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Current and former U.S. and British intelligence officers say the West’s collective banishment this week of 115 Russian “diplomats” will be far less damaging to Russian espionage operations than British Prime Minister Theresa May and American officials have argued.

And they warn tit-for-tat expulsions the Kremlin is expected to order shortly will have much greater impact on Western intelligence missions in Russia.

They say the Cold War-era picture drawn by author John le Carré in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” with Russian espionage in the West depending mainly on spies based out of embassies under diplomatic cover, is anachronistic.

“Western expulsions will have only a very marginal impact on ongoing Russian operations, given the fact the SVR [Russian foreign espionage] and the GRU [Russian military intelligence] run their best sources very well, and they will have back-up communications arrangements for their assets,” a retired senior intelligence officer told VOA.

The officer, a 30-year CIA veteran in counter-espionage who was a member of the team that unmasked CIA employee Aldrich Ames as a KGB mole in 1994, says in the Internet era, with hard-to-breach encrypted communications, “human contact is less crucial than in the past, adding “they will easily be able to use traveling ‘illegals’ to make human contact, anyway” when needed.

Uncertain effect

Speaking in the House of Commons Monday about the wave of expulsions being announced across Europe and by the United States, which ordered 60 diplomats — most of them presumed to be spies — to pack up, Britain’s Theresa May said the mass ejections, along with the 23 expulsions Britain announced last week, would in effect “dismantle” Russia’s spy network in the West.

She hailed the mass expulsions — a collective reprisal for what the British government claims was a Kremlin-approved effort on March 4 to poison on British soil the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia. She added the banishments amounted to “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history” — and May vowed never to allow Russian leader Vladimir Putin to rebuild an espionage machine in the West.

“Western expulsions have never crippled Russian intelligence collection,” says John Sipher, who retired in 2014 after a 28-year career in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, which included a stint in Moscow and running the CIA’s Russia operations.

Sipher told VOA: “The British expulsion of intelligence officers under Maggie Thatcher came the closest to hurting Russian espionage operations. The large number of Russian spies in the United States and Western countries has insured that losing a few doesn’t really do serious damage. If you have 150-200 intelligence officers in-country, losing 50 is painful, but hardly debilitating.”

The expulsions by Margaret Thatcher in 1985 came at the height of the Cold War.

Angry at the revelations about the extent of Soviet espionage activities in Britain that were revealed by KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, Britain’s Iron Lady ordered out more than 30 Russian diplomats in a wave of tit-for-tat expulsions that only ended when the then British ambassador to Moscow Bryan Cartledge pleaded with her to stop because of the damage it was doing to his embassy.

“Never engage in a pissing match with a skunk, he possesses important natural advantages,” Cartledge advised in a telegram to London.

Previous Western expulsions

Cartledge’s advice is echoed by retired and current intelligence officers. Sipher says he doubts the West’s mass expulsions will alter Putin’s policies. “I’m not aware that previous diplomatic expulsions changed behavior,” he said.

Sipher worries the West will come off worse when it comes to the impact on intelligence gathering and espionage, saying that is how it has worked with like-for-like expulsions in the past.

“I don’t think expulsions are as important as in the past but I do think they hurt the West more than Russia. The Russians are consistent and tough, and quickly toss out as many U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. Since our numbers are much smaller, it has a disproportionately bigger impact on us. We in the CIA often argued that it made no sense to throw out 50 [for example] Russian diplomats since it would impact a small percentage of their capability, but would devastate our collection ability,” he says.

Russia’s SVR and GRU have great strength in depth outside Russian embassies, Western intelligence officers say, running far more sleeper agents and other spies under non-official cover than Western agencies, and using them to establish contacts with academics, industrialists, and policymakers to gain access to sensitive and classified information. They can also be used to run logistical errands for deep-cover moles.

“The Russian illegals program is meant to be a strategic reserve in case they lose capability in their ‘legal’ residencies. The Soviet Union created the illegals program when they were young and realized that countries could break diplomatic relations altogether. They wanted to maintain their espionage networks even if the embassies closed,” Sipher says.

