(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Idaho serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech’s last-minute request for a stay of execution.
Associate Justice Elena Kagan issued the decision to deny Creech’s request Wednesday morning, clearing the way for prison authorities to carry out his execution by lethal injection.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(NEW YORK) — At least nine tornadoes were reported across Illinois, Michigan and Ohio as a storm barreled through the Midwest overnight.
Wind gusts reached 82 mph near Chicago, and hail was larger than golf balls in DuPage County, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.
On Wednesday morning, the severe thunderstorm threat is ongoing for the Ohio Valley, West Virginia and Kentucky, where a few thunderstorms are possible.
By Wednesday afternoon, the strong thunderstorms and gusty winds will move east, stretching from the Tennessee River Valley to the Northeast.
Up to 3 inches of rain is forecast for West Virginia and New England.
The heaviest rain will reach the Interstate 95 corridor Wednesday evening.
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(NEW YORK) — The New York Police Department is pushing back after an official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement claimed the Venezuelan suspect arrested for Laken Riley’s murder was previously arrested and released by NYPD in 2023.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, obstructing an emergency call and concealing the death of another.
“There is no arrest on file with the name provided in 2023,” NYPD said in a statement on Tuesday.
He was denied bond during an initial court appearance on Saturday and is being held at the Clarke County Jail.
NYPD’s Tuesday release came in response to a statement on Sunday from ICE, which said Ibarra had been arrested on Sept. 8, 2022, by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “after unlawfully entering the United States near El Paso, Texas.”
“He was paroled and released for further processing,” ICE said. “On Sept. 14, 2023, [Jose] Ibarra was arrested by the New York Police Department and charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation,” the statement continued.
“He was released by the NYPD before a detainer could be issued. On Feb. 23, 2024, ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] Atlanta encountered Ibarra pursuant to his arrest by the University of Georgia Police Department and being charged with murder and other crimes. ERO Atlanta lodged a detainer.”
An ICE spokesperson on Tuesday stood by the agency’s record keeping, but could not explain the dispute. ICE first said Ibarra was arrested and released by NYPD before federal officials could ask for his detention.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp addressed the Athens-Clarke Chamber of Commerce on Monday, calling Riley’s death “preventable.”
“First of all, [the family is] devastated. They are heartbroken. Marty and I both can understand. Our daughters are at the University of Georgia, and they work out in that same area [as Laken Riley],” Kemp said. “They’re also mad like I am that this happened. It was preventable because we just have a nightmare in this country with mass migration and then have people that are here illegally breaking our laws and they’re not telling anybody and reporting this to us.”
The 22-year-old nursing student was found in a wooded area on campus on Thursday with “visible injuries,” the university said. She died from blunt force trauma, according to University of Georgia Police Department Chief Jeffrey Clark.
Police do not believe he knew the victim and do not have a motive, according to the chief.
“I think this was a crime of opportunity, where he saw an individual and bad things happened,” Clark said.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Quinn Owen contributed to this report.
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(SANTA FE, N.M.) — Jurors in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Hannah Gutierrez saw footage of the “Rust” armorer being interviewed by law enforcement hours after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of the Western.
“I wish I would have checked it more,” Gutierrez said of the Colt .45 revolver while being questioned at the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office in New Mexico on Oct. 21, 2021, in footage shown to jurors Tuesday on the fourth day of her trial.
Actor Alec Baldwin was practicing a cross-draw in a church on the set when the gun fired a live round, striking Hutchins and director Joel Souza, who suffered a non-life-threatening injury.
Gutierrez told investigators she was “flabbergasted” by the shooting and that she had checked all six rounds in the prop gun, which was a fully functioning firearm.
“I do check the dummies,” she said. “I check all of them. They all showed that they were not hot, I guess you could say.”
Gutierrez told investigators that she had spent the morning loading prop guns with dummies. After lunch, she was outside the church due to COVID-19 restrictions when she said she heard one shot go off inside.
She said she went inside and was “yelled” at, so ran out. She said she checked the gun, and one round was missing, but the “rest were fine.”
“One of the dummies had somehow been discharged,” she told investigators in the footage.
