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(NEW YORK) — A hush money payment made to an adult film actress nearly seven years ago is at the center of a criminal probe that could potentially result in criminal charges filed against a former U.S. president.

Former President Donald Trump is currently under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office as part of a probe into a payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential race.

No current or former U.S. president has ever been indicted for criminal conduct.

The hush money probe had languished even as other investigations into Trump moved forward — until Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg convened a grand jury to revive the probe at the start of this year, according to sources.

Trump was invited to appear before the grand jury in recent weeks, sources told ABC News, in a sign that the DA could be moving closer to a charging decision. The former president’s attorney said Trump has no plans to testify. Trump himself speculated over the weekend that he would be arrested Tuesday in the probe, but Tuesday passed with no action on the DA’s part.

What is the case about?

The investigation centers around a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels just days before the 2016 election by Trump’s then-attorney, Michael Cohen, in order to prevent her from going public with her allegations of a 2006 affair with Trump, which he has long denied.

Cohen executed the transaction through a shell corporation, Essential Consultants LLC, which Cohen had set up just days prior, according to court filings.

“Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign,” Cohen testified before Congress in 2019.

When Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment, his company logged the payments as a “monthly retainer” for Cohen’s legal services, according to Trump and court documents from Cohen’s subsequent plea deal. Prosecutors are considering whether Trump should be charged with falsifying business records, sources say.

Trump initially claimed he didn’t know about the payment to Daniels, telling reporters in April 2018 to “ask Michael Cohen” about where the money came from. But a month later he posted to Twitter that the payment to Daniels was part of a nondisclosure agreement to keep her from making false accusations.

“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” Trump tweeted.

“Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction,” he wrote.

But just weeks before Cohen delivered the payment to Daniels, the now-former attorney worked with the publisher of the National Enquirer, longtime Trump ally David Pecker, to pay another woman who claimed she’d had an affair with Trump, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

The Enquirer, in concert with the Trump campaign, paid Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story that she’d had a 10-month affair with Trump from 2006 to 2007 — then suppressed the story “in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election,” according to a 2018 plea deal made by the Enquirer’s publisher, AMI.

Trump has denied that he had an affair with McDougal and that he or his campaign directed the Enquirer to “catch and kill” her story.

The first investigation

Following an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Cohen pleaded guilty in August 2018 to multiple felonies for his role in orchestrating the payment to Daniels and to AMI.

The charges included two campaign finance violations related to the payments, which federal prosecutors considered campaign contributions because they were made “in order to influence the 2016 presidential election.” By law, individual contributions to a presidential campaign are limited to $2,700.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison.

“Today [Cohen] stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election,” Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, said in a statement after Cohen entered his guilty plea on August 20, 2018. “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

But the federal investigation ended without any charges filed against Trump himself.

Trump’s attorney at the time praised the decision.

“We are pleased that the investigation surrounding these ridiculous campaign finance allegations is now closed,” Jay Sekulow said in a statement in 2019. “We have maintained from the outset that the President never engaged in any campaign finance violation. From the Court’s opinion: ‘the Government’s investigation into those violations has concluded … another case is closed.'”

In New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office subsequently took up the matter as part of a larger investigation into Trump’s finances starting in 2021. But under then-District Attorney Cy Vance, prosecutors believed the hush money “did not amount to much in legal terms,” according to Mark Pomerantz, one of the probe’s lead investigators who later resigned from the DA’s office due to his dissatisfaction with the pace of the probes and wrote about his experience in his book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account.”

The investigation today

At the start of this year, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg returned to the hush money probe with a focus on whether the Trump Organization falsified business records in the way it recorded the reimbursement payment to Cohen, sources familiar with the investigation have told ABC News.

Trump’s namesake company reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels through invoices that were billed as a “retainer agreement” — an arrangement that prosecutors say was a “sham” because no such retainer agreement existed. The payments, prosecutors say, were for Daniels.

Appearing on ABC News’ Good Morning America last week, Trump’s current attorney denied that any payments were recorded improperly.

