(COLUMBIA, S.C.) — Homeland Security Investigations has seen a 300% increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion, according to the head of the center that investigates cybercrimes at the Department of Homeland Security.
“We have seen an 86% drop in domestic victims of financial sextortion since that time, unfortunately, what we’ve seen is almost 300% increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion,” Mike Prado the head of HSI’s Cyber Crime Center told ABC News.
Sextortion is when a victim sends explicit material to a scammer and then is threatened with public posting unless they pay the scammer money.
The HSI Cyber Crimes Center focuses on all things cyber – but they primarily focus on online child sexual exploitation, according to Prado.
“The threat that we talk about has evolved so rapidly from even a few years ago that we’re deploying new tools, new techniques, new proactive measures and new preemptive strategies to try to combat the continued prevalence of online child sexual exploitation and abuse,” Prado said.
The two most prevalent areas that sextortion scams take place is in the Ivory Coast and in Nigeria, according to Prado. Homeland Security Investigations has an agent detailed to the Ivory Coast to work with local authorities due to the non-extradition rules they have.
Prado added the scams are not sexual in nature, but just look to get money from victims.
Working to end child sexual abuse
Criminals who want to abuse children are attempting to get children off social media platforms and onto encrypted apps, outside the eyes of law enforcement, according to Prado.
“Everywhere children are congregating online, predators are aware of that and then taking them off platform into other more encrypted chat rooms and areas where they can have encrypted conversations outside the eyes of law enforcement and outside the lot, outside the eyes of the tech industry and abusing these abusing these children,” he said.
Predators, he said, “stop at nothing” to abuse a child.
There has also been an unpick in the use of artificial intelligence to create images using children who haven’t been the victim of abuse.
“It is probably the most concerning emergent threat that is now a reality that our agents are dealing with on a daily basis out in the field, and that our agents at the cyber-crime center are dealing with on a daily basis,” he said. “This generative AI problem is going to exponentially grow the number of images that our agents are having to sift through to determine if a child has actually been directly abused or indirectly abused through the use of generative AI.”
To stop online predators, HSI deploys agents in 200 field offices around the country, and 93 foreign offices in 73 counties.
“These cases are tremendously important to us,” he said.” I want to continue to make it a priority that these cases be worked as expeditiously as possible.”
(WASHINGTON) — Less than two hours after President Joe Biden last week announced his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, the Republican National Committee released a two-minute campaign ad blasting Vice President Kamala Harris as “dangerously liberal” and claiming she “was liberal on illegal immigration before she ever reached the White House.”
The ad highlighted the 2008 story of a San Francisco woman who was attacked by a man who was in the country illegally and had been arrested months earlier on drug charges — but was released as part of a new program that had been launched by Harris, then the city’s district attorney.
Now, as Harris tries to frame her campaign against former President Donald Trump as a choice between a tough prosecutor and a convicted felon, the victim of the 2008 assault, Amanda Kiefer, is calling that message from Harris “laughable.”
“When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” Keifer, now 45, told ABC News, speaking about her experience publicly for the first time in 15 years.
According to the RNC ad, Harris “allowed illegal immigrant drug dealers to enter job training” instead of entering prison.
The program, called Back on Track, was billed as a “smart on crime” initiative that could reduce rates of recidivism by empowering lower-level nonviolent offenders to redirect their lives away from crime. Offenders who received job training and completed the program had their records expunged.
A spokesperson for Harris declined to comment on the record for this story.
‘Most Americans would disapprove’
In July 2008, when Kiefer was 29, she was walking with a group of friends in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco when 20-year-old Alexander Izaguirre stole her purse and jumped into a waiting SUV. The driver of the vehicle then attempted to run Kiefer down, leaving her with a fractured skull.
“If people who committed crimes were allowed to stay out of prison to train for jobs they couldn’t legally hold, I think most Americans would disapprove of that,” Kiefer told ABC News.
Harris seemed to agree with that even 15 years ago, telling the Los Angeles Times then that “the whole point of the program [was] … to obtain and hold down lawful employment” — and that someone in the country illegally “probably would not be able to do that, so it would go against the very spirit of the program.”
“I believe we fixed it,” Harris said of the loophole at the time. “So moving forward, it is about making sure that no one enters Back on Track if they cannot hold legal employment.”
In total, fewer than a dozen undocumented immigrants gained entry into the program, which reportedly became a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country.