One of the investigators showed Gutierrez a photo a deputy had texted her from the hospital of the projectile removed from Souza’s shoulder.
“They were thinking it could be an actual live round at this point,” the investigator told Gutierrez.
“Does that look like it would have been a live round to you?” she asked the armorer.
“That looks like a blank one,” Gutierrez initially responded, before later saying, “That might be a regular live round, though.”
“That’s what they were thinking — it could be a live round,” the investigator said.
“Holy f—,” Gutierrez responded.
Gutierrez contended that she had checked the six rounds in the firearm to see if they rattled — indicating they were dummy rounds.
“If it didn’t rattle, I wouldn’t have put it in,” she said. “I checked all six of them for a rattle.”
Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office Cpl. Alexandra Hancock testified on the stand Tuesday that one of the dummy rounds in the firearm had a hole on the side to indicate it was a dummy.
“It would not have rattled, which is contrary to her statement of, if it wouldn’t have had rattled, I wouldn’t put it in,” Hancock said.
Hours before the shooting, several members of the camera department walked off the set in protest of poor working conditions. When asked about that during the interview, Gutierrez said the set was “toxic” but didn’t think anyone was “that malicious.”
“I feel like this is a really f—ed-up accident,” she said, the footage showed.
Asked where the ammunition for the set came from, Gutierrez told the investigator they got boxes of dummies from Seth Kenney, owner of PDQ Arm and Prop in Albuquerque.
During a second interview with the sheriff’s office in November 2021, Gutierrez “disclosed” that she and another supplier also provided ammunition for the set, Hancock testified.
During the November interview, part of which was shown to jurors on Tuesday before breaking for the day, Gutierrez said she brought in “loose dummies” she had from a prior film set that had been in her car for two weeks.
Ammunition from PDQ did not match any of the live ammunition found on the “Rust” set, Hancock testified.
Gutierrez, 26, has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence charges. Prosecutors allege she handed off a small bag of cocaine after her interview with law enforcement following the shooting. The defense has argued there is no proof that cocaine was in the bag and that she was charged with the offense “in an effort to cause unfair prejudice” to the defendant during the trial.
Prosecutors have claimed that the armorer did not always adhere to “essential” safety procedures on set and unwittingly brought the live bullets onto the set.
Defense attorney Jason Bowles said during opening statements last week that the production and state have made Gutierrez a “scapegoat” in the tragic shooting.
“Just because there was a tragedy does not mean that a crime was committed,” he said.
He claimed that the production created a “chaotic scene” by giving Gutierrez props duties that took away from her job as lead armorer. He said she wasn’t given sufficient time to train the crew on the firearms, including Baldwin, whom he argued was inappropriately handling the gun by pointing it at the crew, and has denied that she brought the live bullets on set.
Baldwin has also been charged with involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death. He has pleaded not guilty.
Earlier Tuesday, firearms expert Lucien Haag testified for the state that for the revolver to fire, the hammer would have needed to be fully cocked and the trigger pulled — matching testimony from FBI firearms expert Bryce Ziegler on Monday.
Baldwin has said he did not pull the trigger on the gun.
His trial has been scheduled to start in July.
“We look forward to our day in court,” Baldwin’s attorneys, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, said following his indictment in January.
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“Devastating” wildfires in Texas have prompted a disaster declaration for dozens of counties and evacuation orders in parts of the Texas Panhandle.
Gov. Greg Abbott declared a disaster declaration for 60 counties on Tuesday due to “widespread wildfire activity throughout the state.”
The declaration will ensure that fire response resources are quickly deployed to “areas in the Texas Panhandle being impacted by devastating wildfires,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday.
According to an internal situation report from DHS/CISA, the “wildfires in northern Texas and western Oklahoma prompted a precautionary evacuation of non-essential personnel at the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant in Amarillo, TX. All special materials are safe and unaffected. There are no reported impacts to early voting in either state.”
“The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant in Carson County evacuated all nonessential personnel and paused operations until further notice due to the ongoing wildfires,” according to the report obtained by ABC News. “All weapons and special materials are safe and unaffected. The facility is approximately 13 miles from the Windy Deuce Fire.”