In 2010, the FBI broke up an illegals program in the United States of 10 Russian agents, among them Anna Chapman, whose flame-haired good looks immediately attracted intense Western media interest. The 10 sleepers were swapped by the U.S. for Sergei Skripal and three other Russian nationals, who had been spying for the West.

“The 2010 arrest of illegals in the United States was probably a blow to the SVR. I don’t know how successful they have been in rebuilding the capability,” says Sipher. If the Russians haven’t, then the “recent expulsions from the U.S. may be digging into bone” a bit, he adds.

A serving FBI counter-espionage officer recently told VOA there are concerns about Russian sleeper agents and “illegals” buried in the computer and contracting firms known as “Beltway Bandits” in the Washington DC area, mostly in northern Virginia, which have large government contracts.

Many covers

Another edge the Russian espionage agencies have over their Western rivals, especially when it comes to their rivals in the United States, is they have less restrictions placed on them when it comes to using traveling businessmen, academics, non-profit workers and journalists for spying activities and intelligence collection, say Western intelligence professionals.

Britain and France, which expelled four Russian “diplomats” are exceptions to this general rule — famously British intelligence secured a job easily at the Observer newspaper for double-agent Kim Philby in the 1950s when his MI6 bosses were trying to work out finally whether he had been working for the KGB all along.

“Given the minuscule numbers of U.S. intelligence officers in Russia compared to their presence in the United States, we always lose disproportionately in tit-for-tat,” said the CIA veteran who worked on the Aldrich Ames case. He believes, though, that the 60 expulsions announced by Washington Monday in the short term “should have some impact on the Russians’ developmental operations as there simply will be fewer of them out there hustling Americans.”

 
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Last year, the United States lifted long-standing economic sanctions against Sudan. The sanctions included a trade embargo, a freeze on some government assets, and restrictions on Sudanese banks and the ability of foreign banks to do business with Sudan.

But instead of revitalizing the economy, lifting the sanctions has highlighted a range of additional steps that Sudan must take to normalize relations and, perhaps, improve the country’s economic outlook, experts say.

Diplomatic process

For decades, Sudan and the U.S. have experienced more tension than cooperation. Low points have included the assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Khartoum in 1973, Sudan’s harboring of Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and the Sudanese government supporting violence against civilians in Darfur, which the U.S. called a genocide.

The first of the now-abolished sanctions were imposed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 over Sudan’s alleged sponsorship of terrorism and poor human rights record.

“It is never an easy relationship. It’s always a challenging relationship,” said Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, who served as U.S. chargé d’affaires to Sudan in 2011 and 2012 and co-chairs the Atlantic Council’s Sudan Task Force.

“I think, as it’s moved along in the last year or so, it’s in a very different phase right now than it has been for several decades. And I think there’s opportunity here to re-engage.”

The breakthrough followed a 16-month diplomatic effort known as the “five-track engagement plan.” High-level negotiators worked closely to make progress in key areas, ranging from counterterrorism to ending interference in South Sudan to improving the ability of humanitarian groups to access conflict regions in Sudan. 

“When you spend that amount of time working together and seeing that you both do have a common goal to try and reach and try and have some reward at the end for both countries, moving the nations closer together — I think that verifiable process is exactly what changed the relationship,” Yates said. 

Broader challenges

Sudanese leaders hailed the U.S.’s decision to lift the sanctions, but the impact on Sudan’s economy and its people remains unclear.

Magnus Taylor, an analyst with the International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa Project, said Sudan is struggling with hyperinflation and rising wheat prices following the removal of government subsidies. The end of U.S. sanctions has not been enough to offset those two factors.

“What the Sudanese government hoped was that this would usher in a new era of international investment in Sudan and interest in the country, but it’s actually only been five months,” Taylor said in a visit to VOA’s Washington offices. 

“A lot of companies are still pretty shy to invest in Sudan, and the economy is really in a bad place at the moment. So the investment environment is pretty bad,” he said.