Even so, Trump and his supporters are now seeking to reintroduce Kiefer’s story to counter the vice president’s tough-on-crime posture and to feed into the false narrative that undocumented immigrants have contributed to a spike in crime nationwide, which is contradicted by statistics showing that U.S.-born citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes than people who are in the country illegally.
Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
It’s not the first time Harris has faced those accusations. During his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, Trump used Kiefer’s story to attack Harris and what he alleged was her support for “deadly sanctuary cities.”
“As district attorney in San Francisco, Kamala put a drug-dealing illegal alien into a jobs program instead of into prison. Four months later, the illegal alien robbed a 29-year-old woman, mowed her down with an SUV, fracturing her skull and ruining her life,” Trump said at an August 2020 campaign stop in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. “We believe our country should be a sanctuary for law abiding Americans, not for criminal aliens.”
A ‘red pill moment’
Since becoming the Democratic party’s de-facto nominee, Harris has shied away from discussing the Southwest border, which under the Biden administration saw unprecedented levels of migrant crossings before the numbers began to drop in April.
According to Customs and Border Protection, its agents and officers have encountered more than 8.4 million migrants along the Southwest border since the Biden administration took office — more than four times the amount during the Trump administration. Under Biden, an additional 2 million or so border-crossers were reportedly detected but never captured.
But apprehension rates have dropped significantly in the past two months after the Biden administration announced new asylum restrictions. Government statistics released last week show that migrant encounters along the Southwest border fell by 55% since the restrictions took effect, with June seeing the lowest number of border encounters of any month in the last three years.
Harris, for her part, has continued to press for progressive solutions to both criminal justice and immigration enforcement.
As for Kiefer, the violent assault she suffered was what she called her “red pill moment” — a reference to a pill in the movie “The Matrix” that grants users the ability to see harsh realities.
A self-professed liberal at the time, Kiefer says she now supports the policies of Trump. Government records show she has supported other conservative efforts in recent years, donating small-dollar amounts to Republican causes 17 times since 2020.
Trump earlier this year touted his role in pushing key Republicans to defeat a bipartisan Senate bill that its supporters say would have helped beef up border security and immigration enforcement. Trump described the bill as a political play by Democrats.
Before Izaguirre’s sentencing in 2010, Harris reportedly lent her “full encouragement and support” to his deportation. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records, Izaguirre was deported to Honduras in 2011.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris wrapped up what has been a whirlwind week in the presidential race with her campaign saying Sunday it has raised more than $200 million in less than a week.
Here’s how the news is developing:
On Thursday night, Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and took the lead in addressing the public about their discussions.
Harris has secured commitments from enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee if they all honor their commitment when voting, according to ABC News reporting.
5:28 PM EDT Gov. Andy Beshear rallies for Harris in Atlanta, calls out JD Vance
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear spoke on Sunday at the opening of Kamala Harris’ campaign office in Forsyth County, Georgia.
The possible VP pick for Harris has been an effective surrogate for the vice president’s White House bid over the weekend, coming to the metro Atlanta event fresh off of a stump in Iowa on Saturday night.
The red-state governor introduced himself to the Southern audience on Sunday while boosting Harris’ candidacy and taking a number of swipes at Trump’s Vice Presidential pick, JD Vance.
“Are you ready to beat Donald Trump? Are you ready to beat JD Vance? Are you ready to elect Kamala Harris president of the United States of America?” Beshear asked the crowd, adding, “Let’s win this race,”
“Let me tell you just a bit about myself,” Beshear said. “I’m a proud pro-union governor. I’m a proud pro-choice governor. I am a proud pro-public education governor. I am a proud pro-diversity governor and I’m a proud Harris for president governor,” he added.
Calling out Vance, Beshear said, “Just let me be clear. JD Vance ain’t from Kentucky. He ain’t from Appalachia. And he ain’t gonna be the vice president of the United States.”
-ABC News’ Isabella Murray
2:18 PM EDT Former Vice President Al Gore endorses Kamala Harris
Former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday.
“As a prosecutor, [Kamala Harris] took on Big Oil companies — and won. As [VP], she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the most significant investment in climate solutions in history, the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s the kind of climate champion we need in the White House,” he wrote on X.
“With so much at stake in this year’s election — from strengthening democracy in the US and abroad, to expanding opportunity for the American people, to accelerating climate action — I’m proud to endorse Kamala Harris for President,” he added.
-ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
July 28, 2024, 10:42 AM EDT Vance says Trump ‘doesn’t care’ about his past criticism
During a quick stop at a diner in Minnesota on Sunday morning, Sen. JD Vance on Sunday spoke about his past criticisms of former President Donald Trump.
When asked by ABC News if he and Trump have talked about his past criticism of the former president, Vance said yes, adding that Trump “doesn’t care about what I said eight years ago.”
“I mean, look, President Trump and I have talked a lot about this,” Vance said. “In fact, I sometimes joke that I wish that he had the memory of Joe Biden, because he’s got a memory like a steel trap, and he certainly remembers criticisms that people have made.”
“But this is where the media, I think, really misses Trump — Donald Trump accepts that people can change their mind, and you ask, ‘Why did I change my mind on Donald Trump?’ Because his agenda made people’s lives better,” Vance said.
“This whole thing is not about red team versus blue team or winning an election for its own sake. It’s about getting a chance to govern so that you can bring down the cost of groceries, close that border and stop the fentanyl coming across our country for four years,” Vance continued, saying he was “wrong” about Trump.
“He did a better job of that than anybody that I’ve ever seen as president in my lifetime. So I changed my mind, because he did a good job. And that’s what you do when people do a good job and you’re wrong. I’ve talked to President Trump a lot about it, but look, he, I mean, he just, he doesn’t… He doesn’t care about what I said eight years ago. He cares about whether we together [and] can govern the country successful.”
When asked again if the two have talked about the subject, specifically in the last week since his comments have resurfaced, Vance admitted that they haven’t spoken about it and their conversations have focused on the race ahead.
-ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh, Soorin Kim and Hannah Demissie
(WASHINGTON) — New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said Sunday that Republicans should focus on criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ policy record rather than engaging in personal attacks against her in the race for the White House.
On the campaign trail this past week, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, attacked Harris repeatedly, calling her “a lunatic” and a “threat to democracy” who “would be the most radical, far left extremist to ever occupy the White House.”
Sununu, who said in a previous interview that Republicans should “stick to the issues, stick with unity, stick with positivity” during this campaign, told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that Trump is “missing” an opportunity, but he is still hopeful the campaign “can get back on track.”
“I think he was on track for a couple months there. I think that the change in the campaign has kind of fired him up to go against — against a person — personally,” Sununu said. “You have to stop the personal attacks. We have too much that we can win on when it comes to issues and policies.”
“The border issue, the inflation issue. These are some very real issues,” he said. “It isn’t just going to be about, well, we need to vote for Vice President Harris because she’s a woman, or we need to vote for her because it’s just a change and it’s not Donald Trump.”
With just 100 days until the election, Republicans have been scrambling to form and coordinate an attack strategy against the vice president. Harris has seen a swell of support in the week since President Joe Biden announced he was stepping down from the 2024 race and endorsed Harris. The vice president has racked up major party endorsements and raked in $200 million for her campaign as of Sunday morning, according to her campaign.
While some Republican leaders have focused on criticisms of her record from her time as a senator and California attorney general, others have opted to hurl attacks based on Harris’ race and gender.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., referred to Harris as a “DEI vice president” in a post on X, while Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., in an interview called her “a DEI hire.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in an apparent attempt to rein in such attacks, urged fellow Republicans to stick to policies instead.
“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” Johnson told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Republicans last week, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
Sununu echoed the speaker on Sunday, telling Raddatz that criticisms like that are “not helpful at all.”
“Sticking to the issues is too good of an opportunity for Republicans, both nationally and statewide,” he said. “People want a change. They want some sort of disruption. They’re tired of the — of the elitism, the wokeism and elitism and the liberalism coming out of the — the country.”
As Harris aims to announce her running mate by Aug. 7, resurfaced comments from Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, prompted backlash this week.
“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats via, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies,” said Vance — who specifically named Harris, despite her having two stepchildren — in a 2021 Fox News interview. “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
Vance went on the “Megyn Kelly Show” podcast on Friday to defend his past remarks, arguing that the Democratic Party is “anti-family” and that his criticism was not directed at those who don’t have kids. “The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” Vance told Kelly.
“I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child,” he added. Vance’s original comments from 2021 mentioned the “choices” those Democrats had made that led them to be “miserable” and “childless cat ladies.”
Raddatz asked Sununu on Sunday whether he had any concerns about Vance as Donald Trump’s VP pick.
“No, I don’t have any concerns over JD directly,” he said.
