(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Jury selection has been rescheduled to Thursday in the trial of a former Kentucky police officer who was involved in the botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor.
Brett Hankison’s trial was initially scheduled to begin Aug. 31, 2021, but was delayed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Now Hankison’s trial is being delayed due to an unscheduled recent surgery.
Hankison is charged with three counts of wanton endangerment for firing into a neighboring apartment while serving a “no-knock” warrant on Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020.
He and Louisville Metro Police Department officers Myles Cosgrove and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly fired 32 shots into Taylor’s apartment.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has called Taylor’s death a “tragedy” but defended the officers’ decision to shoot. None have been charged with Taylor’s killing.
“Our investigation found that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their use of force after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker,” Cameron said. “This justification bars us from pursuing charges in Ms. Breonna Taylor’s death.”
Hankison fired 10 of the shots into Taylor’s apartment. Errant bullets penetrated a wall of the residence and entered a neighboring apartment that was occupied by a child, a man and a pregnant woman, according to Cameron.
Taylor, a Black 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was fatally shot multiple times during the raid. No drugs were found in her apartment.
Cameron said none of Hankison’s shots struck Taylor.
Hankison has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
“Our hope is that we can pick an impartial jury,” Hankison’s lawyer Stew Mathews told ABC News. “We’re going to both defend [against] the charges in the courtroom.”
The fatal shooting sparked protests nationwide, as demonstrators demanded action against police brutality and racism in policing.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. and Russia are moving ahead with their diplomatic engagements over Russia menacing Ukraine, according to senior State Department officials, after the two countries’ top diplomats spoke Tuesday.
But as talks continue to proceed, there have been no results yet — with more than 100,000 Russian troops still massed on Ukraine’s borders, including increasingly in its northern neighbor Belarus.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said the U.S. has “ignored” Russia’s key demands that NATO bar Ukraine from joining and pull back allied troops from Eastern European countries — his first comments on the crisis in over a month.
But his government is still analyzing the U.S. response to Russia, laid out in a formal proposal hand-delivered by the U.S. ambassador in Moscow last week, he said.
During a critical call, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “did agree that the ideas on both sides that have been exchanged did form the basis for the potential for serious discussion on a range of issues,” said a senior State Department official.
Those ideas include issues like arms control and greater transparency in military exercises, they added, expressing some hope that Russia’s continued engagement could lay the groundwork for real negotiations.
But for now, Russia is still formulating its response to those U.S. ideas, senior State Department officials said Lavrov told Blinken. Once they are finalized, they will be sent to Putin for approval and then sent to the U.S. After that, Blinken and Lavrov will speak again, the senior officials said.
“I do think they agree that ideas in that non-paper could be the basis for a constructive conversation about how he enhance security in Europe,” said a second senior State Department official. The “non-paper” is what U.S. officials have called the U.S. response to Russia’s original demands.
But Lavrov didn’t outright say that during the call, they conceded. Later on Tuesday, Putin seemed more dismissive of the U.S. proposal, saying, “It is already clear that Russia’s fundamental concerns have been ignored.”
Pressed on whether the Russians may be buying time or stalling before a renewed attack on Ukraine, the second senior State Department official said, “Because we don’t President Putin has made a decision [on whether to further invade Ukraine], we think it’s important to keep the diplomatic option on the table — so to the extent that Russia wants to engage in that diplomatic track, we are also open to having that continued diplomatic engagement.”
Blinken and Lavrov didn’t agree on when or how those talks would continue, but the U.S. has called for them to include one-on-one meetings, as well as negotiations between NATO and Russia and dialogue at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Cold War-era forum that includes the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine.
On Monday, Moscow sent the U.S., as well as several NATO allies and OSCE members, a similar letter seeking clarification about security principles enshrined in one of the OSCE’s key documents, the Helsinki Final Act, according to U.S. and Russian officials. The letter was not Russia’s response to the U.S. proposal, but seems to be part of its effort to formulate one.
“NATO refers to the right of countries to choose freely, but you can not strengthen someone’s security at the expense of others,” Putin said Tuesday during a press conference with Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
As the U.S. and NATO wait for that formal response, Blinken again urged Russia to deescalate tensions by pulling back troops, heavy weaponry, and equipment from Ukraine’s borders. But Lavrov gave no indication during the call that Russia would do so, the senior officials said.
