Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and members of the Trump Administration's Coronavirus Task Force hold a press briefing at the White House on January 31, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Sarah Silbiger | Getty Images
U.S. health officials have instituted a mandatory 14-day quarantine of Americans traveling from China, starting this Sunday, marking an extraordinary step in the Trump administration's efforts to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus which has sickened more than 10,000 people in Mainland China.
"I want to stress the risk of infection for Americans remains low, and with these and our previous actions, we are working to keep the risk," Azar said Friday, as he declared a public health emergency due to the virus.
The emergency declaration provides funding for states and local health officials to deal with the viral outbreak, and flexibility to reassign federal health workers in their communities to help with the response. It is a measure often enacted during national disasters.
This is the first time the U.S. has declared a public emergency due to viral contagion since the outbreak of the Swine Flu epidemic between 2009 and 2010, and the first time in 50 years that the U.S. has imposed a mandatory quarantine order. Federal health officials have resisted such extraordinary measures until now.
"The problem of enacting a quarantine is that it's such a disruptive social measure, economically, socially, culturally … that you only use it as your last resort, like your nuclear option," said Dr. Howard Markel, professor at the University of Michigan school of public health, who has studied quarantines and epidemics. "They can work if they're done very early, but only as a temporary measure to tamp down cases," Markel explained, adding that it is prudent to check and observe travelers who may have been exposed to a new "poorly understood easily transmittable infection."
Former health officials say mandatory restrictions on travel present a difficult balancing act, between proactively trying to contain a virus, while at the same time trying not to be too heavy-handed.
"The way virus spreads and the way in which you combat it is a lot like a forest fire … find it early and be able to smother it before it spreads," said Michael Leavitt, former Health and Human Services Secretary during the George W. Bush administration.
In China, the government estimates five million people left Hubei province before travel restrictions were imposed. For the 50 million people who remain on lock-down in the region, travel restrictions are now entering their second week.
"I don't think that's necessarily something that that's irrational in their situation," said Leavitt, but added "it's quite unproductive, in most cases, to try to restrict movement to the point that commerce just can't move because truthfully, that means the supply chain isn't operating."
Beyond the potential economic dislocations that arise from quarantines, most experts say widespread mandatory restrictions are not the best tool to contain an epidemic. In Liberia, mandatory quarantine measures during the deadly Ebola outbreak five years ago, it resulted in a massive public backlash.
"It caused a lot of protests. People found it difficult to get the things they needed like food, and work to support their families," Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
"When governments take very heavy-handed measures … If (people) don't perceive those to be in their best interest, then, I really worry about the ability to implement other control measures that we know are going to be effective," she said.
Secretary Azar has been mindful of the need to maintain public trust. Last week he told CNBC that transparency is key part of containing the spread of the coronavirus, to get people who are infected to seek treatment and to help track down others who they may have exposed to the virus.
"This is what solves public health outbreaks of infectious disease. It has in every instance in the past. It's what we did with the latest measles outbreak. It's what we're doing now," he said.
Still, on Friday Azar warned that if the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. likely rises over the coming days and weeks, the administration will continue to evaluate what further measures may be necessary.
PARIS/LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Airbus (AIR.PA) bribed public officials and hid the payments as part of a pattern of worldwide corruption, prosecutors said on Friday as the European planemaker agreed a record $4 billion settlement with France, Britain and the United States.
The disclosures, made public after a nearly four-year investigation spanning sales to more than a dozen overseas markets, came as courts on both sides of the Atlantic formally approved settlements that lift a legal cloud that has hung over Europe’s largest aerospace group for years.
“It was a pervasive and pernicious bribery scheme in various divisions of Airbus SE that went on for a number of years,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said.
The deal, effectively a corporate plea bargain, means Airbus has avoided criminal prosecution that would have risked it being barred from public contracts in the United States and European Union - a massive blow for a major defense and space supplier.
Prosecutors said individuals could still face criminal charges, however.
Airbus, whose shares closed down 1%, has been investigated by French and British authorities for alleged corruption over jet sales dating back more than a decade. It has also faced U.S. inquiries over suspected violations of U.S. export controls.
“In reaching this agreement today, we are helping Airbus to turn the page definitively” on corrupt past practices, French prosecutor Jean-Francois Bohnert said.
