(NEW YORK) — Restrictive abortion laws were temporarily struck down Friday in Ohio and Arizona, two states where abortion services have been in flux in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
In Ohio, a six-week abortion ban is indefinitely blocked while a state constitutional challenge brought by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of abortion providers in the state proceeds.
Last month, Hamilton County Judge Christian Jenkins granted a 14-day restraining order against the law, which prohibits most abortions after the “fetal heartbeat” is detected, before granting the ACLU of Ohio’s request for a preliminary injunction on Friday.
The latest ruling means abortion up until 22 weeks will be legal in the state for the duration of the case.
“We are thrilled with this second major victory and relieved that patients in Ohio can continue to access abortion as we work to fight this unjust and dangerous ban in court,” the ACLU of Ohio said in a statement.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is expected to appeal the decision.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, a court issued a stay Friday on a near-total abortion ban with criminal penalties, temporarily blocking enforcement of the ban while an appeal filed by Planned Parenthood Arizona proceeds.
The century-old abortion ban had gone into effect in late September after the Pima County Superior Court lifted an injunction on the abortion ban. The 1901 law, which has language that can be tracked back to 1864, provides no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal abnormalities and makes performing abortions punishable by two to five years in prison.
A 15-week ban, which prohibits abortions “except in a medical emergency,” was passed by the Arizona legislature earlier this year. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich said he would seek to lift the injunction on the older, more restrictive law.
Since Roe was overturned, Arizona abortion providers have either suspended or limited services due to confusion over the two bans.
In issuing the stay, Judge Peter Eckerstrom stated, “Arizona courts have a responsibility to attempt to harmonize all of this state’s relevant statutes. The court further concludes the balance of hardships weigh strongly in favor of granting the stay, given the acute need of healthcare providers, prosecuting agencies, and the public for legal clarity as to the application of our criminal laws.”
Friday’s decision allows abortion care to resume in the state immediately.
“While today’s ruling brings temporary respite to Arizonans, the ongoing threat of this extreme, near-total abortion ban that has no regard for the health care of those across the state, including survivors of rape or incest remains very real,” Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said in a statement. “For over 100 days, Arizonans have experienced pure chaos and confusion and it has been traumatic for our physicians and staff who have been forced to notify patients that they can no longer care for them.”
ABC News’ Mary Kekatos and Libby Cathey contributed to this report.
TOLEDO, Ohio) — Three people were shot outside a high school football game Friday in Toledo, Ohio, and their conditions are not life-threatening, according to the Toledo Police Department.
The game was being played at Whitmer High School against Central Catholic at the time of the shooting. The Toledo Police Department does not have any suspects at this time.
Washington Local Schools Superintendent Kadee Anstadt released a statement following the incident, ABC affiliate WTVG reported.
“We are deeply saddened that a fun rivalry tonight was disrupted by an act of violence in the streets surrounding our event. What we know at this time is limited, and we will not speculate until further details are known. An event like this is every school district’s worst nightmare, and we ask that you keep both Central and Whitmer in your thoughts as we attempt to figure out this atrocious act,” Anstadt said.
ABC News’ Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — More than 500 children have been reunited by the Biden administration’s task force to find families separated as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy at the border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday.
“This is a significant milestone that reflects the tireless dedication of the many public servants in the Department of Homeland Security and across the federal government, including those in the Departments of Health and Human Services, State, and Justice,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “It is a milestone that we could not have achieved without the partnership and critical work of several incredibly committed non-governmental organizations.”
Nearly 200 other children who have yet to be reunited and are in the process, Mayorkas said.
The administration had previously identified 3,855 total children who would qualify for government-assisted reunification, according to the last formal progress report from the task force in July. Since then, the administration has now reached out to about 150 families who are eligible but have not responded. Prior to the establishment of the task force, some 2,260 known children were reunified.
The work is done in connection with international non-governmental organizations including the International Organization for Migration and the UN Refugee Agency. Human rights workers have fanned out across Central America, traveling over 62,000 miles to find separated parents.