“I don’t think those comments were helpful,” Sununu said, referring to Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark. “Again, stick to issues.”
Sununu added that he is worried such personal attacks might alienate part of the independent voter block that Republicans are looking to attract.
“He’s a younger guy. I think this is all very, very new to him. I mean, he’s only been in Washington 18 months. He’s an outsider himself,” Sununu said. “I think he’s surrounding himself, obviously, with a lot of the folks in the campaign that kind of feel an energy off of those personal attacks. But that ain’t what’s going to drive the vote.”
(WASHINGTON) — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, D, brushed off concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris’ short-lived 2020 campaign as she ramps up her presidential campaign this year.
“This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz pressed Moore on if anything “gives you pause” after Harris’ 2020 campaign ended before any primary votes were cast.
“I also know it was pretty long ago,” Moore said. “Since then, we’ve had an entire administration that people have had a chance to see her work. Throughout that time, we’ve had an entire period where people can see where we have historically low unemployment rates throughout our country. I think people are now seeing what a Harris leadership can look like and what it can bring to the future of the country.”
Moore also swatted away Republican attacks on Harris, many of which have focused on stances she took during her 2020 run.
Among the policies she adopted during that campaign included ending the filibuster to adopt a “Green New Deal,” starting from “scratch” on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and making it a civil offense rather than a criminal one to cross the border illegally.
“I think she needs to continue putting together her vision for the future,” Moore said. “First of all, it’s remarkably disingenuous to call someone who was a prosecutor for her entire career, someone who is soft on crime or someone who believes in ‘defund the police,’ she’s never believed in defund the police.”
Early signs indicate an improvement in the way Americans view Harris. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday showed her approval rating jumping from 35% to 43% in a week.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, D, also expressed optimism on Sunday that Harris’ campaign could resonate with voters even after Harris’ lackluster 2020 bid.
“Look, the electorate is energized. Democrats are ready to go, you’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people signing up to volunteer, plus our candidate is the Energizer Bunny. She’s been everywhere all the time over the last several days. And we’re excited about that, to get to see her in the battleground states and all over the country, and her message is one that I think resonates with people,” Pritzker told “This Week.”
Raddatz also pressed Pritzker on immigration — the root causes of which Harris was tasked with handling and which Republicans are hammering her on, though Pritzker largely laid the blame on former President Donald Trump for walking away from a bipartisan agreement to clamp down on the border.
“An enormous problem,” Pritzker said. “Guess what, Republicans were willing to work with Democrats to get something done. And who knows who blew that up, who blew up the opportunity for border security? It was Donald Trump.”
Pritzker, who has been discussed as a possible running mate for Harris, declined to say if he’s been asked for vetting materials. “Well certainly I’ve talked to Kamala Harris last week, of course as things were evolving, had a great conversation with her and I pledged her that no matter what the outcome of this process, that I’d be working hard for her and making sure that she wins in November,” he said.
And while he is competing against several other contenders from battleground states, he said the focus should be on someone who can deliver a cogent message.
“Winning those battleground states is most important. There’s no doubt,” he said. “But I think we’ve seen over the last, well, decades, that who you pick as your vice president doesn’t determine whether you’re going to win a state or not. What it does determine is whether you’ve got the message right across the board.”
Harris’ ascendance to her status as the likeliest nominee for Democrats comes after Democrats persuaded Biden that he no longer had a path to defeating Trump after last month’s debate and that he should drop out.
Moore was a public ally of Biden’s but said Sunday there were “real concerns.”
“I had private conversations with the president, and I’m a big believer that when you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. And I had private conversations where I was telling the president the truth. I also know that the president deserved better than people [who] were running around and going into public and demanding that the president of the United States step down,” he said.
“I think the truth is that there were real concerns. There are real concerns that I know that people had felt, but also that people were telling me that they had felt,” he added. “I’m a loyalty person. And I believe that you can have proper conversations and tell people the truth and be able to tell them what you’re hearing without also then turning around and publicly then trying to embarrass them.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris is enjoying a bounce in her favorability rating among Americans just days after President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race and endorsed her, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday.
The vice president’s favorability rating has jumped to 43%, with an unfavorability rating of 42%, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll released a week ago, Harris’ favorability rating was 35%, while 46% viewed her unfavorability.
Following Biden’s July 20 announcement that he would end his reelection campaign, most major Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, endorsed Harris’ run and she hit the campaign trail.
