(WASHINGTON) — Federal investigators have in their possession an audio recording of former President Donald Trump from July 2021, on which he acknowledges he held onto a sensitive military document after leaving office, sources confirm to ABC News.
The recording was made during a meeting at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, that Trump held with people who were helping former chief of staff Mark Meadows with his memoir, according to sources.
Trump indicated during the recording that he knew the document in question was secret, the sources said.
Meadows was not present for the meeting, the sources said, but other Trump aides, including Margot Martin, were there.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office, has questioned witnesses about the recording, sources familiar with the matter said.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment to ABC News.
A Trump spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News, “Leaks from radical partisans behind this political persecution are designed to inflame tensions and continue the media’s harassment of President Trump and his supporters. It’s just more proof that when it comes to President Trump, there are absolutely no depths to which they will not sink as they pursue their witch hunts.”
“The DOJ’s continued interference in the presidential election is shameful and this meritless investigation should cease wasting the American taxpayer’s money on Democrat political objectives,” the Trump spokesperson said.
News of the recording was first reported by CNN.
On the recording, which ABC News has not listened to nor obtained, Trump is heard attacking Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and referencing one document in particular that Trump claimed Milley had compiled, according to sources. Trump, who said on the recording that he still had the document in his possession, said the document was about attacking Iran, sources said.
The specific nature of the document described in the recording is not known.
The July 2021 conversation took place several months before representatives for Trump handed over to the National Archives 15 boxes of presidential records that included documents with classified markings, and more than a year before Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last August.
During the August search, investigators uncovered more than 100 classified documents after Trump’s team failed to comply with a June 2022 subpoena seeking all such records that remained in his possession.
It’s unclear whether the document allegedly referenced in the recording was among those documents initially handed over to the Archives or those seized by the FBI in the August 2022 search.
(NEW YORK) — A father and his four children were saved from an early morning house fire by a neighbor and a passerby who saw smoke coming from the home’s garage and were able to alert the sleeping family, police said.
The fire was reported around 5:35 a.m. Wednesday at a home in South Brunswick Township, New Jersey, local police said.
A man who lives on the block told police he looked out his window at about 5:30 a.m. and “noticed puffs of smoke that looked like fog” over the corner of his neighbor’s garage, the South Brunswick Township Police Department said in a statement.
When the man — identified by police as 85-year-old Santo Livio — went outside to further check, he saw a woman who regularly walks in the neighborhood coming down the street as well.
“I yell to her, I said, ‘Is that a fire, you think, that smoke is?’ And she says yes,” Livio told ABC News.
The woman ran up the driveway and started banging on the front door to the house, while Livio started banging on a window, he said.
Livio said he banged on the window for about a minute or two before running back home to call 911 while the woman continued knocking on the door.
“When I got back to my door, I saw the people that lived in the house come out and she told them their house was on fire. And the man said, ‘What fire?’ And she says, ‘Look,'” Livio said. “He looked up and he said, ‘Oh my God.'”
The family was sleeping at the time and were woken up by Livio and the woman banging on their front door and bedroom windows before evacuating uninjured, police said.
Three fire departments responded to the scene and were able to extinguish the fire in about 20 minutes, police said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. The blaze appears to have originated in the garage, but the source and official point of origin are pending further investigation, police said.
South Brunswick Fire Chief Chris Perez told ABC New York station WABC-TV that there were smoke detectors in the home but they were not operational.
The children’s mother works overnight as a nurse and wasn’t home at the time of the fire, according to Livio, who said the family came by afterward to thank him.
The father told WABC his family is safe and that they are grateful to first responders, Livio and the mystery woman. He told ABC News in a brief phone call that he was working on finding them a place to stay Wednesday night.
A police spokesperson told ABC News the woman who helped left amid the fire response and they are working to identify her so they can give her recognition.
“I credit Mr. Livio, along with the unidentified woman, and their quick thinking and heroic actions, with saving the family,” South Brunswick Township Police Chief Raymond Hayducka said in a statement.