“We will continue to work tirelessly to deliver on President Biden’s commitment to reunite children separated from their families at the United States-Mexico border,” Mayorkas said Friday.
Those admitted for reunification receive humanitarian parole for three years to live and work in the U.S. The status is similar to those who have fled Afghanistan and Ukraine over the past year. The administration continues to operate two websites — Together.gov and Juntos.gov — where families can register to check their eligibility. So far, the government has registered about 1,700. Once found eligible, families then submit documentation to receive parole, allowing them to enter the U.S.
The government is also providing families access to mental health services as part of the reunification effort.
Last month, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to approve a new round of psychological evaluations for those separated and a part of an ongoing lawsuit in Arizona federal court. Five mothers who were separated from their kids are seeking compensation for mental health damages from the U.S. government.
Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney representing migrant families said in a statement to ABC News that the progress was notable, but much more work needs to be done, noting they continue to look for 150 separated families.
“The task force should be given credit for reunifying 500 families, but unfortunately there is still a long way to go to remedy the historic wrong committed by the Trump administration,” Gelernt said. “Beyond reunification, these families deserve comprehensive relief, including a chance to remain in the United States.”
Armando Garcia and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As colder weather arrives and people head indoors in Europe, a COVID-19 wave may be looming on the continent — and could signal what’s to come for the United States.
Data from the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows cases and hospitalizations are rising in several countries.
A WHO report released Wednesday showed weekly cases reached 1.5 million this week, an increase of 8% compared to the previous week.
In France, COVID-19 rates increased 31% overall, with a marked increase in those aged 80 and older, according to the country’s health agency Santé publique France.
The health agency said both new hospitalizations and new deaths have “continued to increase,” but did not offer specific numbers.
Meanwhile, in England, about one in 50 people — an estimated 1,105,400 — had COVID-19 the week ending Sept. 24, according to data released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics.
This is an increase from the one in 65, or about 857,400 individuals, who had the virus the week before.
What’s more, the current seven-day average of deaths in England sits at 65, according to government data, which is the highest figure recorded in more than one month.
Currently, in the U.S., COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are trending downward and deaths have plateaued, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, public health experts say the COVID situation in Europe is likely a foreshadowing of what’s to come in the U.S.
“We’ve seen this pattern,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News. “We’ve heard this song before, which is that winter comes and cases start rising in places that are cold and, this year, more restrictions have been dropped compared to previous years.”
“The pattern is Europe, New York, then West Coast,” he added.
In fact, there may be some warning signs this is already happening. According to the CDC’s wastewater dashboard, virus levels have risen in some regions of the country including the Northeast and Midwest.
Chin-Hong said while vaccines and boosters will help limit the number of severe COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S., there is likely a mix of vaccine fatigue and confusion over who can get the new booster.
“The Kaiser Family Foundation data was shocking to me,” Chin-Hong said. “Not even knowing is shocking, because it’s not even about not wanting to get it if you don’t even know about it.”
He continued, “So, I think that people are fatigued, they’re really tuned out of vaccine news, they tuned out of COVID news you just want to move on with life.”
However, Chin-Hong stressed that Americans should get the updated booster as soon as possible to protect themselves.
“You might want to get it sooner rather than later given what’s happening in Europe of if you’re traveling abroad,” he said. “I have an uncle who went to France and six hours before he boarded, he tested positive for COVID. So, I think there is a lot of stuff happening in Europe and it may affect your return back home.”
He also recommended the public get the flu shot to reduce their risk of getting infected with influenza and reduce the stress on the hospital system.
(PHOENIX) — In the first and likely only debate for the Arizona Senate race, Democrat Mark Kelly pitched himself to independent voters as someone who can stand up to President Joe Biden and his own party, particularly on border security.
“When Democrats are wrong, like on the border, I call them out on it, because I’m always going to stick up for Arizona,” Kelly said in his opening remarks on stage at Arizona State University’s downtown campus on Thursday. “When the Biden administration refused to increase oil and gas production, I told him he was wrong,” he offered at another point.
