through November, a number that far outpaces the Bi- den campaign’s. None of those reservations have been altered or shifted yet as part of the current review.

Trump’s Ad Campaign

Goes Dark and Regroups

This article is by Nick Corasaniti, Annie Karniand Shane Gold- macher.

$202M Amount Trump’s campaign spent on TV and digital ads since January.

$95M Amount the Biden campaign has spent on ads over the same period.

WASHINGTON — The acting
secretary of homeland security
said on Friday that he had shut
down an intelligence examination
of the work of reporters covering
the government’s response to pro-
tests in Portland, Ore., beginning
an investigation into what he sug-
gested was an infringement on
First Amendment rights.
The effort by the Department of
Homeland Security’s intelligence
and analysis directorate — first re-
vealed by The Washington Post —
in part targeted The New York
Times’s release of an intelligence
analysis indicating that as federal
agents in camouflage deployed to
quell the Portland protests, the ad-
ministration had little understand-
ing of what it was facing.
The acting secretary, Chad F.
Wolf, “is committed to ensuring
that all D.H.S. personnel uphold
the principles of professionalism,
impartiality and respect for civil
rights and civil liberties, particu-
larly as it relates to the exercise of
First Amendment rights,” said
Alexei Woltornist, the depart-
ment’s spokesman.
The intelligence office issued
three “open-source intelligence re-
ports” in the past week that sum-
marized the Twitter posts of a
Times reporter and the editor in
chief for the blog Lawfare, noting
that they had published leaked un-
classified documents.
Mr. Wolf ordered the intelli-
gence arm to “immediately dis-
continue collecting information in-
volving members of the press"
once he found out about the prac-
tice, Mr. Woltornist said.
One of the primary responsibil-
ities of the Department of Home-
land Security is sharing informa-
tion about national security
threats to state, local and federal
law enforcement agencies. The
gaps in communication about such
threats were among the motivat-
ing factors in creating a central
cabinet department to coordinate
security efforts after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks. The department of-

ten distributes reports to information-collecting “fusion centers,” which then disseminate the intelligence to relevant agencies and police departments across the United States. But such efforts were intended to focus on those with connections to terrorists or criminals, not journalists. The directive comes as the agency and its leaders face back- lash and investigations for their actions in Portland, where tactical teams of agents used tear gas and batons against protesters and forced individuals into unmarked vehicles. “This is highly disconcerting if true, which is why these things need to be investigated,” said John Cohen, who ran the intelligence office during the Obama administration. “At the very least, they have a perception problem because at no time should an intelligence com- munity organization be collecting and disseminating intelligence products on U.S. journalists.” “The politicization of intelligence or law enforcement activities is highly problematic and there always has to be a separa- tion between the intelligence- gathering law enforcement activities from the political agenda of the administration,” added Mr. Co- hen, who was also a senior adviser for the Bush administration. It is not the first time the department has used resources to focus on journalists. A Border Patrol agent, Jeffrey A. Rambo, was the subject of a federal investigation for obtaining the confidential trav- el records of a Washington jour- nalist and using them to press her about her sources in 2017. Emails obtained from Customs and Border Protection by the Re- porters Committee and the Com- mittee to Protect Journalists showed that Mr. Rambo was in touch with the F.B.I. around the time that he pressured the journal- ist, who now works for The Times. The reports issued by the department summarized tweets by Benjamin Wittes, the editor in chief of Lawfare, who had shared multiple internal documents, in- cluding one post on July 24 showing a memo warning intelligence

officers not to leak to the press. The reports also included another tweet by Mr. Wittes showing an email from Brian Murphy, the current acting under secretary for intelligence and analysis, telling officers to begin referring to individuals attacking federal facilities in Portland as “VIOLENT AN- TIFA ANARCHISTS.” Mr. Murphy said the intelligence office made the conclusion after reviewing so-called baseball cards of arrested protesters to understand their motivations. It came just days after a department intelligence report said the agency had “low confidence” that the attacks against the federal court- house reflected a broader threat. “We lack insight into the mo- tives for the most recent attacks,” they admitted in the briefing, which was first reported by The Times. The Senate intelligence committee sent a letter on Friday to Mr. Murphy, pressing him for more information about the matter. Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokes- woman for The Times, said that it was critical that the department not use such tactics on journalists. “The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged that its intelligence reporting system, designed to combat terrorism, has instead been misused to target journalists who were reporting on the controversial activities of federal law enforcement officers,” she said in a statement. “It is impera- tive that D.H.S.’s investigation de-