Livio said wouldn’t call himself a hero, but a “good neighbor.”
“I hope that what I did for somebody they would do the same for me,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The House on Wednesday night approved a bill to raise the nation’s debt ceiling while cutting some government spending over the next two years, in a major victory for both the White House and Republican leaders as the country tip-toes closer to a historic default on its bills.
The final vote was 314-117.
A majority of the GOP conference backed the legislation, with 149 votes, but it was 165 Democrats who helped ensure passage as 71 conservatives ultimately voted no, as did 46 Democrats. Four lawmakers, two Republicans and two Democrats, didn’t vote.
The proposal next heads to the Senate, where both Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have said they want to move quickly to approve it — even as soon as Thursday or Friday.
The deal, brokered between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, would raise the country’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025 while setting a broad government budget over the next two years and making some policy changes, such as increasing work requirements on federal food assistance.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has estimated that the government will run out of cash to pay all of its bills by Monday — the so-called “X-date” for default.
But the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed the House on Wednesday includes a two-year government budget in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling through Jan. 1, 2025.
The bill would keep non-defense spending flat in fiscal 2024 and increase levels by 1% in fiscal 2025.
Speaking with reporters after the vote, McCarthy touted what he called Republicans’ work in getting the White House to compromise and he highlighted the cuts and savings he said his party had exacted in light of the currently divided federal government.
“I knew the debt ceiling was coming. I wanted to make history. I wanted to do something no other Congress has done, that we would literally turn the ship, that for the first time in quite some time we’d spend less than we spent the year before,” he said. “Tonight, we all make history.”
“Is it everything I wanted? No,” McCarthy said, later adding, “I think we did pretty dang good for the American public.”
In a statement of his own, Biden applauded the House for taking a “critical step forward” in passing the agreement and specifically thanked McCarthy “and his team for negotiating in good faith.”
“This budget agreement is a bipartisan compromise. Neither side got everything it wanted. That’s the responsibility of governing,” he said.
The president said that the deal protects key parts of his agenda, as well as government programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Despite Biden and McCarthy’s celebratory tones, their deal had drawn bipartisan criticism, too — a notable minority of the House.
Some Republicans said the speaker had not gone far enough in getting sweeping spending cuts, similar to a House bill that passed along party lines in April.
And Democrats said Biden had given in to what they likened to economic hostage-taking in agreeing to some spending cuts without holding to his demand that Republicans raise the debt ceiling without preconditions.
(LOS ANGELES) — Some South Asians, many miles away from their homes, say they are suffering from experiences with discrimination that dates back to thousands of years.
From job rejections to unsupported marriages, they claim that severe harassment from the caste system crossed over into America and has gone unchecked.
“When we talk about our personal experience, people don’t believe me,” Prem Paariyar, a Nepalese immigrant who said he was discriminated against because of his caste both back home and in the U.S., told ABC News Live. “Not just my experience, our experience.”
But state and local leaders on the West Coast are seeking to address the issue with legislation that anti-caste advocates say could help curb this inequality.
The caste system started as a social construct created over 3,000 years ago in South Asia. People are born into distinct groups, that came with their own social hierarchy and political and economic status, according to Anupama Rao, a history professor at Columbia University.
Brahmins, or ritual specialists on top are considered the top caste, followed by the Kshatriyas, the warrior caste, then the Waishyas, which was the caste that represented farmers, traders or merchants, and finally the Shudras, who are also known as the “untouchables.”
Rao told ABC News that members of Shudras were forced to do the worst kind of jobs including hauling caucuses and excrement. She said they are sometimes referred to as Dalit, which is a term of militant self-identification, that means ground down, broken, crushed.
“Caste operates as an engine of social hierarchy and as a form of political and economic inequality,” she said.
Although the Indian government banned caste discrimination in 1948, it has still existed culturally, according to Rao.
“The ways in which caste operates is subtle and not so subtle,” she said. “People trying to figure out what your caste is through your last name, people being very interested in knowing about your cultural and social practices, all trying to get a sense of ways in which you can cut into somebody’s caste identity.”