The vice president, who has secured commitments from enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee if they all honor their commitments when voting, according to ABC News reporting, saw a major jump in her favorability rating among the politically crucial group, independents.
Forty-four percent of independents have a favorable view of Harris, up from only 28% a week ago. Her unfavorability rating among independents is now 40%, which is a slight drop from 47% last week.
There have been no discussions of another Democrat challenging Harris for the nomination and a slight majority of Americans, 52%, say she should be the Democratic nominee, the poll found. This number jumps to 86% among Democrats, compared to 51% of independents and only 20% of Republicans.
Harris has an edge over former President Donald Trump when it comes to how much enthusiasm Americans feel for them as nominees. Forty-eight percent of Americans say they would feel enthusiastic if Harris becomes the Democratic nominee. Fewer, 39%, say they are enthusiastic about Trump being the Republican nominee.
Enthusiasm for Harris as the Democratic nominee peaks among Democrats (88%) and Black Americans (70%). Forty-nine percent of independents express enthusiasm for Harris, whereas only 31% of independents are enthusiastic about Trump.
Trump’s favorability rating dropped slightly from 40%, measured in the week following the attempted assassination and the Republican National Convention, to 36% in the most recent poll.
Trump’s favorability rating among independents also saw a drop in the last week. Twenty-seven percent of independents have a favorable of Trump, which is down from 35% last week.
Political professionals have also been paying a significant amount of attention to a potential swing group of “double haters,” those Americans who have unfavorable views of both Biden and Trump.
In the ABC News/Ipsos poll last week, 15% of Americans held unfavorable views of both Trump and Biden.
Driven largely by an increase in Harris’ favorability, the proportion of Americans who dislike both nominees, Harris and Trump, now has been cut in half to 7%.
Turnout will be crucial in the Fall contest for the presidency and, compared to an ABC News/Washington Post Poll conducted in early July, there has been an increase in the proportion of Democrats saying they are absolutely certain to vote – going from 70% to 76%. This is now about equal to the 78% of Republicans who say they are certain to vote in the November contest.
Trump repeatedly bashed Harris and Democrats on the campaign trail this week and refused to stay committed to the second presidential debate, which would be hosted by ABC News, in September. He also lashed out against Biden for ending his campaign.
Biden vowed to focus on the final months of his presidency as he “passed the torch” to Harris during a speech to the nation Wednesday night. The president’s poor debate performance and declining polling numbers pushed many Democrats to call on Biden to end his race.
Following his sudden announcement of exiting the presidential race, Biden’s favorability though still low, has improved to 37%, a five percentage point increase from the prior week, with an unfavorability rating of 50%, a five percentage point decline from last week, the poll found.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance saw no change in his favorability rating in the last week, but the proportion of Americans viewing him unfavorably has increased.
The Ohio senator’s favorability rating is 24%, similar to his 23% rating in last week’s poll. But the proportion viewing him unfavorably has increased from 31% last week to 39% now, according to the poll.
When it comes to potential Democratic vice presidential candidates, the majority of Americans had no opinion or not enough knowledge to make one when it came to several names who have been floated in the last week, including Arizona Sen. Mark Kelley, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the poll found.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® July 26-27, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,200 U.S. adults with oversamples of Black and Hispanic respondents weighted to their correct proportions in the general population. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.0 points, including the design effect, for the full sample. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls. Partisan divisions are 31-29-29 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News’ Dan Merkle and Ken Goldstein contributed to this report.
(BEAVER COUNTY, Pennsylvania) — The local SWAT team assigned to help protect former President Donald Trump on July 13 had not had any contact with the Secret Service agents in charge of security before a would-be assassin opened fire, those officers told ABC News.
It was a critical part of the planning and communications failures that ended with a gunman killing one man, critically injuring two more and wounding Trump as he delivered a speech just days before accepting the Republican presidential nomination.
“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” said Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the SWAT team in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
“So I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” Woods said. “We had no communication.”
In their first public comments since the assassination attempt, the SWAT team on the ground that day and their supervisors spoke exclusively with ABC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Aaron Katersky. It is the first time any key law enforcement personnel on-site July 13 have offered first-hand accounts of what occurred.
They explained that they did what they could to try to thwart the attack but now have to live with the failure.
The episode last week led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. And, in the wake of the assassination attempt, a series of law-enforcement, internal and congressional probes have been announced – with communications and coordination a key focus of investigators’ attention.
