Evan Osnos:

Yes, this, in a sense, is the culmination of the issues we have been talking about. From the very beginning, Jared Kushner had trouble getting a security clearance, partly because he had these very complex business interests around the world, he wasn’t willing to divest himself of those.

And then also, of course, at the very beginning, he made errors when he filed for his clearance. He left off contacts with more than 100 foreign officials, later amended those forms. But after 13 months in office, usually, a senior White House official has their clearance. They’re fast-tracked. He hadn’t gotten it.

And by last month, we were hearing from members of the intelligence community, law enforcement that they were concerned. They felt that there was something in his profile, in his portfolio that meant he ultimately couldn’t receive that.

And for that, it’s very hard to work at that high level in the White House if you don’t have access to that intelligence.

A federal official said Wednesday that about 800 “criminals” avoided immigration arrests because Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf alerted the public to the surprise operation, an extraordinarily high number of missed targets.

Thomas Homan, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director, told Fox News that the mayor’s warning on Twitter was “beyond the pale” and compared her to a gang lookout who tells people when a police car is arriving. Homan said the Justice Department is looking into whether Schaaf obstructed justice.

The mayor’s unusual public warning last weekend came hours before the agency launched an operation in Northern California that resulted in more than 150 arrests as of Tuesday, according to the agency.

The agency declined to elaborate on the 800 who allegedly got away or answer other questions about the operation that began Sunday. Danielle Bennett, an agency spokeswoman, said more information would be released later in the week.

John Torres, the agency’s director during the end of George W. Bush’s administration and beginning of Barack Obama’s, said agents generally capture about 40 percent of people they target in such sweeps.

Targets often elude authorities because agents don’t have search warrants and advocacy groups have waged public awareness campaigns urging people not to open their doors. Other times, agents have outdated addresses or targets are not home.

It was unclear how many people would have eluded capture without the mayor’s warning but Homan squarely blamed her for 800 and said her actions jeopardized officer safety.

“There’s over 800 significant public safety threat criminals, these are people who are here illegally and committed yet another crime, been convicted of a crime,” he told Fox. “She gave them warning, and there’s 800 that we were unable to locate because of that warning, so that community’s a lot less safe than it would have been.”

Homan’s statement of 800 missed targets — plus the 150 arrests — in only three days suggests an unusually large operation by the agency’s standards. Two weeks ago, it arrested 212 in a five-day operation in the Los Angeles area. A Texas operation in February resulted in 145 arrests over seven days.

The agency said about half of the people arrested in the San Francisco area have criminal convictions in addition to immigration violations, including convictions for assault, weapons offenses and driving under the influence. It is impossible to independently verify that claim because the agency refuses to name them. Its statement released Wednesday identified only one arrest by name.

Schaff on Saturday issued a statement on Twitter that she learned from “multiple credible sources” that an immigration operation was imminent in the San Francisco area, including Oakland, possibly within 24 hours.

The mayor, who is running for another term this year, defended her actions again on Wednesday, saying she was not tipped off by “official sources” and that she didn’t reveal specific locations.

Asked about Homan likening her to a gang lookout, she said the “Trump administration is trying to distract the American people, convince them that these immigrants are dangerous people. That could not be further from the truth and it is based in racism.”

Lara Bazelon, an associate law professor at the University of San Francisco, said it was highly unlikely that the mayor would be prosecuted.

“It’s a tall order for ICE to show that she was obstructing justice because they would have to show she knew they were going after specific people and I just don’t see the evidence for that,” she said.

The warring words are the latest sign of escalating tension between California officials and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement and “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Homan vowed that immigration agents would have a stronger presence in California since a state law took effect in January to sharply limit cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who attended a protest outside the agency’s San Francisco office, said immigration officials did not respond to his demand that attorneys be allowed to interview people detained in the operation.

Booking logs at the Sacramento County jail show at least 12 people booked there by the agency on Sunday.