Alok Kumbhare said he has faced discrimination all of his life because of his name and caste. He remembered a music teacher in India discouraged him from learning music after learning his name as a child.
Kumbhare held back tears recalling a former landlord in India who harassed him over his caste and told him, ” You stink up the toilet too much, I should’ve made you clean and that’s what you’re good for.”
“This implicit notion of superiority and inferiority creeps in all the time,” the married father of one told ABC News Live.
Paariyar said his family was brutally attacked in Nepal by members of a dominant caste and he fled to the U.S. seeking political asylum.
When he arrived in America, however, Paariyar said that his harassment didn’t go away.
After getting a job at a restaurant, Paariyar said he was denied housing that those workers typically used because they were all part of the dominant caste.
“After a month, I was homeless…I was in a van,” he said.
Pariyar would eventually graduate from California State University with a degree in social work, and spearheaded efforts to end caste discrimination on campus.
Some South Asian Americans said that the discrimination is strong even in bigger organizations and groups.
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a South Asian-American activist, and the executive director of Equality Labs, told ABC News that she was originally invited to speak at Google about caste bias but her invitation was rescinded after some employees complained.
“I had a Google V.P. news manager tell me, ‘Well, you know, caste is not a protected category,’ and that’s just me as a speaker imagining what they’re telling to workers,” Soundararajan said.
She said that after the incident, she had to live in a safe house because of threats.
Google claimed in a statement to ABC News, “In this instance, there was specific conduct, and internal posts, that made employees feel targeted and retaliated against for raising concerns about a proposed talk. We made the decision not to move forward.”
“Caste discrimination has no place in our workplace and it’s prohibited in our policies. We have long hosted a variety of constructive conversations with external guests on these sorts of topics,” the company said in a statement.
Soundararajan and other anti-caste advocates have long been calling on the government to address the issue and recently local leaders have been pushing legislation that bans caste discrimination.
In February, Seattle became the first major city outside of South Asia to ban caste discrimination.
On May 11, the California state Senate passed SB 403 which would make caste a protected category in California’s anti-discrimination laws. The law is working its way through the state Assembly.
“As our state becomes more diverse, our laws need to go further and deeper in communities and tackle the issues that matter to them,” State Sen. Aisha Wahab, the lead sponsor of the bill, told ABC News Live.
The bill, however, was met with resistance from some South Asians who contend that caste discrimination isn’t as prevalent as some others claim.
Puspita Prasad, a member of the group The Coalition of Hindus of North America which has opposed SB 403 and Seattle’s law, told ABC News Live, the nature of the legislation is discriminatory
“We object to this word caste. The word caste is in the Western lexicon. It’s a Hindu phobic term. It is not a neutral term,” Prasad said.
Rao acknowledged that most people associate the term caste with the Hindu religion but said “caste and caste-like differences and exclusions are also in evidence in Muslim and Christian communities across South Asia.”
Alok and other anti-caste advocates say the Seattle and California movements are positive signs that people are becoming cognizant of the issue and are willing to make change to end the cycle of discrimination.
“This ordinance is all about hope,” he said of the Seattle legislation. “It will create this ripple effect [that] can create a more inclusive environment,” he said.
(TAHOE CITY, Calif.) — A man found with an arsenal of weapons was arrested after a person near a local California movie theater spotted him with a gun and called 911, authorities said.
Police arrested 42-year-old Thomas Alexander of Oregon after conducting a traffic stop near the Cobblestone Movie Theater on May 19. Authorities discovered multiple weapons in his vehicle, including a loaded handgun holstered on his hip, a loaded rifle with four high-capacity magazines, two additional loaded handguns and prescription pills, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said.
Alexander is facing multiple charges, including carrying a loaded firearm in public, illegal possession of a rifle, transporting a rifle and possession of a controlled substance, according to the sheriff’s office.