Sudan now wants to capitalize on the thaw in its relationship with the U.S. and ask to be removed from a State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. This may be more difficult than lifting sanctions, Taylor said, since the U.S. is likely to ask for proof that the country has improved its human rights record and ended state-supported violence.

“They (the U.S.) want progress to be made on conflict resolution in the two conflict areas. One is Darfur, and one is the conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states on the border with South Sudan,” said Taylor.

The U.S. also wants Sudan to be a good partner by helping to stop conflict across the Horn of Africa. That means assisting with the U.S. agenda in South Sudan and elsewhere in the region, Taylor said.

Next phase

Yates said the Sudanese are eager to move forward toward re-integration into the international community. In addition to removal from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, they want to join the World Trade Organization and receive debt relief.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan visited Khartoum in November, but since then there has been little public evidence of progress, Yates said.

“The plans have not been developed for this second track, and I think time is of the essence here so that this mistrust that was part of our relations for so many decades does not create a vacuum,” she said. “And I think we need to capitalize on the goodwill that has been built so we can attempt to move forward.”
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In the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, students launch the Never Again movement, demanding far stronger gun laws in the US. Just five weeks after the shooting, they organized the March for Our Lives, attended by an estimated one million people across the globe. As Sama Dizayee reports, the students say it’s just the beginning.
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When letters from the U.S. government last month summoned more than 1,000 Burmese refugees in the United States for official interviews, chatter spread across the immigrant community: Were the letters real? Did the refugees have to attend? What was the government trying to glean from meeting with refugees who were already in the country, in some cases for years?

The letters — sent by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that conducts interviews with refugees overseas and vets immigration applications — were real.

Some of the refugees opted to go to the interviews, depending on where they were in the residency or citizenship process. Failing to comply could jeopardize pending immigration applications, according to the letters.

The ultimate goal of the investigation into possible identity fraud — specifically, two refugees entering under the same name — that may go back nearly a decade remains unclear a month later. USCIS will not say whether criminal charges have been or will be filed, and refugee advocates have not reported any such actions.

Regardless, the letters and interviews have raised eyebrows and questions, and kept refugees and their advocates on edge at a time when the U.S. government has whittled the refugee program to a shell of what it was 15 months ago.

Jill Niswander, director of communications and fund development at EMBARC Iowa, a refugee support organization in Des Moines, Iowa, said the USCIS interview requests rattled the Burmese community.

“No matter the outcome, this has cracked that kind of foundation safety these people have achieved here in the United States,” she told VOA, after local media in Iowa first reported the story at the end of February. 

“It’s never going to be the same anymore,” Niswander said. “They are always going to be expecting a letter. They are always going to be concerned about something like this happening again. Especially when you do this to a group of people whose history is persecution by the government.”

U.S. refugee program

The investigation comes after a tumultuous year for refugee admissions to the United States.

The Trump administration has cut arrivals by more than half, several key administrators have been reassigned or have retired, and as VOA reported last month, the nationality of the refugees who do come to the U.S. has shifted.

Refugee advocates fear the Trump administration will use the recent Burmese issue as a springboard to further cuts to the program.

The investigation into potential identity fraud cases isn’t the first time the U.S. has investigated its refugee vetting process. It’s rare, and narrow in scope when it does happen. Yet, an internet search of fraud and refugee-vetting turned up a mix of stories, many of which tout the risk of refugees to the country. The subject is a favorite among ultra-conservative, pseudo news sites and xenophobic blogs.

In one, the U.S. temporarily suspended refugee arrivals from East Africa in 2008 after some refugees failed DNA testing to confirm blood relations they claimed in their paperwork.

A July 2017 report by the Government Accounting Office found that overall, the U.S. State Department, USCIS and their partners “have implemented anti-fraud measures to reduce the risk of staff and applicant fraud — both of which have occurred — but could further assess fraud risks.”

The difference between the current Burmese refugee investigation and earlier ones is that the refugees in question aren’t abroad, but already in the U.S.