“There was absolutely no false record,” Trump attorney Joe Tacopina told George Stephanopoulos. “To my knowledge there was no false records.”

Tacopina also said the payment could not have been a campaign finance violation because it was made with Trump’s personal funds.

“It’s not a contribution to his campaign,” Tacopina said. “He made this with personal funds to prevent something coming out false but embarrassing to himself and his family’s young son. That’s not a campaign finance violation not by any stretch. So personal funds and personal use of funds spending to fulfill a commitment and obligation or an expense of a person that would be existing, irrespective of the campaign, is not a violation.”

The Manhattan grand jury conducting the probe has heard testimony from some of Trump’s closest allies and former aides, including former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and Trump’s 2016 campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, as well as Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher, who was among the first witnesses brought in.

Cohen, too, testified last week before the Manhattan grand jury over multiple days. And Daniels herself met with prosecutors over Zoom last week at the request of the DA’s office, her attorney said. Both Daniels and Cohen said they would make themselves available as witnesses if needed.

Asked last week on Good Morning America if he expects an indictment for Trump, Tacopina was resolute.

“I expect justice to prevail,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “If that’s the case, George, there shouldn’t be an indictment.”

ABC News’ Soo Rin Kim and John Santucci contributed to this report.

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(DENVER) — A student who was under a “certain agreement to be patted down each day” at school allegedly shot and wounded two school administrators at East High School in Denver, authorities said.

The suspect, a juvenile armed with a handgun, fled the school after the Wednesday morning shooting, but Denver police said they know who he is and a search for him is ongoing. The gun has not been recovered, police said.

Both faculty members are in serious condition, according to the hospital. One underwent surgery and the second was able to speak to authorities, officials said.

The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school’s office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect’s daily searches were part of a “safety plan” that was a result of “previous behavior,” officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior.

Police described the suspect as an African American teenager wearing an Astronaut hoodie. Police warned the public to not approach him, calling him armed and dangerous.

East High School was placed on lockdown in the wake of the shooting. Denver Public Schools later said it received clearance to start releasing students.

Last month, East High School students went to a city council meeting to call for action on school safety and gun violence after a 16-year-old student was fatally shot near the school, according to ABC Denver affiliate KMGH.

The superintendent said Wednesday that the school will be closed the rest of this week, and that the building will now have two armed officers present through the end of the school year.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock in a statement said removing school resource officers was a “mistake” and said they should be quickly returned.

“We all have to step up as a community and be a part of the solution,” he said.

Hancock also called on Congress to pass “common sense” gun legislation.

“Parents are angry and frustrated, and they have a right to be,” he said. “Easy access to guns must be addressed in our country — Denver cannot do this alone.”

This shooting comes two years to the day after a mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, that claimed 10 lives.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(DENVER) — Two adults have been hospitalized following a shooting at East High School in Denver, according to Denver police.

Authorities said they believe the suspect is no longer at the scene.

The high school is on lockdown, with all students in their third period classrooms, according to Denver Public Schools.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(DENVER) — A student who was under a “certain agreement to be patted down each day” at school allegedly shot and wounded two faculty members at East High School in Denver, authorities said.

The suspect, who was armed with a handgun, fled the school after the Wednesday morning shooting, but Denver police said they know who he is and a search for him is ongoing.

One faculty member is undergoing surgery and is in critical condition, police said, and the second is in stable and able to speak to authorities.

The high school is on lockdown, according to Denver Public Schools. There will be an “orderly, timed release” of students, authorities said.

This shooting comes two years to the day after a mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, that claimed 10 lives.

Last month, East High School students went to a city council meeting to call for action on school safety and gun violence after a 16-year-old student was shot near the school and seriously hurt, according to ABC Denver affiliate KMGH.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A grand jury is continuing to weigh charges against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into the 2016 hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

No current or former president has ever been indicted for criminal conduct.