Dozens of protesters marching outside the agency’s offices in San Francisco after Homan spoke chanted, “Shut down ICE!” David Chiu, a Democratic state assemblyman, said Trump “has declared war on our immigrant communities.”

“We’re here to stand united and say we do not want him ripping apart our families, ripping apart our economy, ripping apart California,” he said.

Homan, in announcing the arrests late Tuesday, renewed his warning that California’s limits on cooperating with ICE in local jails will lead to a bigger presence of immigration agents on the streets.

“Sanctuary jurisdictions like San Francisco and Oakland shield dangerous criminal aliens from federal law enforcement at the expense of public safety,” he said.

——

Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Paul Elias and Terry Chea in San Francisco contributed.

(CANBERRA) — More than 57,000 illegal firearms including a rocket launcher and machine guns were handed in during a recent Australian amnesty in which gun owners could surrender such weapons without penalty.

The government and some gun policy analysts were surprised by the large number of weapons that were surrendered in the first nationwide amnesty since 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state and galvanized popular support for tough national gun controls.

A virtual ban on private ownership of semi-automatic rifles and a government-funded gun buyback cut the size of Australia’s civilian arsenal by almost a third.

The government said Thursday the three-month amnesty that ended in September collected 57, 324 firearms, including almost 2,500 semi-automatic and fully-automatic guns — the rapid-fire categories particularly targeted after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

“It was a very, very good result,” Law Enforcement Minister Angus Taylor told The Associated Press.

“This is another step in the process of making sure that we keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and gangs, and we keep Australians safe and secure,” he added.

Taylor declined to comment on whether the United States and other countries should follow Australia’s example after the recent Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people.

“I’m not going to give advice to other countries. This is working for us,” Taylor said, referring to national gun controls.

Before the amnesty, Sydney University gun policy analyst Philip Alpers predicted it would only collect “rubbish guns” that were not valued by legitimate gun owners or criminals.

“It’s a resounding success. I think it exceeded everybody’s expectations. I was astonished,” Alpers said on Thursday.

Key to the success over several state-based amnesties that have occurred since the 1996 massacre was that licensed gun dealers had agreed to act as collection points. In previous amnesties, the guns have had to be surrendered at police stations.

The amnesty report said a rocket launcher had been handed into a gun dealer rather than police. The dealer said he understood it had been found in a local garbage dump in Queensland state.

Alpers said the surrender now of semi-automatic and automatic weapons that had been hidden in 1996 when they were banned suggested Australia’s mindset on guns was shifting and that controls had gained popularity over two decades.

Most illegal guns in Australia are considered to be in the gray market, meaning they were not registered or surrendered as they should have been, but are not considered black market guns owned for the purpose of crime.

The danger of those markets merging became obvious in 2014 when a man who professed support for the Islamic State group took hostages in a Sydney cafe armed with a gray market shotgun.

The gunman and two hostages were killed in a shootout with police.

A government inquiry into the siege recommended the government deal with illegal guns in the community.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson speaks at Vaux Big Picture High School in Philadelphia. A former HUD employee says she was demoted after refusing to comply with a request from the acting agency head that she “find money” to bankroll a costly remodeling of future HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s office.

Matt Rourke/AP

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Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson speaks at Vaux Big Picture High School in Philadelphia. A former HUD employee says she was demoted after refusing to comply with a request from the acting agency head that she “find money” to bankroll a costly remodeling of future HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s office.

Matt Rourke/AP

Updated at 10 p.m. ET

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Government Reform Committee sent a letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson Wednesday requesting “all documents and communications” related to the redecorating of his office and HUD’s handling of a whistleblower.

In a four-and-a-half page letter, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said he wants the documents in order for the committee to “determine whether HUD adhered to the applicable spending limitations” that apply to office makeovers. Gowdy is also requesting documentation involving the HUD employee who claims she was the subject of retaliation after refusing to exceed spending caps set for office redecorating.

He set a deadline of March 14 for the documents to be handed over to the committee.