Though the problem originated on the ground in Malaysia, when refugees were registered with the U.N. system, it remains unclear how the errors occurred — whether there was a system for buying refugee identity cards, or errors in data entry in the rush to register refugees, or if refugees assumed the identities of other refugees in an attempt to get out of a country that was threatening them.

Targeted letters

The USCIS investigation is focused on a very narrow subset of refugees — by all accounts, U.S. refugee officials sent the letters exclusively to members of the ethnic Chin community who were processed through the international refugee network in Malaysia from about 2009 to 2013.

The Chin community accounts for about a quarter of the Burmese refugees and asylum-seekers in that country. In the late 2000s, they were vulnerable to detention in Malaysia, a country that has yet to ratify the Refugee Convention and which has, at times, been inhospitable to refugees.

The scramble to register refugees who were fleeing persecution in Myanmar, then arrest in Malaysia, may have led to errors in name and identification documentation, and subsequently, the duplicate identities.

Several refugee resettlement workers said they understood the investigation involved refugees who entered the U.S. after either purchasing other refugees’ identities or using fake names or, in a lesser offense, perhaps merely spelling their name differently on different documents.

A translator who attended one of the interviews told VOA one refugee was asked if she had purchased a refugee identity card. She responded “no,” according to the translator.

Refugee advocates say some of the interviewees have been asked to sign sworn statements documenting their responses.

Gen Langh, a translator with EMBARC Iowa, witnessed one two-and-a-half-hour refugee interview.

“I was a little bit nervous when the lawyer asked the [USCIS] officer how they were going to use the information that they get from the interviews. They don’t really tell, you know, just that they’re investigating,” Langh told VOA. “It’s a little bit uncomfortable for the client, you know — how are they going to use this information? They are going to use [it] against them? I wish they had been a little bit more clear on how they are going to use [the information].”

Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) obtained the transcript of a sworn statement made by a refugee who went through the interview process with USCIS.

The document, with some questions and all answers redacted, shows a line of inquiry that focuses on the refugee’s name, the registration process in Malaysia, identification documents, and other basic biographical information.

What’s next?

The interviews, according to the statement from USCIS, will “determine the validity of the information of record and any impact that information may have on a current or former refugee’s immigration status or eligibility for future immigration benefits.”

When asked in early March about the nature of the investigation into the Burmese Chin refugees, USCIS issued a brief statement to VOA in an emailed response.

The agency said it has “concerns about identity and biographic information provided to USCIS in a number of cases involving Burmese refugees, including many who have resettled in the U.S.”

The agency declined to answer follow-up questions, citing the ongoing investigation, and did not immediately respond for clarification on when the investigation began.

The U.S. State Department, which oversees part of the U.S refugee program, declined to comment for this story and deferred questions to USCIS.

USCIS would not answer whether the investigation is tied to a 2014 incident investigated by UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.

That year, UNHCR said it found “a significant number of cases of suspected fraud among some refugee communities from Myanmar. USCIS did not confirm whether that was the catalyst for their letter-mailing in the United States.

When the U.N. refugee agency raised the flag on the issue four years ago after an internal audit, it said “appropriate measures will be taken against any individuals found to have abused these humanitarian procedures.”

“We immediately informed the governments of resettlement countries, including the United States,” said Chris Boian, spokesperson for UNHCR in Washington.

The refugee agency subsequently carried out “a top-to-bottom overhaul” of their registration procedures, and added digital biometrics, Boian said.

Panicking

It is unclear when USCIS was made aware of the issue, and when the United States began its own investigation into the issue of duplicated Burmese identities.

Langh, the EMBARC translator, said there were rumors throughout the community that some refugees could be deported.

The community is “very much panicking,” he said. “And they didn’t even know how to express their fear. They’re just afraid that the government is going to send them back — or put them in jail.”

But even if criminal charges are filed, removal from the United States would be difficult. Myanmar is on the list of “recalcitrant” countries that do not accept deportees.

“There’s human error — it could be a small human error. That doesn’t mean refugees shouldn’t come to this country and feel welcome,” said Reena Arya, a lawyer with CLINIC, who worked with refugees overseas. “No system is perfect, and that shouldn’t cast doubt on every single person who’s fleeing persecution.”

