(BUTLER, P.A.) — In the days since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the pieces have begun to come together about what the suspected shooter was doing in the lead-up to the attack.
The day before the shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks went to a local shooting club and practiced on the rifle range, counsel for the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club confirmed to ABC News.
The 20-year-old purchased ammunition shortly before the incident, both online and in-person, according to law enforcement sources.
He asked his employer — a nursing home where he worked as a dietary aide — to take the day off on the day of the shooting, but said he would be back as soon as the next day, sources said.
Sometime before the shooting, Crooks searched the internet for both Trump and President Joe Biden, as well as the dates of Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and for those of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Sources said he also left a message on the gaming platform Steam, in which he said that “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds.”
On the day of the assassination attempt, he asked if he could borrow his father’s AR-15-style rifle, saying he planned to go to a shooting range, sources said. Because Crooks’ father had previously let him use the gun for target shooting, he was not suspicious that his son was planning anything of concern.
Crooks went to a local gun shop that day, where he bought 50 rounds of 5.56 mm ammo. He also stopped at a Home Depot to buy a 5-foot ladder, though it was not found at the scene and is not believed to have been used to access the roof.
He then drove to the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, parking about a third of a mile away at a gas station.
For at least an hour before the shooting, Crooks was seen walking around near the rally area. Crooks was seen in video obtained by Pittsburgh ABC affiliate WTAE pacing just beyond the boundaries of the Trump rally at 5:06 p.m., around one hour and five minutes before shots were first fired.
He was also seen walking around near the magnetometers minutes before the shooting, according to law enforcement sources. Some witnesses reported him as a suspicious person, law enforcement sources said.
He then made his way to a nearby building, climbing up air conditioner units until he was able to get on the roof of an adjacent building, according to sources. From there, he moved onto a taller building next to it.
Just before Crooks opened fire, rallygoers spotted him on the roof and tried to alert the Secret Service.
In an unclassified briefing Wednesday, law enforcement officials said 20 minutes passed between when Secret Service snipers first spotted Crooks on the roof and when he opened fire on Trump. He was identified as a person of interest 62 minutes before the shooting, they said.
A Butler Township police officer attempted to stop the shooter, climbing up the roof to approach him, but Crooks pointed his gun at the officer, prompting the officer to retreat, according to Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe.
It was at this point that Crooks began firing his weapon toward Trump, who at that moment turned to look at a Jumbotron, possibly saving his life.
A Secret Service sniper shot back at Crooks, fatally shooting him in the head 26 seconds later, according to law enforcement officials.
Editors Note: This story has been updated to correct the suspected shooter’s name to Thomas Matthew Crooks.
(MILWAUKEE, W.I.) — The fourth and final day of the Republican National Convention is a buildup to tonight’s highly anticipated prime-time address from Donald Trump.
It will be the former president’s first public speech since he narrowly escaped an attempt on his life Saturday at his rally in Pennsylvania.
He has said the attack changed his thinking about what he would say and now plans to stress “unity” in his speech.
Vance shares faith journey at Faith and Freedom breakfast
Speaking at the Faith and Freedom breakfast Thursday morning, vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance shared his faith journey with the attendees, saying his faith was “shallow” when he was a child and evolved into more over time.
“I was raised, as I mentioned last night, by my mamaw who, despite the fact that she loved the F word, was a woman a very deep Christian faith. And you know, she was in some ways what you might call ‘unchurched,'” Vance said.
“We went to church maybe once or twice a month, sometimes less, sometimes more. But she read the Bible every single day. She prayed every single day. She loved to watch Billy Graham whenever he was on the TV and that was really my introduction to the Christian faith,” Vance continued.
When Vance went on to higher education, he began calling himself an atheist. However, Vance said he decided to learn more about his Christian faith when he met his wife at Yale Law School, who does not share his faith.
“But to me, what really brought me back to Christ was finding a wife and falling in love and thinking about my thinking about what was required of me as a husband and as a father,” Vance said.
“And the more that I thought about those deeper questions, the more that I thought that there was wisdom in the Christian faith that I had completely discarded and completely ignored but was most relevant to the questions that were presented in my life as a husband and father.”
-ABC News’ Hannah Demissie
‘Hillbilly Elegy’ continues to climb Netflix’s charts
Netflix’s movie “Hillbilly Elegy,” based on Sen. JD Vance’s memoir, continues to climb the charts following Vance being named Donald Trump’s running mate.