France’s financial prosecutor said the company had also agreed to three years “light compliance monitoring” by the country’s anti-corruption agency.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the deal was the largest ever foreign bribery settlement.
CODE NAME ‘VAN GOGH’
In a packed hearing at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, an Airbus lawyer said the settlements “draw a clear line under the investigation and under the grave historic practices”.
Outlining detailed findings, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said Airbus had hired the wife of a Sri Lankan Airlines executive as its intermediary and misled Britain’s UKEF export credit agency over her name and gender, while paying $2 million to her company. The airline could not be reached for comment.
On defense deals, Airbus hired and disguised payments to a close relative of a government official in Ghana with no aerospace experience in connection with a sale of military transport planes, the SFO said. Ghana’s government could not immediately be reached.
Court filings in Britain and the United States outlined efforts to keep relationships and payments secret, including the use of code names such as ‘Van Gogh’ and payments described as “medications and dosages prescribed by Dr Brown”.
The SFO said Airbus sponsored a sports team owned by AirAsia executives while negotiating airplane orders.
AirAsia officials have strongly denied any wrongdoing in connection with the 2012 sponsorship agreement between the Caterham Formula 1 racing team and Airbus’ then parent EADS.
AirAsia could not immediately be reached for comment.
The British investigation also identified bribery allegations involving Taiwan’s TransAsia Airways, Garuda Indonesia (GIAA.JK) and Citilink Indonesia.
Garuda and Citilink did not immediately respond to requests for comment. TransAsia went bankrupt in 2018.
The U.S. court documents outlined bribery and lavish hospitality involving plane sales to China.
NETWORK OF MIDDLEMEN
French and U.S. prosecutors said the settlement covered Airbus only as a company and any current or former employees involved in related crimes could still be open to prosecution.
“With this settlement we’ve completed a first phase ... we are now going to have to examine individual responsibilities,” French prosecutor Bohnert told reporters.
The UK’s SFO last year abandoned attempts to prosecute individuals following what was then a record bribery settlement with engine maker Rolls-Royce (RR.L) in 2017.
At the center of the Airbus case was a decades-old system of third-party sales agents run from a now-disbanded headquarters unit that at its height involved some 250 people and several hundreds of millions of euros of payments a year, sources familiar with the matter have said.
Airbus has said it halted payments in 2014 after discovering false statements on the use of agents to Britain’s’ export credit agency and later took its findings to UK authorities.
FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
An internal investigation, which racked up legal bills of around 100 million euros a year, led to a board-driven clearout of top management and plunged Airbus into years of self-examination, hampering its sales efforts.
The probe also triggered an internal row over responsibility for lapses, with Airbus employees insisting they had no control over the choice of agents or offset deals handled under a separate entity, EADS, the former Airbus parent company.
Others say the system, whose roots go back decades to an era when payments to win deals were tolerated and tax-deductible, was an open secret in the company and French political circles where it was intertwined with influence-building abroad.
Reporting by Laurence Frost, Simon Carraud and Matthieu Protard, in Paris Iain Withers in London and Chris Prentice and David Shepardson in Washington; Writing by Tim Hepher and Alex Richardson; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Alexander Smith
Cura Partners, a company that agreed to be acquired by Curaleaf(OTC:CURLF), has been fined for mislabeling some of its products.
Cura Partners, which bills itself as the "largest cannabis oil company in Oregon and California," reached a settlement with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) on the matter. In the arrangement, Cura Partners is admitting that it mislabeled 186,152 units of its product. In numerous cases, the company apparently did not state the presence of botanical terpenes or MCT oil, ingredients used in vape products.
Image source: Getty Images.
In its marketing, Cura Partners at times claimed that different ingredients considered more preferential were used in its products.
For its oversights, Cura Partners will pay a fine of $110,000, a record in the history of the OLCC. The regulator said it wasn't apparent that the company's transgressions presented a health risk to users, so it did not mandate a halt in sales of the affected products.
The Portland Business Journal quoted from a letter it obtained written by a Cura Partners lawyer. The lawyer blamed "a communication problem," likely stemming from one or more employees, for the mistakes.
Neither Cura Partners nor Curaleaf, a popular marijuana stock, has yet officially commented on the settlement.
Despite the financial hit, the settlement could end up being good news for both. Curaleaf recently said that the long-gestating Cura Partners acquisition should close by Feb. 1, citing the transfer of Cura Partners' Oregon license. It's speculated that the settlement will go some way toward making that happen.