VOA’s Aline Barros contributed to this report.
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Authorities in the southern U.S. state of Louisiana on Tuesday cleared two white policemen of wrongdoing in the shooting death of a black man at close range after it was determined he was armed, as the officers said they had believed, as they struggled to arrest him.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said the facts surrounding the 2016 killing of Alton Sterling showed “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the police officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake, were justified in the way they handled the incident as it unfolded outside a Baton Rouge convenience store where Sterling was selling homemade CDs.

Landry said the police officers believed that the 37-year-old Sterling was armed as they tried, unsuccessfully, to pin him on a sidewalk to arrest him. The attorney general said the policemen “several times tried to get hold of his hands.” At that point, a video of the incident shows Salamoni stepping back a short distance and firing three shots at Sterling and then three more into Sterling’s back when he began to sit up and move. Lake did not fire his gun.

Federal authorities, who had previously cleared the two officers of willfully depriving Sterling of his civil rights and use of excessive force, concluded that moments before shooting him, Salamoni had yelled that Sterling was reaching for a gun in his pocket. Landry said the “belief he was armed was subsequently verified.”

The July 2016 incident occurred at a time of heightened tensions in the U.S. over deadly street confrontations in several cities between local police, most of them white, and black residents.In some instances, police have been charged with murder in the shootings and convicted, but in other cases have been cleared of wrongdoing.

In Baton Rouge, more than 200 people were arrested in demonstrations protesting the killing of Sterling.
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The attorney general’s office in the western U.S. state of California is joining an investigation into the deadly police shooting of an unarmed African-American man to provide independent oversight.

The announcement was made by the police chief of Sacramento, the capital city of California, where the shooting occurred. Chief Daniel Hahn said the partnership is intended to “build faith and confidence” in the probe.

Attorney General Xavier Becker said his office would ensure the probe would be “based on the facts and the law, nothing less, nothing more.”

Law enforcement authorities are investigating the death of Stephon Clark, who was fatally shot by two police officers earlier this month in his grandparents back yard.

The officers were responding to a nighttime phone call about a man breaking car windows and a glass door in the area. They encountered him in the yard and shot him to death, firing 20 bullets.

Clark did not have a weapon. Only a cell phone was found nearby.

The police killing of another unarmed African-American person sparked outrage from activists who are demanding greater independence in the investigation. Some have called for the officers to be charged.
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Mexico and the United States have signed three accords to improve bilateral customs procedures and expedite the flow of agricultural produce across their almost 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometers) border, the two governments said on Monday.

In a joint news conference with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said the first agreement aimed to promote joint cooperation to stop illegal merchandise crossing the border.

Secondly, the two agreed to implement programs of joint inspections of cargo between the neighbors, whose bilateral trade is worth half a trillion dollars a year.

“It’s about creating efficiencies” Videgaray said.

Finally, the governments signed an accord that would promote the trade of agricultural goods, the minister added.

Nielsen said the two countries were also working on some 20 further memorandums of understanding and letters of intent.

Mexican-U.S. relations have been strained by U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence that Mexico pay for the southern border wall he wants built to keep out illegal immigrants.

Tensions have also been stirred by Trump’s repeated threats to dump the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if it is not reworked to his satisfaction.

He argues NAFTA has encouraged companies to relocate to lower-cost Mexico at the expense of U.S. manufacturing workers.
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Linda Brown, who as a young girl was at the center of the lawsuit that ended racial segregation in American schools, has died.

Brown died Sunday in Topeka, Kansas. She was 76.

Brown was 9 years old when her father, the Rev. Oliver Brown, sued the Topeka school board to allow his daughter to attend an all-white elementary school close to her home.

Four similar cases were combined with Brown’s complaint and presented to the U.S. Supreme Court as Brown v. The Board of Education.

In May 1954, the nation’s highest court unanimously ruled that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” making it unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment that says no citizen can be denied equal protection under the law.

