--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, September 5th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, a hearing that'll determine the future of one of Trump's criminal cases, how Iranian hackers are trying to interfere with the U.S. election, and why Venezuela has rescheduled Christmas. But first, a mass shooting at a high school in Georgia left four people dead and sent at least nine others to the hospital.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The suspect is a student named Colt Gray. He was 14 years old, alive and in police custody. He's accused of killing two 14-year-old boys and two math teachers at Appalachee High School.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a press conference, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation provided a timeline of how events unfolded yesterday morning in Winder, about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta. Director Chris Hosey said the first call reporting an active shooter came in just before 10:30 a.m. The school was locked down, and so were others in the area.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Within minutes, law enforcement was on scene, as well as two school resource officers assigned here to the school who immediately encountered the subject within just minutes of this report going out. Once they encountered the subject, the subject immediately surrendered to these officers and he was taken into custody.
--:-- Shamita Basu: ABC News spoke with Alexandra Romero, a sophomore at Appalachee who described the terror she felt as they barricaded themselves in classrooms.
--:-- Alexandra Romero: The teachers came in and they were like, everybody get on the floor, cover yourselves. Like we were all like hugging each other. So we were all like, it was a small little ball of us like all holding each other. And I remember like my friends crying. They were all scared.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to Georgia officials, the suspected shooter will be tried as an adult. And the FBI revealed he was interviewed last year by local law enforcement about anonymous online threats on gaming sites that contained images of guns and warnings about a school shooting, which he denied.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the agency alerted local schools at that time and asked them to continue monitoring him. Authorities say he used an AR-style weapon, but they're still looking into how he obtained it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When sheriff's deputies spoke to him and his dad in 2023, his dad shared that they own hunting guns, but claimed any access was supervised.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a statement, President Biden said we cannot continue to accept mass shootings as normal. And he called on Congress to pass gun control measures, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and enacting universal background checks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Georgia Reporter, which is a local newspaper, says yesterday's tragic events are likely to spur similar calls in the state legislative session, which begins in January.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Coincidentally, a Georgia state Senate committee on safe firearm storage was already scheduled to meet for the first time this morning. But it's unlikely radical change will come. Both chambers of the Georgia state legislature are controlled by Republicans, many of whom are staunchly against many gun control measures.
--:-- Shamita Basu: According to the Washington Post, this was the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history. The Gun Violence Archive says the United States has had nearly 400 mass shootings so far this year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump, and a hearing today that might determine how at least one of them could move forward.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A few weeks back, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts committed while in office. Because of that ruling, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed an updated federal indictment against Trump to try to salvage the case against him for allegedly obstructing the 2020 election.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Devlin Barrett is a law enforcement reporter for The Washington Post and has been keeping track of all of these developments.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: What that means when you read the document is that there are a lot more references to private conduct, campaign conduct, and they have stripped out references to him talking to White House aides or other government officials because they, per the Supreme Court ruling, that seems off limits.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: Today, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkin will hold a hearing to figure out, in part, which elements of this case can proceed to a trial and which will get tossed out.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: Barrett says this process could be extremely complicated and drawn out, and it's likely this case could end up before the Supreme Court.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: One of the things the Supreme Court ruling said was that it may be that Trump's conversations with Mike Pence, for example, which is one of the pieces of evidence still in the case, are covered by immunity.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: It may be, the Supreme Court said, that some of his public statements or many of his public statements may be covered by immunity. And that maybe is obviously quite a large bunch of material.
--:-- Devlin Barrett: And so Chetkin is wrestling with this. Jack Smith is wrestling with this as the special counsel. But my expectation is that the Supreme Court is going to ultimately have to decide, well, you know, maybe it's fine, but is it or isn't it?
--:-- Devlin Barrett: So I do think this will ultimately get back to the Supreme Court. The case could be so drawn out, in fact, that Barrett says it's possible it wouldn't go to trial before next summer, if not 2026.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Supreme Court's immunity ruling is also impacting another case where there has been a legal resolution, the New York hush money case, where Trump was convicted earlier this year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In a few days, the state judge in that case is expected to decide whether that conviction should be thrown out because of the Supreme Court ruling or if he'll be sentenced.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's three possibilities here. One is simply that the sentencing goes forward on September 18th as scheduled. The other possibility is that the judge pushes the sentencing after the election, meaning he's not willing to toss the conviction, but he is willing to give Trump more time and essentially put off the sentencing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the third possibility is that he could decide that the conviction should be thrown out based on the immunity decision.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Barrett says it's hard to know what will happen. But he noted that often judges don't toss out their own convictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are growing concerns about foreign interference in our elections, with the U government specifically calling out Russia in an announcement yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Justice Department is seizing 32 Internet domains that the Russian government and the Russian actors have used to engage in a covert campaign to interfere and influence the outcome of our country's elections.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is taking a number of actions to push back on Russian influence campaigns in the upcoming election, including indicting two Russian employees of the Russian-owned media company RT who are accused of spending $10 million on an effort to spread disinformation in the United States on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Garland also called out other bad actors, including China and Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's take a moment to talk about how Iran is coming up in this space. It was, after all, linked to a recent breach of former President Trump's campaign.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNN reporter Evan Perez recently took a closer look.
