Hillicon Valley: Dems unleash sprawling Trump probe | Pelosi says Dems will offer net neutrality bill this week | Cyber espionage campaign linked to North Korea | Huawei exec sues Canada

Welcome to Hillicon Valley, The Hill’s newsletter detailing all you need to know about the tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. If you don’t already, be sure to sign up for our newsletter with this LINK.

Welcome! Follow the cyber team, Olivia Beavers (@olivia_beavers) and Jacqueline Thomsen (@jacq_thomsen), and the tech team, Harper Neidig (@hneidig) and Emily Birnbaum (@birnbaum_e).

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING: Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee unleashed a sprawling probe of President Trump’s family, campaign, business and administration on Monday that includes more than 80 requests for documents.

The investigation under Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) will focus on three key areas: obstruction of justice, public corruption and abuses of power. Nadler rolled out the expansive investigation less than a week after the president’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, delivered explosive public testimony against him on Capitol Hill.

In the spotlight: Democrats will be looking at those involved in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer linked to the Kremlin, the Trump Organization’s plans to build a Trump property in Moscow and a scheme to pay off two women who alleged they had affairs with Trump before the 2016 election.

{mosads}In a statement, Nadler accused Trump of evading “accountability for his near-daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms.”

“Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress and a core function of the House Judiciary Committee,” Nadler said. “We have seen the damage done to our democratic institutions in the two years that the Congress refused to conduct responsible oversight. Congress must provide a check on abuses of power.”

The committee is demanding a trove of documents from the White House, including those related to the removal of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the termination of former FBI Director James Comey and any conversations about the removal of special counsel Robert Mueller.

The committee is also asking for documents from a slew of current and former White House and administration officials, including Flynn, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former White House communications director Hope Hicks and former White House counsel Don McGahn.

Trump reacts: Trump blasted the investigation as a “hoax” but said he would comply with it, telling reporters at a White House event to congratulate a college football team’s championship that “I cooperate all the time with everybody.”

Read more on the wide-ranging probe here.

 

A NEW NET NEUTRALITY BILL: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Monday that Democrats will introduce a net neutrality bill to replace the open internet rules that were repealed in 2017.

In a letter to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said a bill called the Save the Internet Act will be unveiled Wednesday and will be introduced in the Senate as well.

But hold on: The text of the legislation has not been released, and it’s unclear what will be included in the bill.

How we got here: Democrats have railed against the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission vote to repeal the net neutrality rules, which happened over a year ago.

The 2015 regulations prohibited internet service providers from blocking or throttling websites or creating internet fast lanes.

Republicans and the broadband industry have called for legislation codifying net neutrality, but there remain some partisan divisions over what rules should be in effect and how they should be enforced.

Don’t forget the court fight: The repeal order is also facing a challenge from Democratic state attorneys general and consumer advocates. Last month, a panel of federal appeals court judges heard oral arguments in the case and they are expected to issue a ruling by the summer.

More on Pelosi’s plan here.

 

NORTH KOREA IS BACK AT IT…: A prominent hacking group tied to North Korea is believed to be behind an extensive cyber espionage campaign that has targeted key sectors, including government, defense, energy and critical infrastructure organizations, security firm McAfee revealed Sunday.

The hacking group Lazarus continues to carry out these attacks in what McAfee calls “Operation Sharpshooter.”

The firm, which says it discovered the operation in December 2018, believes the campaign could’ve started as early as September 2017 and that it is “more extensive in complexity, scope and duration of operations” than previously believed. At the time, McAfee said they had found that roughly 80 organizations across a series of key industries were targeted.

The firm says it was able to attribute the cyber espionage campaign to the Lazarus Group because a government entity provided “command-and-control” data to McAfee for analysis — data that revealed “technical indicators and procedures that overlap between the two,” according to McAfee’s report.

“Until now, there wasn’t enough technical evidence for the threat research team to confidently attribute the attacks to Lazarus, but due to the non-typical access McAfee had to the data on the seized control servers the adversaries used, confidence levels are now much higher,” the report says. Read more here.

 

…AND SO IS CHINA: A team of cybersecurity researchers said Monday that they have identified a state-sponsored Chinese hacking group that has launched cyberattacks to try to bolster China’s navy.

Security firm FireEye said in a blog post that the group, which they are calling APT40, has been carrying out cyberattacks since at least 2013 that targeted the engineering, transportation and defense industries.

The researchers said that the group is also going after traditional targets for China, including groups tied to elections in Southeast Asia, to try to gain intelligence about the organizations.

FireEye noted that those actions are likely linked to Chinese disputes in the South China Sea, as well as China’s massive “Belt and Road Initiative,” which aims to make the country a global superpower in trade.