The debate between Kelly, his Republican challenger Blake Masters and Libertarian Marc Victor comes just one week before early ballots are sent out in a race that could determine which party has majority control of the Senate next year, as polls show the race is tightening.
“Two years ago, Mark Kelly stood right there, and he promised to be independent,” Masters said in his opening. “But he broke that promise.”
Kelly, who won a special election in 2020 by getting more votes in Arizona than Biden himself, has distanced himself from Democrats’ messaging on immigration amid a record number of arrests or detentions of migrants at the southern border.
That includes the Biden administration’s decision to lift Title 42, a controversial Trump-era public health order which cut down opportunities for migrants to make legal claims to avoid deportation during the coronavirus pandemic.
“When the president decided he was going to do something dumb on this and change the rules that would create a bigger crisis, you know, I’ve told him he was wrong,” Kelly said. “So I’ve pushed back on this administration multiple times, and I’ve got more money on the ground.”
Kelly called the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border a “mess” and said he supports some physical barriers at the border.
Meanwhile, Masters emphasized Kelly’s record of allegiance to Democrats, asking Kelly about a vote against a GOP amendment to the Inflation Reduction Act that would’ve funded additional 18,000 border patrol agents.
“There are votes that happen in DC that have nothing to do with Border Patrol agents that have might have the title on it and nothing happens,” Kelly offered.
Masters called on Kelly to “respectfully resign” if he has truly done everything he can to secure the border.
During the hour-long debate, the candidates also sparred over the 2020 election, inflation, abortion rights and water security.
Asked if Biden is the legitimately elected president, Masters at first sarcastically offered, “Joe Biden is absolutely the president. I mean, my gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?” before acknowledging Biden as the “the legitimate president.”
But the political newcomer then pivoted into a conspiracy theory about how the FBI pressured Facebook and other big tech companies to censor information about Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Masters, who said in a campaign ad last year, “I think Trump won in 2020,” has softened some stances since beating out four other candidates in the August primary and conceded under questioning from moderator Ted Simons of Arizona PBS that he hasn’t seen evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 race.
“I haven’t seen evidence of that,” Masters said, breaking from former President Donald Trump, who endorsed him over the summer.
Kelly warned that the “wheels” could “come off our democracy” if candidates like Masters, who he says continue to questioning the integrity of American elections, win this November.
On abortion — a hot-button issue in Arizona after a federal judge last month upheld a 1901 law prohibiting all abortions other than those necessary to save the life of the mother and mandating jail time for providers — the two candidates offered vastly different views.
Kelly answered “of course” when asked if he’d vote to codify Roe v. Wade, and attacked Masters for his past statements describing abortion as “demonic” and “religious sacrifice.”
“You think you know better than women and doctors about abortion,” Kelly said. “You can think you know better than seniors about social security. And you think you know better than veterans about how to win a war. Folks, we all know guys like this, and we can’t be letting them make decisions about us because it’s just dangerous.”
Masters said he’s “pro-life as a matter of conscience” with “exceptions” and falsely accused Kelly of supporting abortion “up until the moment of birth.” He said he would support a federal “personhood law” to ban all third-trimester abortions — which Kelly called “code for throwing women into jail” — as well as Sen. Lindsey Graham’s federal abortion ban after 15 weeks.
With inflation highest in the country in the Phoenix-metro area, Masters appeared most comfortable when grouping in Kelly with spending in Washington.
“Joe Biden is spending like a drunken sailor and at every single opportunity Mark Kelly just says yes. He can’t say no to Chuck Schumer. He can’t say no to Joe Biden,” Masters said. “You never have to wonder which way Senator Kelly is gonna vote.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Uvalde, Texas, school district, facing withering criticism over its police department’s failings both during the May 24 elementary school massacre and since, announced the suspension of the entire district police force on Friday.
(WASHINGTON) — In a recent ABC News interview, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she felt clear-eyed about the contrast between her Democratic Party and the Republicans hoping to oust her from power in the midterm elections.