“All of the actions that we are seeing on the ground do not suggest escalation. We continue to see in fact more Russian troops coming not only to Russia’s border with Ukraine, but as you know, also to Belarus for these supposed exercises,” the second senior State Department official said.
Russia and Belarus have said those forces are preparing for military exercises to improve their readiness. But the U.S. said Monday it has evidence that more than 30,000 Russian troops will mass in Belarus in the coming days, citing declassified U.S. intelligence — a concerning move that puts them within two hours of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
(STOCKTON, Calif.) — Firefighters in Stockton, California, are mourning one of their own, 47-year-old Fire Captain Vidal “Max” Fortuna, who was gunned down while putting out a fire on Monday.
The suspect, Robert Somerville, 67, was arrested Monday and booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on homicide and weapons charges, the Stockton Police Department said.
Fortuna was shot while at the scene of a dumpster fire, which was reported to 911 around 4:45 a.m. Monday, officials said.
Officers arrived at the scene and detained Somerville, officials said, adding that police found a .380 caliber handgun at the scene.
Police are still looking into a possible motive, a Stockton police spokesman told ABC News.
Fortuna, a 21-year veteran of the Stockton Fire Department, leaves behind a wife and two children, Stockton Fire Chief Richard Edwards said.
Somerville is due in court Wednesday.
As Stockton’s firefighters grieve, fire departments from neighboring communities are staffing Stockton’s fire stations and responding to calls, according to the city.
“We are extremely grateful that our partners have come together to provide mutual aid to our community while we, as individuals and a department, are grieving and healing from this horrific and tragic event,” Chief Edwards said. “While the engine or truck may have a different name on the side, we want to let the community know that you are in good hands with professional firefighters who will be protecting and serving our community.”
(NEW YORK) — Over the past decade, the Black Lives Matter movement has brought attention to racism and injustice in America through the stories of hundreds of Black men, women and children, but it all started with a hashtag that went viral in the wake of the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.
Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, has been unyielding in her fight for social justice, becoming one of the most prominent activists nationwide and a leader in the “Mothers of the Movement” — a group of women whose Black children have been killed by police officers or gun violence.
Ten years after her son’s death, Fulton reflected on the fight for social justice and how she is keeping her son’s legacy alive in an exclusive interview with Good Morning America.
“My chest still hurts. I still have a hole in my heart,” Fulton said.
Martin was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman, who deemed him “suspicious” as he walked back from a convenience store to his father’s fiancée’s home in Sanford, Florida, wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles candy, according to police.
The hoodie and the Skittles became symbols of the fight for social justice as the Black Lives Matter movement grew to an international movement.
“I never lose sight that that was my baby,” Fulton said when asked how she reconciles her memory of her son with the symbol for justice that his name has become.
“By the same token, I know that Trayvon Martin is a symbol for other Trayvon Martins that you don’t know, that you have not said their name … He was just a vessel that represents so many others.”
In “Trayvon: Ten Years Later: A Mother’s Essay,” which was published by Amazon Original Stories on Feb. 1, Fulton reflects on love, loss and shares lessons with a new generation from her fight for social justice over the past 10 years.
“I absolutely think that change is happening; it’s just going a little slow,” Fulton said when asked if she feels that we are at a turning point in the fight for social justice.
Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, who called 911 from his vehicle and was told by a police dispatcher not to follow the teenager.
Soon after, a physical altercation between Martin and Zimmerman ensued, and Martin was shot and killed, according to investigators.
Zimmerman claimed the shooting took place in self-defense. He was eventually arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He was found not guilty by a jury in July 2013.
Martin would have turned 27 this year on Feb. 5.
“You can’t help but to wonder what he would have become [and] what he would have achieved in the last 10 years,” Fulton said.
She said that when she sees his younger brother, Jahvaris Fulton, attend college, she always thinks about the path Trayvon would have taken. She often reflects on this when she visits an airport because of Trayvon’s interest in aviation.
“The airport also reminds me of Trayvon,” she said. “I always think about if he was going to fix the plane, [or] fly the planes because he wasn’t really sure.”
Fulton said that she wants her son’s story to be a reminder of the lack of accountability in America’s criminal justice system.
“I want the world to know that my son was unarmed and he was 17 years old,” Fulton said. “He wasn’t committing any crime. Trayvon’s only crime was the color of his skin … which is not a crime.”
Fulton said that while guilty verdicts in the cases of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are a sign of progress, the killings of those unarmed Black men are also an indication that “we take two steps forward and two steps back.”
