13 May 2021
Top White House officials — including counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Security Council chief of staff Yohannes Abraham — visited Camp David last weekend to brief President Biden about the Colonial Pipeline hack, sources familiar with the response tell Axios.
Why it matters: The high-level response, which also included daily calls from national security adviser Jake Sullivan, underscores the administration's heightened concern about fallout from the hack — both from national security and political perspectives.
What we're hearing: Biden made clear after receiving his first briefing Friday night that he wanted to be kept abreast of the status of the hack and the administration's response.
- He requested details on both fronts, officials said.
How events unfolded: Beginning Friday, Homeland Security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall and National Economic Council director Brian Deese set up an ad-hoc interagency team, made up of White House and Cabinet principals, to deal with the pipeline breakdown.
- Deese and Sherwood-Randall, who served as deputy secretary of Energy under President Obama and previously worked on issues with the Colonial pipeline, convened a series of calls and Zoom meetings with Colonial multiple times per day.
- Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technology, was in touch with Colonial executives, and invited Tuesday to assist their chief information officer with diagnostics and remediation.
On Tuesday morning, Sullivan and Sherwood-Randall gave Biden a more detailed briefing focused on the nature of the attack, the particular group involved and how Colonial was remediating the ransomware attack to get their network back up and running.
- Biden received a breakdown of the capabilities of the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Homeland Security and Defense, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, to assist in mitigating supply shortages.
- Biden urged the team to move aggressively in responding to supply shortages that would emerge from a prolonged shutdown, officials said.
On Wednesday, the White House sent its top Cabinet officials to brief members of Congress on the situation. The briefing was held shortly after Colonial announced it would begin restarting its operations.
Go deeper: The White House provided a fact sheet on its outreach to states, including waivers allowing multiple states to temporarily use noncompliant fuel to boost available supply and increase weight limits for fuel transport trucks.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.