Magician says political consultant hired him to create AI robocall
CONCORD, N.H. — A New Orleans magician said Friday that a Democratic consultant who worked for Dean Phillips’ presidential campaign hired him to create the audio for what authorities have said may be the first known attempt to use artificial intelligence to interfere with a U.S. election.
Paul Carpenter told The Associated Press he was hired by Steve Kramer to use AI to mimic President Joe Biden’s voice for the robocalls, which sought to discourage people from voting in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary last month.
New Hampshire authorities have said the recorded message, sent to thousands of voters two days before the Jan. 23 election, violated the state’s voter suppression laws. They have issued cease-and-desist orders to two Texas companies they believe were involved. The connection to the Louisiana magician was first reported by NBC News.
Phillips’ campaign denounced the calls and Kramer’s alleged actions, saying the $260,000 it paid him in December and January was for help getting on the ballot in New York and Pennsylvania.
Reached by text, Kramer referred questions Friday to political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who did not immediately respond to an email message.
Carpenter, a street magician who told NBC that he holds world records in fork-bending and straitjacket escapes, said he has been involved in making social media content for about 20 years. Screenshots he shared with NBC News and the AP include a text Kramer sent him three days before the primary saying he had emailed Carpenter a script.
Carpenter said when he made the audio, he thought Kramer was working for the Biden campaign.
Biden migration: President Joe Biden told the nation’s governors Friday that he’s exploring what executive actions he can take to curb migration across the southern border after a bipartisan deal collapsed in Congress this month. He seemed to express frustration at the legal limits of his authority to act unilaterally.
Biden hosted members of the National Governors Association in the East Room, where he implored them to urge their representatives in Congress to resurrect the bipartisan proposal.
Later, during a private session with the governors, he indicated he was mulling his options for taking action by executive order.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Democratic vice chair of the governors’ group, said Biden cited federal courts overruling some of former President Donald Trump’s immigration actions, and a desire to avoid a similar fate with any action he took.
Cellphone location data cited in a court filing Friday raises questions about the testimony given by a special prosecutor in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump who had a romantic relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The cellphone location data, disclosed in a court filing by Trump’s attorneys, shows prosecutor Nathan Wade had visited the neighborhood south of Atlanta where Willis lived at least 35 times during the first 11 months of 2021, an investigator said. Wade had testified that he had been there
Ga. Trump prosecutor:
fewer than 10 times before he was hired as special prosecutor in November 2021.
The new filing raises fresh questions about the timeline of the relationship between Willis and Wade as Trump and other defendants, who are accused of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, have argued that both prosecutors should be removed from the case because their romantic relationship created a conflict of interest.
Ex-FBI informant: A federal judge in California will consider whether a former FBI informant charged with lying about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden’s family must remain behind bars while he awaits trial after prosecutors pushed to have him locked up over fears that he would flee the country.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts in Las Vegas earlier this week allowed Alexander Smirnov to be released from jail on electronic GPS monitoring. But U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II ordered Smirnov to be returned to custody after prosecutors asked Wright to reconsider the earlier ruling releasing him.
Wright has set a hearing for Monday in Los Angeles on prosecutors’ request to keep Smirnov in jail. Smirnov was returned to custody Thursday morning.
Wright wrote in court papers unsealed Friday that it had come to his attention that defense attorneys were again pushing for Smirnov’s release in Nevada — which the judge added was “likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.”
A woman who traveled to Syria as a teenager to join the Islamic State group lost her appeal Friday against the British government’s decision to revoke her U.K. citizenship, with judges saying that it wasn’t for them to rule on whether it was “harsh” to do so.
Shamima Begum, who is
UK Islamic State bride:
now 24, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in February 2015 to marry IS fighters in Syria at a time when the group’s online recruitment program lured many impressionable young people to its self-proclaimed caliphate. Begum married a Dutchman fighting for IS and had three children, who all died.
Authorities withdrew her British citizenship soon after she surfaced in a Syrian refugee camp in 2019, where she has been ever since. Last year, Begum lost her appeal against the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a tribunal that hears challenges to decisions to remove British citizenship on national security grounds.
Begum’s lawyers brought a further bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal.
All three judges dismissed her case and argued she had made a “calculated” decision to join IS even though she may have been “influenced and manipulated by others.”
Iraq oil refinery: Iraq’s prime minister announced Friday the reopening of the Beiji refinery, the country’s largest, which had been shut down for a decade after being damaged in the battle against the Islamic State extremist group.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that the refinery’s resurrection will enable Iraq to meet its oil derivative needs internally, saving billions of dollars annually.
The oil refinery in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, has not operated since the IS seized the town as part of its blitz across much of Iraq in the summer of 2014. The facility was heavily damaged in the fighting that ensued as Iraqi forces battled to retake control of the strategic site. Much of the refinery’s equipment was looted.
In August, al-Sudani announced the recovery in Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region of some 60 truckloads of supplies and equipment stolen from the facility.