Trump aims to box in Biden abroad, but it may not work

News

Trump aims to box in Biden abroad, but it may not work

2020-11-23 13:05 Last Updated At：13:10

On its way out the door, the Trump administration is enacting new rules, regulations and orders that it hopes will box in President-elect Joe Biden's administration on numerous foreign policy matters and cement President Donald Trump’s “America First” legacy in international affairs.

Yet, the push may not work, as many of these decisions can be withdrawn or significantly amended by the incoming president when he takes office on Jan. 20.

In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and other agencies have been working overtime to produce new policy pronouncements on Iran, Israel, China and elsewhere that aim to lock in Trump's vision for the world. Some have attracted significant attention while others have flown largely under the radar.

And, while Biden could reverse many of them with a stroke of the pen, some will demand the time and attention of his administration when it comes into power with a host of other priorities that perhaps need more urgent attention.

The most recent of these moves took place this past week as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made what may be his last visit to Israel as secretary of state and delivered two announcements in support of Israel's claims to territory claimed by the Palestinians.

Biden's team has remained silent about these announcements, but Biden has made clear he supports few, if any, of them and will reverse many as he intends to return to a more traditional policy toward Israel and the Palestinians.

The Trump administration’s determined efforts to thwart potential Biden policy reversals actually began months earlier, half a world away from the Jewish state, with China, even before the former vice president was formally declared the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

As opinion polls started to show Biden as a clear favorite to beat Trump in November, the administration began to move even as the president maintained a public face of defiance and absolute confidence in his reelection.

Some officials point to a July 13 declaration from Pompeo that the United States would now reject virtually all of China's territorial claims in the South Chine Sea, a 180-degree shift from previous administrations' positions that all such claims should be handled by arbitration.

While many of Trump’s foreign policy decisions from early on have been designed to blow up the previous administration's foreign policy achievements — withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans Pacific Partnership on trade — the South China Sea decision was the first to be linked by administration officials to the possibility that Biden might be the next president.

One administration official said at the time that decisions made after that would all be taken with an eye toward Biden becoming president. Thus, the fear that Trump might be a one-term president began to take hold in July and has been followed by an acceleration of pronouncements aimed mainly at thwarting any reversal by Biden.

A look at some of those moves:

ISRAEL

On Thursday, before making an unprecedented trip to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Pompeo announced that the U.S, would henceforth consider “antisemitic” the groups that advocate for Palestinian rights by supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

He also announced a change in import labeling rules that will require products made in settlements to be identified as “Made in Israel.” The product labeling will take some time to take effect and, as yet, no groups have been hit with the antisemitic designation. But, even if they are implemented, Biden could reverse them on Day One.

Those moves followed numerous other Israel-friendly steps the administration has taken since it came to office. They include recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, moving the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, and cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority and the U.N. refugee agency that works with Palestinians. While Biden is unlikely to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv, the other measures can be reversed quickly.

IRAN

Pompeo and other officials have spoken of a new push for sanctions against Iran, but the fact is that the administration has been ramping up such penalties since Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal two years ago. New sanctions could potentially target supporters of Iranian-backed militia in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the Shiite Houthi movement in Yemen, which has been involved in a disastrous war with the country's internationally recognized government.

Biden has spoken of wanting to rejoin the nuclear accord, and Iranian officials have said they would be willing to come back into compliance with the accord if he does. Biden could eliminate many of the Trump administration's reimposed sanctions by executive order, but it remains unclear how high a priority it will be for him.

BROADER MIDDLE EAST

While the withdrawal of significant numbers of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Iraq — bringing troop levels down to 2,500 in each country — is a clear indication of Trump's intentions, Biden's approach remains less certain. The withdrawals could be delayed or slow-rolled by the Pentagon, and it remains unclear how the State Department will handle staffing at its embassies in Baghdad and Kabul, both of which are dependent on U.S. military support.

Pompeo has threatened to close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad unless rocket attacks by Iranian-backed militias against the area in which it's located are halted. However, despite the troop withdrawal determination last week, there has been no announcement about the embassy's status.

CHINA

Although the administration's most strident actions against China began more than a year ago, they have gained momentum since March, when Trump determined that he would at once blame China for the spread of the novel coronavirus and accuse Biden of being soft on Beijing.

Since then, the administration has steadily ramped up sanctions against China over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. It has also moved against the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and sought restrictions on Chinese social media applications like TikTok and WeChat.

Last week, the State Department's policy planning office released a 70-page China policy strategy document. While it contains little in the way of immediate policy recommendations, it advocates for increased support and cooperation with Taiwan. Indeed, as the document was released, U.S. officials were meeting with Taiwanese counterparts in Washington to discuss economic cooperation.

