(WASHINGTON) — Gun control advocates and domestic abuse victims’ rights groups on Friday praised a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a federal ban on people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns.
The 8-1 decision in U.S. v. Rahimi, which ruled that federal and state laws that prevent domestic abusers from temporarily owning a firearm do not violate the Second Amendment, came after several decisions by the conservative-leaning court in the last two years that have scaled back gun control laws.
Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at the gun control non-profit Everytown Law, said in a statement that the ruling was a step in the right direction but more work needs to be done to prevent gun violence.
“Our country has stood at a tipping point, with the safety of survivors of domestic violence on the line. But today, we took a step toward protecting millions from their abusers,” she said in a statement.
La’Shea Cretain, an Everytown volunteer, told ABC News she knows the decision will go a long way after she survived a violent encounter with her ex-boyfriend, a case profiled by ABC News.
The five bullets that put Cretain in a coma are still inside her body.
“It’s going to affect so many children from witnessing their mothers, fathers, grandparents or friends or anyone, experiencing gun violence, at the hands of abusers,” Cretain told ABC News.
Certain added that the court showed that they listened to survivors’ experiences.
“They listened to us. Because it’s not a day, a minute, our second, but we don’t think about it. We don’t feel the pain. But we have to continue to go on in spite of it all,” she said.
Former Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a shooting in 2011 and now heads the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, echoed that statement.
Her organization noted that women in the United States are 21 times more likely to die from a firearm than women in other high-income countries.
“This is a win for women, children, and anyone who has experienced domestic abuse. Women should be able to live their lives free from the fear of gun violence,” Giffords said in a statement.
Although gun control advocates contend the decision could pave the way for similar laws and firearms restrictions against dangerous individuals, one of the nation’s most prominent gun rights groups argued that the Supreme Court’s decision is narrow.
Randy Kozuch, executive director of the National Rifle Association, said in a post on X Friday, that the decision “holds only that an individual who poses a clear threat of violence may be temporarily disarmed after a judicial finding of dangerousness.” The NRA has been vocal against red flag laws passed in several states which allow people or law enforcement the right to petition a court to have a person’s firearms removed if they pose a threat to others or themselves.
“The Supreme Court’s narrow opinion offers no endorsement of red flag laws or of the dozens of other unconstitutional laws that the NRA is challenging across the country that burden the right of peaceable Americans to keep and bear arms,” Kozuch said.
Kelly Roskam, director of law and policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, said in a statement that research has shown that armed domestic abusers are not just a threat to their significant other but to the general public.
“It also shows that laws prohibiting these individuals from having firearms are effective at reducing intimate partner homicide. It is imperative that we be able to continue to do so,” she said in a statement.
President Joe Biden, a staunch gun control advocate, vowed to continue to advocate for laws and policies that prevent arming domestic violence suspects.
Biden noted that Congress and his office have pushed forward policies to prevent shootings in domestic violence cases citing the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which he helped pass during his time in the U.S. Senate, and the recent Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that narrowed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” so that dating partners convicted of domestic violence cannot buy a firearm.
“No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun. As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades,” he said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump argued Friday that Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel in Trump’s classified documents case gives the U.S. attorney general the authority to “set up a shadow government” by giving Smith the authority to serve in government without being confirmed by the Senate.
“That sounds very ominous,” U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said, before she asked whether that is really a realistic risk given there are well-defined special counsel regulations.
Trump’s lawyers made the argument as part of their efforts to have the classified documents case dismissed on the grounds that Smith’s appointment was unlawful — an issue other courts have largely rejected.
Trump attorney Emil Bove argued Friday that it was a realistic risk given Smith was convening and relying on grand jury proceedings in Washington, D.C., and “avoiding judges on this bench,” referring to district judges in Florida.
“I don’t know if it’s fair to draw aspersions,” replied Cannon, who has been overseeing the classified documents case against the former president.
Bove said they wanted clarity on the level of engagement between the special counsel’s office and the attorney general in order to resolve the motion — suggesting an evidentiary hearing was needed.
Cannon appeared skeptical at times about Trump’s argument, but at the same time seemed to indulge some of it.
The hearing then devolved into a history lesson, dating back to special counsel appointments under President Ulysses S. Grant and the definitions of specific words in the special counsel appointments clause.
The Trump team’s arguments are based on a legal theory pushed by conservative legal critics of the special counsel, who has been overseeing the case against Trump since his appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022.
Trump pleaded not guilty last June to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after Smith said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
Judge Cannon set aside all of Friday for arguments, kicking off a series of related hearings that will continue into next week.