Additionally, the agency reports “the Smokehouse Creek fire crossed into northwestern Oklahoma, resulting in a hospital and nursing home evacuation in Shattuck, OK. Several state and local highways are also affected by the fires.”
The Texas A&M Forest Service had said it responded to 13 wildfires on Monday, with conditions on Tuesday ideal for more wildfire activity.
“Several large wildfires ignited under warm, dry and windy conditions across the Texas Panhandle,” the agency said on social media earlier Tuesday. “Today, strong winds will likely impact these wildfires and the potential for new ignitions remains.”
Fires continued to impact mainly the central and eastern portions of the Panhandles on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Among the blazes, the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Hutchinson County has burned 250,000 acres and is 0% contained as of Tuesday evening, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. There was “extreme fire behavior” associated with the wildfire on Tuesday, with wind gusts up to 60 mph and flames as high as 20 feet in grass, a spokesperson for the agency told ABC News.
The Windy Deuce Fire in Moore County has burned an estimated 38,000 acres and was 20% contained as of Tuesday evening, fire officials said.
“Fire behavior continues to be very active under the influence of high winds,” the Texas A&M Forest Service said on social media.
More than 40 houses were damaged in Fritch, a city located in Hutchinson and Moore counties, since Monday, the city said. Parts of the city have been evacuated.
Mandatory evacuations are in effect for several towns and communities in the Amarillo region, including Skellytown, Wheeler, Allison and Briscoe, the National Weather Service said Tuesday evening. Voluntary evacuations are in effect for Pampa, it said.
Abbott warned that the wildfires could grow in the coming days as high temperatures and windy conditions continue.
“Texans are urged to limit activities that could create sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe,” he said.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
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(SITKA, Alaska) — Tad Fujioka always had great problem-solving skills. After studying and working as an engineer, he left the field 14 years ago to become a troll fisherman based in Sitka, Alaska.
“If you’re good at solving problems in one environment, that translates directly to another environment,” he told ABC News, adding that there are other benefits to the job. “I love the freedom to follow my instincts, I don’t have to report to a boss, I love being out on the water in a beautiful country.”
Today he’s the chairman of the Seafood Producers Cooperative in Sitka, Alaska, and supports his family by troll fishing on his 31-foot boat, the Sakura. One of the most important types of fish he reels in is king salmon — the largest and most expensive species of salmon in the Pacific.
But now, Fujioka is facing a new problem. The fish, which are also known as Chinook, are vital to the state’s rural economy but are also the primary prey for a group of starving orcas in the Salish Sea known as the southern residents. It’s a recipe for disaster that has Southeast Alaska’s troll fishery caught at the heart of a legal showdown that could potentially stop the king salmon harvest in an effort to help the endangered killer whales.
The case is still working its way through the courts, and has left the small communities on both sides of the issue waiting on a result that will impact their culture, economy and way of life.
“To lose access to the king salmon resource would have turned a marginally poor season into a disastrous season,” said Fujioka, who estimates that these fish accounted for two thirds of his income. “It has a direct effect on rural southeast Alaska.”
In 2019 the federal government acknowledged that Southeast Alaska’s limits for king salmon troll fishing didn’t allow for enough fish to migrate south to southern resident territory.
A year later, the Wild Fish Conservancy, a conservation group in Washington State, filed a lawsuit against the government alleging that it had violated environmental law by continuing to allow the king salmon troll fishery to operate. The government did have a plan to introduce hatchery fish to mitigate the damage, but had not proven that it would be successful and leave enough for the whales.
“If we keep doing what we’re doing, these populations will eventually not exist, and these whales may not exist,” Emma Helverson, executive director of the Wild Fish Conservancy, told ABC News.
In May 2023 a judge ruled in the WFC’s favor, and granted its request to close the fishery while the government determines if a harvest can continue without harming the orcas. But a circuit court panel later reversed this decision, citing a potentially “disastrous” economic impact, after hearing from the Alaska Trollers Association and other parties.
“There’s this perception that Alaska is catching all of their fish — we are viewed as ‘big, bad Alaska,'” said Dani Evenson, of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “We all share the responsibility of conservation, but people like to point fingers. Everybody wants a silver bullet.”