Curaleaf's stock closed up by nearly 6% on Thursday.
A fine for embattled banking institution Danske Bank could be much lower lower thanexpected in the U.S. because the institution does not have a banking license in the country, according to a report byReuters.
Danske Bank was involved in a much publicized money-laundering scandal, but the U.S. fine for the money laundering will likely be much lower than expected, according to anonymous banking sources cited in a report by S&P Global Market Intelligence, Reuters said.
“Everyone is talking about this big U.S. fine. I don’t see it,” the source said.
Both the Justice Department and the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission are investigating Danske Bank. The potential fine has been worrying investors due to the large size of past fines for banks in the U.S.
Danske shares have been almost halved due to the scandal and the investigation. Shares in the organization went up 5.5 percent in early trading on Friday (Jan. 31), but that was potentially just a delayed reaction to the report published this week.
“I think this is the first time we have seen in an actual article that legal experts are saying this,” said Jyske Bank analyst Anders Haulund Vollesen.
In December, it was reported that Danske Bank was facing a lawsuit from an estimated 60 investors over the issue. It’s actually the third lawsuit about the issue, and the plaintiffs want1.5 billion crowns ($224 million). Previous lawsuits are involve 232 pension funds, and another claim wants $800 million. Danske said it was going to fight the suits.
“We will defend ourselves against the demands and deal with any development in collaboration with the bank’s lawyers,” Danske said.
One lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Copenhagen, with the Danish law firm Nemeth Sigetty performing the actual filing.
The investors include insurance companies, pension funds and managers of assets from a number of countries. They are being represented by the International Securities Associations and Foundations Management Company for Damaged Danske Investors (ISAF-Danske).
PARIS/LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Airbus (AIR.PA) bribed public officials and hid the payments as part of a pattern of worldwide corruption, prosecutors said on Friday as the European planemaker agreed a record $4 billion settlement with France, Britain and the United States.
The disclosures, made public after a nearly four-year investigation spanning sales to more than a dozen overseas markets, came as courts on both sides of the Atlantic formally approved settlements that lift a legal cloud that has hung over Europe’s largest aerospace group for years.
“It was a pervasive and pernicious bribery scheme in various divisions of Airbus SE that went on for a number of years,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said.
The deal, effectively a corporate plea bargain, means Airbus has avoided criminal prosecution that would have risked it being barred from public contracts in the United States and European Union - a massive blow for a major defense and space supplier.
Prosecutors said individuals could still face criminal charges, however.
Airbus, whose shares closed down 1%, has been investigated by French and British authorities for alleged corruption over jet sales dating back more than a decade. It has also faced U.S. inquiries over suspected violations of U.S. export controls.
“In reaching this agreement today, we are helping Airbus to turn the page definitively” on corrupt past practices, French prosecutor Jean-Francois Bohnert said.
France’s financial prosecutor said the company had also agreed to three years “light compliance monitoring” by the country’s anti-corruption agency.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the deal was the largest ever foreign bribery settlement.
CODE NAME ‘VAN GOGH’
In a packed hearing at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, an Airbus lawyer said the settlements “draw a clear line under the investigation and under the grave historic practices”.
Outlining detailed findings, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said Airbus had hired the wife of a Sri Lankan Airlines executive as its intermediary and misled Britain’s UKEF export credit agency over her name and gender, while paying $2 million to her company. The airline could not be reached for comment.
On defense deals, Airbus hired and disguised payments to a close relative of a government official in Ghana with no aerospace experience in connection with a sale of military transport planes, the SFO said. Ghana’s government could not immediately be reached.
Court filings in Britain and the United States outlined efforts to keep relationships and payments secret, including the use of code names such as ‘Van Gogh’ and payments described as “medications and dosages prescribed by Dr Brown”.
The SFO said Airbus sponsored a sports team owned by AirAsia executives while negotiating airplane orders.
AirAsia officials have strongly denied any wrongdoing in connection with the 2012 sponsorship agreement between the Caterham Formula 1 racing team and Airbus’ then parent EADS.
AirAsia could not immediately be reached for comment.
The British investigation also identified bribery allegations involving Taiwan’s TransAsia Airways, Garuda Indonesia (GIAA.JK) and Citilink Indonesia.