On Monday Cannon will hear arguments on a motion brought by Trump challenging the funding of the special counsel’s office. The same day, Cannon will hear additional arguments over Smith’s request for a limited gag order limiting Trump’s rhetoric about law enforcement involved in the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.
Then on Tuesday the judge is scheduled to consider Trump’s request to throw out evidence gathered during that search, as well as testimony provided by Evan Corcoran, Trump’s former lead attorney who Smith has alleged Trump misled as part of Trump’s efforts to obstruct the government’s investigation.
The trial in the case had originally been scheduled to begin on May 20, but last month Cannon indefinitely postponed the trial’s start date pending the resolution of pretrial litigation, making it all but certain the case won’t go to trial before Election Day.
(WASHINGTON) — The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case is hearing arguments Friday on the former president’s effort to invalidate the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith.
The hearing is focused on a legal theory pushed by conservative legal critics of the special counsel, who has been overseeing the case against Trump since his appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022.
Trump pleaded not guilty last June to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after Smith said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has set aside all of Friday for arguments on Trump’s motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that Smith’s appointment was unlawful — an issue other courts have largely rejected.
Friday’s arguments kick off a series of related hearings that will continue into next week.
On Monday Cannon will hear arguments on a motion brought by Trump challenging the funding of the special counsel’s office. The same day, Cannon will hear additional arguments over Smith’s request for a limited gag order limiting Trump’s rhetoric about law enforcement involved in the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.
Then on Tuesday the judge is scheduled to consider Trump’s request to throw out evidence gathered during that search, as well as testimony provided by Evan Corcoran, Trump’s former lead attorney who Smith has alleged Trump misled as part of Trump’s efforts to obstruct the government’s investigation.
The trial in the case had originally been scheduled to begin on May 20, but last month Cannon indefinitely postponed the trial’s start date pending the resolution of pretrial litigation, making it all but certain the case won’t go to trial before Election Day.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is raising his debate expectations for President Joe Biden a week ahead of the two men facing off, and after spending months describing him as a weak, mentally unfit leader.
“I assume he’s gonna be somebody that will be a worthy debater. … I don’t want to underestimate him,” Trump said during an episode of the “All In” podcast, hosted by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg, and released on Thursday.
Pointing to Biden’s vice-presidential debate performance against former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who ran as the VP choice of Sen. Mitt Romney in his 2012 presidential campaign, Trump, in a rare moment, praised Biden.
“All I can say is this, I watched him with Paul Ryan, and he destroyed Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan with the water, he was chugging water left and right … and he beat Paul Ryan. So, I’m not underestimating him. I’m not underestimating him. It is what it is.”
Trump’s comments are a departure from his previous rhetoric and come as his campaign advisers have warned that Biden may overperform on Thursday because expectations have been set low for him, though Trump himself has contributed to those conversations.
“Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced – He can’t put two sentences together!” Trump posted on his social media platform when he accepted Biden’s debate proposal.
“I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds – That’s only because he doesn’t get them.”
After Trump and Biden agreed to face off twice, Trump called for Biden to be drug tested ahead of the debates, claiming that if he performed well, it would be because of some kind of performance enhancement.
“I’m gonna demand a drug test, by the way. I am. No, I really am,” Trump said at a campaign event in Michigan last month.
“I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union. He was high as a kite. They said ‘Is that Joe up there in that beautiful room?’ And by the end of the evening, he’s like, where? He was exhausted, right?” Trump continued, making unfounded claims that Biden was on drugs during his State of the Union address.
Trump also previously floated the idea that Biden would be replaced as the Democratic nominee if he performed poorly at the debate, quipping that he would “lose the debate on purpose,” to ensure Biden stays in the race.
“Maybe I’m better off losing the debate, I’ll make sure he stays. I’ll lose the debate on purpose, maybe I’ll do something like that,” Trump said during an interview with Real America’s Voices the day he visited with Congressional Republicans.
However, now as the debate inches closer, Trump has started to plant seeds of doubt with his supporters about potential ways Biden could exceed expectations, complaining about the logistics of next Thursday’s first debate and potential media coverage.
At his most recent rally in Racine, Wisconsin, Trump criticized debate moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, arguing they won’t be fair to him, and labeled their network, CNN, which is hosting the debate, as “fake news.”
“I’ll probably be negotiating with three people, but that’s OK. I’ve done that before where I’ll be debating three people instead of one-half of a person,” Trump previously said, continuing to attack Biden’s mental fitness.