It’s now ranked No. 2 on Netflix. On Wednesday, it was ranked No. 4; on Tuesday, it was ranked No. 6.
-ABC News’ Hannah Demissie
In RNC keynote, Trump says he’ll stress ‘unity’ after assassination attempt
Trump will formally accept the GOP presidential nomination Thursday night and deliver his first speech since Saturday’s assassination attempt, capping off an ebullient Republican convention at a time of heightened political uncertainty — and now he says he will push for a more unifying message.
Such a tone would mark a departure both for Trump individually and for American politics writ large, though operatives and conventiongoers alike predicted a more subdued speech focused on uniting the country, with the nation captivated by news of the attempt on the former president’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I think he’s a changed man. Anytime you come within millimeters of your life, that has an effect,” said Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign official who remains in touch with his current team. “I think, from his standpoint, he doesn’t want to be a divisive figure. He wants to be a unifying figure at a time that the country is desperately seeking unity and needs unity.”
-ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler and Tal Axelrod
Trump, joined by family at RNC, to deliver speech tonight
On Day 4 of the Republican National Convention, former first lady Melania Trump is scheduled to arrive at the arena around the 8 p.m. CT/9 p.m. ET hour, publicly joining Trump on a major campaign event for the first time this election cycle. Other members of the Trump family are also expected to attend RNC events this evening.
Trump is scheduled to take the stage at 9:02 p.m. CT/10:02 p.m. ET, the first time we’ll be seeing him speak publicly after his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Thursday’s theme is “Make America Great Once Again” and will feature speakers including Trump’s son, Eric Trump; Montana Sen. Steve Daines; former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and UFC President Dana White.
-ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Lalee Ibssa and Kelsey Walsh.
(MILWAUKEE, W.I.) — Former President Donald Trump will formally accept the GOP presidential nomination Thursday night and deliver his first speech since Saturday’s assassination attempt, capping off an ebullient Republican convention at a time of heightened political uncertainty.
Trump will give the keynote remarks at a time when he is pushing for a more unifying message after last weekend’s shooting and as he rides political tailwinds into the summer and fall, fueled in part by President Joe Biden’s calamitous June debate and subsequent Democratic angst.
Such a tone would mark a departure both for Trump individually and for American politics writ large, though operatives and conventiongoers alike predicted a more subdued speech focused on uniting the country, with the nation captivated by news of the attempt on the former president’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I think he’s a changed man. Anytime you come within millimeters of your life, that has an effect. I think, from his standpoint, he doesn’t want to be a divisive figure. He wants to be a unifying figure at a time that the country is desperately seeking unity and needs unity,” said Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign official who remains in touch with his current team.
“It’s just not a moment for him, and it’s just not a moment for the Republican Party. It’s a moment for the country,” he added. “We experienced a shock. We could literally be at a funeral today.”
Trump said he revised his remarks after Saturday’s shooting, saying it initially was set to be a “humdinger” but that now it will be “more of a unity speech.”
In an era when few thinks punch through the political noise, particularly in a race between a current and former president with virtually universal name recognition, the speech marks a rare moment where Trump can hold the stage at a pivot point in the race, even as it’s unclear precisely how much the election’s dynamics have changed.
“When you’re at this level, there’s just certain speeches that the world stops and listens to, and your nominating speech is one,” said veteran GOP strategist Chip Saltsman.
“Unity” has been the buzz word since Saturday, with leaders of both parties lamenting the violence and urging renewed civility in the country’s politics.
However, such a tone could also help Trump politically, operatives predicted.
While in office, Trump bled support from centrist, suburban voters — enough to cost him reelection in 2020. Their defection was widely attributed more to tone than to policy disagreements, and now, with polls showing Biden with hefty disapproval ratings, a more leveled approach from Trump could help win some voters back to his side, including by detailing the immediate aftermath of the shooting, strategists said.
“How do you get the Republicans that don’t particularly like you? How do you get the true undecideds and independents? And how do you get the Democrats that aren’t happy with Joe Biden? Obviously, those are typically issue-type conversations, but I think in this case he can do it with his emotion,” Saltsman said.