Here is how the news is developing. All times Eastern. Check back for updates:

Mar 22, 12:51 PM EDT
Manhattan grand jury to reconvene as early as Thursday

The Manhattan grand jury weighing charges against former President Donald Trump in connection to the Stormy Daniels hush payment investigation is not meeting on Wednesday, sources told ABC News. The earliest the grand jury would reconvene is Thursday, sources said.

The grand jurors were called Wednesday morning and told they were not needed during the day as scheduled, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The grand jurors were told to be prepared to reconvene on Thursday when it’s possible they will hear from at least one additional witness, the sources said.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment, citing a policy of not discussing grand jury matters.

-ABC News’ John Santucci and Luke Barr

Mar 22, 8:25 AM EDT
With Trump case looming, what is an indictment?

Criminal prosecution proceedings typically start with an arrest and a court appearance, but legal experts say that on many occasions, especially in white collar crimes, suspects aren’t hit with charges or a visit from an officer until long after an official investigation is underway.

Typically, if a crime is being investigated, law enforcement agents will make an arrest, file initial charges and bring a suspect to be arraigned in court, Vincent Southerland, an assistant professor of clinical law and the director of the criminal defense and reentry clinic at NYU School of Law, told ABC News.

After this arraignment, prosecutors would impanel a grand jury for a formal criminal indictment. Southerland, who has been practicing law in New York state for 19 years, said this process includes giving the jury evidence, possible testimony and other exhibits before they can officially charge a person with felonies.

A Manhattan grand jury is currently investigating Trump’s possible role in the hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The former president has denied any wrongdoing and having an affair with Daniels. His attorneys have framed the funds as a response to an extortion plot.

-ABC News’ Ivan Pereira

Mar 21, 6:11 PM EDT
Pence discourages protests if Trump indicted

Former Vice President Mike Pence discouraged any protests should a grand jury indict Donald Trump.

“Every American has the right to let their voice be heard. The Constitution provides the right to peaceably assemble. But I think in this instance, I would discourage Americans from engaging in protests if in fact the former president is indicted,” Pence said Tuesday when asked by ABC News if Americans should protest a possible indictment.

Pence said he understood the “frustration” while calling the case “politically motivated.”

“But I think letting our voices be heard in other ways, and in not engaging in protests, I think is most prudent at this time,” he said.

-ABC News’ Libby Cathey

Mar 21, 11:00 AM EDT
McCarthy grows frustrated as Trump questions persist at House GOP retreat

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy again ripped into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg when asked about the potential charges against former President Donald Trump at a Tuesday press conference at the House GOP retreat in Orlando.

When McCarthy was asked directly if had concerns about Trump’s alleged conduct regarding the alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, he didn’t answer the question and instead pivoted to talking about Hillary Clinton and Bragg.

“What we see before us is a political game being played by a local. Look, this isn’t New York City, this is just a Manhattan,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy said he hasn’t spoken to Trump in three weeks.

When asked if Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party, McCarthy took a jab at the press: “In the press room, for all of you, he is.”

-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Will Steakin

Mar 21, 10:14 AM EDT
Grand jury to reconvene on Wednesday

A grand jury will reconvene on Wednesday to continue to weigh charges against former President Donald Trump in connection with the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into the 2016 hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, paid $130,000 to Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign to allegedly keep her from talking about an affair she claimed to have had with Trump.

Trump has denied the affair and his attorneys have framed the funds as an extortion payment.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is mulling whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records, after the Trump Organization allegedly reimbursed Cohen for the payment then logged the reimbursement as a legal expense, sources have told ABC News. Trump has called the payment “a private contract between two parties” and has denied all wrongdoing.

Trump this weekend wrote on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.

The U.S. Secret Service is coordinating security plans with the NYPD in the event of an indictment and arraignment in an open courtroom in Manhattan, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The two agencies had a call Monday to discuss logistics, including court security and how Trump would potentially surrender for booking and processing, according to sources briefed on the discussions. White collar criminal defendants in New York are typically allowed to negotiate a surrender.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LOS ANGELES) — For the second straight day, classes were canceled for more than 400,000 Los Angeles public school students as tens of thousands of service workers, backed by the powerful teachers union, continued to strike.

Custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, special education assistants and other members of the Service Employees International Union Local 99 walked picket lines Wednesday morning with no new negotiations with the Los Angeles Unified School District publicly announced. The 30,000 members of the service employees union are demanding higher wages and better working conditions, and are planning to stay off the job for a third day on Thursday.

The labor action is the first major work stoppage for the nation’s second largest school district since a 2019 strike by the 35,000 members of the United Teachers Los Angeles Union.

The teachers union is honoring the service union’s picket lines, forcing the school district to shut down schools.

Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of the UTLA, said her members are supporting the service employees’ demands to show “respect to the education workers that keep our schools working and our children safe.”

“We stand in solidarity with them, recognizing that their struggles are our struggles … that the only way we achieve our goals is by standing collectively together,” Myart-Cruz said.

The service workers union has called for a three-day strike.

Hopes of avoiding a strike were dashed on Monday when a new effort to jumpstart labor negotiations broke down at the last minute, officials said.

“Despite our invitation for a transparent, honest conversation that perhaps would result in a meaningful solution that would avoid a strike, we were never able to be in the same room or at the same table to address these issues,” LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a statement.

Carvalho said he and the district’s negotiating team waited for hours on Monday to resume labor talks, but never got a response from the service workers union.

“We’ve run out of time,” said Carvalho, adding that he is still hopeful that negotiations will resume soon.

Max Arias, executive director of the service workers union, said the union had agreed to “enter a confidential mediation process” with the LAUSD.

“Unfortunately, LAUSD broke that confidentiality by sharing it with the media before our bargaining team, which makes all decisions, had a chance to discuss how to proceed,” Arias said. “This is yet another example of the school district’s continued disrespect of school workers. We are ready to strike.”

Conrado Guerrero, president of the local service workers’ union and a building engineer for the school district, said Tuesday that the “LAUSD has pushed us to a strike.”

“I showed up every day, I installed air filters in classrooms and other facilities. My work was essential for student health,” Guerrero told ABC News. “But it seems LAUSD has forgotten that.”

The service employees have been working without a contract since June 2020.

“We’re not getting an equitable wage to feed families, have housing,” Fatima Grayson, a striking special education assistant, told ABC Los Angeles station KABC. “A lot of people that do work for LAUSD have to work two jobs.”

In December 2022, the union declared an impasse in negotiations, prompting the appointment of a state mediator.

The service workers’ union said many of its members earn “poverty wages” of $25,000 per year and are demanding a 30% pay hike, with an additional pay increase for the lowest-paid workers.

Carvalho said on Monday that the school district had upped its most recent offer to a 23% wage increase, along with a 3% “cash-in-hand bonus.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the city is helping parents cope with the strike by making recreation centers available to students. All city public libraries will also remain open and the Los Angeles Zoo is offering free admission to students during the strike.

Many parents said they are standing behind the service workers, including some who plan to walk the picket line with the striking employees.

“We have some of our most underpaid workers doing some of the most challenging jobs on our campuses,” parent Jenna Schwartz told KABC. “The majority aren’t receiving health care. They’ve been negotiating for years to no avail.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Los Angeles, joined service workers on the picket line Tuesday, saying he is supporting “all those who take such good care of our kids who are there in school.”

“I stand here with people of Los Angeles who believe that those that have these important responsibilities should not have to live in poverty,” Schiff said. “The median income of our bus drivers and our cafeteria workers that are school age is $25,000 a year. Those are poverty wages. People with some of the most important responsibilities in our schools should not have to live in poverty.”

ABC News’ Flor Tolentino contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A “bomb cyclone” is wreaking havoc across an already soaked California, killing at least two people whose vehicles were crushed by falling trees in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials said.

A dramatic drop in atmospheric pressure triggered the so-called bomb cyclone that swept in from the Pacific Ocean and clobbered the San Francisco area. The storm packed heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 90 mph that knocked down trees, blocking major roadways and highways, officials said.

Tens of thousands of utility customers lost power, according to officials.