He has also claimed that Biden’s metric of success won’t be based on performance but on mere completion.
“If he’s standing, they’ll say it was a brilliant performance,” Trump told an NRA Convention crowd last month in Dallas.
Ahead of Thursday, both candidates have taken different approaches to preparation. While Biden is hunkering down at Camp David, participating in mock debates and refining his message with advisers, Trump has been holding policy meetings with his vice presidential candidates and former administration officials.
(WASHINGTON) — A smaller number of the women voters who cast ballots for President Joe Biden in 2020 said they’d vote for him again in 2024 than the share of women voters who supported former President Donald Trump in 2020 who said they’d do so again this year, according to a new set of polls from KFF, a health care research nonprofit group.
The polls were taken of women both nationally and in the battleground states of Arizona and Michigan.
Of women voters who cast ballots for Biden in 2020, 83% said they would vote for him again in 2024 — with 7% who said they’ll vote for Trump and 10% who said they would vote for someone else or wouldn’t vote.
Of the women voters who cast ballots for Trump in 2020, 92% said they would do so again this year. None said they’d vote for Biden and 7% said they’d vote for someone else or wouldn’t vote.
This dip in support from women for Biden — a critical voting bloc ahead of the 2024 race, which is expected to be a close contest between Trump and Biden — comes as a majority of women across party, age, race and ethnicity feel “anxious” (68%) or “frustrated” (70%) ahead of November, the polls found. At the same time, only 21% said they are “uninterested” in the election.
Both Trump and Biden will be working to court women voters as the election nears.
The majority of women voters (60%) said they are not satisfied with their options for president this cycle, though the poll found that Republican women are more motivated (53%) than Democratic women to vote (44%). Twenty-nine percent of independent women voters are motivated, according to the polls.
More specifically, women voters supportive of Trump are more motivated (53%) than Biden voters (49%) to vote in the upcoming election.
The polls also carefully examined how the issue of abortion is impacting those voters and could affect turnout. The data suggests that the majority (65%) of Republican women who said abortion should be illegal are motivated to vote in 2024.
But broadly, most women voters (54%) said that the 2024 presidential election will have a “major impact” on access to abortion and reproductive health care in the country — with Democratic women (71%) saying more than Republican women (37%) that it will have that “major impact.” Forty-three percent of independent women said they thought it would have a “major impact.”
Furthermore, Democratic women reported they are more motivated to vote in states that might have abortion ballot initiatives in November compared to states without the measures, KFF’s polls found.
This is shown nationally: 83% of Democratic women voters said they will definitely vote in states that will/may have initiatives — a larger amount than the share of women who say they will vote (72%) in other states.
In states with potential ballot initiatives, according to KFF’s count, Republican and Democratic women voters are about equally likely to say they are certain to vote (82% and 83%, respectively). In all other states, Republican women voters are more likely than Democratic women voters to say that they’ll definitely vote in November (80% to 72%, respectively).
In Arizona, where there will likely be an abortion ballot initiative come November, 45% of women voters said they strongly support the initiative, with 22% saying they somewhat support it. Forty-nine percent of all Arizona women voters and 60% of Democratic women said they’re more motivated to vote this election than in elections past if the Arizona Right to Abortion initiative appears on the ballot.
In Michigan, where there isn’t an abortion ballot measure in 2022, 60% said they believe that abortion was settled by the constitutional amendment that they passed in 2022. Forty-eight percent of Michigan women voters said that initiative was very important to their turnout in the 2022 midterms.
Inflation remains the chief issue for women ahead of the 2024 election, however — nationally, in Arizona and in Michigan. In all three places, “threats to democracy” ranked as the second-largest concern and immigration and border security came third.
KFF noted that many within Biden’s base don’t approve of his handling of the issue of inflation. Nearly half of Democratic women voters overall — especially younger Democrats (72%), Black women voters (55%), Hispanic women voters (57%) and lower-income women voters (55%) — do not approve of how Biden is handling the issue.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is issuing a total ban on the use of a Russian-backed cybersecurity software in the United States due to the Russian government’s alleged influence operations over the software, the U.S. Commerce Department announced on Thursday.
Kaspersky Lab’s software has been a concern of U.S. government officials since at least 2017. Under Russian law, their government has total access to Kaspersky systems and therefore has access to the data of all of its customers, U.S. officials say.
“Russia has shown it has the capacity, and even more than that, the intent to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on a call on Thursday.
Raimondo said the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security was able to ban Kaspersky under its new authorities.