The Secret Service, whose on-site team was supplemented as usual by local, county and state law-enforcement agencies, was ultimately responsible for security at the event.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi declined to respond directly to the comments from Woods and his colleagues. He said the agency “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again. That includes complete cooperation with Congress, the FBI and other relevant investigations.”
Woods told ABC News he would have expected to have seen more coordination with the Secret Service and to have had greater communication between their team on the ground that day and the agents with Trump’s detail. The first communication between their group and the Secret Service agents on the scene that day, he said, was “not until after the shooting. By then, he said, “it was too late.”
Woods and the rest of the Beaver County sniper team were in position by mid-morning July 13, hours before Trump was set to take the stage at the Butler Farm Show grounds, outside Pittsburgh. The site is studded by a complex of warehouses, some clustered just outside the position where metal detectors were set up that day.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, sparked suspicion among the Beaver County SWAT team but was still able to evade law enforcement and take position on the roof of the very building where county snipers had been posted. Though their sniper had taken pictures of Crooks and had called into Command about the suspicious presence — within an hour Crooks opened fire on the former president less than 200 yards from the stage.
Beaver County Chief Detective Patrick Young, who runs the Emergency Services Unit and SWAT team, said collaboration is key when lives are on the line.
“I believe our team did everything humanly possible that day,” Young said. “We talk a lot on SWAT that we as individuals mean nothing until we come together as a team.”
Watch: ABC News’ exclusive first interview with the local SWAT team on the ground during Trump’s assassination attempt, airs in its entirety on “Good Morning America” on Monday, July 29, at 7 a.m. ET.
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats succeeded in pressuring President Joe Biden to end his presidential campaign. Now, they’re debating how best to utilize him to help Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House.
Some want to see him out on the stump, both with Harris and by himself, as well as in ads and high-profile White House addresses. Others want to see him focus on governing, arguing that being the best president he can be is the greatest way to help after flubbing the race’s highest-profile moment in last month’s debate led to his electoral downfall.
The decision marks just one of several unprecedented factors for Democrats as they look to reinforce Harris’ budding campaign, balancing establishing her as a candidate in her own right with her role as the No. 2 to an unpopular president who the party still credits with delivering a muscular record and making a “selfless” decision.
“That is a delicate balance, because this administration is far from over, and she’s a part of that administration,” said former Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., an ally of both Biden and Harris.
“She has got to step out and be her own person at this point and do it in a way that’s sensitive to anything ongoing in the administration, but also with an eye toward not just the election, but her own administration,” he added.
Some Democrats told ABC News the best way to do that is to blitz the campaign trail herself and leave Biden in the Oval Office.
Biden has at times shined on the stump, though he has consistently struggled in public, including at June’s debate but also in media interviews and news conferences. Making that gamble again as Harris looks to get her candidacy off the ground with just about 100 days to Election Day isn’t worth it, those Democrats argued.
“I don’t think you need him out there making appearances,” said one informal adviser to the campaign. “The reason he’s not running is because he doesn’t have the gas in the tank to do it.”
Other Democrats weren’t as blunt, but they did say that some physical distance between Biden and Harris during the campaign could offer the vice president a reprieve from poll numbers that had shown most voters trust Biden less than former President Donald Trump on key policy issues.
One source familiar with the Harris campaign’s thinking said Biden would “probably” be better off in situations where he wouldn’t be speaking live.
“I think it’s important that she demonstrate that she has her own unique vision and agenda,” the person said, though they added that, “I do think that there are ways that [Biden] could be used,” including in ads.
One of those ways could be making progress on his own initiatives while in office — and show that Harris is at his side.
“It’s almost not on the campaign trail, but in the White House. What are they doing to showcase her, to give her leadership opportunities, to take full advantage of communicating to the country that she is, in fact, the vice president of the United States?” said Democratic donor and Harris supporter Steve Phillips.
“There’s a power in cultivating and conveying images regarding the transfer of leadership within the Oval Office, within the White House, within this iconic building in our country.”
Other Democrats said Harris’ campaign should be less restrictive with how Biden is used and rejected the idea that there needs to be distance placed between the two of them.
Core administration policies, like raising taxes on the wealthy and protecting abortion rights, remain popular with voters. And several Democrats who spoke to ABC News said that they expect opinions of Biden will improve after dropping out of the race.
“I wonder now that he has passed the torch, does that make people view him more favorably and just recognize how powerful it is what he did,” said one Democratic strategist close to Harris’ team. “It may mean that people actually have better appreciation for what he’s accomplished, what they’ve accomplished. And certainly, I think he is a great validator for the Biden-Harris record.”