To be certain, Trump is still widely anticipated to go after Biden’s record, prosecuting the kind of contrast on policies that he’s been putting forth since the election began.
“I expect to hear about Afghanistan withdrawal and the economy and the border and these big picture issues that have formed around this campaign,” said one former senior Trump administration official. “A lot of the things that I think he covers on a regular basis in his rallies, but it’ll be more surgical, if Trump’s capable of surgical.”
“I do think you’ll see him add Kamala in a good amount to the Biden criticisms. I think that news today makes it clear that they’re still pushing on that, and President Trump’s pretty keen to this as an option for them,” the person added, referencing growing chatter around Democrats’ calls for Biden to drop out of the race.
And it’s still unclear precisely how long the veneer of unity can last. Politics has morphed into a blood sport in the U.S., and those working for both candidates may be more willing to push the envelope when going after their opponents.
“I’ll be honest, it’s not gonna be the tone you hear from the rest of us, we’re seasoned operatives. We fight, and that’s how you gain position is by fighting,” Lanza said.
Interviews with conventiongoers showed an appetite for both unity and Trump’s typical punchiness.
“Peace and unity because it’s a very divided country right now,” Awet Gebremariam, a delegate from California, said when asked what she wants to hear from Trump. “He almost lost his life. And I think he’s very subdued and he’s very reserved and he’s very grounded now. And I think he’s going to give a great, great speech, maybe very different from the speeches before he used to give before.”
Others, like Daniel Bobay, an alternate delegate from Texas, wanted more of a mix, arguing that “you can fight nicely.”
“I’m hoping,” Elizabeth Hines-Ferrick, a delegate from Massachusetts said, when asked if she wanted the rhetoric toned down. “But at least I still expect him to be a fighter, because he speaks straight from the heart.”
Politically, Democrats concede a more unifying tone from Trump could make it harder to knock him as a threat to democracy, especially after the shooting, even if they’re skeptical he can keep it up long after the GOP convention.
“I think there’s an initial concern that if Trump can play this the right way that he can look like a unifier and get outside of his brand,” one battleground Democratic strategist said. “But then also at the same time, I would tell you that no one has any confidence that he can continue to play the straight man.”
As far as Thursday goes, however, Trump is virtually guaranteed a hero’s welcome, no matter what he says.
“I think it’s gonna be pretty epic,” the former senior administration official said. “Everyone in that hall loves the man, and him speaking to them for the first time since Saturday is going to have a pretty raucous atmosphere. I imagine it’s gonna be emotional. You’re gonna see delegates teary-eyed and hooting and hollering.”
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — In the tumultuous weeks since President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance, the 81-year-old commander-in-chief has resisted calls from within his own party to end his reelection campaign, often relying on assurances from his medical staff to rebuff those who question his fitness for office.
This week, in an interview with BET, Biden suggested for the first time that he would consider dropping out of the presidential race if there was “some medical condition that emerged … if the doctors came to me, said, ‘You got this problem and that problem.'”
The person who would carry that heavy burden is a media-shy physician who Biden warmly refers to as “Doc”: the 58-year-old head of the White House medical unit, Dr. Kevin O’Connor.
A retired Army surgeon who served tours with special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, O’Connor has spent more than a decade caring for Biden. One former White House aide described the osteopath as being “like family” to the Bidens.
And now, with the aging president’s health front and center in the 2024 race — and with him facing a second COVID-19 diagnosis since taking office — O’Connor seems poised to remain in the spotlight.
In nearly a dozen interviews, current and former colleagues praised O’Connor as a top-tier clinician and an “honest doctor” whose deep bond with his high-profile patient makes him uniquely qualified to deliver unwelcome prognoses, if warranted.
“If [O’Connor] felt there was a problem for the country, he would tell the president and he would tell the American people,” said Retired Army Colonel Dr. John Holcomb, a longtime friend. “That would be a hard decision. But it would be the right thing to do, and [O’Connor] would do it.”
But as the president’s public gaffes continue, a chorus of critics, allies and medical professionals have questioned his mental acuity — and his medical staff’s reluctance to divulge more information about his health.
Dr. Lawrence Mohr, the White House physician to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, told ABC News that based on what he has seen publicly, “I don’t think there’s any question that the president should undergo a test of cognitive function, and he should do it very quickly.”