Kaspersky “has long raised national security concerns” and it was banned from several government systems as far back as 2017, Raimondo said. She added that “while we’ve been exploring every option at our disposal, we ultimately decided that given the Russian government’s continued offensive cyber capabilities and capacity to influence Kaspersky’s operations, that we had to take the significant measure of a full prohibition if we’re going to protect Americans and their personal data.”
After July 20, Kaspersky is prohibited from entering into any new agreements inside the U.S. under the new ban. Kaspersky can provide existing customers with cyber and antivirus software until Sept. 29, but after that “Kaspersky will not be able to provide security updates.” Software services will “degrade,” the rule says.
Raimondo said she wanted to make clear that Americans and U.S. businesses who continue to use existing Kaspersky products will not be breaking the law, but they will not be able to update their products as of Sept. 30. “I would encourage you in the strongest possible terms to immediately stop using that software and switch to an alternative in order to protect yourself, your data, and your family,” the commerce secretary said.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose Department has a robust cyber agency, said in a statement Americans need to know they can rely on the safety of their devices.
“The actions taken today are vital to our national security and will better protect the personal information and privacy of many Americans,” Mayorkas said. “We will continue to work with the Department of Commerce, state and local officials, and critical infrastructure operators to protect our nation’s most vital systems and assets.”
ABC News previously reported on the government’s concerns about Kaspersky. The head of Kaspersky Lab, Eugene Kaspersky, at the time denied Russia’s influence on the software company.
In an interview with ABC News in 2017, Kapersky called U.S. government warnings about his company “wrong advice” and said that “rumors about our partnership with government agencies [are] false.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden won the coin toss to secure a podium position on the right side of the stage during the CNN debate next week, but by doing so gave Donald Trump the final closing statement of the 90-minute matchup.
According to CNN, the coin landed on tails — the side chosen by the Biden campaign. The team then got to choose between podium placement or the order of closing arguments, picking to have Biden be on the right side of television and other screens but deliver his closing statement first.
Trump’s podium will be on the left side, and will have the last word by delivering his closing statement after Biden.
The 90-minute CNN debate, starting at 9 p.m. ET, will take place on June 27 in Atlanta. It is the first of two debates between Biden and Trump, the second taking place on Sept. 10 and hosted by ABC News.
The CNN debate is being simulcast on ABC and ABC News Live with pre-coverage beginning at 8 p.m. ET on the network and 7 p.m ET on ABCNL.
Earlier this week, other rules were announced by CNN such as muting the candidates’ microphone unless it is their turn to speak and allowing no props, only pen, paper and a bottle of water.
There will be no opening statements, two commercial breaks and no studio audience.
Biden and Trump will be given two minutes to answer questions posed by moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, followed by one minute each to respond and rebut. There will be a red light flashing to indicate to candidates they have five seconds remaining of their allotted time. When their time is over, the light will turn solid red.
With exactly a week to go until the debate, both campaigns are beginning to prepare.
President Biden will huddle at Camp David with former chief of staff Ron Klain and other longtime advisers and aides.
Trump is holding policy meetings with advisers and congressional allies on issues like immigration, the economy and democracy. He’ll also campaign in Philadelphia over the weekend and attend fundraisers next week.
Biden and Trump will be the only candidates on stage after the qualification window closed at midnight, CNN said.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent, fell short of meeting the network’s polling and ballot access requirements. He called his exclusion from the stage “undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly.”
ABC News’ Isabella Murray and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. has received intense public scrutiny for promoting an array of unconventional theories, from claiming that vaccines are behind an “epidemic” of diseases in America to insisting that the CIA was directly involved in the assassination of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.
But one recurring conspiracy theory has garnered relatively little notice: his persistent assertion that major U.S. media outlets are being run by undercover CIA operatives or are controlled in some other way by the CIA, as part of a secret government plot to manipulate Americans’ minds.
“The new head of NPR is a CIA agent,” Kennedy declared at a New York campaign fundraiser in April, drawing gasps from some of his supporters.
He was specifically referring to Katherine Maher, who nearly two months earlier became NPR’s CEO and president after a long career in international development and digital advocacy. At the fundraiser, Kennedy said Maher’s hiring at NPR was just the latest salvo in the CIA’s “systematic takeover of the American press, particularly the liberal media.”
Kennedy continues to amplify such claims at campaign events, in media interviews, and on social media, supporting them with what experts described to ABC News as “half-truths,” “intimations,” misinterpretations of law, and twisted historical anecdotes. He often cites widespread — but utterly unsubstantiated — allegations that a CIA program supposedly called “Operation Mockingbird” secretly recruited journalists decades ago to help brainwash Americans.