Rather than stay off the stump, some Democrats argued, Biden should instead hit the campaign trail as much as he likes.
His stops would likely generate massive media coverage, and he could offer a defense of his record — and Harris’ part in it — while letting his vice president focus on the future of her own administration.
“When the president shows up in a community he dominates the media. So, the president can probably keep as much of a travel schedule as they feel comfortable,” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director in the Biden administration. “He can tell the story of the Biden-Harris administration as well as anyone, and she can tell the story of what the Harris administration will do.”
Those rallies could be held by himself or jointly with Harris — “there’s no reason for the vice president to shy away from him,” Simmons said.
Logistically, Biden would likely be deployed in ways that could maximize his strengths and allow Harris to expand her voter base.
Democrats boasted that he could appeal to working-class voters, seniors and independents — all demographics he performed well with in 2020 who would need to be kept in the fold as Harris regains ground with younger voters and voters of color who were drifting away from Biden.
“He can help in the Midwest, some of the blue-collar workers, some of the places where he’s got a unique relationship to those voters with the ‘Scranton Joe’ kind of thing. And older voters love him,” said the strategist with ties to Harris’ team.
Biden also retains goodwill “among a lot of independents and even moderate Republicans who may have questioned his age but not his ability and his sincerity,” Jones argued.
For his part, Biden has indicated he’s ready to campaign for Harris. And while the campaign did not specify how he’ll be deployed, spokesperson Lauren Hitt told ABC News in a statement the president will be “an effective advocate for the Vice President on the campaign trail.”
“My expectation is that he will play whatever role the vice president asks him,” said Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor and Biden administration official.
“Everything and anything, any and all, repeat and rinse,” Landrieu added when asked exactly what that looks like. “The president’s going to be in it to win it for her.”
(WASHINGTON) — Since getting thrust into the race for president after President Joe Biden announced on Sunday he would step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris and her team have been racing to define her to the American people as their attention turns to the newly energized campaign before Donald Trump could beat her to the punch.
In a shift, the vice president, who has served as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, is leaning heavily into that part of her resume — which was largely a liability during her 2020 bid for the presidency, a campaign she abandoned before the first voters were cast in that primary.
“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris told staffers at her campaign headquarters Monday in what was officially her first campaign event since getting in the race. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she added. “And in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his.”
It’s a framing of prosecutor vs. convict that Harris and her team have pushed aggressively in early days of her nascent campaign
On Thursday, Harris attacked Trump over his legal woes in the first ad of her campaign. In it Harris said her vision of the future includes an America “where no one is above the law” as the former president’s mugshot and newspaper headlines following his conviction on 34 counts in New York flashed on screen.
“Their campaign says, ‘I’m the prosecutor and he is the convicted felon,” Trump said at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, his first since Biden dropped out. “That’s their campaign. I don’t think people are gonna buy it.”
Harris has also worked to define the race as being between someone who is fighting to protect Americans’ freedoms and Donald Trump, who she argues will strip them of their freedom.
“In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” Harris asked in that first ad titled “We Choose Freedom” and that features Beyonce’s “Freedom,” which the vice president walks out to at rallies.
“There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos. Of fear. Of hate,” she adds over images of Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. “But us? We choose something different; we choose freedom.”
Speaking at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston Thursday, Harris said, “In this moment, across our nation, we witness a full-on attack on hard-won, hard-fought freedoms.”
Harris, said that those freedoms include the right to an abortion, pointing to the Supreme Court’s overuling of Roe v. Wade, for which she blames Trump, and vowing to fight to restore them.
“When I am president of the United States and when Congress passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into law. We are not playing around,” she said at the historically Black Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.’s Grand Boulé in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
But the Trump campaign is trying to define Harris in ways they think could hurt her prospects and that they hope the American people will buy.
Sources told ABC News that Trump’s attacks will largely focus on Harris’ role leading the administration’s effort on the migrant crisis and use it to make the case that the administration failed to secure the border.
Prior to Biden stepping down, Trump began ramping up personal attacks against the vice president, going after her laugh by nicknaming her “Laffin’ Kamala” and dubbing her “nuts.”
“You can tell a lot by a laugh,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan on Saturday. “I call her Laffin’ Kamala. You ever watch her laugh?… She’s crazy. She’s nuts.”