Garuda and Citilink did not immediately respond to requests for comment. TransAsia went bankrupt in 2018.
The U.S. court documents outlined bribery and lavish hospitality involving plane sales to China.
NETWORK OF MIDDLEMEN
French and U.S. prosecutors said the settlement covered Airbus only as a company and any current or former employees involved in related crimes could still be open to prosecution.
“With this settlement we’ve completed a first phase ... we are now going to have to examine individual responsibilities,” French prosecutor Bohnert told reporters.
The UK’s SFO last year abandoned attempts to prosecute individuals following what was then a record bribery settlement with engine maker Rolls-Royce (RR.L) in 2017.
At the center of the Airbus case was a decades-old system of third-party sales agents run from a now-disbanded headquarters unit that at its height involved some 250 people and several hundreds of millions of euros of payments a year, sources familiar with the matter have said.
Airbus has said it halted payments in 2014 after discovering false statements on the use of agents to Britain’s’ export credit agency and later took its findings to UK authorities.
FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
An internal investigation, which racked up legal bills of around 100 million euros a year, led to a board-driven clearout of top management and plunged Airbus into years of self-examination, hampering its sales efforts.
The probe also triggered an internal row over responsibility for lapses, with Airbus employees insisting they had no control over the choice of agents or offset deals handled under a separate entity, EADS, the former Airbus parent company.
Others say the system, whose roots go back decades to an era when payments to win deals were tolerated and tax-deductible, was an open secret in the company and French political circles where it was intertwined with influence-building abroad.
Reporting by Laurence Frost, Simon Carraud and Matthieu Protard, in Paris Iain Withers in London and Chris Prentice and David Shepardson in Washington; Writing by Tim Hepher and Alex Richardson; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Alexander Smith
The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to fine a Utah man $12.9 million for conducting a string of racist robocalling campaigns across the United States over the last two years.
The FCC says one of the campaigns seemed like an attempt to tamper with a jury in an ongoing case. Another targeted a newspaper for criticizing his earlier campaigns.
Shortly before the 2018 election, the man, Scott Rhodes, reportedly made 766 spoofed robocalls in Florida, where black Democrat Andrew Gillum was running for governor. According to the FCC, "robocalls falsely claimed to be from the candidate and used 'a caricature of a black dialect' with jungle background noises."
Soon afterward in neighboring Georgia, Rhodes allegedly made 583 spoofed calls attacking Stacey Abrams, another black Democrat running for governor. "The calls pretended to be from Oprah Winfrey and concerned a racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory," according to an FCC press release.
Around the same time, Rhodes placed more than 2,000 robocalls in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area. A jury there was considering the fate of James Fields, a man whose car had run over and killed Heather Heyer the day of the infamous 2017 Charlottesville protests. The calls "articulated a racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory" that blamed local Charlottesville officials for Heyer's death, the FCC says. The judge asked jurors if they received the calls and instructed them to ignore them.
The FCC says that calls like this run afoul of the 2009 Truth in Caller ID Act, which makes it illegal to spoof caller information with intent to cause harm. Rhodes allegedly used an online platform to falsify the caller ID information to make it look like the calls were coming from local numbers.
Technically, the FCC's action was a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture—a first step toward fining Rhodes. He'll have a chance to rebut the FCC's allegations before the agency can formally impose the fine.
And of course there's no guarantee that the agency will get all—or even most—of the $13 million it is asking for. Rhodes may not have anywhere close to $13 million in the bank, and he may resist paying whatever money he does have.
Indeed, the FCC has a poor track record of collecting on fines against robocallers. A Wall Street Journal investigation last year found that while the FCC had theoretically imposed $208 million in robocall-related fines, it had only collected $6,790 of that amount.
Facebook and Twitter were each threatened Friday with being fined nearly $100,000 apiece for allegedly failing to comply with a data localization law on the books in Russia.
Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s internet and media watchdog, announced that the agency initiated new administrative proceedings against each of the American-based companies.
“These companies did not provide information on meeting the requirements for localizing the databases of Russian users of the corresponding social networks on servers located in the Russian Federation,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement published in Russian on the agency’s website.
Russia requires large internet companies to store Russian user data on servers inside the country, and Roskomnadzor has repeatedly pressed both Facebook and Twitter to comply.