“When I look at the case of George Floyd and I look at the case of Ahmaud Arbery and the people that killed them all were convicted and that they are going to be going to jail for the rest of their lives,” she said. “But by the same token, we had to lose lives in order to get to that point … why did we have to lose those lives in order for us to move the country forward?”
Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died in May 2020 after police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against his neck for more than 9 minutes. Chauvin was convicted in Floyd’s death and was sentenced in June 2021 to 22 and a half years in prison.
Arbery, an unarmed Black, was chased and gunned down while jogging in February 2020. Three men who were convicted in Arbery’s shooting were found guilty in November 2021 and were each sentenced last month to life in prison.
Both cases gained national attention and became rallying cries in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Fulton said that she is hopeful that the next generation of activists will bring about lasting change and while she “can’t change the world,” by herself, she wants to do her part to “make a difference in this world.”
“My purpose is to continue to bring awareness to senseless gun violence. My purpose is the circle of mothers — helping other mothers to cope with the loss of a child,” she said. “My purpose is to try to change laws.”
In her essay, “Trayvon: Ten Years Later,” Fulton reflects on how the past 10 years have changed her and how racism has shaped the fight for justice in her son’s name:
“How am I different today? If I am not picking myself up and becoming more than I was last year, then I am no good to anyone. There is a part of me that died along with my son, so I became who I had to become in that moment. I didn’t pray to become the mother of a movement. I was happy being the mother of Trayvon Martin and Jahvaris Fulton. I became the mother of a movement out of necessity. Sometimes you have to step into roles you did not ask for and that you do not want. You can find the strength from within if you are willing to live in your purpose. Believe in your strength from within. That’s a Word,” she writes in the essay.
“While nothing compares emotionally to the loss of a child due to senseless, racially tinged violence, the on- and offline smear campaign was its own sort of shock. It wasn’t enough that it took law enforcement far too long to take Trayvon’s killer into custody, right-wing conservatives and members of law enforcement started to attack my son’s character, as if any mistakes he made as a child could justify his untimely death. I had never seen such a negative frenzy with the media weaponized against the actual victim. We, my family and I, strove to channel our energy in a positive and productive way, but there were times back then when I felt like it was all in vain. It was shameful and undue to see a victim slandered in such a public way. The words’ Trayvon Martin’ had become clickbait and a hot topic, with celebrities, influencers, and politicians all taking part. While many seized the moment to speak truth to power and take a stand for Black lives, others were far less altruistic and merely saw it as an opportunity to garner attention and increase the reach of their brand in the most toxic of ways. According to an article in the Miami Herald, my son’s name was tweeted over two million times in the short period of thirty days.”
ABC News’ Amanda McMaster and Taylor Rhodes contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump announced Monday night that his political committees raised more than $51 million over the second half of last year, to buttress what is now a massive $122 million war chest.
Trump’s latest fundraising haul is a drop from the first half of last year, when his various committees together raised a total of $82 million from January through June of 2021.
It is possible that the $82 million sum Trump’s team announced for the first half of last year included transferred money raised in the final weeks of 2020, though the exact amount transferred from the previous year is unclear.
Trump’s war chest puts him in a uniquely strong position heading into the 2022 midterms and ahead of a potential 2024 presidential run.
The Republican National Committee also reported having $56.3 million cash in hand at the end of December 2021.
In a press release Monday, Trump’s Save America political action committee said that the $51 million was raised by the former president’s multiple committees from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2021.
The average donation Trump received between his committees was $31, with a total of 1,631,648 donations, the release said.
Notably, Trump doesn’t appear to be sharing many of his donations yet. With over $122 million in cash on hand, Trump says his PACs have only donated $1.35 million to “to like-minded causes and endorsed candidates.”
Save America’s filing shows that $1 million of that contribution went to the nonprofit Conservative Partnership Institute, which is led by a slew of Trump’s close allies, including Mark Meadows, Jim DeMint and Ed Corrigan.
Much of Save America’s money in the latter half of 2021 was spent on Facebook ads, payroll, and consulting fees for various firms, including $1.5 million paid to Tim Unes’ firm Event Strategies and $60,000 paid to former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s firm Parscale Strategy, according to the filing. More than $240,000 also went to legal spending, the filing shows.
Over the past year, Trump has been fundraising with numerous allies through various vehicles, including his Save America PAC and his presidential campaign committee-turned PAC, Make America Great Again PAC.