Gowdy’s letter to Carson comes a day after reports surfaced the agency approved more than $31,000 on a new office suite dining room set. Additionally there are allegations brought by a former HUD official claiming she was told by her superiors that “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair.”

According to the New York Times, a “custom hardwood table, chairs and hutch” were purchased a month after a whistleblower complaint was filed alleging Candy Carson, the wife and informal adviser to the HUD Secretary, was pushing for elaborate modifications to the drab decor of the department’s offices.

The whistleblower Helen Foster, was a career HUD employee. She filed a complaint in November alleging she was demoted and replaced after refusing to exceed the legal $5,000 limit on redecoration. The existence of the complaint was first reported Tuesday by The Guardian.

Carson tweeted on Wednesday evening that he had done nothing wrong.

Thank you to so many who have expressed concern for me and my family over the latest accusations. Rest assured that there has been no dishonesty or wrongdoing by us. All the numbers and evidence are being gathered and a full disclosure is forthcoming. 1/2

— Ben Candy Carson (@RealBenCarson) March 1, 2018

In a statement, HUD spokesperson Raffi Williams denied Foster’s allegations of lavish spending, adding that while Carson did have different chairs in his office they were not new purchases, but rather ones that came from HUD’s basement.

“Secretary Carson, to the best of our knowledge, is the only secretary to go to the subbasement at his agency to select the furniture for his office. All the furniture in his office was purchased by the government prior to his arrival,” Williams said.

According to the Guardian, Foster was first urged by then-acting HUD Director Craig Clemmensen in January last year to help Carson’s wife get the funding to redecorate Carson’s office.

In an interview with CNN Tuesday, Foster said she was pressured and retaliated against for not following through on finding more money. She was also told that past administrations always found the funding.

“I had a bucket in my car because I would throw up on the way to work and on the way home from work every day, just out of anxiety,” Foster said.

In an interview with NPR, Foster’s Washington-based lawyer, Joe Kaplan, of the firm Passman Kaplan, said the pressure by HUD officials persisted “for several weeks, certainly into February” of last year.

According to Kaplan, when Foster told Clemmensen that she could not get around the statutory cap of $5,000 for redecorating, Clemmensen told her that amount could not even purchase a decent chair.

“I’ve sat in a lot of chairs that have cost less than $5,000, let me tell you,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said his client is seeking compensatory damages and reinstatment as HUD’s chief administrative officer. He adds that “a public apology by HUD would go a long way in restoring Helen’s reputation.”

HUD officials provided receipts that showed HUD spent $3,373 on window treatments, including wooden blinds, and an additional $1,100 on furniture repairs.

In a separate receipt, dated Dec. 21, an item labeled “Secretary’s Furniture Procurement” for the amount of $31,561 was made to the Baltimore-based contractor Sebree and Associates LLC.

Officials at HUD said the secretary did not purchase the dining room set. They said it was bought by “career staffers in charge of the building.” The old table and chairs from the mid-1960s were “deemed unrepairable.” NPR has not confirmed who gave the OK for that purchase and has sought clarity from HUD about why the purchase of the new table did not fall under the $5,000 new-decor cap.

The complaint over HUD’s decoration spending comes as the agency has been embroiled in other controversies in recent weeks. The Trump administration is proposing more than $8 billion in cuts to HUD’s budget, or more than 14 percent from current levels.

Carson is also facing allegations that he may have violated ethics rules by allowing his son, Baltimore businessman Ben Carson Jr., to organize “listening tours” for his father in that city last summer. The secretary has called on HUD’s inspector general to review whether there were any violations.

Kaplan, the lawyer for Foster, said the Office of Special Counsel could determine whether it will move forward and investigate Foster’s complaint as early as next week. The special counsel is separate from the Justice Department counsel investigating contacts between Russian officials and the Trump presidential campaign.

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The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.

Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.

Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

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The officials say systems in the seven states were compromised in a variety of ways, with some breaches more serious than others, from entry into state websites to penetration of actual voter registration databases.