Facebook and Twitter were separately fined in 2019 after Roskomnadzor said the companies failed to provide requested information about its policies for storing Russian user data.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has since signed a law significantly increasing monetary penalties for companies found in violation of the country’s data localization policies.
Facebook and Twitter now risk being fined up to 6 million rubles, or roughly $94,000, Roskomnadzor said Friday.
Twitter declined to comment on Roskomnadzor’s announcement when reached by The Washington Times, and Facebook did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking its reaction.
Roskomnadzor will ask a Russian court within the next three days to consider taking action against the companies, the agency said.
The FCC has proposed an almost $13 million fine for a man it says was behind a series of racist and anti-semitic robocalling campaigns consisting of over 6,000 calls being placed across six states. The man is accused of using anti-semitic and racist tropes to attack political candidates, threaten a newspaper, and stoke racial hatred after the murder of a college student by an undocumented immigrant.
There were six campaigns in total, the FCC alleges, which ranged from attacking political candidates in California, Florida, and Georgia (1,496, 766, and 583 calls respectively), threatening a newspaper in Idaho (750 calls), and spreading conspiracy theories about a trial in Virginia (2,023 calls). In the latter case, the FCC says the calls seemed designed to influence the trial’s jury.
In Iowa, a campaign placed 827 calls in which a woman’s voice designed to imitate a murdered student encouraged the calls’ recipients to “kill them all,” referring to undocumented immigrants according to FCC chairman Ajit Pai. An undocumented immigrant had been charged with the student’s murder the previous month. One such call was received by the victim’s father.
The campaigns are allegedly the work of Scott D. Rhodes, according to The New York Times. Rhodes is accused of spoofing caller IDs with the intent to cause harm. He’s accused of violating the Truth in Caller ID Act by manipulating call ID information to make it appear as though the calls were coming from local numbers nearby to their recipients. Rhodes will have 30 days to respond to the findings, after which the FCC will vote on whether to impose the $12,910,000 fine.
Rhodes runs the website Road to Power, and is accused by anti-hate groups of being a white supremacist. Road to Power has previously taken credit for racist robocalls made to Columbia University employees after a freshman student was killed in a mugging. However, these calls are not part of the FCC’s current action.
The case illustrates how robocalls are not just an annoying daily occurrence for anyone with a phone number, but that they can be actively used to harass, threaten, and spread hatred on a massive scale. They cannot be stamped out soon enough.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has suggested a fine of $12.91m for one man accused of calling US consumers with a spoofed number.
Networking
The proposed fine relies on the 2009 Truth in Caller ID Act, which was beefed up last year to give the regulator the authority to pursue offshore robocall outfits and VoIP calls. The original Act also prohibits spoofing caller IDs to defraud and cause harm to people.
The robocalls that drew the proposed fine were made by the owner of a US business who apparently believed that making threatening calls to victims would attract media attention and then boost his website and personal brand.
According to the FCC, the man made nearly 6,500 automated calls across six campaigns to residents in California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, and Virginia.
The calls, made from an online platform, used so-called 'neighbor spoofing' to make it appear they were placed from local numbers.
The calls were made to target a "community grappling with the recent murder of a local woman, threaten a journalist and newspaper, and attempt to influence a jury", the FCC said.
According to the Des Moines Register, the calls were allegedly made by a neo-Nazi podcaster who attempted to exploit the murder of 20-year-old Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts to promote white nationalist propaganda.
Tibbetts went missing in her hometown Brooklyn, Iowa in 2018 while out jogging.
"As if this tragedy were not enough, just two days after her funeral, Mollie's family, friends, and the close-knit community of Brooklyn began to receive a barrage of spoofed robocalls," said FCC chairman Ajit Pai.
"Preying on the tragedy, the calls contained inflammatory prerecorded messages and a woman's voice apparently intended to impersonate Mollie Tibbetts saying 'kill them all' – the 'them' referring to illegal aliens from Mexico."
"Our Notice of Apparent Liability will not undo the harm caused by these spoofed robocalls, particularly to the grieving family of Mollie Tibbetts and the community of Brooklyn. But it once again makes clear this Commission's determination to go after those who are unlawfully bombarding the American people with spoofed robocalls."
Earlier this week the US Justice Department filed two lawsuits against five US-based firms for enabling foreign criminals to make hundreds of millions of robocalls to US consumers.