House Republicans have also suggested that O’Connor’s “connections with the Biden family” compromise his ability to “provide accurate and independent reviews of the president’s fitness to serve.”
O’Connor did not respond to a request to be interviewed. But several people close to him said he has grown irritated in recent weeks amid scrutiny of his clinical decisions and character. One person who recently spoke with O’Connor said the newfound attention is “bugging him.”
O’Connor rarely makes public appearances, preferring instead to communicate news about the president’s health in written statements. But in a podcast interview earlier this year, the physician described himself as “apolitical.”
“We don’t serve the president; we serve the presidency. That is sacrosanct,” he said on the podcast WarDocs. “We’re not here for a man, we’re here for the office … [President Biden] knows that. He wants it that way.”
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, described O’Connor as “a world class medical professional” whose “unique expertise is sought across the medical community, in which he is respected for his candor, attention to detail, and work ethic.”
‘Brotherly trust’
A New Jersey-bred high school wrestler, O’Connor served for 22 years in the Army, where he cut his teeth jumping out of airplanes with the 82nd Airborne Division and later as a medic with special operations units. He was “one of the very first Americans to go into Afghanistan” during the early days of the War on Terror, according to Dr. Frank Butler, a retired Navy surgeon.
As he rose through the ranks, O’Connor played a “pioneering role” in overhauling the U.S. military’s battlefield trauma care, known as the Tactical Combat Casualty Care, and was an early advocate of the use of ketamine to treat severe depression in servicemembers and veterans, Butler said.
In 2006, during his time as a hospital administrator at Fort Carson in Colorado, O’Connor was asked to consult about a patient suffering from back pain. The patient, O’Connor later learned, was President George W. Bush — and his treatment set the course for a career pivot to the White House.
“I beat him up pretty good,” O’Connor recalled in the podcast interview, regarding his treatment of Bush’s back issue. After that initial treatment, “[Bush] started calling me ‘bone-crusher’ … and over the course of time that morphed into ‘bone-cracker'” and later, simply to “‘cracker,’ which was unfortunate,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor joined the White House medical unit full-time later that year. When the Obama administration swept into office in 2009, O’Connor said he “fell into” the role of primary physician for then-Vice President Biden.
The two men grew close when Biden asked O’Connor to consult on end-of-life care for his mother, who passed away in 2010. Their bond deepened, friends said, when Biden’s son Beau Biden was later diagnosed with cancer.
Through those trying moments, the two men forged a “brotherly trust” that remains in place today, according to a current administration official who worked for Biden during the Obama administration.
In an October 2016 email inviting several members of the Biden family to a party Biden hosted for O’Connor’s retirement from the Army, O’Connor wrote that “a retirement ceremony really has little to do with the retiree — it’s for their family.”
“I can never imagine a day when any of you call and I don’t pick up the phone with a smile,” he wrote, before signing the message, “Love, Kevin.”
After Biden left office in 2017, O’Connor remained his physician — the only difference being “that [Biden] got a bill and he drove himself [to appointments],” O’Connor said on the WarDocs podcast.
O’Connor also continued to treat and provide consultations for members of Biden’s family, including his son, Hunter Biden, and Hunter Biden’s daughters, according to emails leaked online from Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive.
When Biden was elected president in 2020, O’Connor was summoned back to the White House as the physician to the oldest president in American history. In the intervening years, O’Connor has penned extensive annual reports on the president’s health — most recently in February, when he declared that Biden “continues to be fit for duty.”
But many Americans disagree. In last week’s ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, Trump leads Biden by 30 percentage points, 44% to 14%, in being seen as having the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president.
Even so, O’Connor has committed to being forthright with the president about any troubling medical observations.
“You’ve got to tell them what they need to hear,” O’Connor said on the WarDocs podcast in January. “We don’t candy-coat things in medicine.”
‘I would love to live in anonymity’
Despite his high-profile role, O’Connor has made a concerted effort to stay under the radar. Where past White House physicians have, under certain circumstances, taken questions from the media, O’Connor said on the WarDocs podcast that he laments “the press stuff.”
“I like to not deal with that more than I have to,” he said. “I’m very thorough and very honest and very forthcoming in writing every time [Biden has] been sick … but still they want more.”