At the North Carolina rally he unleashed a barrage of false claims, referring to her as “Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” as a “radical-left lunatic” and a liar before suggesting that she is okay with the “execution” of a baby.
“She wants abortions in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy, that’s fine with her right up until birth. And even after birth, the execution of a baby because that’s not abortion. That’s the execution of a baby,” Trump falsely claimed before touting the U.S. Supreme Court decision that sent the issue back to the states.
In the early days of his administration, Biden tasked Harris with leading his administration’s efforts to address the root causes of migration, primarily tackling economic and social issues in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the face of migrant surges at the border, Republicans have placed blame on Harris, who they disparagingly, inaccurately nickname the “border czar.”
“Kamala Harris was appointed border czar, as you know, in March of 2021 and since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country and countless Americans have been killed by migrant crime because of her,” Trump said during a press call Tuesday.
The Harris campaign responded to these attacks by pointing the finger at Trump for his opposition to a bipartisan deal to secure the border and address immigration.
“The only ‘plan’ Donald Trump has to secure our border is ripping mothers from their children aand a few xenophobic placards at the Republican National Convention. He tanked the bipartisan border security deal because, for Donald Trump, this has never been about solutions just running on a problem,” Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
“Like everything with Donald Trump, it’s never been about helping the country, it’s only about helping himself,” Munoz added. “There’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for bipartisan solutions to strengthen border security, and that’s Vice President Harris.”
Trump allies, in a sign they are struggling to define Harris, have also resorted to describing the presumptive nominee as someone who is unqualified and chosen because of her race and gender, with some calling her a so-called “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) candidate.
Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is now a supporter of Trump, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that these attacks are “not helpful.”
Harris has seized being thrust into the spotlight with her newly minted campaign, positioning herself as leader during moments she would otherwise have to wait for Biden’s lead.
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–separately from Biden’s own meeting—Harris came before the cameras to outline her view on the war in Gaza, which had become a political headache for the president in recent months. (Biden, himself, did not speak with reporters after his meeting.)
Biden has been plagued domestically over criticism of his response to the war and for not being more forceful against Netanyahu as scores of civilians get killed in Gaza, and for continuing to supply Israel with weapons.
And although her policy stances on the war largely don’t stray far from Biden’s, Harris on Thursday notably signaled a future shift.
“We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering,” Harris said. “And I will not be silent.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance went on the “Megyn Kelly Show” podcast Friday to defend his past remarks where he questioned Democratic leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for not having biological children, referring to them as “childless cat ladies.”
Vance made the comments in 2021, but they have recently resurfaced after former first lady Hillary Clinton shared a clip of the comments on X earlier this week — a little more than a week after Trump picked Vance as his running mate. Harris — who was among those Vance attacked — has secured commitments from enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee if they all honor their commitment when voting, according to ABC News reporting.
“We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Vance said in the 2021 Fox News interview.
The main argument Vance made during his Friday interview with Kelly is that the Democratic Party is “anti-family” and that his criticism was not directed at those who don’t have kids.
“The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” Vance told Kelly.
“I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child,” he added.
Vance’s original comments form 2021 mentioned the “choices” those Democrats had made that led them to be “miserable” and “childless cat ladies.”
While Vance claims Democrats are “anti-family and anti-child,” President Joe Biden and Harris have advocated for the child tax credit. The expanded child tax credit put in place during COVID expired in 2021 after pressure from Republicans and independent Joe Manchin. Democrats continue to fight to bring it back — with Biden calling for it to be put back in place in his FY2025 budget.
Vance said in the interview that he hopes parents realize he’s fighting for them.
“I’m proud to stand up for parents, and I hope the parents out there recognize that I’m a guy who wants to fight for you. I want to fight for your interests. I want to fight for your stake in the country. And that is what this is fundamentally about,” Vance said.
But Vance’s past comments have received massive backlash.
Kerstin Emhoff, mother to Cole and Ella Emhoff and the ex-wife of second gentleman Doug Emhoff, called Vance’s “cat lady” comments “baseless attacks.”
“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it,” Kerstin Emhoff said.
Ella Emhoff, the daughter of second gentleman Doug Emhoff and Harris’ stepdaughter, posted on her story on Instagram, “I love my three parents” while highlighting her mom’s statement. She asked “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I.”
Buttigieg also reacted to Vance’s comments on CNN Tuesday night, telling anchor Kaitlin Collins that Vance shouldn’t comment on other people’s children.
“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey,” Buttigieg said. “He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”
ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report