Law enforcement officials responded to an emergency call from a concerned citizen at the Tahoe City-area movie theater inquiring about California’s gun law on open carry, after the citizen allegedly saw Alexander with a weapon, according to the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.
Prior to his arrest, Alexander allegedly inquired about the arrival time of theatergoers, according to police.
According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, California is home to the strictest gun laws in the U.S.– some of which were enacted in response to several violent mass shootings in recent years, including a bill from February that expanded the state’s gun licensing system and strengthened gun training requirements.
Despite its tough laws on firearms, California has been the site of a handful of mass shootings so far this year.
Eleven people were killed and nine injured at a dance studio in Monterey Park, a suburb of Los Angeles, on Jan. 21 during a Lunar New Year celebration.
On Jan. 23, seven people were fatally shot in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, after a suspect open fired on two farms in the rural town, according to officials.
California voters passed Proposition 63 in 2016, which requires background checks for purchasing ammunition and prohibits possession of large-capacity magazines. A red flag law also went into effect that year, which prevents certain people from acquiring firearms.
Alexander’s attorney did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
His next hearing is on June 7, according to court records.
ABC News’ Julia Jacobo contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Digital mental health company BetterHelp is facing multiple potential class action lawsuits over claims from patients that it shared their personal information to advertisers — including Facebook. The lawsuits came soon after BetterHelp agreed in March to pay $7.8 million over charges from the Federal Trade Commission that it revealed sensitive patient data.
“When a person struggling with mental health issues reaches out for help, they do so in a moment of vulnerability and with an expectation that professional counseling services will protect their privacy,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “Instead, BetterHelp betrayed consumers’ most personal health information for profit.”
This isn’t the first time a digital mental health service — which could include apps that connect you with a therapist, chatbots, meditation apps, and others — has come under fire for privacy violations. These products market themselves as useful resources for people struggling to navigate mental health care. They’re also more accessible at times than traditional therapists and easier to use from home.
But many of these mental health tools have privacy risks that you won’t find with a traditional, in-person therapist. Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included project says that mental health apps, as a category, have some of the worst privacy protections of any apps on the market.
However, digital mental health tools might still be a good option for some people, but it’s important to check beforehand if you can trust the privacy protections offered by the service you’re using, says Dr. Rebecca Brendel, president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Here are some things to think about when you sign up.
Don’t assume your information will be private
Many digital mental health tools are not governed by the medical privacy law HIPAA. That law protects data collected by health care professionals or hospitals — but not always by apps or websites. An app could, for example, legally share the fact that you signed up for its service with third-party advertisers.
That’s why it’s so important to do your due diligence before using a service, Brendel says. “Entering into mental health treatment is something that’s deeply private and personal for so many of us. And so being sure ahead of time that you can trust that your treatment is actually private and protected is critical,” she says.
Check the privacy policy
Read the privacy policy of any mental health tool closely before you use it, Brendel says. Check if it will be sharing data and what kind of data it will be sharing. Find out if any information will be used for research — either medical research or to improve the app.
“What are some of the guarantees that are being made and what isn’t being made?” she added. Make sure you’re comfortable with the policy, and that you know your rights.
Ask questions during your first visit
People should also ask questions about privacy during their first visit with a provider through the app, Brendel says.
“Asking direct questions at the beginning of a first session is a really important way to ensure that there is integrity in the treatment, and that it protects privacy in a way that makes treatment possible and trustworthy,” she says.
That should include asking if there have been any data breaches at the company, where data is stored, and if there are any reasons to worry about data privacy.
“If there are any red flags or any concerns, it might not be the best option or it might require a little more investigation, Brendel says.
Consider using a virtual service through a hospital rather than a tech company
It can be hard to track down all the information about privacy on an app or website, Brendel notes. If you want to have a higher level of certainty, you may consider accessing a virtual mental health service that’s connected to a hospital or a health care system — rather than a startup or app-based platform.
“Think about systems that really are behind medical firewalls,” she says.
If you’re really worried about privacy, those might be able to give you more peace of mind.
