(NEW YORK) — There are multiple Jeremy Rosenbergs in New York City, as former President Donald Trump’s attorneys found out Tuesday after they sent a subpoena to the wrong one.
Last month, Trump’s attorneys in his criminal hush money case in Manhattan sought to subpoena the Jeremy Rosenberg who was a supervising investigator in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Instead, according to court filings revealed Tuesday, the subpoena went to another Jeremy Rosenberg living in an $8 million Brooklyn home.
“I don’t have any files for you,” that Rosenberg wrote to defense attorney Todd Blanche, per the court filings.
Furthermore, that Rosenberg wrote, “I’m keeping the fifteen dollars” Blanche had provided to help him pay the cost of sending the requested documents.
Prosecutors informed the court that was not the Jeremy Rosenberg Trump’s legal team was looking for, after Blanche complained Rosenberg was not being cooperative.
“After receiving defendant’s pre-motion letter, the People spoke with Mr. Rosenberg’s counsel, who informed the People that Mr. Rosenberg was not, in fact, served with the subpoena, that Mr. Rosenberg had not corresponded with defense counsel, and that Mr. Rosenberg does not have any connection to the Brooklyn address where the subpoena purportedly was served,” prosecutors said.
Trump is scheduled to go to trial on April 15 after prosecutors say he falsified business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election.
The former president has pleaded not guilty and denied all wrongdoing.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked a New York appellate court for an interim stay to his upcoming criminal hush money trial in New York — a tactic that has already failed twice this week.
Trump’s latest effort to scuttle the trial involves a petition against Judge Juan Merchan, challenging his failure to recuse himself from the case and his refusal to allow Trump to make arguments about presidential immunity.
There was no immediate word from the court on when — or whether — a judge will hear those arguments.
Merchan has said presidential immunity does not apply to Trump’s hush money case because he failed to invoke the defense in a timely fashion.
“This Court finds that Defendant had myriad opportunities to raise the claim of presidential immunity well before March 7, 2024,” Merchan wrote earlier this month.
Merchan declined to recuse himself from the case last August, writing that “this Court has examined its conscience and is certain in its ability to be fair and impartial.”
Trump insists that Merchan should not preside over the trial because his daughter did political consulting work for Democrats, creating an “unacceptable appearance of impropriety,” his lawyers have said.
Trump has tried, and failed, twice this week to delay the trial while he challenges a gag order and while he tries to get the case moved out of Manhattan.
The former president last April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to get underway this coming Monday in New York City.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday defended his leadership strategy ahead of a meeting with fellow Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, who has threatened to remove Johnson from his post.
It will be their first sit-down since Greene introduced a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair before the House broke for a two-week recess.
Asked about the upcoming meeting during a press conference alongside other House Republican leaders, Johnson said he and Greene are on the same team when it comes to Republican ideals.
“Marjorie and I don’t disagree, I think, on any matter of philosophy,” he said, calling her a colleague and a friend. “We’re both conservatives. But we do disagree sometimes on strategy with regard to what we put on the floor and when.”
Johnson noted Greene’s anger over the House passage of funding bills to avert a government shutdown, telling reporters he shared her frustration, but they are limited with a one-vote majority in the House and a Democrat-controlled Senate and White House.
“We are not going to get, because of that reality, we are not going to be able to do big transformational changes that we’d like, that we know are necessary,” Johnson said.
The speaker added, “We will never get 100% of what we want and believe is necessary for the country because that’s the reality. It’s a matter of math in the Congress.”
Greene criticized Johnson, laying out her point-by-point case in a letter to colleagues on Tuesday, knocking the Louisiana congressman for working with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown and pledging to act on providing more aid to Ukraine.
“This has been a complete and total surrender, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered the Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority,” Greene wrote in the five-page letter.
Johnson pushed back Wednesday that he didn’t believe allowing the government to shut down was in the GOP’s political interests in trying to keep and expand their majority in the November elections.
“That would put a lot of pressure on the American people … at a very desperate time,” Johnson said of a possible shutdown.
“Nor does a motion to vacate help us in that regard either. It would be chaos in the House,” Johnson said. “So Marjorie and I are going to visit later today, and look forward to the conversation.”
Another point of contention for Greene and other hard-line Republicans is Johnson’s potential movement on Ukraine aid.
The Senate passed its own $95 billion national security supplemental bill in February that included assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but Johnson has not brought it to the House floor for a vote.
In an interview with Fox News during recess, Johnson pledged to act on Ukraine aid when lawmakers returned to Washington.
But as of Wednesday, Johnson said details on a measure to provide assistance to Ukraine as Russia’s invasion rages on were still being worked out.
“On the supplemental, the House members are continuing to actively discuss our options on a path forward,” he said. “There are a lot of different ideas on that. It’s a very complicated matter at a very complicated time. The clock is ticking on it and everyone here feels the urgency of that, but what’s required is that you reach consensus on it and that’s what we’re working on.”
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is trying again on Wednesday to fight his upcoming criminal hush money trial in New York, asking an appeals court to intervene.
The Appellate Division First Department docket shows Trump is filing another petition against Judge Juan Merchan, the New York judge overseeing the case.
The documents associated with Wednesday’s petition are sealed, so the basis for it was not immediately clear.