termines how this happened and ensures it does not happen again.” Mr. Wittes said there was noth- ing wrong with the agency sharing information about his tweets, noting that it prepared daily news clippings. “But to frame it as intelligence work product is a really odd thing,” he said. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the agency’s actions on Friday, saying they were part of a larger pattern. “Under Wolf’s leadership, D.H.S. was caught just last year unconstitutionally targeting and building dossiers on journalists reporting on conditions at the border,” the group’s senior legislative counsel, Neema Signh Guliani, said in a statement. “For weeks, D.H.S. agents have been deliber- ately and brutally attacking journalists covering the Portland protests. And documents show that D.H.S. intelligence arm appears to be claiming authority it does not have. This administration’s assault on the First Amendment con- tinues to escalate.” Gabe Rottman, a lawyer at the Reporters Committee for Free- dom of the Press, said that the department’s focus on journalists had broader implications. “Federal law prohibits the cre- ation of ‘dossiers’ on journalists precisely because doing so can morph into investigations of journalists for news coverage that em- barrasses the government, but that the public has a right to know,” he said in a statement. Mr. Woltornist said Mr. Wolf found out about the practice from news reports on Thursday night, prompting former officials to question the stability of leadership in the agency. The Department of Homeland Security has not had a Senate-confirmed secretary since President Trump ousted Kirstjen Nielsen in April 2019. “I’m concerned that what’s hap- pening is there’s a lack of control and when there’s a lot of turnover, it takes a while to learn the DNA of the department,” said Michael Chertoff, a former secretary for homeland security under Presi- dent George W. Bush. “It’s very hard to get a hold of the various components.”

U.S. ‘Intelligence’ Reports on Journalists Are Halted

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported
from Washington, and Marc Tracy
from New York.

By ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS and MARC TRACY

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security.

EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas — The deadly
confrontation between an armed
motorist and an armed protester
during a street demonstration in
downtown Austin over the week-
end began when the motorist
made a turn toward a crowd of
marchers and came to a stop.
The protester was Garrett Fos-
ter, 28, a former aircraft mechanic
for the U.S. Air Force who wore a
bandanna on his face and carried
an AK-47-type rifle on a strap in
front of him. The driver who fired
the fatal shots has now been iden-
tified as Daniel S. Perry, 33, an ac-
tive-duty sergeant with the U.S.
Army and a driver for a ride-share
company who had just dropped off
a customer nearby.
Days after the shooting that
stunned Austin, details of the en-
counter remain in dispute, with
different points of view from the
police, demonstrators and Mr.
Perry, who has not been charged
with any crime.
Mr. Foster was at the demon-
stration with his fiancée, Whitney
Mitchell, a quadruple amputee
who uses a wheelchair. Mr. Foster
was white, and Ms. Mitchell is
Black. The two of them had fre-
quently attended protests against
police brutality in Austin.
Demonstrators who witnessed
the confrontation have said in in-
terviews that Mr. Perry was driv-
ing aggressively in the direction of
the protesters and that Mr. Foster
approached the vehicle with his ri-
fle pointed downward. At that
point, they said, Mr. Perry pulled
out a handgun and shot him.
But in a statement released late
Thursday evening, Mr. Perry’s
lawyer disputed that version of
events.
Mr. Perry did not know that a
Black Lives Matter demonstration
was taking place when he turned
onto the street, said the lawyer, F.
Clinton Broden.
He said Mr. Foster approached
the car and motioned with his rifle
for Mr. Perry to lower the window,
and Mr. Perry complied because
he believed that Mr. Foster was as-
sociated with law enforcement. As
Mr. Perry realized that Mr. Foster
was not a police officer, Mr. Foster
raised the rifle toward him, Mr.
Broden said in the statement.
“It was only then that Sgt. Perry,
who carried a handgun in his car
for his own protection while driv-
ing strangers in the ride-share
program, fired on the person to