One person was killed and another was injured in the gated community of Rossmoor, about 25 miles east of San Francisco, when a tree fell on a moving car, according to the California Highway Patrol. Another motorist was killed around 1:30 p.m. local time Tuesday when a toppled tree crushed a work van in San Mateo County, about 30 miles south of San Francisco, according to CHP.

On Wednesday morning, the town of Woodside, about 32 miles south of San Francisco, was under a “highly recommended evacuation” after a mudslide shut down a road, impacting about 30 homes, officials said.

“If you live in this area, please pack your ‘Go Bag,’ with all necessary essentials: insurance policy, pets, medications, a change of clothes, and LEAVE NOW,” San Mateo County officials said in a Twitter post Wednesday. “Once the road gives out completely, residents in that area will not have access to emergency services for the foreseeable future.”

The mudslide unfolded as the National Weather Service issued a flood advisory for Woodside and nearby San Mateo County communities Wednesday morning after about 3 inches of rain fell in the area over a 24-hour period.

The powerful springtime storm is also being blamed for the derailment of an Amtrak train near Martinez, about 35 miles east of San Francisco. The train was carrying 55 passengers when it struck a downed tree on the tracks, according to Amtrak officials. No injuries were reported.

High wind gusts also caused a tractor-trailer rig to overturn on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, blocking the eastbound lanes and snarling traffic during the evening commute, according to CHP.

The winds were so strong in downtown San Francisco Tuesday that it knocked out windows in high-rise buildings, sending shattered glass to the ground, according to the San Francisco Fire Department.

San Francisco International Airport recorded wind gusts of 64 mph, while gusty winds reached 74 mph in Oakland. Gusts hit nearly 90 mph between San Francisco and Sacramento.

The “bomb cyclone” developed off the coast of San Francisco Tuesday when the atmospheric pressure dropped 24 millibars in 17 hours, producing the strongest March storm ever recorded in the Bay Area.

The same storm system walloped Southern California Tuesday with wind gusts of up to 100 mph in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles. The town of Lytle Creek in the San Gabriel Mountains recorded more than 6 inches of rain, while nearly an inch-and-a-half of rain fell in downtown Los Angeles.

The weather system is expected to weaken Wednesday, but most of California will remain under a flood watch and high-wind alerts are expected to persist into the afternoon.

The storm, the latest in a series of atmospheric river systems that has nearly eliminated the state’s multi-year drought, is expected to move southeast, bringing severe weather to parts of Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma. Severe weather on Thursday and Friday could produce large hail and damaging winds from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to San Angelo, more than 250 miles southwest of Dallas.

As the storm moves east on Friday, a possible tornado outbreak could form in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — South Carolina authorities have confirmed they are investigating the death of Stephen Smith as a homicide, nearly eight years after the 19-year-old was found dead in the middle of a rural road from what was ruled to be a hit-and-run.

State police reopened Stephen Smith’s case in June 2021 after discovering new evidence during the investigation into the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, a mother and son who were found fatally shot at the prominent legal family’s South Carolina hunting estate that month.

Stephen Smith’s death was determined to be highway vehicular manslaughter and no suspects were ever apprehended. His mother has long asked for the unsolved case to be re-examined.

Lawyers representing his mother announced that the death is now being considered a homicide Tuesday night, citing a phone call with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED).

“SLED is publicly supporting us, Sandy Smith, and her efforts to find out what really happened to her son,” Ronnie Richter, with the Bland Richter Law Firm, said in a statement.

A SLED spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that the case is being investigated as a homicide.

“It’s a day that I have been waiting for. The best news I’ve heard in eight years,” Sandy Smith told ABC News.

“Stephen was an amazing kid and he didn’t deserve to die this way,” she added. “And I know somebody did it, and whoever did it needs to come forward and bring peace to this family.”

Lawyers representing Stephen Smith’s mother have said they do not believe the evidence maintains that he was hit by a car, but rather may have been killed somewhere else and then placed on the road. His mother has raised more than $80,000 to exhume her son’s body to conduct an independent autopsy.