But Pelosi was also clear, she told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Hulu’s “Power Trip,” about what it would take to win in November — despite major political headwinds like high inflation and a sour mood on the economy.
Pelosi saw it another way, and as evidence she cited the Supreme Court’s divisive ruling striking down nationwide abortion access, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“We know that the public is with us, it’s just a question of turning out the vote,” she argued. “Any doubt that anyone might have in their minds about the enthusiasm of the Democratic voter — should be dispelled by the Dobbs decision.”
The California lawmaker stressed how few Republicans in the House had supported a law ensuring access to contraception and how none had voted to codify abortion access into federal law.
“Our races are discreet,” she acknowledged of the midterms, in which a resurgent GOP hopes to flip at least the handful of seats needed to erase Pelosi’s majority.
“But,” she said, Democrats could press another advantage: “Going into each race with the contrast of what that member of Congress or that candidate said about Social Security, Medicare, a woman’s right to choose, a ban on abortion and undermining our democracy — and that is what they [Republicans] are trying to do.”
“You’ve got a lot of Republicans on the ballot who still don’t accept the last election,” Stephanopoulos told her of those who falsely deny the results of the 2020 presidential race.
“Well, that’s pathetic,” Pelosi told him, adding, in a nod to football coach Al Davis, “Just win, baby.”
ABC News polling shows there are major challenges to such a feat as voters say that the economy and inflation remain key issues — while giving low marks to President Joe Biden on each. Democrats also have to contend with a long history of midterm losses for the party in power.
“Our message is what this means to you in your home at your kitchen table,” Pelosi said.
“Is that what people are feeling right now?” Stephanopoulos asked. “Right now they’re feeling inflation, they’re looking at the border, seeing people cross the border all the time, they feel crime in the cities.”
When pressed further by Stephanopoulos about inflation, crime and the border — three areas Republicans are focusing on this election cycle — Pelosi said she didn’t believe recent migrant flights by GOP governors were working and contended inflation is a “global issue.”
“They can’t do any more about inflation than we are,” she said.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a reaction to some of Pelosi’s criticism, telling ABC News’ Brittany Shepherd in “Power Trip” — at an event previewing the House GOP’s campaign-season “Commitment to America” — that Democrats “can’t run on their record.”
“The ‘Commitment to America’ is a plan for a new direction, one that will make our economy strong, will make our nation safe. It’d be a future built on freedom and give us check and balance inside Washington,” McCarthy said.
As to Pelosi’s criticism of Republicans as a threat to democracy, given how many in the party embrace baseless claims about the 2020 race, McCarthy was not fazed. “It’s idiotic,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — At the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, his team returned a large batch of classified FBI documents and other government records to the Justice Department in such disarray that a year later — in a letter to lawmakers — the department said it still couldn’t tell which of the documents were the classified ones.
The documents came from the FBI’s controversial probe in 2016 looking at alleged links between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump tried to make the documents public the night before he left office, issuing a “declassification” memo and secretly meeting with conservative writer John Solomon, who was allowed to review the documents, Solomon told ABC News this past week.
But for reasons that are still not clear — and to the great frustration of Trump and his political allies — none of the documents were ever officially released, and the Justice Department said Thursday it’s still working to determine which documents can be disclosed.
“[T]he Justice Department has … failed to declassify a single page,” Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., complained to the attorney general in February.
Much of what happened with the documents in those last days of the Trump administration — and ever since — remains shrouded in mystery because current and former government officials involved have refused to speak about it, especially now that the FBI is pursuing its investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of a separate cache of classified documents.
The story that still emerges, though, from pieces of public statements and Solomon’s own accounts is one that sheds further light on how Trump’s White House treated certain government secrets. And it helps explain how — in the midst of the FBI probe — Solomon became one of Trump’s official “representatives” to the National Archives.
‘Thank God’ for Solomon
By the middle of Trump’s presidency, Solomon had become one of Trump’s favorite voices in media.