“Despite increased public attention, APT40 continues to conduct cyber espionage operations following a regular tempo, and we anticipate their operations will continue through at least the near and medium term,” the post reads. Read more here.

 

TRUMP CAMPAIGN WALKS BACK 5G SURPRISE: The White House was reportedly caught off guard last week when the Trump campaign backed a plan to give the government a role in managing next-generation wireless technology, known as 5G, in the U.S.

Axios reported Sunday that there was “widespread confusion” inside the Trump administration as well as “mass uncertainty” after the Trump campaign appeared to back the proposal.

“Lots of policy folks were caught off guard,” a senior Trump administration official told Axios.

The confusion came after Politico reported Friday that the Trump campaign was supporting the plan to allow the government to control 5G airwaves and lease access to private wireless providers.

“The White House sets the policy on 5G and all issues,” Kayleigh McEnany, a Trump 2020 campaign spokeswoman, told Axios “Naturally, the campaign fully supports the President’s priorities and his policy agenda. There is no daylight between the White House and the campaign.”

More here.

 

TRUMP WANTED TO BLOCK AT&T-TIME WARNER DEAL: President Trump reportedly directed his former economic adviser, Gary Cohn, to pressure the Justice Department to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, according to a report in The New Yorker.

In an explosive new investigation into the relationship between the Trump White House and Fox News, the magazine reported new details that contradict the administration’s assurances that Trump had no role in the Justice Department’s lawsuit trying to stop the merger.

Citing an unidentified “well-informed source,” The New Yorker reported that in summer 2017, months before the Justice Department filed its antitrust lawsuit, Trump called Cohn and then-chief of staff John Kelly into the Oval Office and told them that he wanted to “make sure” the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to block the merger was filed.

“I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened!” Trump told Kelly, according to the report. “I’ve mentioned it 50 times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”

Trump repeatedly criticized the $85 billion deal on the campaign trail and as president, vowing to block the merger and saying that it was “not good for the country.”

But, according to The New Yorker, many saw Trump’s opposition to the deal as motivated by his disdain for CNN, which is owned by Time Warner. The Justice Department has insisted that the president’s unhappiness with CNN, which he often targets in tweets and at rallies as “fake news,” did not influence the case.

After Trump’s direction in the 2017 meeting, The New Yorker reported, Cohn refused to follow the instruction, knowing that it would be “highly improper” for Trump to involve himself in stopping the merger.

“Don’t you f—ing dare call the Justice Department,” he reportedly told Kelly. “We are not going to do business that way.”

Read more on the New Yorker’s report here.

 

ROYAL RULES: Britain’s royal family has issued guidelines for its social media followers following an onslaught of online abuse directed at Kate Middleton, duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan Markle, duchess of Sussex.

The new guidelines, released Monday, ban “obscene, offensive, threatening, abusive, hateful, inflammatory” comments and those that violate the platforms’ guidelines.

“We ask that anyone engaging with our social media channels shows courtesy, kindness and respect for all other members of our social media communities,” the royal family said in a statement.

The royal family said it reserves the right to hide or delete comments and block users that violate the guidelines, as well as send any comments to law enforcement authorities “as we feel necessary.”

More on the harassment here.

 

HUAWEI EXEC SUES: Meng Wanzhou, executive of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, filed suit Sunday against the Canadian government and two of its law enforcement agencies, alleging she was unlawfully detained and interrogated late last year.

The Associated Press reported that lawyers for Wanzhou filed a notice of a civil claim in the British Columbia Supreme Court on Sunday. The complaint alleges that authorities interrogated Meng “under the guise of routine customs” and waited to explain to her that she was under arrest.

Lawyers for Meng claimed that the Canada Border Service Agency took her electronic devices and unlawfully viewed the contents. Meng was notified three hours after she was initially detained that she was under arrest, the lawsuit says.

{mossecondads}In addition to the Canadian government, the suit names the border agency and the Canadian national police force.

“We are a country governed by the rule of law. Canada is conducting a fair, unbiased, and transparent legal proceeding with respect to the arrest of Ms. Meng Wanzhou,” a spokesperson for the office of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness said in a statement. The office declined to comment specifically on her lawsuit.

Read more here.

 

AN OP-ED TO CHEW ON: US would be crippled by an EMP attack, which we pioneered nearly 60 years ago.

 

A LIGHTER CLICK: True grit and determination.

 

NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

The making of the Fox News White House. (The New Yorker)

Here are the data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information. (Fast Company)

AT&T restructures WarnerMedia to gird for Netflix fight. (Reuters)

Jerome Corsi, InfoWars retract and apologize for spreading Seth Rich DNC murder conspiracy theory. (The Daily Beast)