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(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.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Jennifer Thompson misses “her boys.”

Five days since her husband and son disappeared while kayaking on Beaver Lake in Arkansas, Thompson said that law enforcement is now working to recover their bodies. Lt. Shannon Jenkins of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the two are presumed dead. Thompson believes they likely drowned after one fell into the cold lake from a kayak and the other tried to rescue him.

“What saved me from the beginning of this is that they died together; they were together,” Thompson said.

Her son, Charlie Morris, 20, was a sophomore at Ohio Wesleyan University where he played violin and guitar, competed as a three-season runner, led the orchestra, and aspired to be a lawyer. Her husband, Chuck Morris, 46, was a father to Charlie and a 12-year-old daughter, as well as an acclaimed percussionist with the electronic-jam band Lotus.

According to Chuck’s bandmate Jesse Miller, Lotus had just finished a 25-city tour. Charlie was home for vacation, and the family decided to travel from Kansas City to Beaver Lake, Arkansas to unwind.

“We thought it would be a great idea for Chuck and Charlie to be able to get on the kayaks before a storm hit,” Thompson said.

While she and her daughter went into town, “the boys” went out on the kayaks on March 16, despite the cold water, strong currents and three-foot waves.

When Thompson returned, Chuck and Charlie were nowhere to be found, which was not initially a cause for alarm.

“We got home, and they weren’t back yet. My husband being the adventurer that he is, we’re like, ‘oh, they must be having a great time,'” she said.

According to Thompson, “crisis mode” set in as time passed. They drove around the lake twice, scanning the water for the father-and-son kayakers. After failing to find them, Thompson called the police later that afternoon.

Rescue teams searched the area for days using helicopters, drones, sonar, and dogs. Neighbors also used their boats to aid in the rescue.

On the first night, they recovered a kayak, and the next day another, Thompson said. They later found Chuck’s hat and his coat, but other than those traces, the two men disappeared.

“I guess the first couple of days I really just wanted to hold out some hope,” Miller recalled. “You know, as that dwindled, and the reality became more real, I guess the grief started to set in a little bit more.”

Jenkins said the recovery effort would scale back on Wednesday. It’s unclear when or if the bodies will be recovered, according to Thompson.

She said the current theory is that one of the men fell into the water from his kayak. Weighed down by soaked clothing, he struggled to swim, prompting the other to leave his kayak to attempt a rescue. In the cold water of Beaver Lake, the two likely drowned, Thompson said. She added that the theory was corroborated when cadaver dogs hit near the location of the theorized site of the drowning.

Looking back, Thompson said the cold and choppy conditions on the lake were “for all intents and purposes a perfect storm for drowning.”

As the rescue continued, friends of the family and fans of Lotus began an outpouring of support online. A GoFundMe to support the family’s expenses raised $87,347 as of Tuesday evening. With the grief came memories of the father and son — musical dynamos who Thompson described as “beautifully gentle, loving men.”

“Chuck was fun and creative and funny, and Charlie was pensive and serious and very much believed in the responsibility of people to be good,” she said.

Miller, who spoke to ABC News on behalf of the band Lotus, said that while the group is grieving their late band member, they remember Chuck as a great musician, father and friend.

“When he was on stage, and he was playing that music, he embodied just beauty and spirit and love,” Thompson added.

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(TAMPA, Fla.) — Three “heroic” security guards stopped an armed man from entering a Florida strip club and helped to avert a possible mass shooting, police said.

In dramatic surveillance video released by the Tampa Police Department on Tuesday, a man can be seen walking toward the door of the club, Mons Venus, early Sunday morning wearing a red “devil mask.” He wielded a flashlight in one hand and a fully loaded 9 mm handgun in the other, according to police. He also had the words “kill” and “darkk [sic] one” on his arms, police said.

A “watchful and alert” security guard saw the man and attempted to take the firearm, Interim Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said during a press briefing Tuesday.

The security guard, Manuel Resto, told reporters he noticed the red mask as the man took “measured steps” toward the door.

“I was like, OK, it’s not Halloween,” Resto said, recalling his confusion.

Resto said he then saw the man point the gun toward the door.

“I then decided that he was not going to enter the club and hurt anybody,” Resto said.

During an ensuing struggle, Resto said he was hit in the head “quite a few times” by the gun.

“I almost went unconscious, but … I wasn’t going to let this happen,” he said. “I was not going to let him win. He was not going to hurt nobody.”

A single round from the gun struck the front door of the venue before Resto was able to knock it out of the suspect’s hand, Bercaw said.

Two other security guards helped Resto restrain the suspect, identified by police as 44-year-old Michael Rudman, and keep him pinned to the ground until authorities arrived.

“All of this happened in less than a minute,” Bercaw said. “And any police officer will tell you — fighting with an armed suspect for a minute seems like an eternity.”

Upon arriving at the scene, police allegedly found two fully loaded magazines in the suspect’s pocket, along with additional ammunition, nine knives and firearm accessories in his pickup truck, which was parked near the club, authorities said.

Roughly 200 people were inside the venue at the time of the incident, which occurred around 1:15 a.m., police said. No one inside was injured.

“There is no question in my mind that had it not been for the brave men you see standing next to me that we could have been here discussing a mass shooting in the city of Tampa. But thanks to their heroic actions, today an armed suspect is in custody and no lives were lost,” Bercaw said.