“John Solomon should get the Pulitzer Prize,” Trump said to cheers at a rally in Louisiana in October 2019.
At the time, Solomon was promoting a series of since-discredited claims about supposed Obama-era corruption in Ukraine, claims which Trump then privately pushed the Ukrainian president to investigate, leading to Trump’s first impeachment.
Solomon’s own employer then, The Hill newspaper, eventually launched an internal review and concluded his Ukraine-related pieces “potentially blurred the distinction between news and opinion” and at times failed to include relevant “context and/or disclosure[s].” Solomon has stood by those pieces, insisting still that they were accurate.
His work at the time was also focused on the FBI’s Russia-related investigation and its offshoots, which he described as “a sin against Donald Trump,” an “offense against the entire American people,” and “arguably the most devious political dirty trick in American history.”
“Thank God we have [Solomon and several Fox News hosts] on our side,” Trump declared at the 2019 rally.
So when Trump and his team were determined to push out the so-called “full story” of “the Russia hoax” before Trump’s presidency ended, Solomon was well-positioned to help, with his online media platforms and regular TV appearances.
“We worked closely together in trying to get to the truth on that,” Solomon recounted to Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in an interview with him last year.
In its final report on the investigation, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said that while it found “fundamental errors” and significant “failures” in the FBI probe, it found no evidence that “political bias or improper motivation influenced” the investigation, including the decision to eavesdrop on one of Trump’s former campaign advisers.
But Trump and many of his allies contended otherwise.
‘Continuing objection’
With just weeks left as president, Trump “demanded” that “key documents” — still classified by the FBI and Justice Department — “be brought to the White House” so they could be “entered into the public record once and for all,” Meadows wrote in a memoir published last year.
On Dec. 30, 2020, the Justice Department delivered a binder filled with internal notes, memos, emails and other records. The White House was unsure of what should be disclosed, so Trump’s team asked a group of Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee to make recommendations, a congressional source informed of the request told ABC News.
“[It’s] a foot-and-a-half of documents, almost everything that the FBI had left out of public sight,” Solomon said in an interview with a right-wing website on Jan. 14, 2021, predicting that the documents could be “made public as early as tomorrow.”
But the FBI objected to “any” release at all, Trump’s “declassification” memo said.
“The FBI has concerns about everything, from the protection of assets and codenames, and prior investigations that may be referenced in the Russia materials, to Privacy Act stuff,” Solomon said in an interview with another right-wing website on Jan. 18, 2021. “There’s been a lot of back and forth.”
The FBI even sent a letter to the White House identifying passages in documents that were particularly “crucial to keep from public disclosure,” the subsequent memo said.
Trump then agreed to some redactions, declaring that everything else in the binder was declassified, according to the memo.
“I personally went through every page, to make sure that the President’s declassification would not inadvertently disclose sources and methods,” Meadows wrote in his book.
It’s unclear if the FBI and Justice Department ever agreed with the review Meadows conducted.
Around that time, White House staffers produced multiple copies of documents from the binder, a former Trump administration official told ABC News.
‘All the documents’
Trump formally issued his “declassification” memo regarding those documents at around 7 p.m. ET on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2021, the same day Solomon allegedly met with him.
“I had a brief interview with President Trump in which he told me unequivocally he had signed the order completing the [declassification] and that I would be getting a set of the declassified documents to post online for the public,” Solomon told ABC News in a statement this past week. “Later that same day, I was allowed, on two occasions, to briefly review a stack of documents that I was told were the declassified documents. I wasn’t allowed to keep the documents either time, but was told I would get a full set later in the day.”
Shortly after 9 p.m. ET that day, Solomon appeared on Fox News and said he had “been through all the documents at least one time now.”
He told ABC News the documents he reviewed had redactions, cross-outs and other “markings on them indicating they had been declassified” — though at least some of them were not stamped “declassified,” as formally-declassified documents often are.