Save America, in particular, was set up as a leadership PAC, which is designed to allow former and current lawmakers or prominent political figures to raise money and boost their allies, often with the purpose of advancing their political influence.
Last year, Save America raised $700,000 in a joint fundraising operation with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. More recently, the PAC raised roughly $202,000 with Trump-endorsed Florida House hopeful Anna Paulina Luna, new disclosure filings show.
Save America had also raised massive sums with the Republican National Committee in the weeks following the 2020 election, but the two have since stopped officially fundraising together. The RNC and other GOP party committees, however, continue to frequently appeal to donors by using Trump’s name in fundraising emails and messages.
The RNC has also continued to help cover Trump’s legal bills over the past few months. As previously reported by ABC News, the national party committee has paid at least $720,000 to law firms representing the former president in various legal challenges, including criminal investigations into his businesses in New York, according to campaign finance records.
In the past few months the RNC’s fundraising has dipped in comparison to the substantially larger amounts it used to report every month while it was fundraising with Trump during the 2020 election cycle. However, the RNC’s fundraising still topped the DNC’s in the second half of 2021.
Between July and December 2021, the GOP national committee reported raising a total of $74 million, while the Democratic National Committee reported raising $65 million during the same period, disclosure filings show.
In all of 2021, the RNC raised $159 million while the DNC raised $151 million.
Jonathan Karl, Benjamin Siegel and Will Steakin, ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany turned over text messages to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a source familiar with the investigation — the latest indication of the extensive level of cooperation the committee has received from many witnesses.
McEnany, who was at work in the White House and around then-President Donald Trump before and during the Capitol attack, was subpoenaed by the panel for records and testimony in November, and turned over text messages to committee investigators.
A source familiar with her interactions with the committee has told ABC News that text messages from McEnany’s phone were quoted in a recent letter the committee sent to Ivanka Trump. The texts came directly from documents turned over by McEnany, said the source.
“1 – no more stolen election talk,” Fox News host Sean Hannity texted McEnany, according to the records. “2- Yes, impeachment and the 25th amendment are real and many people will quit.”
“Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce….,” McEnany replied, per the documents.
McEnany did not respond to calls and messages from ABC News seeking comment or to an email sent to a spokesperson for Fox News, where McEnany currently co-hosts the show “Outnumbered.”
A committee spokesman declined to comment and would not provide details on other text messages and documents turned over by McEnany.
McEnany appeared virtually before investigators for several hours on Jan. 13, according to a source familiar with her testimony, and did not appear that day on her midday Fox News program.
The committee was interested in her repeated false claims of widespread voter fraud from the White House Briefing Room podium, and in her interactions with Trump on Jan. 6, according to a letter the committee sent to McEnany along with the subpoena.
In addition to text messages and any other materials McEnany turned over to the committee, investigators are expected to receive her White House files from the National Archives, some of the many White House records Trump unsuccessfully tried to prevent the Archives from sharing with Congress.
The House select committee has interviewed more than 400 people as part of its investigation, and committee leaders say that most witnesses have cooperated with the panel’s requests and subpoenas.
“In general, people have been extremely cooperative. The closer we get to Trump, the more difficult it becomes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., recently told ABC News about the panel’s progress.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who worked closely with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to seek out evidence of voter fraud, recently complied with the panel’s subpoena for records and testimony, as did former Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller.
However Trump ally Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have openly challenged the committee’s subpoenas, leading Congress to hold both men in contempt and issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
The department has not acted on the Meadows referral, but Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress in November. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is set to begin in July.
Meadows challenged the committee’s requests only after voluntarily turning over thousands of documents to the panel, a tranche that included emails and text messages that committee members say have helped them piece together conversations around Trump and the White House as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded.
(NEW YORK) — For many parents of unvaccinated toddlers in the U.S., a return to normalcy amid the COVID-19 pandemic seems out of reach.
Many have been forced to take time off work or change their schedules to provide care for their children due to school shutdowns. Rebecca Sanghvi, a public school teacher in Washington, D.C., has a 5-year-old daughter, who is vaccinated, in kindergarten and a 2-year-old son in daycare.
Working from home is not possible for her, so she juggles the house responsibilities with her husband, who’s able to shift remotely when needed. She said it’s been exhausting to cope with the pandemic while balancing her job and parenting responsibilities.
“I do think that there’s not enough attention on the difficulties that the families who can’t do that are facing with kids being quarantined, taking time off work, often unpaid,” Sanghvi said.