“A fresh set of eyes and a new autopsy may yield a different conclusion that Stephen was not killed on Sandy Run Road in Bamberg County, that maybe he was killed somewhere else,” her attorney, Eric Bland, told reporters this week.

The mother’s attorneys said they are petitioning a judge to allow them to exhume the body. SLED officials will “be present and participate in any exhumation of Stephen’s body to gather more evidence,” Bland and Richter said Tuesday.

“SLED officials have revealed that they did not need to exhume Stephen Smith’s body to convince them that his death was a homicide,” they added.

Stephen Smith was a former classmate of Buster Murdaugh, whose father, Alex Murdaugh, was convicted earlier this month in the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh. The disgraced former attorney was sentenced to life in prison for the 2021 killing of his wife and younger son.

SLED officials reportedly were waiting until the high-profile Murdaugh trial was over before announcing developments in the Stephen Smith case “out of concern that witnesses would not be as forthcoming under the Murdaugh sphere of influence,” Bland and Richter said.

“Since the conclusion of the Murdaugh trial, more resources have been devoted and will be devoted to Stephen Smith’s case,” the law firm added.

Buster Murdaugh spoke out this week against what he called “baseless rumors” alleging his involvement in Stephen Smith’s death.

“Before, during and since my father’s trial, I have been targeted and harassed by the media and followers of this story. This has gone on far too long,” he said in a statement on Monday. “These baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false. I unequivocally deny any involvement in his death, and my heart goes out to the Smith family.”

ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.

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(SUMTER, S.C.) — Three children and one man were killed in an apparent domestic mass shooting in South Carolina, authorities said.

A second man, who authorities believe was the shooter, was also found dead at the scene Tuesday night, the Sumter Police Department said.

Additional information was not immediately available. Police in Sumter, about 45 miles east of Columbia, said they didn’t believe there’s a threat to the public.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A little over two years ago, Richard Loew and his wife Donna were settling into a relaxing, new stage of their life: retirement in Florida.

But then came a government-branded letter, informing them that payments were due on nearly $100,000 of pandemic-relief loans, called Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or EIDL.

The loans were registered to the Loews’ Palm City, Florida, address. Each was for under $50,000.

One loan was under the name “Loew Farms,” while the other was simply under “Donna Farms.”

But Richard, a retired physician, and Donna, who works with a cat rescue nonprofit, had never taken out the loans, nor did they have a farm in their gated community on the Florida coast.

Still, the Small Business Administration continued to send letters with threats to garnish their wages and lower their credit scores.

“It’s scary,” Donna Loew told ABC News. “The fact that they can start taking money from us. What are we going to do? It’s the government.”

Richard Loew says he’s taken more than 200 pages of notes over the last two years, documenting dozens of calls with SBA customer service, affidavits reporting his and his wife’s identity theft with the Federal Trade Commission and local law enforcement, attempts to escalate his case to the FBI and letters written to both his local congressmen.

Still, the letters from SBA keep coming, he said.

“It makes me feel like I’m some sort of deadbeat. And the truth is, I worked hard to, you know, not be that person,” Loew said.

The Loews are just two of the thousands of Americans whose stolen identities were used to wrongly obtain COVID-19 relief money as over $5 trillion was pushed out to the American public to keep a halted economy afloat.

Three years later, watchdog groups, investigators, Congress and the White House are avidly trying to claw money back and nail down exactly how much taxpayer money was stolen.

But people like the Loews have slipped through the cracks — a major part of the problem, they say, but not a focus of the solution.

“What recourse do I have?” Loew asked.

A once-in-a-century pandemic forcing a false choice: speed over security

Michael Horowitz, chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), a federal watchdog charged with tracking how much money was defrauded from the government during COVID, said the Loews’ experience is not unusual.

A recent PRAC report found that nearly 70,000 potentially suspect Social Security numbers were used to successfully apply for EIDL or Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds, totaling $5.4 billion.

Yet Horowitz reiterated that the path to recourse is challenging for those tens of thousands of Americans who could’ve had their identities stolen.