Republicans in Congress have suggested that O’Connor’s close ties with Biden might undermine his objectivity in delivering updates on the president’s health. In a letter to O’Connor last week, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer highlighted O’Connor’s apparent involvement with James Biden, the president’s brother, in an ill-fated business endeavor dating back to 2017.
James Biden, in an interview with committee investigators earlier this year, said O’Connor introduced him to a group of individuals with expertise in providing PTSD care to servicemembers as part of his role in Americore, a hospital system looking to expand access to healthcare access in rural areas.
“The Oversight Committee is concerned your medical assessments have been influenced by your private business endeavors with the Biden family,” Comer wrote in the letter.
Paul Fishman, an attorney for James Biden, acknowledged in a statement that “Jim sought his advice on best practices” — but insisted that “O’Connor was not in business with Jim” and that O’Connor was not paid for brokering the meeting.
Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, called Comer’s overture “absolutely ridiculous and insulting.”
Republicans’ scrutiny of O’Connor and the broader discourse about Biden’s mental health has drawn the behind-the-scenes West Wing fixture into the open, despite his protestations.
“My goal right now in this job is [that] I hope nobody has any memory of me whatsoever,” he said on the WarDocs podcast in January. “I would love to live in anonymity.”
But few people have more access to the president, and fewer still have the training to evaluate his fitness for duty — a point O’Connor himself has acknowledged as a crucial part of his role. His office sits on the ground floor of the executive residence, directly across from the president’s personal elevator.
“[The president] literally has to pass me at least twice a day, usually more than that, to and from his way to the Oval Office,” he told a group of medical students earlier this year. “I have always viewed the most important part of my day as, ‘Good morning, Mr. President.'”
Experts point out that O’Connor is limited in what he can say publicly about Biden’s health. The same doctor-patient confidentiality that applies to every American, through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, also applies to the president.
“It’s not the doctor’s responsibility — or even the doctor’s authority — to make statements about the medical conditions about the president,” said Dr. Mohr, the former physician to Reagan and George H.W. Bush. “That’s the president’s responsibility.”
“It’s never the doctor’s prerogative to make statements without the president’s permission,” Mohr said.
Dr. Philip Volpe, a retired major general and O’Connor’s longtime mentor, told ABC News that he shared this advice with the president’s physician last week: “Be a good doc, do the right thing, and tell the truth.”
(LONDON) — The espionage trial of The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich resumed on Thursday, proceeding behind closed doors in a remote Russian courtroom after Washington and Moscow officials each raised the potential for the journalist to be part of an international prisoner exchange.
Gershkovich’s court date had been moved forward from August 13 after a request from his defense team, Grainne McCarthy, an international editor at the Journal, told staff in an email on Wednesday.
“The process remains opaque but what we do know is that the sooner this is over, the better,” McCarthy wrote in the email, which was shared with ABC News. “Evan cannot be freed soon enough.”
The trial of Gershkovich, a 32-year-old American, began in June behind closed doors in Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, a city hundreds of miles from Moscow. A second closed-door hearing began Thursday morning. U.S. officials accused the Kremlin of using the case “to achieve its political objectives.”
Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the Sverdlovsk region, where Russian officials claimed he was collecting secrets on the “production and repair of military equipment” for the CIA. The indictment against Gershkovich was approved by prosecutors in June, sending the case to the regional court for trial.
Prosecutors began at the June 26 hearing to lay out their evidence against the journalist. Whatever evidence Russia has against the journalist hasn’t been publicly released, according to U.S. officials. The trial amounted to “a performance put on by Russian authorities to justify their repression of journalists and independent voices,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in June.
“Russia should stop using individuals like Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan as bargaining chips,” Miller said, referring to a Marine veteran separately detained in Russia. “They should both be released immediately.”
During a United Nations Security Council meeting on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield addressed Gershkovich’s detention, telling Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Americans wrongfully detained in Russia should be released.
“We will not rest until Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich come home, and Russia has ceased this barbaric practice of holding human pawns once and for all,” she said on social media afterward.
Lavrov following the meeting said that using journalists for intelligence gathering was “absolutely natural,” adding that Russia has “irrefutable evidence that Gershkovich was engaged in espionage.” But he also said an international prisoner exchange may be possible, echoing what Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said.
“The intelligence services of the two countries, by agreement between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden back in June 2021, have been in contact to see if someone can be exchanged for someone else,” Lavrov said.