“In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote.

Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case before the court for the plaintiffs.

Kansas Governor Jeff Coyler on Monday tweeted, “64 years ago a young girl from Topeka brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America. Linda Brown’s life reminds us that sometimes the most unlikely people can have an incredible impact and that by serving our community we can truly change the world.”

“We are to be grateful for the family that stood up for what is right,” said Democratic state Rep. Annie Kuether of Topeka. “That made a difference to the rest of the world.”
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In her widely watched “60 Minutes” interview, porn star Stormy Daniels explained why she accepted a $130,000 payment she says was intended to keep her silent about her sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006.

Trump has denied the affair, through his representatives. But his lawyer, Michael Cohen, has said he paid Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket days before the 2016 election. That has prompted questions about whether it was effectively a campaign contribution. Cohen denies the payment was related to the campaign.

Some questions and answers about the payment:

WAS THE $130K ILLEGAL?

The transaction itself does not seem to be illegal, but the failure to report it either as a campaign contribution or on government ethics forms might be.

WHO OBJECTS?

Two complaints have been filed by watchdog groups. Common Cause says in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that the payment may violate federal campaign finance law in several respects. It said it should have been reported as an in-kind campaign contribution and was far above the $5,400 Cohen could give Trump’s campaign. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington also has asked the Justice Department and the Office of Government Ethics to investigate whether the payment to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, may have violated federal law because Trump did not list it on his financial disclosure forms.

Cohen has said neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Daniels and he was not reimbursed for the payment. However, Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti told “60 Minutes” he has documents showing Cohen using his Trump Organization email address in setting up the payment and that the nondisclosure agreement was sent by FedEx to Cohen at his Trump Organization office in Trump Tower.

ISN’T THIS JUST A TECHNICALITY?

The groups that filed these complaints say their beef isn’t just about technical violations of obscure election and ethics laws. They say the complaints may open the door to more serious allegations that could force Cohen, and potentially Trump, to testify under oath. Common Cause vice president Paul S. Ryan said Cohen should be asked under oath about Trump’s involvement in the payment. “Michael Cohen knows whether Donald Trump is directly involved in all of this,” Ryan said.

WHAT’S THE PENALTY FOR ILLEGAL CONTRIBUTIONS?

There can be both civil and criminal penalties if investigators determine that the campaign or Cohen intended to keep the payment secret. This is not an easy standard to prove in court. Prosecutors failed to get a conviction against former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards on charges that he received illegal contributions and falsified documents to pay for the silence of his pregnant mistress as he campaigned for president in 2008. Ryan said a case against Trump could be stronger because the payment to Daniels was made days before the election when she was likely to go public with her story.

ANY CONNECTION TO THE RUSSIA PROBE?

Russia’s election meddling and the alleged Daniels affair do not appear to be linked. But special counsel Robert Mueller has broad investigative authority, and Cohen has been linked to other aspects of the investigation, including efforts in 2015 to pursue a Trump Tower real estate development in Moscow. If Mueller believed he could leverage Cohen’s testimony about Russian matters, he could have reason to look into the payment to Daniels.

WHAT OTHER LAWSUITS ARE INVOLVED?

Daniels has filed a lawsuit to free herself from the non-disclosure agreement she signed when she accepted the money. Cohen also is pursuing claims through arbitration against Daniels for violating the non-disclosure agreement. Cohen says Daniels could owe $20 million for violating the agreement. It’s possible that if Cohen does not drop the effort, Daniels’ lawyer could try to question Trump about the arrangement.

DOES A SITTING PRESIDENT HAVE TO TESTIFY?

Probably. The Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that President Bill Clinton was not protected from a civil sexual harassment lawsuit filed in federal court by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. The high court has never definitively said whether a president must answer questions in a criminal proceeding, including the kind of grand jury that Mueller has empaneled. But it has suggested he would have to comply. Trump also is facing a defamation lawsuit in a New York court that was filed by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice.” A judge ruled the lawsuit can move forward while the president is in office.
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