“Unfortunately, for most on the federal level, there’s very little resources available,” Horowitz told ABC News.

“What we’re seeing is the victims are often struggling out there to deal with these problems that were created by others, that the agencies didn’t do enough to protect their identities,” he said.

A major reason that those protections weren’t in place, Horowitz said, was the need for speed.

“A decision was made at the outset of the pandemic. Speed was the key. We’re going to send the money out. We’re not going to vet people,” Horowitz said.

The thinking was that “you investigators, you’ll go catch it later, go chase the fraud later. We just want to get the money out,” he said. “That was a bad choice. It was the wrong choice. It never should have happened.”

Those holes in the programs have also been documented by the inspector general for the SBA, the independent watchdog with oversight of the department, who says accounting for the fraud will continue to dog the SBA into 2023.

“I believe managing COVID-19 stimulus lending is the greatest overall challenge facing SBA, and it may likely continue to be for many years as the agency grapples with fraud in the programs,” Inspector General Hannibal Ware said in a report.

Ware noted that SBA faced unprecedented demand in 2020, processing the same amount of loans it had in the last 14 years in just 14 days. It also expanded its staff by 10 times.

Still, a review of several reports from the SBA inspector general reveals how the agency “lowered guardrails” to handle the tidal wave of pandemic relief loans in ways that “significantly increased the risk of fraud.”

And in a 2021 report, Ware also cited the specific issue facing the Loews: “At the time of our review, we found SBA did not provide status updates to those reporting COVID-19 EIDL identity theft,” Ware wrote.

“These individuals have been waiting a long time, some of them for months, for a resolution on potentially fraudulent loans in their names that could negatively affect their ability to obtain credit,” he wrote, citing 18 interviews with prospective identity theft victims.

The SBA did eventually implement a reporting process for identity theft within their programs, setting up a central email address in February 2021 where people with claims could send a set of forms outlined at sba.gov/fraud, under a section called “Report identity theft to SBA.”

About 25,000 people have reached out to report identity theft to the email address, the SBA told ABC News. Of those cases, 8,000 claims have been processed and cleared by the SBA so far, with another 5,000 still under review.

The SBA also said it’s tried to reach out to thousands more people who could be victims of identity theft but haven’t fully completed the reporting process or who might not know that their information was used for a loan.

In a statement, the department said it “has dramatically improved its technology and expanded its staff capacity” since early in the pandemic, and is “committed to assisting people and providing expeditious relief to victims of identity theft.”

The Loews, however, said they’ve followed that process outlined by the SBA, but to no avail. And their experience, over two years later, shows how complicated it can be to get relief.

Despite all of his efforts, in a phone call in mid-March shared with ABC News, an SBA customer service center loan agent told Loew his case remained under investigation, and they received another letter in the mail as recently as late February demanding repayment.

The SBA, in response to inquiries into Loew’s case from ABC News, initially said that it couldn’t confirm or deny any cases of potential identity fraud due to long standing policy. But on Monday evening, an official followed up to say that they had reached out to the Loews.

From ‘lowered guardrails’ to ‘reforms’

The SBA also told ABC News that “additional reforms” to get relief for identity theft victims within the SBA’s programs are still in the process, including using multi-factor authentication and a new process to pause billing once someone has reported identity theft, SBA spokesperson Christina Carr said in a statement.

Much of those reforms will be guided by an expected executive order from President Joe Biden, who pledged over a year ago to sign an order in the “coming weeks” that would direct “new actions to support the victims of identity fraud.”

Administration officials told ABC News that the action is still expected to come soon, though they didn’t provide concrete timing.

Biden also recently called on Congress to approve $1.6 billion to crack down on fraud, including $300 million to triple the “strike forces” within the Department of Justice investigating COVID relief fraud and $400 million to help victims.

Those efforts show the pandemic has been a wake-up call, Horowitz said.

“We’re going to keep putting out reports about this and our hope is that Congress and the executive branch take the actions that are desperately needed to fix these problems,” he said.

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