Nevertheless, on the same day Solomon met with Trump and reviewed the documents, the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence community “were trying to get the documents back” from the White House, Solomon said in a subsequent interview on Fox Business Network.
Several people at the White House “were fearful that something was going to happen to the larger batch,” so they took steps to get at least “some of the documents” to Solomon, he said in a separate interview on Newsmax TV last September.
That night, a “courier” or staffer he didn’t know delivered a package to his Washington, D.C., office with a “small batch” of the documents in it, he told ABC News.
The envelope carrying the documents had the Justice Department insignia on it, he said.
Meadows did not respond to questions from ABC News, and the Justice Department declined to comment for this article.
‘Bombshell revelations?’
Just before his Fox News appearance the night of Jan. 19, 2021, Solomon published a piece online revealing the “First Trump declassified Russia document,” which he told ABC News came in the package he received.
The document was an FBI report detailing two September 2017 interviews with Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose “dossier” — much of it since debunked — was used to separately convince four federal judges that the FBI should be allowed to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign adviser.
“There are some bombshell revelations,” Solomon said of the FBI report on Fox News.
Despite such rhetoric, it’s unclear how much new information the documents could actually reveal about any FBI missteps or alleged bias in 2016.
Meadows claimed in his book that “several key papers” could “unravel the full story of how the United States intelligence community had targeted President Trump, spied on his campaign, and attempted to bring him down.”
And on Fox News that night, Solomon called the FBI report “the most important of all the documents.”
As Solomon touted it at the time, the FBI report supposedly revealed that Steele viewed Trump as his “main opponent,” that he was worried Trump would hurt the U.S.-U.K. relationship, and that he leaked information about Trump and the FBI to the media because of Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email scandal during the 2016 campaign.
But records with that same information had been released by Senate Republicans seven weeks earlier and mentioned in the Justice Department inspector general’s report two years earlier, which outlined Steele’s “bias against Trump” and questions about the credibility of Steele’s sources.
Next week, one of Steele’s primary sources, Igor Danchenko, is set to go on trial in Virginia for allegedly lying to the FBI about his own sources of information as the FBI was trying to vet Steele’s “dossier.” Danchenko has pleaded not guilty in the case.
‘Proven challenging’
On the morning of Jan. 20, 2021 — with just two hours left before Joe Biden would become president — Meadows found himself racing to the White House to retrieve at least some of the documents, he recalled in his book. And in a memo to then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen that morning, Meadows said he would be returning “the bulk of the binder” to the Justice Department.
According to the memo, which Solomon later obtained, and more recent statements from Meadows, the department raised last-minute concerns about “privacy” and “personal information.” So “out of an abundance of caution” the White House gave the documents back to the Justice Department “to do final redactions,” he said in an interview with Solomon last December.
The New York Times recently reported that the privacy concerns stemmed from years-old text messages between then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and his romantically-connected colleague Lisa Page, who in 2016 exchanged a series of anti-Trump sentiments as they worked on the Russia-related probe.
Meadows said he expected that when the “final redactions” were completed, the documents would be released.
But that never happened.
“[D]etermining precisely what was declassified by [Trump] has proven challenging given the manner in which the relevant records were returned to the Department on January 20, 2021,” the Justice Department wrote Grassley and Johnson earlier this year, after they repeatedly expressed concern that none of the documents had been released. “The Department has been taking steps to determine what material is appropriately and lawfully disclosable.”
The National Archives also received a batch of related documents, which were similarly delivered in a not “easily discernible manner,” Solomon quoted the National Archives as telling him.
Efforts by ABC News to understand why at least two separate tranches of documents were allegedly both in such disarray were not successful.
Meanwhile, Meadows allegedly kept copies of at least some of those documents himself after leaving government.
In a newly-released book, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said Trump told her in an interview last year, months after leaving the White House, that Meadows still had “in his possession” the internal FBI text messages between Strzok and Page that Trump planned to make public on his last night in office.
“[Trump] offered to connect me with him,” Haberman wrote.
As for Solomon, he told ABC News he never received the full set of documents Trump promised him.