The department charged the companies with wire fraud in a bid to achieve a speedy halt to robocalls each company allegedly enabled.
The FCC says this person used these call campaigns to threaten a journalist and newspaper, to target a community struggling with a recent murder, and to influence political campaigns in California, Florida and Georgia as well as calling people in the Charlottesville area.
A man who telecom regulators say was apparently behind a barrage of racist robocalls in six states — sowing hate in response to the killing of an Iowa college student by an undocumented immigrant and a white supremacist’s murder trial in Virginia — is facing a proposed fine of nearly $13 million by the Federal Communications Commission.
The commission said that in addition to Iowa and Virginia, Mr. Rhodes targeted people in California, Georgia, Florida and Idaho with the robocalls.
The F.C.C. said Thursday that Scott D. Rhodes, seen above on a podcast from his website, Road to Power, targeted people in six states with racist robocalls.
Most recently, Road to Power took credit for a flurry of racist robocalls made to Columbia University employees after Tessa Majors, a Barnard College freshman, was killed in a mugging in December in New York City. The calls, which promoted a white supremacist ideology, were not part of the F.C.C. action on Thursday.
The F.C.C. said it traced 827 spoofed robocalls that were made to residents in Brooklyn, Iowa, in August 2018 after the slaying of the University of Iowa student, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented farmworker from Mexico. Ms. Tibbetts, whose murder has been invoked by President Trump in his push for a border wall, was from the small town.
The commission said Mr. Rhodes used an online calling platform to intentionally manipulate caller ID information to display local phone numbers as the source of the calls. That practice, known as neighbor spoofing, violates the Truth in Caller ID Act, the commission said.
“As if this tragedy were not enough, just two days after her funeral, Mollie’s family, friends, and the close-knit community of Brooklyn began to receive a barrage of spoofed robocalls,” Ajit Pai, the commission’s chairman, said in a statement on Thursday. “Preying on the tragedy, the calls contained inflammatory prerecorded messages and a woman’s voice apparently intended to impersonate Mollie Tibbetts saying ‘kill them all.’ ”
Mr. Pai said the caller had been referring to undocumented immigrants from Mexico.
Attempts on Thursday to reach Mr. Rhodes, who has used several aliases, were unsuccessful.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Rhodes will face criminal charges for the robocalls, which the commission said were all made in 2018. A spokesman for the commission said he could not comment about possible violations outside the agency’s jurisdiction.
Mr. Rhodes has 30 days to respond to the commission’s findings before the agency votes on the proposed fine. If the fine is imposed and Mr. Rhodes cannot pay, the matter would be turned over to the Department of Justice for collection, the F.C.C. spokesman said.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate groups, said Thursday that it was critical to hold bad actors accountable.
“It’s a great first step,” Oren Segal, the director of the organization’s Center for Extremism, said Thursday of the action taken against Mr. Rhodes. “Hopefully, the message is clear to extremists and bigots who want to use this technology in the future that there are consequences.”
The commission said that Mr. Rhodes made 2,023 robocalls in November and December 2018 to residents of Charlottesville, Va., blaming the mayor and police chief for the murder of Heather Heyer in August 2017. Ms. Heyer was killed when James Fields Jr., who had traveled to Virginia to participate in a white supremacist rally, steered his car into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators. Mr. Fields pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
The commission said Mr. Rhodes was also responsible for 766 robocalls in October 2018 targeting Andrew Gillum, who was the first black nominee for Florida governor from a major party.
In the audio of one of the robocalls obtained by The New York Times, a man pretending to be Mr. Gillum could be heard talking in the exaggerated accent of a minstrel performer. “Well hello there,” it begins, “I is Andrew Gillum.” He then spoke for a little over a minute about mud huts and unfair policing practices, and asked repeatedly for the listener’s vote. In the background were the sounds of drums and monkeys.
The F.C.C. spokesman declined to comment about the robocalls that Road to Power took credit for in December in New York, which were condemned by Columbia University officials.
Sergeant Jessica McRorie, a New York Police Department spokeswoman, said Thursday evening that the case was still under investigation.
“There is no place for hate or intolerance in New York City, or anywhere,” she said. “The N.Y.P.D.’s Racial and Ethnic Motivated Extremism unit is aware of this incident and looking into the matter.”
日経平均 ＜日足＞ 「株探」多機能チャートより