“Operation Mockingbird is alive and well today,” Kennedy has said repeatedly in recent months.
Kennedy’s questionable tactics are all “classic techniques of propaganda,” according to Sarah Oates, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in propaganda. And that’s ironic, she said, when Kennedy is employing those techniques to claim that the CIA and its media proxies are the ones propagandizing Americans.
Kennedy has offered varying explanations of the CIA’s supposed goal for the purported media takeover — from allegedly promoting the Democratic Party’s agenda to protecting the “military industrial complex.”
The theory Kennedy promotes is consistent with his long-running criticism of both the CIA, which he says “continues to be involved in the coverup” of his uncle’s murder, and “the mainstream media,” which he claims have “slandered and censored” him over the last decade.
But Oates said the CIA conspiracy theory also creates a “Catch-22 situation,” where the CIA’s secretive nature makes it virtually impossible to disprove what Kennedy is alleging — and media reports questioning it can be spun “as evidence that the conspiracy is true.”
“And that’s the challenge,” Oates said.
In a statement to ABC News, a CIA representative said, “Any notion that CIA is controlling American media is absolutely false. CIA Is an organization focused on providing foreign intelligence information to policymakers and protecting the United States from a range of overseas threats.”
‘Compromised by the CIA’? According to Kennedy, the CIA infiltration of media is wide and deep: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and several prominent online news sites, including the Daily Beast, are “under the control of Intelligence Agency operatives,” as he put it in a late April post on X, formerly Twitter.
Penske Media Corporation, which owns Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, is “a kind of front for the CIA,” Kennedy said at the fundraiser in New York.
And “even journals like Smithsonian and National Geographic … appear to be compromised by the CIA,” he said in an interview last year.
To support his claims, Kennedy last month cited writings from former CIA officer Kevin Shipp, a conspiracy theorist who openly supports the QAnon movement and claims “Pearl Harbor was a myth,” as well as author David Talbot, whose 2015 book on the CIA was “animated by conspiracy theories” and “speculations” that “often run far ahead of the evidence,” the San Francisco Chronicle said in its review of the book.
In addition, Kennedy has frequently cited a pair of articles from author Dick Russell.
Though Kennedy hasn’t always mentioned it, those articles were published three years ago by the media arm of his own nonprofit organization, Children’s Health Defense, which promotes vaccine skepticism and often alleges government corruption.
The articles attacked the “mainstream media” and said they “falsely vilify” Kennedy as a “disinformation ‘conspiracy theorist,'” arguing that news outlets could be under “the sway of the intelligence apparatus.”
To try to make that case, the articles offered a rambling dissection of the personal and professional lives of then-Rolling Stone editor Noah Shachtman, former Daily Beast chief John Avlon, and Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal website DailyKos.
Kennedy has claimed the articles exposed their “agency ties,” by reporting that Moulitsas began the process of becoming a CIA officer two decades ago while looking for work, and then chose a different career path. The articles also said that Avlon is “childhood best friends” with a former high-ranking national security official who once worked for an “intelligence agency-linked think tank.” And they said Shachtman, who started covering national security issues long before joining the Daily Beast, was in regular contact with intelligence officials — which is typical of national security reporters.
Moulitsas told ABC News that Russell’s articles are “utter horse crap” and “hilariously wrong.” Avlon, who left the Daily Beast six years ago and is now running for Congress in New York as a Democrat, similarly called the articles “bonkers.”
“I am not, nor have I ever been, a CIA agent or member of the intelligence community,” Avlon said on a podcast last week when asked about Kennedy’s claims, calling the accusations “a sort of cautionary tale about RFK Jr. … because he keeps saying this.”
Shachtman, who stepped down as editor of Rolling Stone earlier this year, did not comment on the record about Kennedy’s claims.
As for Maher and her alleged ongoing work for the CIA, the only alleged sources of such information Kennedy has pointed to are an online column by conservative activist Christopher Rufo and an X post from a writer who claims to be fighting government censorship and “mind control.”
Both suggested that, as the writer’s X post put it, Maher’s resume and CV “scream spy”: She focused on Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in college, she then worked for the World Bank and a host of democracy-promoting foreign policy organizations, she frequently traveled to Arab countries, and — before joining NPR — she helmed the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that maintains Wikipedia.
“That would be a very normal and a very impressive CV” for someone who works in that foreign-focused sphere, Oates said, saying that Kennedy’s CIA accusations are a “leap that a lot of people wouldn’t make.”