The conservative group Judicial Watch recently filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to force the Justice Department to release all of the document
In a court filing Thursday, the department said it is now “processing” 815 pages relevant to Judicial Watch’s request and expects to start releasing “non-exempt records” in late December.
It’s unclear if the Biden administration may have reclassified any of the documents that Trump previously declared as “declassified.”
‘A records dispute?’
In June, Trump announced he had designated Solomon and a former Trump administration official, Kash Patel, as his official representatives to the National Archives.
By then, a federal grand jury was already weeks into its investigation of Trump’s alleged refusal to return sensitive government documents to the National Archives and his alleged mishandling of national security documents at Mar-a-Lago.
When the FBI then sought approval from a judge to raid Mar-a-Lago, it noted — among many other things — that Patel publicly claimed Trump had already “declassified the materials at issue.” The next two-and-a-half pages of the FBI’s submission to the judge were completely redacted.
In a recent interview on Fox News, Trump made a series of widely-disputed claims about a president’s authority to declassify information.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify … [just] by thinking about it,” Trump said. “So when you send it, it’s declassified. I declassified everything.”
After the raid at Mar-a-Lago, Solomon issued a statement insisting his role as Trump’s representative to the National Archives “has nothing to do with the [FBI] investigation.”
He was acting “as a reporter in an effort to resolve the question of what happened to the Russia probe documents that former President Trump declassified but which were never released,” he said.
Solomon has denounced the FBI investigation as the “criminalization of a records dispute.”
According to the Justice Department, hundreds of documents marked classified, including many marked “top secret,” were kept in unsecure locations at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office. And a federal appeals court recently noted that, with respect to documents found during the raid, Trump has offered “no evidence that any of these records were declassified.”
(WASHINGTON) — The nation’s democratic process has been dangerously tested after the 2020 presidential race and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, polls show and experts warn, leaving many Americans with little faith in the election system.
Heading into the consequential midterm elections, when voters will decide which party will control Congress next year, more than two-thirds of Americans think our democracy is in danger of collapse, according to an August poll from Quinnipiac University.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in January — more than a year after the insurrection — found only 20% of those surveyed saying they’re very confident about the election system. Even fewer Republicans, just 13%, said they were very confident in the process.
“After every election, especially a presidential election, there is some sense among the people who voted for the losing candidate that the election was not quite fair,” Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News.
“But 2020 is different,” Burden continued. “Republican voters have been stuck with very low levels of support.”
That’s in large part due to Donald Trump, Burden and other elections observers said, as well as his GOP allies who continue to emphatically spread falsehoods about the integrity of the 2020 election.
In fact, 60% of Americans will have an election denier on the ballot this November. Out of 541 total Republican nominees running for office, FiveThirtyEight found 199 who’ve fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
So, what can be done to restore trust in the system? The path forward is unclear, experts ABC News spoke with said.
“It’s a very hard problem,” Burden acknowledged.
The most effective solution?
What would be the most successful fix is also the thing least likely to happen: for Trump and his allies to change their message.
“Donald Trump, as somebody who knows how to bring a crowd, whenever he leans into some of this election conspiracy stuff, he is tapping into a very, very animated part of the Republican base,” explained Eli Yokley, a senior reporter at the data firm Morning Consult, which also tracks confidence in U.S. institutions.
Yokley said it will be “incumbent on policymakers not to lean into voters’ worst instincts” for trust to be restored.
Because Republicans are also generally more skeptical of mainstream media and traditional news sources, it’s going to be most impactful for those lacking faith in the system to hear it straight from the former president and his closest associates.
“Those kinds of authoritative voices for Trump’s followers have to be what’s going to deliver the message because other sources like the current president or the mainstream media or fact checkers just aren’t trusted in the same way,” Burden said.
But Trump, as recently as Oct. 1, at a rally in the battleground state of Michigan, continued to call the 2020 election “stolen” and said Democrats “cheat like dogs” to win.