Mask mandates have been lifted in many parts of the country and in-person events have resumed, but many parents feel that until their kids are vaccinated, they can’t move on from the first stages of the pandemic.
Vaccines for kids under 5 are still unavailable — though Pfizer said approvals could come in the next few weeks — and currently, there are nearly 20 million kids under 5 years old in America, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.
“People don’t realize that if you have a young child, you’re still stuck in March 2020, and that we haven’t really evolved for these young children,” Deborah Schoenfeld, a mom of three in Maryland, said.
The recent surge in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant has taken an even bigger toll on parents of young children. Sanghavi said the reality others have been living in, where vaccinations are widely available and daily life is looking close to “normal” again, is drastically different to hers.
“We are living in this reality that I think a lot of people aren’t, and it makes these choices that we have to make with regards to risk, but also the sacrifices we have to make with regards to our work and our child care, that much more difficult, because it is really a situation that that not everybody is in anymore,” she said.
Some schools and daycares across the country have reopened despite the rise in cases, leaving young unvaccinated students with higher risks of getting contaminated, and consequently, bringing the virus home.
These surges in schools have left parents — like Anagha Phadkule — struggling to find ways to care for their children while working full-time jobs.
Phadkule is from Portland, Oregon, and works in a hospital, while her husband works from home. Their 3-year-old son, Aroosh, had to spend most of his time home after his daycare shut down twice in January due to COVID-19 outbreaks among the staff.
Her son’s unvaccinated status leaves Phadkule worried about his safety.
“It feels like a very reckless time to push your toddler into daycare and be like, ‘OK, whatever happens, happens,'” Phadkule said.
The frequent school shutdowns have led some parents to change their routines permanently. Schoenfeld, for example, made the decision to keep her son at home after his daycare was shut down several times over the past few weeks.
“My childcare situation has gotten increasingly hard. I almost feel like in 2021 it was easier. They were still figuring out what to do with COVID, but there weren’t so many cancellations and quarantines,” Schoenfeld said.
Other parents, who don’t have many options left, find themselves taking their kids to work in hopes to juggle both responsibilities. But the move has proven to be more stressful than expected.
“Sometimes, [my husband] was busy and I had to take even my kids to work for showings, for times that I had appointments with different clients … I had an issue with a client where she told me that it was unprofessional for me to show up with my kids,” Eddie Suarez, who has a 3-year-old, said.
Brigid Schulte, director of The Better Life Lab and Good Life Initiative at New America, said many parents are feeling “unheard” and “invisible,” as they don’t think their struggles are being considered.
“We’re talking about real existential threats to family survival right now — at a time when so many families thought that we had rounded the corner,” Schulte said. “This is hitting everybody. This is sort of an equal opportunity exhaustion, disruption, uncertainty and a disastrous situation for so many families.”
So what is the solution? Many parents believe the authorization of vaccines for children 5 and younger will change things for the better.
“I’d rather them take their time and … make it right, make it safe. I don’t want to feel like this push in this rush to get it done if it’s not ready yet,” Schoenfeld said. “But I don’t want to be like a hostage or prisoner waiting for the vaccine, like I need child care. That’s going to work for us right now … or something needs to, because this cannot continue. It’s too hard.”
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
(LONDON) — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is apologizing again after initial findings of an investigation found that he and his staff showed “failures of leadership and judgment” for allegedly hosting parties during lockdown.
Johnson and his staff have been under fire in recent weeks for holding a number of parties last year — including a Christmas gathering as the country was sent back into lockdown — in alleged breaches of his own government’s lockdown rules.
The extent to which the report would lay blame at the feet of Johnson had been the subject of intense speculation, with the prime minister facing down a barrage of calls to resign from opposition lawmakers and even disgruntled members of his own party.
In a statement following the publication of the report, authored by Sue Gray, a civil servant appointed to lead the investigation, Johnson said he “accepted the general findings in full.” He apologized “for the things we simply didn’t get right… [and] the way this matter has been handled.”
Responding to criticisms in the report about accountability measures in different government departments, Johnson said, “I get it, and I will fix it,” prompting jeers from opposition lawmakers in the House of Commons.
The scandal has dominated British politics in recent weeks. The intervention of the Metropolitan Police, which is now carrying out a criminal investigation into at least eight of the gatherings, meant the report has not been published in full, which some critics have said granted the prime minister a short-term reprieve.
Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, who has called for the prime minister to resign since the beginning of the crisis, described the interim report as “damning.”
Gray said she was only able to “make minimal reference” to the gatherings under police investigation. At the time of these alleged get-togethers, breaches of lockdown rules were punishable by fixed penalty fines. Restrictions were also in place at the time on hospital and care home visits and funerals, prompting fury from victims and the bereaved, represented by organizations such as the COVID Bereaved Families for Justice.
Johnson apologized in the House of Commons earlier this month but denied breaching any rules. At a gathering in the Downing Street gardens in May of last year, which Johnson himself attended and over 100 staffers were invited to despite social distancing rules, Johnson said he believed it was a “work event.”
While the interim report is lacking in detail over what exactly took place at the gatherings in question — which reports in the U.K. media said included leaving parties for departing staff — the update was critical of numerous “failures of leadership” at various levels of the government.
“Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place,” Gray wrote. “Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”
Meanwhile, Gray said “steps needed to be taken” to ensure that government departments had clearer policies covering the drinking of alcohol.
“The excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time,” she said in the report.“Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behavior surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify.”
The full report may not be published until after the Metropolitan Police have completed their investigation.
Senate pages carry the Electoral College ballot boxes on Jan. 7, 2021 at the Capitol, in Washington. – Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — With voting rights legislation all but dead in the Senate, and the former president now openly suggesting he tried to use a vaguely-worded 19th-century law to try to manipulate the last presidential election, a growing group of bipartisan lawmakers is backing the idea of changing how Congress tallies presidential election results by reforming the 1887 Electoral Count Act.
The law was intended to set up a peaceful transfer of power after an election dispute, but it’s one former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to exploit in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump made his clearest statement yet this week that he believed Pence could and should have simply overturned the results himself, responding to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who was asked about efforts to reform the law on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.
He said, “…how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?”
“Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power. He could have overturned the Election!” Trump falsely claimed in a statement late Sunday.
By pressing then-Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the ceremonial counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, as well as outlining how states could — and several would — send conflicting slates of electors to Congress, and urging lawmakers to object to results, to which 147 Republicans followed, Trump took advantage of ambiguities in the law’s language.
Republican leaders have signaled an openness to amending the text, but Democrats argue the effort, while potentially bipartisan, does not address what they call state voter suppression tactics they say will be felt in the midterms and could be a distraction from larger voting reform.
Addressing reforms to the law, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House has “been open to and a part of conversations about the Electoral Count Act,” but that it shouldn’t be a “replacement” for larger voting reforms. She also called attention to Trump’s statement as representing a “unique and existential threat to our democracy.”
Some scholars warn that if lawmakers don’t join together to reform the process, it will be weaponized again.
“There’s enough focus now on the ambiguities of this statute that if it isn’t Donald Trump in 2024, you could easily imagine a number of other actors taking a page from his playbook,” Rebecca Green, co-director of the election law program at William and Mary Law School, told ABC News. “But the ECA is not just specific to one presidential election or one person. It’s just become a more apparent problem to address after Jan 6.”
Here’s a look at the Electoral Count Act and why people are calling for it to be reformed:
What is the Electoral Count Act?
The Electoral Count Act is the law that governs how Congress counts electoral votes following a presidential election.
It essentially sets up a timetable for when different parts of the counting process must take place and sets up a dispute resolution process for how Congress will resolve irregularities in accepting electoral slates from states.
How did the law come about?
The law was crafted in response to a contested presidential election in 1876, when several states under the control of Reconstruction governments sent multiple slates of electors to Congress post-Civil War.
Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, had won the popular vote, but after Congress created an ad hoc commission to deal with the dispute, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was ultimately declared the winner.
Democrats refused to accept the results until the Compromise of 1877, which called for an end to Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops from former Confederate states. A decade later, Congress passed a law that lawmakers hoped would prevent a future process from being upended.
But it has presented problems.
What problems does it present?
While there are several proposals for ways to reform the law, such as changing the timeline for “safe harbor” status — when electoral votes are considered “conclusive” — or resolving questions around judicial review following election disputes, there are two glaring areas that Green told ABC News lawmakers need to address.
The role of the vice president is unclear
The vice president’s role in what usually is a ministerial proceeding — simply counting and announcing the votes — is extremely unclear.
The Constitution dictates that the president of the Senate, or the vice president, open the certificates of electoral votes from each state. Additionally, under the current Electoral Count Act, the president of the Senate carries over the proceedings and calls for objections.