King salmon is vital to small communities in Alaska
King salmon trolling, which is a style of fishing involving small boats and individual fishing lines dragged through the water, has an estimated economic impact of $85 million in Southeast Alaska. In 2022, king salmon caught in Southeast Alaska were valued at just over $16 million, according to data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
In cities like Craig, which has just over 1,000 residents, many families rely on the fishing industry — even the mayor is a commercial troller. He told ABC News the city’s population could decrease by half if king salmon fishing were halted indefinitely. He was also keen to counteract campaigns for consumers to stop eating the fish.
“You’re going to break a bunch of fishermen. You’re going to destroy some communities in Alaska. You’re going to put a bunch of kids out of work or out of school,” he said. “Is that what you want to do by not eating king salmon?”
Julie Yates, who lives in Craig, worked alongside her father on his troll boat for years before becoming a commercial fisherman.
“It’s been the dream to follow in his footsteps and continue this,” said Yates, who has also been teaching her son Bear about the family business and is concerned about the uncertainty the lawsuit has brought.
“It’s hard to even think about what the future looks like,” she said.
The salmon also serves as a food source for locals, which is especially valuable as grocery prices continue to increase. A 2023 report named Alaska the fifth most expensive state in the U.S. in terms of cost of living.
Members of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, for whom king salmon is a traditional food, have also weighed in on the lawsuit, filing an Amicus brief in October last year.
“Salmon — a foundational food source for Southeast Alaska Indigenous communities—are particularly revered. Trolling for Chinook salmon is a traditional, respectful, and sustainable method of harvesting this culturally significant food,” the brief reads, adding that the groups “do not support blunt measures that place the heaviest burdens on the Indigenous people who depend on the Chinook troll industry for both their individual and community wellbeing.”
Clinton Cook Sr., President of the Craig Tribal Association, who was involved in filing the brief, said it’s a common misconception that people in Alaska prioritize industry over the environment.
“That’s about as wrong as it gets,” he said. “We’re the indigenous people of the southeast, we’ve been here for generations. We’re stewards of the land and the water — that’s been our history for thousands of years.”
“We’ve always protected our environment, our fish are sacred to us,” he added. “When people try to take that away, it’s not ok.”
Fates of chinook salmon and orca whales are intertwined
Decades ago Chinook were able to survive in the wild for more than nine years, which allowed them to grow to larger than 100 pounds. Today they reach less than a third of that size on average, and their population is decreasing. The total amount being caught or returning to rivers in the Salish Sea has fallen from just over 800,000 in the 1980s to just over 400,000 in 2018, according to data from the Pacific Salmon Commission. Two species of Chinook are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
This is a problem for the ocean’s ecosystem as a whole, but specifically for the southern resident killer whales, officials said. A group of 74 whales made up of three pods whose territory usually extends from the waters around Vancouver Island to the Salish Sea. They have been dubbed “icons of the West coast.”
The whales evolved over hundreds of years to feed specifically on Chinook salmon. After losing a large amount of their population to marine parks in the 1970s and 1980s, and were listed as endangered in 2005. Today they face a multitude of challenges including high levels of toxins in their water and increased noise from boat traffic — both of which are exacerbated by the fact that their primary prey is rapidly declining.
Biologists estimate that 69% of pregnancies among the southern residents fail, largely due to a lack of food.
“They are basically in a constant state of hunger the southern residents go and there’s one fish that they’re trying to share between three or four family members,” said Deborah Giles, science and research director of Wild Orca, who has spent decades studying the whales. “Just in one whale’s lifetime, we have completely changed their ability to survive.”
Whale watching communities need healthy salmon population
Meanwhile, 640 miles southeast, the livelihood of another small island community depends on the ocean as well — but in a different way. Friday Harbor, Washington, is a town of about 2,500 people in the picturesque San Juan islands, where whale watching represents 13% of total employment in the region and brings in half a million visitors every year, officials said.