“That can be very, very helpful and reassuring so that you can enter into treatment and focus on getting better and getting the help you need, rather than whether you’re going to be exposed or others are going to find out about it,” Brendel says.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, substance use, or other mental health crises please call or text 988. Trained crisis counselors are available for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(NEW YORK) — Ring security cameras, the inexpensive security cameras that people can hook up in their houses or on their doors, were not fully secure for years, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The video doorbell company allegedly “gave every employee … full access to every customer video” before 2017 and failed to patch bugs in the system that allowed hackers to access cameras and scare consumers, the FTC’s federal complaint says.
“Not only could every Ring employee and Ukraine-based third-party contractor access every customer’s videos (all of which were stored unencrypted on Ring’s network), but they could also readily download any customer’s videos and then view, share, or disclose those videos at will,” the civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday by the Justice Department on behalf of the FTC says. “Before July 2017, Ring did not impose any technical or procedural restrictions on employees’ ability to download, save, or transfer customers’ videos.”
The FTC says that the “dangerously overbroad access” employees received led to at least one employee viewing “thousands” of video recordings “belonging to at least 81 unique female users (including customers and Ring employees) of Ring Stick Up Cams.”
“The employee focused his prurient searches on cameras with names indicating that they surveilled an intimate space, such as ‘Master Bedroom,’ ‘Master Bathroom,’ or ‘Spy Cam.’ On hundreds of occasions during this three-month period, the employee perused female customers’ and employees’ videos, often for an hour or more each day. Undetected by Ring, the employee continued spying for month,” the filing adds.
In August of 2017, a supervisor discovered what the employee was doing only “after the supervisor noticed that the male employee was only viewing videos of ‘pretty girls,'” the complaint alleges. That employee was terminated, the filing says.
Another incident allegedly occurred in 2018, when a male employee allegedly accessed a fellow female employee’s camera “and watched her stored video recordings without her permission,” per the filing.
The FTC alleges that Ring didn’t notify consumers of the broad access to cameras.
The company also “systematically failed” to control two types of cyber attacks and failed to patch system vulnerabilities” before January 2020, the FTC says. Because Ring allegedly did not take appropriate security measures, despite knowing about the problems, “the attacks continued to succeed,” through December of 2019, when media reports were published detailing alarming behavior from attackers, the filing adds.
“During the course of these attacks, approximately 55,000 U.S. customers suffered serious account compromises,” the complaint alleges. “For at least 910 U.S. accounts (affecting approximately 1,250 devices), the bad actor not only accessed the accounts, but took additional invasive actions, such as accessing a stored video, accessing a live stream video, or viewing a customer’s profile. The bad actors disproportionately targeted indoor cameras. Even though indoor cameras are a relatively small subset of Ring’s product offerings, approximately 500 of the 1,250 compromised devices in the U.S. (i.e., approximately 40% of the compromised devices in the U.S.) were Stick Up Cams or Indoor Cams, both of which Defendant markets for indoor use.”
In at least 20 instances, bad actors accessed the Ring accounts device for more than one month, per the complaint.
“And, in many instances, the bad actors were not just passively viewing customers’ sensitive video data,” the complaint says. “Rather, the bad actors took advantage of the camera’s two-way communication functionality to harass, threaten, and insult individuals — including elderly individuals and children — whose rooms were monitored by Ring cameras, and to set off alarms and change important device settings.”
Some of the alleged harassment and slurs included hackers cursing at women in bed, children being the object of hackers’ racist slurs and numerous death threats from hackers to Ring consumers, the FTC says.
Amazon, Ring’s parent company, said the doorbell company “promptly addressed the issues at hand.”
“Ring promptly addressed the issues at hand on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry,” an Amazon spokesperson told ABC News. “Our focus has been and remains on delivering products and features our customers love, while upholding our commitment to protect their privacy and security.”
Under the proposed FTC order, Ring will be prohibited from profiting from unlawfully accessing consumers videos and directed to pay $5.8 million in consumer refunds, according to court documents.