While officials in Washington informed several of those states in the run-up to the election that foreign entities were probing their systems, none were told the Russian government was behind it, state officials told NBC News.

All state and federal officials who spoke to NBC News agree that no votes were changed and no voters were taken off the rolls.

According to classified intelligence documents, the intelligence community defines compromised as actual “entry” into election websites, voter registration systems and voter look-up systems.

NBC News reached out to all seven states that were compromised, as well as 14 additional states the Department of Homeland Security says were probed during the 2016 election.

To this day, six of the seven states deny they were breached, based on their own cyber investigations. It’s a discrepancy that underscores how unprepared some experts think America is for the next wave of Russian interference that intelligence officials say is coming.

Eight months after the assessment, in September 2017, the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally contacted election officials in all 50 states to tell them whether or not their systems had been targeted. It told 21 states they had been targeted, and U.S. officials acknowledged that some of those attempts had been successful.

“I think the Obama administration should have been doing much more to push back against the Russians across the board,” said Juan Zarate, an NBC News analyst who was deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush. “I think the U.S. was very meek and mild in how we responded to Russian aggression.”

Denis McDonough, who was Obama’s last chief of staff, strongly disagrees, arguing the administration acted to thwart the Russians before and after the election. Obama administration spokespeople also say they transmitted sensitive intelligence regarding state compromises to congressional leaders.

“The administration took a series of steps to push back against the Russians to include far-ranging sanctions, diplomatic steps to push people associated with the Russian effort out of this country and also warning our friends and allies,” he said.

The Trump DHS, like under the Obama administration, has declined to share the intelligence assessment of which states were actually compromised, according to state election officials.

This month, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the current head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said that “an exceptionally small number” of those 21 states “were actually successfully penetrated.” But Manfra declined to answer questions about the classified intelligence assessment, or to say specifically how many states had been penetrated.

Top election officials from all 50 states met in Washington this month for a National Association of Secretaries of State conference and received temporary security clearances for a classified threat briefing from intelligence officials. According to two officials present, one from the intelligence community and the other a state official, the actual intelligence on state compromises was not shared.

While numerous state election officials told NBC News that the Department of Homeland Security has been stepping up communications with them, many say they’re worried they are still not getting enough information from Washington.

Illinois itself had detected a “malicious cyberattack” on its voter registration system in the summer of 2016 and reported it to DHS, saying its voter rolls had been accessed but nothing had been altered. It is the only state to acknowledge actual compromise.

The other six states from the January 2017 assessment, however, say that when DHS told them last September that their systems had been targeted, it still did not tell them that their systems had been compromised. All six also say that based on their own cyber investigations, they believe their election systems were never compromised.

Three states said publicly in September that while some state websites were affected, none were directly related to voting; specifically, Texas, Wisconsin and California say some sites were “scanned.” But a former senior intelligence official told NBC News that these types of probes can also be serious, either as gateways to other networks or as reconnoitering for future attacks.

Fears of a repeat in 2018

Nearly 16 months after the presidential election, and more than eight months before the critical midterms, many state and federal officials are convinced the Russians will be back. They’re concerned that 2016 was laying the groundwork for a possible future attack.

“We have an extreme sense of urgency on insuring security of the 2018 elections, because you don’t get a chance to do it over,” said Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, who said there was no evidence of a successful hack in California.

Several state election officials, including Padilla, told NBC News they think they should have been told that U.S. intelligence agencies believed they’d been breached whether or not that turned out to be true.

“It is hugely imperative that intelligence be shared with state elections officials immediately in order to protect our election infrastructure and the integrity of election results,” Padilla said.

Reluctance to share the information may be due, in part, to the classification of the intelligence itself. Multiple intelligence officials told NBC News that determining the Russian government was behind the hacks depended on “exceptionally sensitive sources and methods” including human spies and eavesdropping on Russian communications.