When Kennedy reposted Rufo’s column in late April, he said, “I don’t know if she is actual CIA, or just ideologically aligned.” Then, at the fundraiser just three days later, he was unequivocal: “The new head of NPR is a CIA agent,” he said.
“Geez,” a woman in the crowd could be heard saying.
It’s not the first time Maher has been accused of being a CIA agent: In 2016, when Maher joined the Wikimedia Foundation, a Tunisian blogger whom she had met before — and even visited his home — speculated online that her new job could indicate she’s a spy.
“Seriously?” Maher responded. “I’m not any sort of agent. You can dislike me, but please don’t defame me.”
“Operate on evidence,” she implored him.
An NPR spokesperson declined to comment to ABC News.
‘Makes no sense’ According to experts who spoke with ABC News, Kennedy has misleadingly tried to frame an alleged CIA “takeover of the American press” as not only plausible, but permitted by law.
Kennedy — a lawyer who touts his own legal acumen — claims that for decades, a law known as the Smith-Mundt Act “prohibited the CIA from spying on Americans or propagandizing Americans” — but then those laws were removed, “and now the CIA actually can legally not only spy on us but it can propagandize us,” as he put it at the April fundraiser.
The Smith-Mundt Act, however, had nothing to do with spying and didn’t even mention the CIA, which legal experts say is still restricted from spying on Americans and operating inside the United States.
Instead, the Smith-Mundt Act, enacted in the wake of World War II, allowed the State Department to distribute propaganda overseas.
Then in 2013, with the internet making it hard to wall-off information from abroad, Congress and the Obama administration signed off on updates to the Smith-Mundt Act that allowed Americans to access and review the State Department-produced content sent overseas. The revised law specifically said that none of the resources it provided could “be used to influence public opinion in the United States.”
The revised law also made it clear that it applied “only to the Department of State,” not any “other department or agency of the Federal Government.”
“So there was still a prohibition that prevented messages from targeting or being designed for people inside the United States,” said Mac Thornberry, the former Republican congressman from Texas who led the push to update the Smith-Mundt Act and retired in 2021 after more than 25 years in Congress.
Several years ago, when various social media users began alleging, like Kennedy does, that the Smith-Mundt Act’s changes allowed the U.S. government to propagandize Americans, both the Associated Press and the fact-checking Poynter Institute labeled the claims “false.”
“The simple explanation that the [law was updated] just to reflect the existence of the Internet somehow is not what some people want to hear, so they have to come up with other explanations that get pretty far-fetched,” Thornberry said.
“It makes no sense to me,” he said, especially since “there are a number of [other] laws that limit what the CIA can do.”
In its statement to ABC News, the CIA said, “Federal law prohibits the Agency from engaging in domestic propaganda efforts and CIA takes this very seriously.”
‘Operation Mockingbird’ As Kennedy tells it, the CIA has deliberately used American media before to spread propaganda at home.
“[The CIA] had a program called ‘Operation Mockingbird,’ where they had [many] of the leading journalists in our country, and editors … actually working for the CIA and propagandizing Americans,” Kennedy said in an interview last month.
According to Kennedy, it was all “revealed” in the 1970s by a Senate probe of CIA activities, which helped uncover a cache of secret documents known as the “Family Jewels” — as well as by Pulitzer Prize-winner Carl Bernstein, who in 1977 published a lengthy piece in Rolling Stone titled “The CIA And The Media.”
But an ABC News review of Bernstein’s article, publicly-released portions of the “Family Jewels,” and the Senate’s final report found no information to support Kennedy’s claims that journalists were used to deliberately propagandize Americans or that a propaganda-pushing program called “Operation Mockingbird” even existed.
The Senate report and Bernstein’s article were both clear about one thing: The CIA’s use of media personnel in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s didn’t target Americans; it targeted foreigners, who were largely viewed as fair game then.
The world at that time was gripped by the Cold War, and the U.S. government was scrambling to protect America from the growing threat of communism — so the CIA asked employees of U.S. media organizations to help. Some “provided cover for CIA agents abroad,” while about 50 journalists around the world collected intelligence and would “at times attempt to influence foreign opinion through the use of covert propaganda,” concluded the Senate report, which was released in 1976.
“We have taken particular caution to ensure that our operations are focused abroad and not at the United States,” the report quoted former CIA director William Colby as telling investigators during their probe.
