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US govt State Dept boss Mike Pompeo: We'll shut you out if you're using kit from Chinese maker

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says his department may punish countries that purchase hardware from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.…

Dubsmash, Armor Games, 500px, Whitepages, ShareThis, and more allegedly up for grabs for $$$s in BTC

Exclusive Some 617 million online account details stolen from 16 hacked websites are on sale from today in bulk on the dark web, according the data trove's seller.…

Oil, gas, maritime systems affected by latest bug findings

Companies running a popular brand of industrial Ethernet switch are being advised to update their firmware ASAP following a series of bug disclosures.…

Seven-year battle by Bezos could be coming to an end

A seven-year fight over the introduction of .amazon internet addresses may finally be resolved this week with crunch talks in Brazilia.…

'Doomsday scenario' unless devops crowd walks this way

Aleksa Sarai, a senior software engineer at SUSE Linux GmbH, has disclosed a serious vulnerability affecting runc, the default container runtime for Docker, containerd, Podman, and CRI-O.…

During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the special counsel investigation last week, Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was surprisingly asked a question about his involvement in January’s new opinion on the Wire Act issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Whitaker denied any involvement.

The opinion, as has been covered here previously, said that the Wire Act makes all interstate online gambling illegal, reversing the opinion from the OLC under the Obama Administration in late 2011, which said that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting.

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal said that Sheldon Adelson was behind the new OLC opinion, as one of his lobbyists submitted a memo to the Justice Department in 2017, arguing that the 2011 opinion was wrong. The Justice Department forwarded it to the OLC, which produced the opinion in November 2018. The opinion was published last month.

Not a Friendly Conversation

During the Congressional hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D – Md.) entered into a contentious line of questioning with Whitaker to try to drill down into some potential financial corruption in the Trump administration. After Whitaker interrupted early questions and attempted to hijack the session, voices were raised and Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler stepped in to settle things down. Following that excitement, Rep. Raskin got to the Wire Act:

I’ve got a theory that I want to float with you and it goes to something very strange that’s been happening at the Department of Justice…recently.

Casino billionaire and magnate Sheldon Adelson hates online gambling, for obvious reasons. It’s competition for him; he wants people in the casinos, not online. And he spent more than a million dollars lobbying Congress to override the 2000 [author’s note: 2011] opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel – DoJ – saying that the Wire Act plainly prohibits only sports gambling online, not gambling in the states, which is why Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, have built important business for themselves online. But Congress wouldn’t change the law according to the demands of Mr. Adelson, so rather than change the law, he decided to try to get the Department of Justice to change the interpretation of the law and he threw millions into a campaign to remake the DoJ and get the Office of Legal Counsel to perform a complete reversal and say that the Wire Act bans the kind of lotteries that states run online, even though its language plainly prohibits only sports betting.

And when Donald Trump won and Mr. Sessions became AG and you became Chief of Staff, DoJ leadership ordered a reevaluation of this legal question and what do you know? The Office of Legal Counsel find some subtle and invisible points of law that apparently escaped the Department of Justice in 2011 and reversed the plain reading of the interpretation which talked specifically about sports betting.

Now, were you involved in that decision?

Whitaker responded that then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from online gambling issues and thus Whitaker was also recused and was not involved in the Justice Department’s decision. He also said, after Raskin asked, that he never spoke with Adelson or his lobbyists about the decision. He did admit that he knows Charles Cooper, Adelson lobbyist and the former personal attorney for Sessions, but never spoke with him about the matter.

Whether or not any of that is true is unknown, but if Whitaker lied during his Congressional testimony, then he will be some hot water if the truth comes out.

The post Acting Attorney General Tells Congress He Was Not Involved in Wire Act Opinion appeared first on Poker News Daily.

Bonkers dust world colonization that was never going to happen definitely isn't going to happen

The group trying to crowdfund a plan to colonization of Mars that was declared suicidal has shuttered its shop front.…

Accused hacker can write Reg headlines. Who knew?

Lauri Love will find out whether he is getting his computers back from the National Crime Agency on 19 February, a judge ruled today.…

Plus: Cygnus freighter to spray more sats across the heavens

As Elon Musk crowed over the performance of SpaceX's Raptor engine and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus departed the International Space Station (ISS), debris watchers were ruing the 10th anniversary of the first accidental hypervelocity satellite collision.…

Oh and by the way, there's a consulting reorg on the way

Brand new Teradata CEO Oliver Ratzesberger wouldn't be drawn on headcount reduction in the legacy data warehouser's consulting group, but admitted realignments will be made to bag "megadata" customers.…

JESUS MOOOOOOOM

The relationship between mother and son is a strange one. Sigmund Freud's "Oedipus complex" made all of psychology awkward, and mums haven't helped by cherishing and coddling their perfect little boys well into adulthood.…

Western Digital hard drive also among the spoils

Accused computer hacker Lauri Love is in court today arguing with the National Crime Agency over whether the British government agency should return PCs they seized from him.…

JavaScript emulator gains audio support and proper '90s Doom

The JavaScript incarnation of Windows 95 received a version bump last week, giving those trapped in the snow or stuck in the office a lunchtime of delight listening to the bleeps and bloops of yesteryear.…

Lad Media, The Lead Expert don't look so 'expert' now

The bosses of lead-generation firms Lad Media and The Lead Experts have been slapped with four and six-year bans on forming companies respectively after they fell foul of direct marketing laws.…

Eben Upton talks to El Reg about hopes, dreams and solid starts

The first Pi shop has opened its doors in Cambridge and, if the first weekend of trading is anything to go by, has done rather well.…

Latest data dribble from distant New Horizons reveals things are strange out there

NASA's New Horizons probe mission has once again given boffins something exciting to think about. New data sent back to Earth has meant they'll need to rework our understanding about the shape of 2014 MU69 (aka Ultima Thule).…

But you'll love our sticker scheme... right?

Interview The EU has not seen evidence that Huawei poses a threat to its internal markets – and says that even if it had, blocking the controversial Chinese company's products is up to EU member nations, not the political bloc.…

New Windows 10 build and Small Basic turns 1.0

Roundup Last week the headlines were dominated by Microsoft seemingly putting the boot into its own productivity suites and bashing its elderly browser. But of course there was plenty else afoot within the sphere of Redmond.…

NAS-ty: Strange activity sinkholes antivirus update checks

Network attached storage maker QNAP's customers have reported being hit by a mystery strain of old-school malware that disables software updates by hijacking entries in host machines' hosts file.…

'Idiot? You're calling me a f*cking idiot?!'

Who, Me? Once again, Monday has put an end to the weekend's fun – and Who, Me? is tagging along, as always.…