Ring, founded in 2013 as Doorbot, was sold to Amazon for $1 billion in 2018.
(BOSTON) — Police have arrested 35-year-old Matthew J. Nilo, a former Boston attorney, in connection with several decades-old rapes that took place in Boston. Officials said they were able to identify the suspect using forensic genetic genealogy.
Nilo has been charged with three counts of aggravated rape, two counts of kidnapping, one count of assault with intent to rape and one count of indecent assault and battery, according to Boston police.
The sexual assaults were allegedly committed on Aug. 18, 2007; Nov. 22, 2007; Aug. 5, 2008; and Dec. 23, 2008, in the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown, according to police.
“This arrest cumulates the investigation that employed the use of genetic genealogy from recovered evidence. All four cases are DNA connected,” Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a press conference.
Nilo was arrested in New Jersey following an investigation between the Boston Police Department, the New Jersey Police Department and Boston’s FBI office.
“These investigations utilized sexual assault evidence collection kits with the assistance of detectives in identifying the suspect as the investigations continued,” Cox said.
Additional resources for the investigation came from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Grant, which helps the city investigate unsolved sexual assault crimes, according to Cox.
Efforts were launched in May 2022 to review unsolved sexual assault cases that posed the most threat to public safety, Cox said.
Authorities announced in 2008 that the cases were connected through DNA evidence, but had no suspect at the time. Through genetic genealogy, detectives can search for relatives of an unknown suspect through DNA voluntarily submitted to public databases and then narrow the family members down to a likely perpetrator.
“While we know today’s arrest of Mr. Nilo cannot erase the harm he allegedly inflicted upon his survivors, we believe we have removed a dangerous threat from our community,” FBI Boston Division Special Agent in Charge Joseph Bonavolonta said at the press conference.
(WASHINGTON) — A Hispanic man accused of shooting and killing eight people at an outlet mall in Texas earlier this month held a mix of views consistent with neo-Nazism and involuntary celibate extremist ideologies, authorities said.
Though a motive for the suspect, who was shot and killed by a police officer, remains under investigation, the mass shooting appears among recent examples that highlight a “persistent and lethal threat” to U.S. security posed by “lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a recent bulletin.
This type of threat is what’s often referred to by FBI director Christopher Wray as “salad bar” extremism. In the U.K., it’s known by the acronym MUU — mixed, unstable or unclear. Security firm Valens Global calls the phenomenon “composite violent extremism.”
The terms broadly refer to “idiosyncratic patterns of radicalization,” according to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the CEO of Valens Global who leads a project on domestic extremism for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
“Traditionally, terrorism is thought of as being largely nested within a single ideology,” Gartenstein-Ross told ABC News. “What we’re seeing is violent extremists who display an amalgamation of different disparate beliefs, interests and grievances.”
This pattern of radicalization has “taken on increasing salience in recent years,” with an uptick within the last decade, Gartenstein-Ross said.
Examples of this, he cited, include Frank James, who pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges for a 2022 shooting in the New York City subway; Nikolas Cruz, who was sentenced to life in prison for the 2018 mass shooting at South Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; and Zale Thompson, who was shot and killed by NYC police officers after attacking them with an ax in 2014.
John Cohen, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security acting undersecretary for intelligence and ABC News contributor, points to several factors that are contributing to this phenomenon in the U.S., including a highly-polarized society in which some people feel that violence is acceptable, and an online and media environment that is “saturated” with extremist content.
“You spend time online, you not only can find the justification for the conduct of that attack, but you can find content that will provide you detailed instructions on how to do it,” Cohen said.
Gartenstein-Ross said he feels that the idiosyncratic ideologies reflect people, in general, taking on very disparate ideas in today’s information and social media environment.
“We as a people are becoming more incoherent,” he said. “Extremists are becoming more incoherent as well.”
Such extremists may pop up on law enforcement’s radar prior to attacks — such as a concerned call from a family member — but the U.S. lacks a “cohesive strategy” in the investigation and prevention of this threat, according to Cohen.