“It’s one of the peak life experiences to see whales in the wild, especially out here,” said Jeff Friedman, a marine naturalist and owner of a whale watching company based in Friday Harbor, noting the island has people coming from as far away as Australia and Europe to see the southern residents and other groups of whales. “Obviously our businesses are dependent on that, as well as the hotels and restaurants and other island businesses that people support when they’re out here.”
These whales are particularly beloved among tourists and residents.
“The southern residents are probably the best known population here,” Amy Nesler, Communications and Stewardship Manager at the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau, told ABC News. “We end up with newspaper articles every time they have a new calf, or we’ll have a memorial of the ones we lose in a year.”
They used to be a common site on whale watching tours, but have become much more rare in recent years.
“We don’t see them in the inland waters like we used to, because they don’t have salmon,” Friedman said, noting that he and other operators follow a strict set of guidelines prohibiting boats from getting too close to the group to prevent damage from boat noise.
“We have impacted their world,” he said. “I think it gives us not just a sense of responsibility, but a desire to do something right for them and make sure they have the environment to thrive.”
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(NEW YORK) — Just days after the untimely death of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who became world famous after escaping from his vandalized enclosure at New York City’s Central Park Zoo, fans and politicians are proposing ideas to preserve his legacy, including erecting a statue in honor of the fugitive fowl.
A Change.org petition had already garnered more than 2,300 signatures as of Tuesday, calling on the city and park officials to create a permanent memorial of the beloved apex predator near one of his favorite Central Park trees.
“I think the legacy of Flaco is he turned a lot of people into bird enthusiasts. He turned a lot of people onto the joy of looking around, viewing the city not as just a concrete jungle,” Manhattan resident Brandon Borror-Chappell, who along with his friend, Mike Hubbard, started the Change.org petition on Sunday, told ABC News.
Hubbard noted that the only other statue honoring a famous real-life animal is the bronze sculpture of Balto, the Alaskan sled dog who in 1925 became a national cause célèbre for leading a team of mushers on the last leg of a 700-mile trek through a blizzard to deliver vaccine to Nome, Alaska, where a diphtheria outbreak was threatening the population.
Unlike Flaco, Balto had no previous connection to New York City other than attending the unveiling ceremony of his statue.
“This is a uniquely New York story,” the 34-year-old Hubbard said of Flaco’s yearlong saga, which captured worldwide attention. “I just think it could only happen here. It was so crazy, funny, it was huge, it was inspiring. It had like a dangerous edge to it. That could only happen here.”
Borror-Cappell, 33, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Central Park, said Flaco inspired scores of New Yorkers like no other animal before him with the resilience he showed in his quest to live as a free bird.
“He was confined for 13 years and yet when he became his natural self, there was something in him that was unchanged by that confinement,” Borror-Cappell said. “It was so cool to see him figure out how to be an owl.”
Borror-Cappell said that if the statue doesn’t pan out, he still has mementos of Flaco he’ll cherish forever — rodent bones he found in pellets regurgitated by Flaco and found beneath one of the bird’s favorite trees in the North Woods of Central Park.
“I brought them home and I bleached them in peroxide a couple of times, and now I have a collection of little white rat bones that are hygienic and were in the real Flaco’s belly and coughed up in his pellet.”
Flaco died Friday evening after apparently colliding with a building on West 89th Street in Manhattan, according to a statement from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the Central Park Zoo. Residents of the building reported the downed owl to the Wild Bird Fund (WBF), which quickly responded, but Flaco was nonresponsive and declared dead shortly afterward.
The initial findings from a necropsy performed Saturday are consistent with death due to “acute traumatic injury,” WCS officials said.
Two local elected leaders are also trying to preserve Flaco’s legacy with a renewed push for two pieces of legislation to increase protections for birds in New York. One of the bills, the Bird Safe Buildings Act, is being renamed the FLACO Act, also a clever acronym for “Feathered Lives Also Count.”
The FLACO Act would require any new or significantly altered state buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs, particularly in their windows. Backers of the bill say that nearly 250,000 birds in New York City die each year from collisions with buildings.
A second piece of legislation, the Dark Skies Protection Act, would protect migrating birds from becoming disoriented by bright lights in New York by requiring most non-essential outdoor lighting be covered by an external shield, be motion-activated, or be turned off between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.