Russia and the United States carried out similar high-profile swaps in 2022 when WNBA star Brittney Griner was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker, and a former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, was traded for a pilot convicted of drug smuggling.
Russia has maintained that discussions about trades for Gershkovich can only start in earnest after the trial is over, Brian D. Taylor, a Syracuse University political science professor who serves as director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, told ABC News.
“So the quicker the trial and the inevitable verdict, the quicker they can offer Evan as a piece in a possible trade,” Taylor said.
Miller, of the State Department, said in June that the U.S. continued to negotiate for Whelan’s and Gershkovich’s releases in private discussions, including putting a “significant” offer on the table months earlier.
“We shouldn’t have to do that. They should both be released immediately, but we will continue our efforts,” he said. “Those have been happening before Evan’s trial, they will continue during the trial. And should he be convicted — which, of course, he will be, it’s not a free trial — they will continue after the trial. But we want to see him returned home immediately.”
ABC News’ Mike Levine, Will Gretsky, Joe Simonetti and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
(BUTLER, P.A.) — Investigators working to determine a motive behind the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump found a message posted to the gaming platform Steam that they believe was authored by the suspect, in which he said that “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds,” according to three law enforcement sources briefed on the probe.
Investigators also found internet searches for both Trump and President Joe Biden on the phone belonging to Thomas Matthew Crooks, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News. Crooks, 20, had searched for the dates of Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and for those of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the sources said.
The suspect’s phone was one of several devices that law enforcement investigators had collected as they worked to piece together a timeline of the assassination attempt against the former president during a Saturday rally.
“What is beginning to emerge is a portrait of a troubled young person who turned to violence,” said John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and former head of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security.
Cohen, who specializes in the phenomenon of mass shooters, added that investigators may never determine a single or precise motive for the attack. Sources familiar with the investigation have told ABC News that a search of the suspect’s phone history has revealed no indication of Crooks’ political views or his motive for the shooting. Investigators have also found no digital footprint from the suspect suggesting any affiliations with international or domestic terrorist groups. They have also been unable to identify any ideological nexus to Trump and/or Biden, according to sources.
“Likely, it was a combination of mental health issues, ideological beliefs and a sense of personal grievance, the same combination of factors present in almost every school shooting and mass casualty attack over the past several years. As with those incidents, the warning signs were there, they were just not recognized,” Cohen said. “The threat was real but people around him did not understand what they were witnessing or how it would play out last Saturday.”
The FBI early on Sunday had identified Crooks as the suspect. The U.S. Secret Service said snipers had killed Crooks at the scene. Firefighter Corey Comperatore, a dad who was attending the rally, was killed, and two other bystanders injured, officials said.
The searches compounded the questions that were swirling as investigators searched for a reason for the shooting, including a possible political motive. Crooks had been registered as a Republican voter, according to state records. But a $15 donation to a progressive group was also recorded under “Thomas Crooks” in January 2021, according to FEC records.
As investigators analyzed the suspect’s phone, they looked at his search history, which included the queries for Trump and Biden. But that search history didn’t immediately appear to reveal Crooks’ political views, sources told ABC News.
Law enforcement officials investigating the assassination attempt told lawmakers on Wednesday that 20 minutes had passed between the time Secret Service snipers first spotted Crooks on a rooftop and the time the first shots were fired, according to several law enforcement officials and lawmakers briefed on the matter.
(MILWAUKEE, W.I. ) — Speakers at the Republican National Convention this week have faulted the Biden administration for putting the nation at risk from threats that include criminals, illicit drugs — and high prices.
“American families have been crushed by inflation,” Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers told the audience in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, described the “silent creep of inflation unleashed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
Some economists who spoke to ABC News took issue with the blame placed on President Joe Biden as an overstatement of his role in the price spike. Instead, they said, the bout of rapidly rising prices emerged from a supply shortage imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war.
Pandemic-era spending measures enacted by former President Donald Trump and Biden also contributed to the price spike, the economists added, but they differed on the share of responsibility that should be apportioned to each of the major party candidates.
“There’s a long list of reasons for the high inflation. At the top of the list is the pandemic and the Russian war,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told ABC News.
Some of the inflation owes to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan signed by Biden in 2021, Zandi said. But, he added, “It’s at the bottom of the list.”