protect his own life,” he said. Mr. Broden said the police had interviewed witnesses who were marching with Mr. Foster and who had confirmed that he had raised his rifle “in a direct threat to Sgt. Perry’s life.” Immediately after the shooting, he said, a person in the crowd began firing on Mr. Per- ry’s car, so he “drove to safety and immediately called the police.” Mr. Foster’s family said they were certain that he had not threatened the motorist. “Everyone who was standing around said Garrett never raised his weapon,” his mother, Sheila Foster, said in an interview on Fri- day. “That man took away one of the best people on this planet.” A person who appeared to be Mr. Perry had posted in the past on Twitter about using violence against protesters. The Twitter ac- count has since been deleted, and Mr. Broden did not respond to que- ries about it. In June, President Trump posted a warning before his rally in Tulsa, Okla., writing on Twitter that any “protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!” The person who appeared to be Mr. Perry responded on Twitter: “Send them to Texas we will show them why we say don’t mess with Texas.” In another tweet in June, he wrote that shooting someone in their “center of mass,” or chest area, was the best way to take the person down. Mr. Foster’s comments before the shooting are also being scruti- nized. Earlier that evening at the demonstration, Mr. Foster was interviewed by an independent jour- nalist on Periscope about why he brought his rifle, and he said that “all the people that hate us” were too afraid to “stop and actually do anything about it.”

One police official who criticized that comment on social media has since apologized. The official, Ken- neth Casaday, the president of the Austin police officers’ union, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Foster “was looking for confrontation and he found it,” but he later apologized in another tweet “for my of- fensive choice of words.” Austin’s police chief, Brian Man- ley, said investigators were told that Mr. Foster was shot after he pointed his rifle at Mr. Perry. “Dur- ing the initial investigation of this incident, it appears that Mr. Foster

may have pointed his weapon at the driver of this vehicle prior to being shot,” Chief Manley told reporters on Sunday. Chief Manley said that a person in the crowd who had also opened fire — the gunfire that Mr. Perry had reported to the police — had done so after hearing the gunshots and seeing the car drive away. Mr. Perry called 911 after leav- ing the scene and told dispatchers that he had shot someone who had approached him and pointed a rifle at him. He was instructed to pull over. Both he and the person in the crowd who shot at the vehicle were interviewed by investigators and released. They both had state-issued handgun licenses. Mr. Broden said Mr. Perry had “fully cooperated with the police following the shooting and he con- tinues to do so.” Mr. Perry, who is stationed at the Fort Hood Army base in Killeen, Texas, and had served in Afghanistan, was driv- ing for the ride-share company as a way to make extra money, his

lawyer said. It was unclear which company he drove for. “We simply ask that anybody who might want to criticize Sgt. Perry’s actions, picture themselves trapped in a car as a masked stranger raises an assault rifle in their direction and reflect upon what they might have done if faced with the split-second decision faced by Sgt. Perry that evening,” Mr. Broden said in the statement. Mr. Foster’s mother said her son enlisted in the Air Force in the weeks after he graduated from high school in 2010 in the Dallas suburb of Plano, where he grew up. Months later, he and Ms. Mitchell became engaged, when they were both 19. In a matter of weeks, their lives changed — Ms. Mitchell collapsed at her grand- mother’s house. Her organs began to fail, as an infection caused sep- tic shock, a life-threatening condi- tion, Ms. Foster said. All four of her limbs were amputated. Mr. Foster spent two years in the Air Force but was discharged and began taking care of Ms. Mitchell. The couple lived in a house in North Austin that they renovated to accommodate her wheelchair and her health needs. “From the moment he got out, two years after he went in, he never left her side,” Ms. Foster said. “He brushed her teeth. He combed her hair. He did her make- up.” During a phone conversation she had with her son about a week before his death, his mother ex- pressed concern that the couple could be exposing themselves to danger at the demonstrations, which she knew he had been at- tending with his rifle. She asked her son who would take care of Ms. Mitchell if he were put in jail. She said her son replied: “Mom, it’s not going to happen. I’m not stupid. I know how to use a gun. I’m not going to point my gun at anybody.”

David Montgomery reported from
Austin and Manny Fernandez
from Houston. Bryan Pietsch con-
tributed reporting from Andover,
Minn.

Austin Driver

Is Claiming

Self-Defense

In Shooting

A vigil for Garrett Foster, an armed protester who was killed during an altercation with a motorist.

ANA RAMIREZ/AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

By DAVID MONTGOMERY and MANNY FERNANDEZ

Gunman is a sergeant

in the U.S. Army and

has not been charged.

The New York Times - USA (2020-08-01)

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