--:-- Evan Perez: A few years ago, they were kind of nowhere on the scene. It was all China and Russia that had this kind of capability. The Iranians have come out of nowhere.
--:-- Evan Perez: Perez told us Iran's program is not as big or advanced as China's or Russia's, but their cyber strategy is getting more sophisticated, more aggressive, and more unpredictable, which has U.S. intelligence officials on edge.
--:-- Evan Perez: CNN got some insight into how Iran attempts these attacks. Back in 2022, this hacking group that recently targeted Trump went after a former member of his administration who was connected to John Bolton.
--:-- Evan Perez: You might remember Bolton was Trump's former national security advisor and a prominent Iran critic. The email basically says, we've been working on this book. We respect you and we would really like your input on these chapters. And it had a link for what was purported to be a manuscript.
--:-- Evan Perez: What was in that link, however, was malware.
--:-- Evan Perez: This year, hackers also targeted someone who had worked for the Biden administration, a former senior diplomat in the Middle East, with a similar email phishing scheme.
--:-- Evan Perez: It's unclear whether that phishing effort worked and the diplomat declined to comment to CNN for this story.
--:-- Evan Perez: What we do know is that these hackers appear to have a broad mandate to collect data that the Iranian regime might find useful for kidnapping or assassination plots.
--:-- Evan Perez: This summer, U.S. authorities were tipped off about a plot by Iran to assassinate Trump, which led to the Secret Service ramping up his security.
--:-- Evan Perez: And the Justice Department says Iran has tried to hire hitmen in the past to target people from both Trump and Biden's administrations.
--:-- Evan Perez: Perez explained how cyber attacks support these efforts. Some of it was about knowing whereabouts, getting documents, getting a little bit of more data points that they could use to help carry out assassinations.
--:-- Evan Perez: They're playing all of the different sides of this playbook.
--:-- Evan Perez: The playbook also includes strategies for sowing distrust among Americans.
--:-- Evan Perez: Perez says U.S. intelligence officials want you to be mindful of that as you browse social media, in general, but especially during this final stretch of the presidential election.
--:-- Evan Perez: Some of the stuff you're seeing online is being driven by bots that are operated by the Chinese, by the Russians and the Iranians.
--:-- Evan Perez: And all of it is to keep Americans fighting each other. That's all they want.
--:-- Evan Perez: And so when you see people, you know, picking fights online, you might want to consider whether it someone sitting in you know in their living room in Idaho or it someone in Tehran who wants you to pick fights with someone on the other political side.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, here are some other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Starting with this moment from former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney.
--:-- Liz Cheney: I don't believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates' names, particularly in swing states. And as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this.
--:-- Liz Cheney: And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.
--:-- Shamita Basu: in this way. Cheney, a Republican and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was speaking to students at Duke University.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They gave her a standing ovation for those comments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You might remember she broke from the party in 2021 after the January 6th insurrection, when she forcefully denounced Trump and voted to impeach him.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She spent her last months in office on the special House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Harris campaign has been courting her endorsement for weeks, in the hopes that it'll attract support from other anti-Trump Republicans.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Looking abroad in Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro has rescheduled Christmas, declaring that his country will now celebrate the birth of Jesus on October 1st.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Maduro's announcement comes five weeks after an election that opposition groups and independent observers say he did not win, despite him claiming victory.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His refusal to step down has led to protests and fears of wider unrest in the country that's already struggling from a debilitating economic crisis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is not the first time Maduro has moved Christmas for political purposes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Last time he did this was in 2013, when he moved up the timing for Christmas bonuses for government workers to just a few days before municipal elections.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This time, he says it's a call for peace.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Though just hours before Maduro's Christmas announcement, his government issued an arrest warrant for the opposition candidate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo recently said she plans to keep the iconic Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The decision has been met with swift backlash, coming from the public, conservation advocates, and even the Eiffel family, the living descendants of the original architect.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Time sums up some of that pushback.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One popular French account on X said, You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: New York Magazine has the story of a bitter feud in the world of paleontology. Two researchers with competing claims about the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