The act says, in long, convoluted language, the each state’s slates or “all such returns and papers shall be opened by him” — the vice president, or president of the Senate — “in the presence of the two houses when met as aforesaid, and read by the tellers, and all such returns and papers shall thereupon be submitted to the judgment and decision…”
“Does this run-on sentence mean that Mike Pence shall open only the ballots that he wants? Or does he have to open if there’s more than one slate from a state — how does he know which ones to open?” Green posed. “None of those questions are answered by the face of the statute.”
She added, “Those vagaries produced the mischief that we saw in the 2020 election,” she added.
ABC News Senior Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reported in his book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows emailed to Pence’s top aide a detailed plan penned by Trump’s campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis outlining how Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won.
Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa also revealed in their book, Peril, a memo written by John Eastman, whom Trump introduced at the Jan. 6 rally as “one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country,” outlined another plan for how Pence would hand the election back to Trump on Jan. 6.
According to their reporting, Eastman instructed Pence to say, at the conclusion of counting, “because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States.” Then, Pence “gavels President Trump as reelected.”
Pence would have declared the seven states that submitted the alternate slates of electors as being in dispute, and ultimately hand the election to Trump in the alleged plot. However, Pence rejected the pressure to do so, sticking to his strictly ceremonial role, and the National Archives never accepted the uncertified documents for congressional counting.
Despite all the manipulation, scholars argue it isn’t reasonable to suggest the vice president would have been granted such interference.
“There has never been the kind of pressure that Mike Pence experienced on Jan. 6, 2021, before,” Green said, “but it would be extremely illogical for the system to instill that much power in sitting vice presidents, particularly since sitting vice presidents are so regularly on the presidential ballot.”
Additionally, the Justice Department and lawmakers on the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 are looking into those individuals who falsely signed on as alternate electors to declare Trump the winner in states he actually lost to Biden.
It’s ‘too easy’ for lawmakers to object to a state’s slate.
The law allows one congressman paired with one senator to object to the results submitted by each state — which last year, made way for a long, drawn-out process as Republican after Republican, including several freshmen, contested results. Eight senators and 139 representatives, all Republicans, voted to sustain one or both objections to electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
If a congressman finds a senator to join in their objection, both the House and Senate chambers are forced back to their chambers for two hours of debate and a vote, which some argue is an invitation for political grandstanding.
The objection tool was used only once in its first 100 years. In all three recent cases, the attempts have failed.
In 2001 and 2017, no senator would join with a representative to object. (Biden, then serving as vice president, was the one to gavel out a handful of Democrats’ challenging Trump’s electors.) In 2005, a representative and a senator objected to counting Ohio’s electoral votes cast for George W. Bush, but the challenge was not successful.
Some lawmakers are now coalescing around the idea of raising the threshold for objections beyond just a single senator and representative — or to creating a list of valid ground for objecting results.
One proposal raises that at least one-third of each chamber would be needed for an objection to be heard — or more than 30 senators and 140 House members.
“The idea is that the current process is too easy and that perhaps it should be made a little bit harder to object, so that there’s more consensus required and a couple of people can’t kind of gum up the works as easily,” Green said.
Collins, who is leading discussions with a group of 16 senators to reform the law, said she’s hopeful it can be done on an “overwhelming” bipartisan basis.
“I’m hopeful that we can come up with a bipartisan bill that will make very clear that the vice president’s role is simply ministerial, that he has no ability to halt the count, and that we’ll raise the threshold from one House member, one senator, for triggering a challenge to a vote count submitted by the states,” she told ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos. “This is no small thing. I think it is really important that we do this reform.”
Why act now?
Earlier this month, a Democratic-led committee released a 31-page report on potential reforms to the Electoral Count Act.
“As the events leading up to the violent attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, demonstrated, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is in dire need of reform. It is antiquated, incomplete, vague, and open to exploitation,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chairperson of the Committee on House Administration. “But to be clear — reforming the Electoral Count Act, necessary as it is, would not restrain the erosion of democracy or the dishonest efforts across the nation to diminish and impede the equal freedom to vote.”
Key Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have expressed a willingness to back reforms, but Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has argued the reforms don’t go far enough in addressing threats to democracy and restrictions to the vote in elections beyond the race for president.
As the movement gains new bipartisan traction, election experts are calling for lawmakers to keep the momentum up.