“I’m gutted at the death of Flaco the owl, who delighted countless New Yorkers through his presence in Central Park,” state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who introduced the FLACO ACT, said in a statement.
Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes the west side of Manhattan, added, “By renaming our legislation to require state-owned buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs, we’ll not only honor this magnificent creature, but hopefully inspire our legislative colleagues to pass both the FLACO Act and the Dark Skies Protection Act.”
Meanwhile, volunteers scrambled Tuesday ahead of a rainstorm to collect artifacts left at a memorial for Flaco in Central Park.
“We want to preserve the letters and photos, and even paintings that people have left behind in honor of Flaco,” David Barrett, the creator and manager of Manhattan Bird Alert, the go-to New York bird watchers’ social media site boasting more than 91,000 followers on X (formally known as Twitter), told ABC News. “This is something we’ll want to remember, the time that brought people together in the love of Flaco.”
The zoo officials said the vandal who, on the evening of Feb. 2, 2023, cut open the stainless steel mesh of Flaco’s enclosure, enabling the owl to bolt into the wilds of the concrete jungle, is ultimately responsible for his death.
“The vandal who damaged Flaco’s exhibit jeopardized the safety of the bird and is ultimately responsible for his death. We are still hopeful that the NYPD, which is investigating the vandalism, will ultimately make an arrest,” the WCS said in a statement.
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(NEW ORLEANS) — A convicted felon who escaped custody on Sunday after pepper spraying his transporting deputy and stealing her car was captured in New Orleans on Tuesday, authorities said.
Leon Ruffin, 51, who had been in custody on a second-degree murder charge, was found at a hotel in New Orleans East, with the help of New Orleans Police and the U.S. Marshals Service, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said in a media briefing Tuesday.
At about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Ruffin was taken into custody at the hotel without incident, said Lopinto.
Search warrants are currently being conducted at the hotel. Authorities believe that Ruffin spent most of his time at the hotel during his escape.
Lopinto said he expects to arrest others for allegedly assisting Ruffin during the past few days.
Lopinto said that Ruffin will now face additional charges, including assaulting a police officer.
Ruffin was arrested in July 2023 and was in custody at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center, authorities said. Since his arrest he had been treated for multiple injuries and was wheelchair-bound with a boot on his leg, the sheriff said.
Shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, Ruffin allegedly faked a seizure and fell out of his wheelchair, Lopinto said. He was transported to Ochsner Medical Center’s West Bank campus.
Ruffin was discharged nearly five hours later after a series of tests and put in the back of a sheriff’s vehicle inside a cage to head back to the correctional center, the sheriff said.
As a deputy started driving away from the hospital, Ruffin claimed that his boot was stuck under the cage, causing him pain, according to the sheriff. The deputy stopped the vehicle to check to see if she could fix the boot. As she opened the back, Ruffin pepper sprayed her, removed his boot and stole the vehicle, according to Lopinto. He was not handcuffed or shackled at the time due to his injuries, the sheriff said.
“She treated somebody with compassion that doesn’t deserve compassion, to be honest with you,” Lopinto said during a press briefing earlier Tuesday, adding that they believe he was “milking” his leg injury.
The deputy fired multiple shots as Ruffin was driving away, but there is no indication that he was hit, the sheriff said.
The vehicle was found two and a half hours later, according to Lopinto.
It was unclear where the suspect obtained the pepper spray, authorities previously said. The deputy still had her pepper spray, taser and weapon following his escape.
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(WASHINGTON) — Hunter Biden will come face to face this week with the Republicans lawmakers he once accused of trying to kill him to harm his father’s political career in a highly anticipated face-off that could be a pivotal moment for the sputtering GOP-led impeachment inquiry.
Members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees will interview President Joe Biden’s son on Wednesday during a closed-door session on Capitol Hill.
Republicans hope to elicit revelations that could justify moving forward with their inquiry, whose credibility suffered a blow with the recent indictment of an ex-FBI source who is accused of falsifying the allegations of bribery involving both Bidens that were once a central tenet of the GOP impeachment narrative.