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Price increases have slowed significantly from a peak of more than 9% in June 2022, though inflation remains a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%. Even after that progress made in the inflation fight, cumulative price increases during the Biden administration continue to take a toll on consumers, especially the rise in costs for essential goods like food and gas.
Like so many economic problems, inflation emerged due to an imbalance between supply and demand.
Hundreds of millions across the globe facing lockdowns replaced restaurant expenditures with online orders of couches and exercise bikes. But the demand for goods and labor far outpaced supply, as COVID-related bottlenecks slowed delivery times and infection fears kept workers on the sidelines.
“The most important factor for inflation is the recovery from the pandemic,” Jeffrey Frankel, an economist at Harvard University, told ABC News. “The process of coming back took longer than expected, in particular the supply constraints.”
To supercharge the recovery, Trump and Biden enacted economic stimulus meant to support people who’d lost their jobs or faced other financial hardship. That stimulus helped bring about a speedy economic recovery from the March 2020 downturn, triggering a surge in demand and a blitz of hiring.
With too many dollars chasing too few goods, prices skyrocketed.
“Both Trump and Biden contributed to the fiscal stimulus that fed into the inflation,” George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the libertarian Cato Institute, told ABC News.
Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, estimated that Biden’s American Rescue Plan added between 1 percentage point and 4 percentage points to the inflation rate in 2021, Roll Call reported. Michael Strain, of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, estimated that the legislation added 3 percentage points to inflation.
“It was irresponsible to do stimulus when the economy was well on its way to recovery,” Peter Morici, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Business told ABC News, faulting Biden’s stimulus more than Trump’s because Biden’s measure came when the economy was already heating up.
“Blame is falling where it’s due,” Morici added. “Biden does bear responsibility for the endurance of Covid inflation.”
Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics, disagreed. The measure did little to raise prices but helped sustain the strong job gains and robust economic performance that followed, he said. As far as inflation goes, Zandi added, “The American Rescue Plan is a sideshow.”
Some economists who spoke to ABC News noted that price increases bedeviled countries across the globe, some of which have suffered much worse inflation than the U.S. In Argentina, inflation has surged to more than 270%; in Turkey, it exceeded 75%.
“It’s important to realize that the bout of inflation is worldwide,” Frankel said.
While Biden should avoid wholesale blame for inflation, he should also command only partial credit for its reduction, economists said. The significant slowdown of inflation over the past two years owes in large part to an aggressive series of interest rate hikes at the Federal Reserve.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell was appointed by Trump to head the central bank in 2018. Despite a tradition of independence at the Fed, Trump pressured Powell to lower interest rates the following year. Biden, for his part, has largely refrained from commenting on the actions of the Fed.
(WASHINGTON) — Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who pleaded guilty to federal offenses for leaking sensitive information online, will now face a military court-martial, according to the U.S. Air Force.
No trial date has been set yet for the military legal proceedings, which will take place at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
Teixeira faces charges alleging he violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to a statement from the Air Force.
The first charge alleges he failed to obey an order to “cease and desist from accessing information not pertaining to his duties” on or about Sept. 15, 2022, and on or about April 13, 2023, according to the statement.
The second charge alleges that he “dispose[d] of an iPad, computer hard drive, and cell phone, with intent to obstruct the due administration of justice in the case of himself” sometime between March 1, 2023, and April 13, 2023, according to the statement. It also alleges he similarly directed another person to delete Discord messages he sent “with intent to obstruct the due administration of justice in the case of himself” on or about April 7, 2023.
Teixeira was indicted by a federal grand jury last year on six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to the national defense. Federal prosecutors said Teixeira “accessed and printed hundreds of classified documents” and posted images of them on Discord prior to his arrest in April 2023.
He pleaded guilty to all six charges and agreed to accept a 16-year prison sentence in March. In exchange, prosecutors agreed not to charge him with additional counts under the Espionage Act.
His sentencing is set for Sept. 27.
The U.S. military reserves the right to separately prosecute a service member who has already been convicted in a federal court.
An Air Force evidentiary hearing was held in May to determine whether his case should move forward to an Air Force court-martial.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said in an interview airing on Wednesday that, should his doctors tell him he had a “medical condition,” he would consider leaving office and turning over power to Vice President Kamala Harris in a second term.
It is his latest explanation of what might cause him to step aside as a growing number of Democrats pressured him to do so.