“I don’t believe we’ll ever have a fair election again,” Trump said, prompting boos and shouts of agreement from his crowd.
“I don’t believe it,” he repeated.
Combatting disinformation
While Trump and his allies continue to spread lies about the 2020 election, state and local elections offices are picking up the slack to combat disinformation.
Arizona’s Maricopa County — the largest county in the battleground state and the site of intense scrutiny both during and after the 2020 election — launched a campaign in 2021 titled “Just the Facts” in response to the increase of misinformation spreading about elections administration.
The website and an accompanying newsletter answers questions about how elections are administered, how officials build the ballot, how they count the ballots and ensure accuracy of the equipment used. This cycle, the campaign will also provide information about the upcoming races and how to participate successfully, according to Maricopa County Elections Department spokesperson Megan Gilbertson.
“It’s imperative for election experts to provide a trusted source of information to voters about the you know, the facts about elections administration,” Gilbertson told ABC News. “And so I think that initiatives like this are attainable for elections offices.”
The city of Atlanta has launched the Atlanta Votes initiative, a similar online tool aimed at educating voters and increasing turnout. The Connecticut legislature has provided $2 million for internet, TV and mail education efforts on the election process, and to hire an election information security officer. Colorado has also hired a team called the “Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit” to monitor sites for misinformation.
The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a national clearinghouse for information regarding election administration, similarly revamped the information on its site to make it more digestible to everyday Americans, Chairman Thomas Hicks told ABC News.
“I always say that election officials are public servants,” Hicks said. “None of us are doing this to get rich, and so we’re doing this for the love of our country and for our democracy.”
Hicks said the commission has also worked with other organizations and has spoken to Twitter and Facebook about combating misinformation.
The tech platforms took some steps to tackle misinformation in 2020 but some experts said the actions weren’t enough. YouTube, Google and TikTok have announced election plans for 2022 that include bolstering trusted news sources and flagging or removing posts containing falsehoods about the process.
But it’s difficult to stop individuals who are spreading disinformation, Burden said.
“We have the First Amendment in the United States that protects people’s right to say things they believe, even if they’re factually incorrect,” Burden said. “If they think they don’t trust the system, they’re certainly allowed to say that. So it’s a difficult problem to solve.”
(WASHINGTON) — While attending the Georgia State Fair on Friday, Gov. Brian Kemp was asked if he would continue to support fellow Republican Herschel Walker’s Senate candidacy following the allegations that the businessman and college football legend paid for an ex-girlfriend to have an abortion — a claim that Walker has adamantly denied.
Kemp responded by telling ABC News that he would support the Republican candidates on the ballot.
“I’m going to vote like everyone else, but I’m supporting the ticket,” he said. “We’re working hard to help the whole ticket in this state. We’ve got a great team, especially the folks I’ve been serving with in the state.”
During a gaggle with the press, Kemp told reporters that he was looking toward the November elections and working toward getting voters’ support.
When pressed about Walker’s anti-abortion stance in light of the latest allegation, Kemp steered clear of answering the question directly and instead said that he’s focusing on running his reelection campaign against Democrat Stacey Abrams.
Walker, a local icon from his time playing for the University of Georgia, this week repeatedly denied a report in The Daily Beast in which an ex-girlfriend claimed he reimbursed her for an abortion in 2009.
Asked Friday about the woman’s accusations, Kemp said, “I’m not a police officer, I’m not an investigation reporter. I’m running to be governor of Georgia.”
Other GOP state leaders have publicly criticized Walker.
Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said on CNN on Wednesday night that the latest reports about Walker were not easily dismissed: “Even the most staunch Republicans, I think, are rattled at the continued flow of information.”
“If we’re being intellectually honest, Herschel Walker won the primary because he scored a bunch of touchdowns back in the ’80s and he was Donald Trump’s friend. And now you move forward several months on the calendar and that’s no longer a recipe to win,” Duncan said.
The allegations against Walker come at a critical point in the campaign — just a few weeks from Election Day, where Walker will face Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