RUSSIA

Sunday marked the formal withdrawal of the U.S. from the “Open Skies Treaty” with Russia, which allowed each country overflight rights to inspect military facilities. The withdrawal, six months after the U.S. notified the Russians of its intent, leaves only one arms-control pact still in force between the former Cold War foes — the New START treaty, which limits the number of nuclear warheads each may have. That treaty will expire in February.

The Trump administration had said it wasn't interested in extending the New START treaty unless China also joined, something Beijing has rejected. In recent weeks, however, the administration has eased its stance and said it's willing to consider an extension. As the transition to the Biden administration approaches, those negotiations remain a work in progress.

Court clerk who helped with Alex Murdaugh's trial pleads guilty to showing sealed exhibits

ST. MATTHEWS, S.C. (AP) — The former court clerk in South Carolina who helped out with the murder trial of attorney Alex Murdaugh pleaded guilty Monday to criminal charges for showing sealed court exhibits to a photographer and lying about it in court.

Former Colleton County Clerk of Court Mary Rebecca “Becky” Hill pleaded guilty in Colleton County Circuit Court to four charges — obstruction of justice and perjury for showing a reporter photographs that were sealed court exhibits and then lying about it — as well as two counts of misconduct in office for taking bonuses and promoting through her public office a book she wrote on the trial.

Judge Heath Taylor sentenced Hill to three years of probation. The judge told Hill her sentence would have been much harsher if prosecutors had found that she had tampered with the Murdaugh jury.

Hill read a short statement where she asked the judge for a chance to do better.

"There is no excuse for the mistakes I made. I’m ashamed of them and will carry that shame the rest of my life,” she said.

Hill was in charge of taking care of the jury, overseeing exhibits and helping the judge during Murdaugh's six-week trial that ended with murder convictions for killing his wife and son. The case involved power, danger, money and privilege and an attorney whose family had lorded over his small South Carolina county for nearly a century.

Hill has played a prominent part as Murdaugh appeals his convictions and a sentence of life without parole. His lawyers said Hill tried to influence jurors to vote guilty and that she was biased against Murdaugh for her book.

Prosecutors said they investigated jury tampering allegations. But while three jurors or alternates said Hill told stories that changed about how she may have tried to influence them, 11 said she did nothing wrong.

“I would be facing a trial with 11 witnesses coming in to say everything the state is saying is not true,” Solicitor Rick Hubbard said.

During Monday's hearing, Hubbard told the judge that a journalist told investigators that Hill showed graphic crime scene photos to several media members. He did not name the journalist.

The photos were posted online and Hubbard said metadata from the images matched up with a time where Hill's courthouse key card said she was inside the locked room where the photos were kept.

Murdaugh is also serving a separate sentence of decades in prison for admitting to stealing millions of dollars from settlements for clients who suffered horrible injuries or deaths — and from his family’s law firm.

An initial appeal by Murdaugh’s lawyers was denied. But Judge Jean Toal said she wasn’t sure Hill told the truth about her dealings with jurors and was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity” status.

Along with showing the sealed exhibits, an arrest warrant said Hill lied to Toal during a January 2024 hearing when the judge asked: “Did you allow anyone from the press to view the sealed exhibits?”

One of the charges — misconduct in office — involved money that investigators said Hill took for herself. She brought a check to court on Monday to pay back nearly $10,000 meant for bonuses from federal money meant to improve child support collection and about $2,000 in money from the Clerk of Court’s office.

The warrant on the other misconduct charge said Hill used her public role as clerk of court to promote her book on the Murdaugh trial on social media.

The judge said he knows Hill has been more humiliated than most people who come before him because of all the attention from the true crime world on the Murdaugh case.

“ A lot of boats got swept up in the hoopla that was at that trial,” Taylor said. “A lot of folks probably made a lot of money, but you didn’t.”

Hill was also accused last May of 76 counts of ethics violations. Officials said Hill allowed a photo of Murdaugh in a holding cell to be taken to promote her book on the trial and used county money to buy dozens of lunches for her staff, prosecutors and a vendor.

Hill also struck a deal with a documentary maker to use the county courtroom in exchange for promoting her book on the trial, which later she admitted had plagiarized passages, according to the South Carolina Ethics Commission complaint.

Hill resigned in March 2024 during the last year of her four-year term, citing the public scrutiny of Murdaugh’s trial and wanting to spend time with her grandchildren.

This story corrects Hill's sentence to three years of probation.