“If these disputes aren’t resolved, then partisan actors are going to act a certain way and try to exploit ambiguities to their favor whereas if you sort of close those gaps prior to the election, then you’re more likely to have a fair process that produces an outcome without dispute that it’s legitimate,” Green said.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — After months of tensions over Russia’s massive troop buildup on Ukraine’s borders, the United Nations Security Council met Monday to discuss the situation for the first time — adjourning after over two hours of open debate.
The meeting didn’t yield any action or even a joint statement, but ambassadors from the U.S. and Russia sparred in dueling remarks, trading blame for escalating the crisis.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has amassed over 100,000 troops and heavy equipment and weaponry on three sides of Ukraine, including in Russian-annexed Crimea and in Belarus, Kyiv’s northern neighbor and a close Kremlin ally.
At first, Russia, backed by China, tried to block the session from moving forward by calling a vote among Security Council’s 15 member states. Russia and China opposed it, three countries abstained, but ten voted to move ahead with it.
“You heard from our Russian colleagues that we’re calling for this meeting to make you all feel uncomfortable. Imagine how uncomfortable you would be if you had 100,000 troops sitting on your border in the way that these troops are sitting on the border with Ukraine,” said U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “This is not about antics. It’s not about rhetoric. It’s not about ‘U.S. and Russia.’ What this is about is the peace and security of one of our member states.”
In her remarks, she accused Russia of “the largest — hear me clearly — mobilization of troops in Europe in decades” and threatening military action should its concerns about Ukraine joining NATO and NATO’s troop deployments in Eastern European member states not be addressed.
“If Russia further invades Ukraine, none of us will be able to say we didn’t see it coming, and the consequences will be horrific,” she added.
But Russia’s envoy again denied that the Kremlin is planning to attack its neighbor, a former Soviet state and now a growing democracy — telling the Security Council there is “no proof confirming such a serious accusation whatsoever,” defending troop movements within Russia’s borders as a domestic issue, and then denying there are 100,000 as U.S. and other Western officials have said.
“They themselves are whipping up tensions and rhetoric and are provoking escalation,” Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said of the U.S. and its NATO allies. “The discussions about a threat of war is provocative in and of itself. You are almost calling for this. You want it to happen. You’re waiting for it to happen.”
Thomas-Greenfield requested to speak again to respond, saying, “I cannot let the false equivalency go unchecked, so I feel I must respond. … The threats of aggression on the border of Ukraine — yes on its border — is provocative. Our recognition of the facts on the ground is not provocative.”
Ukraine — which is not a member of the Security Council, but was invited to participate — urged Russia to respect its “sovereign right” to choose which countries it partners with.
“Ukraine will not bow to threats aimed at weakening Ukraine, undermining its economic and financial stability, and inciting public frustration. This will not happen. And the Kremlin must remember that Ukraine is ready to defend itself,” Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council.
In a sign of their increasing alignment, China was the only country to back Russia’s effort to squash the public meeting. Its ambassador Zhang Jun said they oppose “microphone diplomacy of public confrontation” and believed the open discussion of the issue would add “fuel to the tension.”
While the session didn’t yield any results, it marks the start of another week of diplomacy between Russia and the U.S. and its allies over Ukraine.
“Russia heard clearly a united position from the vast majority of the council, and I hope that that will lead to a diplomatic solution,” Thomas-Greenfield, a member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, told reporters after the meeting.
Biden himself hailed the meeting as “a critical step in rallying the world to speak out in one voice: rejecting the use of force, calling for military de-escalation, supporting diplomacy as the best path forward.”
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the State Department and Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday — the first conversation after the U.S. responding in writing last week to Russia’s demands about Ukraine and NATO.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to speak to Putin this week, days after the U.K. said it could deploy troops to protect NATO allies if Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden announced a similar position last week, putting 8,500 U.S. troops on “heightened alert” and adding Friday he could do so in the “near” future.
In a potential positive sign for diplomacy, Russia said some of its forces had pulled back from the border areas after a “preparedness check,” according to the Russian Armed Forces’ Southern Military District.
But it’s not yet clear if the U.S. had confirmed any troops were withdrawn from the border region, and Thomas-Greenfield warned the U.S. has evidence Russia intends to expand its presence in Belarus to more than 30,000 troops — putting them less than two hours north of Kyiv. Those deployments include short-range ballistic missiles, special forces, and anti-aircraft batteries, she added — all of which Russia and Belarus have said are for military exercises.