No state election official at the time had a security clearance sufficient to permit access to such sensitive information, according to DHS.

“Look, whether or not state elections officials had the proper clearance has unfortunately been an excuse in my opinion, a bureaucratic response for why information or intelligence hasn’t been more quickly shared with state elections officials,” Padilla said.

“We’ve got to fix that right away, because it does us no good, [when somebody is] sitting in Washington, D.C., with a bit of information about a significant cyberthreat and elections officials and locals are completely unaware. That doesn’t help anybody and that needs to be addressed,” Padilla said.

Zarate said that he thought “too much of this has happened behind the veil of the government,” and that “much more has to be discussed openly with the public about what we know of the kinds of attacks that are happening, who may be behind them, and how we defend ourselves against [them].”

A spokesperson for Florida’s secretary of state, Mark Ard, said the state was informed by DHS in September 2017 that Florida had been targeted by hackers in 2016. “This attempt was not in any way successful and Florida’s online elections databases and voting systems remained secure,” Ard said.

Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said in a statement that his agency had not seen any evidence that any voting or voting registration systems in Texas were compromised before the 2016 elections.

The public information officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission said the commission has never detected a successful hack on its system, “nor has it ever been notified of one by the Department of Homeland Security or any other state or federal agency.”

A spokesperson for the Arizona secretary of state, Matt Roberts, said the state had still not been informed of a successful hack, and had seen no evidence of one. Roberts said the state had not been told that “ANY Arizona voting system has been compromised, nor do we have any reason to believe any votes were manipulated or changed. No evidence, no report, no nothing.”

Alaska did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but has previously denied that any breach occurred.

Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security, tried to lift the veil and find out what U.S. intelligence knew about the Russian attempts to compromise the voter system. He sued for disclosure of government files and won last week, receiving 118 top-secret pages from the intelligence community. The pages referred to “compromises” and other breaches but the pages were almost completely blacked out for security reasons.

Said Moss: “The spreadsheets show that there were documented breaches of election networks. That there were documented, numerous documented instances of attempted breaches of state election networks, and that there was a widespread concern among several agencies in the intelligence committee about the sanctity and the integrity of these election networks.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it has been working with state and local officials for more than a year on the issue.

“This relationship is built on trust and transparency, and we have prioritized sharing threat and mitigation information with election officials in a timely manner to help them protect their systems,” DHS acting press secretary Tyler Houlton said.

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“In addition to granting state officials clearances to give them access to classified information, we work to declassify information rapidly and have the ability to grant one-day waivers when necessary to provide state officials with information they may need to protect their systems.

“We are committed to this work and will continue to stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have the confidence that their vote counts — and is counted correctly.”

A statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said only: “The declassified Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6, 2017, found that Russian actors did not compromise vote tallying systems. That assessment has not changed.”

Next steps

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the National Security Agency director, Adm. Mike Rogers, acknowledged that the White House has not directed him to try to stop Moscow from meddling in U.S. elections.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that was “outrageous” and asked whether the U.S. was in a position to stop Russia from “doing this again.”

“We’re taking steps but we’re probably not doing enough,” Rogers said.

“I want to know, why the hell not?” McCaskill shot back. “What’s it going to take?”

While the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are taking steps to shore up cyberdefenses, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress this month that the instructions did not come from the top.

When Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., asked Wray if the president had directed him or the bureau to take “specific actions to confront and blunt” ongoing Russian activities, Wray said, “We’re taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt Russian efforts.”

Reed then asked, “Specifically directed by the president?” Wray answered, “Not as specifically directed by the president.”

The White House on Tuesday pushed back on any suggestion they’re not doing enough, saying President Trump is “looking at a number of different ways of making sure that Russia doesn’t meddle in our elections.”

For the future, Zarate suggests taking a lesson from the past.

“After 9/11, the walls between law enforcement and intelligence sources had to be broken down in order to connect the dots,” Zarate said. “There has to be a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to dealing with what is an assault on American democracy.”