“This is the most complex, dynamic and dangerous threat environment I’ve experienced — and I include in that the months following Sept. 11,” Cohen said. “The reason I say that is because we’re not adapting to address this [type of] threat, and it’s a threat that potentially impacts every city and town across the United States.”
Composite violent extremism poses several challenges to law enforcement, Gartenstein-Ross noted, from determining when someone who is ideologically idiosyncratic becomes a threat to how to best intervene, to how to define their community.
“We understand where jihadist groups exist, we can see very concretely what the neo-Nazi white supremacist sphere is,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “For idiosyncratic, violent extremism, what’s the digital or real-world community that forms a part of the extremist’s familia?”
There is also an “unsettled” methodology in determining this type of extremist’s core beliefs, Gartenstein-Ross said.
“I firmly believe these are things we can crack,” he continued. “A lot of these are new questions based on the increased prominence of idiosyncratic radicalization patterns.”
Cohen said addressing the threat will entail strategies from the local to federal level.
“We have to employ not just traditional law enforcement strategies to address it, but also community-based threat management strategies that involve collaborative efforts involving mental health professionals, law enforcement, community groups, faith leaders,” he said.
Educating both the public on the behaviors of these types of extremists so they know when to alert authorities, and front-line responders on how to respond, is also key, he said.
Common behaviors often exhibited by violent extremists, who tend to be people “who exist on the fringe of the community,” include publicly expressing anger and grievances; spending significant time online consuming violent and extremist content; acquiring firearms, ammunition and tactical gear; posting photos with that gear; and “making statements that represent an articulation of an intent to engage in violence,” Cohen said.
“We need to make sure that those calls are answered and that local authorities have a process in place to evaluate those behaviors — not just from the perspective of, has a crime been committed, but from the perspective of, is this person exhibiting behaviors that we know to be associated with somebody who may be preparing to conduct a mass casualty attack?” Cohen said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Mike Pence will announce next week that he is running for president, giving a kickoff speech in Iowa and releasing a campaign video on June 7 ahead of a town hall with CNN later that day in Des Moines, a source familiar confirms to ABC News.
Pence will be running against his old boss, Donald Trump, in the Republican primary.
His expected announcement will come only weeks after a group of conservative allies launched a political group to support his potential candidacy.
The super PAC, Committed to America, hopes to both “reintroduce” Pence to voters — who, the group believes, don’t have a full sense of the former vice president — and to catch the attention of voters perhaps stuck on other candidates as the list of Republican hopefuls grows longer.
“People know Mike Pence, they just don’t know him well,” co-chair Scott Reed told a small group of reporters on Friday. “This campaign is going to reintroduce Mike Pence to the country as his own man, not as vice president, but as a true economic, social and national security conservative — a Reagan conservative.”
The pro-Pence group said it will make significant investments in Iowa, a state critical for Republicans as it holds the first nominating contest next year.
“We’re going to organize Iowa, all 99 counties, like we’re running him for county sheriff,” said Reed, who previously managed Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.
In March, during an exclusive interview with ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, Pence said he was giving a run for the 2024 GOP nomination “serious consideration.”
At the time and in the ensuing months, Pence has held voter-facing events in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He also published a memoir, “So Help Me God,” in November.
“We’re getting a lot of encouragement, not only here in Iowa, but all across the country,” Pence told Karl in March. “We’re giving prayerful consideration to what role we might play.”
A key ally for Trump while they were in office, Pence has since had a notable falling out with the former president over Trump’s push to overturn their election loss — climaxing in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters breached the complex and sent Pence and Congress into hiding.
“We all face the judgment of history, and I believe in the fullness of time that history will hold Donald Trump accountable for the events of Jan. 6, as it will other people that were involved,” Pence told Karl.
He added then: “I also think the American people will also have their say. I mean, the president is now a candidate for office again, he’s running for election, but as I go around the country, I’m convinced the American people have learned the lessons of that day.”