Hunter Biden, who in January abruptly relented his efforts to testify at an open hearing, will likely continue to deny his father had an involvement in his overseas business endeavors. The president has forcefully denied having any role in his son’s work life.
Republicans are also expected to ask him about the ethical implications of his art career and his relationship with Kevin Morris, his friend, attorney, and patron.
But Hunter Biden might otherwise be limited in what he can tell the committee about any matters related to the two federal criminal indictments he faces, a person familiar with his preparations told ABC News.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to tax-related charges in California and gun-related crimes in Delaware.
Wednesday’s hearing will come after months of public and private wrangling over the nature and extent of Hunter Biden’s cooperation with a congressional subpoena, which Oversight Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan first issued in November 2023.
Hunter Biden appeared on Capitol Hill not once, but twice, to challenge Republicans to allow him to testify in public. Republicans declined his overtures, arguing that his initial testimony should take place behind closed doors, as they say is done with all other witnesses. Comer at one point threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress.
Hunter Biden ultimately acquiesced. But a person familiar with the matter said his legal team negotiated conditions for the interview that satisfied their concern that Republicans on the panel would cherry-pick or mischaracterize his testimony.
Notably, the committees agreed to share a transcript of the complete interview to Democrats and Republicans on the committees simultaneously — and subsequently made public as quickly as possible — and that his interview would not be videotaped.
The committees have already interviewed scores of witnesses and reviewed thousands of bank records belonging to Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, who last week told lawmakers that the president had no involvement in the family’s business dealings.
At least nine other key witnesses interviewed as part of the impeachment probe have shared similar exculpatory accounts that undercut key tenets of Republicans’ accusations against the president.
Republicans are nonetheless expected to press Hunter Biden on his role in allegedly selling the Biden “brand” to score lucrative business deals abroad; his proclivity to invoke his family name in business negotiations; and whether any of the millions of dollars he earned from foreign business entities benefitted his father personally.
Those claims are central to Republicans’ accusations against President Biden, even though no concrete evidence has emerged to suggest the president made policy decisions based on his son’s business dealings when he was vice president or at other times or accepted any payments through family members.
Even so, some witnesses have testified that Joe Biden had a more active role in his son’s work than he or the White House have otherwise acknowledged, even if those interactions did not amount to direct financial involvement.
Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter and James Biden, said Joe Biden attended at least two dinners with their foreign business partners, although “nothing of material was discussed.”
Archer, who sat with Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm, also testified that Hunter Biden would often put his father on speakerphone while in the presence of business associates, but said those discussions were often about the weather and other benign subjects.
Notably, Archer said he was not aware of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
For his part, Hunter Biden has acknowledged at least one instance in which he and his father discussed his business activities. In an interview with the New Yorker in 2019, Hunter Biden recalled a conversation they had about his appointment to the board of directors of Burisma: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do,'” Hunter Biden recalled.
In a statement Tuesday, Comer said the Republican probe will continue — despite Wednesday’s outcome.
“Our committees have the opportunity to depose Hunter Biden, a key witness in our impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, about this record of evidence,” he said. “This deposition is not the conclusion of the impeachment inquiry. There are more subpoenas and witness interviews to come. We will continue to follow the facts to inform legislative reforms to federal ethics laws and determine whether articles of impeachment are warranted.”
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(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — The Covenant School, which was the site of a 2023 mass shooting, received a bomb threat on Monday, according to a Nashville Police Department spokesperson.
“Yesterday an employee of Covenant School received an emailed bomb threat. We cleared the site, with assistance from a THP (Tennessee Highway Patrol) bomb dog. Our Specialized Investigations Division detectives are working with the FBI to investigate the origin of the threat,” according to a Metropolitan Nashville Police Department spokesperson.
The school referred ABC News to law enforcement when requested for comment regarding the bomb threat.
In March of 2023, Covenant School in Nashville, a private pre-k to sixth grade Christian school, was the site of a mass shooting that killed three students and three employees including the head of school.
The shooter was identified by police as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who law enforcement said once attended the school.
A police spokesperson told ABC News in March 2023, that Hale was assigned female at birth and pointed to a social media account linked to Hale that included use of the pronouns he/him.
It was the deadliest school shooting in Tennessee history.
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