Police said Tuesday they are still investigating a motive. Detectives have since learned that Rudman allegedly visited the establishment the previous night.

Rudman faces charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault, both felonies, and battery, which is a misdemeanor, court records show. He also faces the charge of purchasing, possessing or receiving a firearm while under a risk protection order. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office served him a risk protection order last year, Tampa police said.

Rudman is being held in a Hillsborough County jail with no bond. A pre-trial detention hearing has been scheduled for Friday, court records show. ABC News was unable to reach his public defender for comment.

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(WASHINGTON) — Prosecutors in the special counsel’s office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that former President Donald Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office, a former top federal judge wrote Friday in a sealed filing, according to sources who described its contents to ABC News.

U.S. Judge Beryl Howell, who on Friday stepped down as the D.C. district court’s chief judge, wrote last week that prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office had made a “prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations,” according to the sources, and that attorney-client privileges invoked by two of his lawyers could therefore be pierced.

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his handling of classified documents.

In her sealed filing, Howell ordered that Evan Corcoran, an attorney for Trump, should comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony on six separate lines of inquiry over which he had previously asserted attorney-client privilege.

Sources added that Howell also ordered Corcoran to hand over a number of records tied to what Howell described as Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme,” echoing prosecutors. Those records include handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.

In reaching the so-called prima facie standard to pierce Corcoran’s privilege, Howell agreed prosecutors made a sufficient showing that on its face would appear to show Trump committed crimes. The judge made it clear that prosecutors would still need to meet a higher standard of evidence in order to seek charges against Trump, and more still to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“It is a lower hurdle, but it is an indication that the government had presented some evidence and allegation that they had evidence that met the elements of a crime,” Brandon Van Grack, a former top national security official in the Justice Department who is now in private practice, told ABC News.

Howell found that prosecutors showed “sufficient” evidence that Trump “intentionally concealed” the existence of additional classified documents from Corcoran, sources said, putting Corcoran in an unwitting position to deceive the government.

It’s unclear what evidence Howell may have reviewed under seal from both DOJ and Trump’s attorneys to help her arrive at her decision.

In response to ABC News, a Trump campaign spokesperson said, in part, “Shame on Fake News ABC for broadcasting ILLEGALLY LEAKED false allegations from a Never Trump, now former chief judge, against the Trump legal team.”

“The real story here, that Fake News ABC SHOULD be reporting on, is that prosecutors only attack lawyers when they have no case whatsoever,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment to ABC News.

The developments described by sources illustrate another dimension of the former president’s ongoing legal vulnerabilities. As Smith’s classified documents probe marches forward, prosecutors in New York are mulling a separate indictment against Trump over hush payments he allegedly paid to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump also faces scrutiny in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state, and Smith is continuing his own probe into Trump’s attempts to interfere in the 2020 election.

Central to Smith’s efforts in the classified documents probe is determining whether lawyers who represented the former president falsely certified in response to a grand jury subpoena that Trump had returned all classified records to the government or whether Trump himself sought to conceal records that he might have unlawfully retained.

Federal prosecutors have claimed that lawyers for Trump certified in June 2022 that a “diligent search” of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate turned up just 38 classified documents stored in a secured storage room. But two months later, when FBI agents raided the premises, they found more than 100 additional documents marked classified — some of which were located outside of the storage room, including in Trump’s office desk, prosecutors said.

In her order last Friday, Howell was unsparing in her criticism of Trump’s actions since early last year in response to the government’s attempts to retrieve all classified documents taken from the White House. At one point she described Trump’s interactions with officials from the National Archives as a “dress rehearsal,” sources said, for his later efforts at misdirection in response to the grand jury subpoena.

As ABC News has previously reported, investigators sought to compel the testimony of Corcoran and another Trump attorney, Jennifer Little, as part of their probe, citing the crime-fraud exception, which allows for attorney-client privilege to be pierced in cases where it is suspected that legal services were rendered in the commission of a crime. Sources told ABC News that Howell ordered Little’s testimony as well, with the exception of one of the topics for which she sought to assert attorney-client privilege.

Sources said prosecutors have sought to question Corcoran on how he aided another Trump attorney, Christina Bobb, in drafting the June 2022 statement to the Justice Department, which Bobb ultimately signed.

Attorneys for Trump were expected to appeal Howell’s Friday ruling, sources said.

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(SEA ISLE CITY, N.J.) — A pod of eight dolphins died after being stranded on two beaches in New Jersey on Tuesday, according to an animal rescue and rehabilitation center.

The sea creatures washed up on 50th and 52nd Street beaches, according to Sea Isle City officials, who warned the public not to approach the dolphins, where police and state workers attempted to aid the animals.

According to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, two of the dolphins died on one of the beaches, while the organization’s veterinarian euthanized the other six after an assessment determined that the dolphins’ health was failing.

“The decision was made to humanely euthanize the dolphins to prevent further suffering, as returning them to the ocean would have only prolonged their inevitable death,” Marine Mammal Stranding Center said in a statement posted on Facebook.

The dolphins were sent to a state laboratory where a necropsy will be performed, the center said.

“We share in the public’s sorrow for these beautiful animals and hope that the necropsies will help us understand the reason for their stranding,” Marine Mammal Stranding Center said.

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