Though the Senate report counted about 50 American journalists as CIA “assets,” Bernstein’s article, published a year later on Oct. 20, 1977, alleged a much broader program, saying that more than 400 American journalists “secretly carried out assignments” for the CIA — and many even got paid.
“The Agency’s use of journalists in undercover operations has been most extensive in Western Europe … Latin America and the Far East,” Bernstein wrote.
“The tasks they performed sometimes consisted of little more than serving as ‘eyes and ears’ for the CIA; reporting on what they had seen or overheard in an Eastern European factory [or] at a diplomatic reception in Bonn,” Bernstein wrote. “On other occasions, their assignments were more complex,” such as “plant[ing] false information with officials of foreign governments.”
But, echoing a concern raised by the Senate report, Bernstein also said that some “fallout” — pieces of propaganda distributed overseas inadvertently making their way to Americans — “is inevitable.” Colby later told lawmakers it happened on “a few minor occasions.”
In his 1977 article, Bernstein named several prominent U.S. media organizations, including ABC News and the New York Times, that he said provided cover to CIA operatives or had employees who personally helped the CIA over the previous two decades.
Many media executives, however, disputed parts of Bernstein’s reporting, both before and after it was published.
The senior vice president of ABC News at the time, William Sheehan, told the New York Times in 1977 that “there was no arrangement by this company to provide cover for the C.I.A,” and that “there was no one on our staff” working for the CIA — though the New York Times quoted an unnamed, former ABC correspondent claiming otherwise.
In December 1977, two months after Bernstein’s article, the New York Times reported that during the Cold War the CIA did use American journalists to gather intelligence. But, said the Times, they were not used “to further its worldwide propaganda campaign.”
“[None] of those interviewed … said that the CIA had ever encouraged them to slant their dispatches to suit its purposes or to compromise themselves journalistically in any other way,” the New York Times reported.
Despite all that, Kennedy continues to claim that American journalists aiding the CIA were intentionally manipulating their fellow Americans: “Their job was to propagandize the American people,” Kennedy said last month on an episode of his own podcast titled “CIA Propagandizing Americans.”
That’s “a completely different thing” than what the CIA actually did, Oates said.
“The CIA has been found to have done shady things, including with journalists,” she said. “But he’s using the missteps and some of the scandals that have happened in America to try to build into a propagandistic conspiracy theory.”
‘Just go’ look In the late 1970s, after the CIA’s Cold War-era use of journalists was exposed, the CIA announced a series of restrictions, recognizing that “the use of American journalists and media organizations for clandestine operations is a threat to the integrity of the press.”
As for whether any of that was part of an “Operation Mockingbird,” neither Bernstein’s article nor the Senate report makes any mention of such an operation. Neither do other publicly-available congressional reports or declassified CIA documents.
Portions of the “Family Jewels” that the CIA released in 2007 do reference a “Project Mockingbird,” but they repeatedly and explicitly state it was a short-lived leak investigation that secretly tapped the phones of two journalists in Washington, not a decades-long global program that gained willing cooperation from dozens or even hundreds of journalists.
“Project Mockingbird, a telephone intercept activity, was conducted between 12 March 1963 and 15 June 1963, and targeted two Washington-based newsmen who, at the time, had been publishing [classified materials],” a once-secret document from the 1970s said.
Claims of a much broader “Operation Mockingbird” first emerged more than 40 years ago, and now they are being amplified by a significant candidate for the U.S. presidency.
“All of the propaganda that particularly liberals are hearing is all controlled now by the intelligence agencies,” Kennedy told supporters at the fundraiser in April. “I’m going to be called a conspiracy theorist for saying it, but just go [look].”
ABC News repeatedly asked Kennedy’s campaign to point out any references to an “Operation Mockingbird” in congressional proceedings or government documents, and repeatedly asked for more information regarding the theories espoused by the candidate, but several representatives for Kennedy never responded to multiple messages from ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Trump-era tax on U.S. shareholders of some American-controlled foreign corporations, preserving a major source of government revenue while sidestepping the more controversial question of the constitutionality of the taxation of wealth.
In a 7-2 decision, the court said a 2017 law signed by then-President Donald Trump to generate more than $340 billion is allowed under the 16th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to collect taxes on incomes but not explicitly on property.
A Washington state couple, Charles and Kathleen Moore, sued to strike down the law saying a $15,000 tax bill they paid as shareholders of an Indian company was illegal because they had not personally realized any financial gain.
“Congress has long taxed shareholders of an entity on the entity’s undistributed income, and it did the same with the MRT,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the court’s majority. “This Court has long upheld taxes of that kind, and we do the same today with the MRT.”