“If there had [muffled] some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if the doctors, came to me, said, ‘you got this problem and that problem.’ But I made a serious mistake in the whole debate, ” he told BET’s Ed Gordon n a preview clip of the interview set to air at 10 p.m. ET
The interview was done before the White House announced late Wednesday that Biden had tested positive for COVID-19, saying that his symptoms were mild.
Biden has now given several shifting reasons about what might make him decide to step aside.
He told ABC News in a July 5 interview after his poor debate performance debate that only the “Lord Almighty” might get him to drop out of the presidential race.
When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked, “If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?” Biden answered, “Well, it depends on .. on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”
In a news conference a week ago, he said he would stay in the race unless his aides told him he had no chance to win a second term.
“No, unless they came back and said, ‘There’s no way you can win.’ “No one is saying that. No poll says that,” Biden told reporters.
Also in the BET interview, Biden said, “When I originally ran, I said I was gonna be a transitional candidate, and I thought that I’d be able to move from this just pass it on to someone else. But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided and quite frankly, and I think the only thing age brings a little bit of wisdom,” he said. “And I think I’ve demonstrated that I know how to get things done for the country, in spite of the fact that we [were] told we couldn’t get it done. But there’s more to do, and I’m reluctant to walk away from that.”
On Tuesday, he wholeheartedly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as not only a “great vice president” but so great that “she could be president of the United States,” he said while addressing the NAACP national convention in Las Vegas.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated, after the full interview aired, to reflect that Biden said he would consider stepping aside from a second term if he had a “medical condition.”
(NEW YORK) — Babies born to women who received a COVID-19 vaccine in their first trimester did not have a significant increased risk of birth defects, a new study found.
For the study, published Wednesday evening in the journal The BMJ, researchers used national public health registries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to compare pregnant women who received either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine in the first trimester and pregnant women who were infected with COVID-19 in the first trimester to women who were not vaccinated or infected.
The team followed more than 343,000 babies born to women with an estimated start of pregnancy between March 1, 2020, and February 14, 2022, with each infant followed for a minimum of nine months.
A total of 10,229, or 3%, of infants had mothers who were infected with COVID-19 during the first trimester. A subgroup of about 152,000 infants, or 19%, had mothers who received a COVID-19 vaccine in the first trimester.
Of the more than 343,000 babies, about 17,700 were diagnosed with a major congenital anomaly within a nine-month follow-up period, but there was no increased risk of any major birth defect for either the infected mothers’ group or the vaccinated mothers’ group, including heart, brain, eye, face, breathing, limb, kidney, genital and gastrointestinal defects.
All mothers were evaluated by considering factors such as age, smoking during pregnancy, body mass index, socioeconomic status, COVID-19 infection despite vaccination, infant prematurity and other chronic conditions.
The authors also found no increased risk of major birth defects related to fetal deaths that could be attributed to first-trimester COVID-19 infection or vaccination.
Some limitations included excluding mothers from the infected group if they had a positive antigen test followed by a negative PCR test within four days. Additionally, there was no information available on how many doses of vaccines the vaccinated mothers received.
However, the researchers say the findings are a further indication that pregnant people should be vaccinated.
“Vaccination of pregnant women protects the women and the infants from adverse outcomes,” the authors wrote in the study. “Furthermore, we did not find any indication that vaccination against COVID-19 during the first trimester increased the risk of anomalies, providing additional evidence about the safety of vaccination in pregnant women. Overall, our findings support the current recommendations to vaccinate pregnant women against COVID-19.”
The study is the latest in a growing body of evidence showing mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — which Pfizer and Moderna fall under — are safe to receive before and during pregnancy and do not increase the risks for complications including miscarriage, premature birth, stillbirth or birth defects.
In fact, some research has suggested COVID-19 vaccination can reduce the risk of premature birth and stillbirth, as well as help protect babies younger than 6 months old from being hospitalized due to COVID-19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends that people who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant now, or who might become pregnant in the future — as well as who are breastfeeding a baby — receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine.
People who are pregnant are more likely to become seriously ill and hospitalized if infected with COVID-19, and more likely to suffer pregnancy complications including preterm birth or stillbirth, the CDC said.
Jade March, MD, a board certified family medicine physician and current integrative medicine fellow at UCLA, is a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