The MRT, or Mandatory Repatriation Tax, was a key part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by then-President Donald Trump. It levied a one-time collection on investors’ shares of corporate profits earned overseas, part of a complex plan to encourage greater investment in the U.S.
Conservative groups backing the Moore’s urged the court to clearly disavow the possibility of a taxation on wealth – an idea that has been pushed by some prominent Democratic lawmakers – but Kavanaugh left the door open.
“We do not decide that question today,” Kavanaugh wrote.
In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch argued that the MRT is not constitutional because it does not tax income “realized” by the taxpayer.
“The text and history of the [16th] Amendment make clear that it requires a distinction between “income” and the “source” from which that income is “derived.” And, the only way to draw such a distinction is with a realization requirement,” Thomas wrote. “Because the Moores never actually received any of their investment gains, those unrealized gains could not be taxed as “income” under the Sixteenth Amendment.”
President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in the final presidential debate at Belmont University, October 22, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is getting ready for next week’s highly anticipated debate with President Joe Biden by holding policy meetings with advisers and congressional allies and favoring town hall events over mock debates, according to sources familiar with his preparations.
Ahead of the June 27 standoff in Atlanta, hosted by CNN, Trump is not making conventional preparations — where someone would be assigned to play Biden in a mock debate, people familiar with Trump’s plans tell ABC News.
Also, sources say he won’t plan to memorize a series of debate responses. Instead, the campaign has been setting up sessions with policy experts on individual topics they think could come up at the debate next Thursday, such as the economy, immigration and democracy, according to people familiar the plans.
When the former president was in town last week for a visit with congressional Republicans, he met with Sens. Marco Rubio and Eric Schmitt, for a debate discussion session, along with a group of his advisers, according to sources with knowledge of the meetings.
It’s an example of how Trump has held informal debate-focused sessions with a series of experts, fitting them in between campaign stops and fundraisers.
Many of these sessions have been with people who were part of his previous administration, including his former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and former top adviser Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, who served as acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when Trump was president, according to sources familiar with the meetings.
The debate, being moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will run for approximately 90 minutes with two commercial breaks. It is the first of two debates scheduled between the candidates — the second of which will be hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10.
In an election year, both candidates are looking to the debate as a way to attract undecided voters in what is expected to be a very tight race.
Trump has also recently spoken with some of the people on his shortlist to become his vice president as he prepares to make a decision about who will be his running mate, sources tell ABC News. His vice presidential pick would go up against Vice President Kamala Harris during a debate this summer.
Trump met with Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. Vance, speculated to be a top contender to be Trump’s vice president pick, discussed the economy with Trump as part of the former president’s debate prep, according to a source.
Vance has been an active surrogate for Trump over the past few months, appearing at campaign events with him and hosting fundraisers to help raise money for Trump’s White House bid.
Vance has maintained his commitment to helping Trump’s campaign. In May, he told Donald Trump Jr. on his podcast “Triggered with Don Jr.” that he wanted to help the former president however he could.
Trump has previously departed from traditional debate preparations, which advisers have said speak to his strengths in giving off-the-cuff remarks.
More recently, the campaign has also held more events where Trump is able to take questions from audience members. Although the questions have mainly been from his staunch supporters, the town hall forums have allowed the former president to be put on the spot ahead of the debate.
“President Trump talks with voters in town halls, speaks to thousands at rallies, and frequently takes questions from the press,” which have prepared him for the upcoming debate, senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement to ABC News.
Hughes added that “Biden needs rehearsals with handlers to find some way to explain this mess he’s made of our nation.”
“President Trump is always prepared to present to Americans his record of success and Biden’s weakness and failures,” Hughes said.
As Biden heads off to Camp David for his debate preparations, Trump will spend the weekend campaigning in Philadelphia and attending a series of fundraisers leading up to next week.
The Trump campaign pushed for earlier debates this election cycle, remaining confident Trump could garner more supporters if voters could see the two men debate and compare their presidential records.
Following Trump and Biden’s agreement to participate in debates in June and September, the Trump campaign has put public pressure on the Biden campaign to agree to more debates.
“We propose a debate in June, a debate in July, a debate in August, and a debate in September, in addition to the Vice Presidential debate. Additional dates will allow voters to have maximum exposure to the records and future visions of each candidate,” Trump advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a memo sent out in May.
Debates have been an opportunity for Trump to reach a wider audience. His first debate with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in September 2016 garnered 84 million viewers, making it the most-watched presidential debate in modern American history.