Trump has tried, and failed, twice this week to delay the trial while he challenges a gag order and while he tries to get the case moved out of Manhattan.
Trump’s attorneys have also been trying to get Merchan removed from the case on the grounds that his daughter has done work for a Democratic political consulting firm.
The former president last April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to get underway this coming Monday in New York City.
(NEW YORK) — Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was sentenced Wednesday to five months in jail for lying under oath during his testimony in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial and during the investigation that preceded it.
Weisselberg, 76, arrived at New York criminal court not in a suit, but dressed for jail in jogging pants and a zip-up jacket.
“The promise is five months of incarceration,” Judge Laurie Peterson said during sentencing.
“Mr. Weisselberg is there anything you’d like to say?” the judge asked.
“No your honor,” Weisselberg replied before court officers handcuffed him and took him into custody.
Weisselberg pleaded guilty last month to two felony counts of perjury that charged him with lying under oath. Prosecutors said Weisselberg lied about his role in valuing Trump’s Fifth Avenue triplex apartment at three times its actual size.
During his trial testimony, Weisselberg struggled to explain why the apartment, which is less than 11,000 square feet, was listed on Trump’s statements of financial condition as 30,000 square feet.
“It was almost de minimis relative to his net worth, so I didn’t really focus on it,” Weisselberg said during trial. “I never even thought about the apartment.”
But Forbes published an article following Weisselberg’s appearance that accused him of lying under oath and suggested Weisselberg did think about the apartment because he played a key role in trying to convince the magazine the apartment was as big as Trump’s financial statements represented.
At the trial, a lawyer with the New York AG’s office, Louis Solomon, confronted Weisselberg with emails from a Forbes reporter seeking clarity about the apartment’s size and a letter signed by Weisselberg certifying the excessive square footage to the Trump Organization’s accountant, Mazars USA.
“Forbes was right, the triplex was actually only 10,996 right?” Solomon asked.
“Right,” Weisselberg finally conceded.
In recent days, defense lawyers for Trump and his adult sons have attempted to recast Weisselberg’s guilty plea as an act of legal coercion, rather than an acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
“To be clear, counsel for Defendants have no ‘knowledge’ that Mr. Weisselberg made false statements during the trial; to the contrary, many believe that Mr. Weisselberg only made such admissions because he was being threatened with life in prison,” defense lawyer Clifford Robert added in a footnote of a filing earlier this week.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron in February ordered Trump to pay $464 million in disgorgement and pre-judgment interest after he found the former president, his adult sons, Weisselberg, and another former Trump Organization executive liable for using “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate his net worth in order to get more favorable loan terms.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has appealed the decision in the case.
Weisselberg last year served three months in jail for tax fraud after he pleaded guilty to 15 felony charges related to his compensation while working for Trump.
Presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West speaks to the community and congregation at Second Baptist Church in Santa Ana, Mar. 29, 2024. (Leonard Ortiz/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Independent presidential candidate Cornel West will announce his vice presidential pick on Wednesday as he seeks to gain ballot access in additional states ahead of the November general election.
West, a prominent activist, author and philosopher who had entered the 2024 field first as a Green Party candidate before switching to an independent bid, will make the announcement on “The Tavis Smiley Show.”
“On Wednesday, we will joyfully open a new chapter in this ‘moment in a movement,’ by announcing a committed candidate for Vice President who stands in solidarity with poor, oppressed and forgotten people everywhere,” West said in a statement released by his campaign.
His running mate decision will also “allow the campaign to further progress in additional key states which require a VP candidate to obtain ballot access and give voters an independent choice alongside the duopoly candidates,” his campaign noted.
Independent candidates need a running mate to qualify for the ballot in multiple states. Another independent White House hopeful, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., encountered such a dilemma in the state of Nevada, where his lack of a running mate at the time he delivered the signatures required to get on the state’s ballot may now invalidate his efforts to gain access.
Kennedy announced his vice presidential pick, Nicole Shanahan, shortly after the dispute arose. (State officials have not resolved the issue.)
West’s campaign has said he is on the ballot in four states: Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, either independently or associated with minor parties, though officials in each state have not yet confirmed that.
He was on the Peace and Freedom March 5 presidential primary ballot in California, where current results show him in second place. Results will be certified in California on April 12.
Going forward, West’s campaign has said they’re attempting to get him on ballots in all 50 states. In January, they announced that he was launching a new political party, the Justice for All Party, in order to more easily gain access everywhere as in some places it’s easier, mostly because of signature requirements, to get on the ballot as a member of a new party rather than as an independent.
Richard Winger, a ballot access expert and political analyst, told ABC News that a number of past third-party or independent candidates have used patchwork methods the way West is attempting in order to get on more ballots.
New party creation is achieved state-by-state, so West may be able to gain access in one place as an independent and another place as a member of the Justice for All Party or even affiliated with other small parties.
U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, R-Ariz., takes questions at a news conference, Feb. 29, 2024, in Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to uphold a near-total abortion ban predating Arizona’s statehood has drawn differing reactions from state Republicans who previously claimed to be “100% pro-life” while both local and national Democrats vowed to push to protect abortion access in one of the most politically important states on the 2024 map.
Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to travel to Tucson on Friday for her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms,” where she’s expected to continue to squarely blame former President Donald Trump for appointing three of the justices who voted in 2022 to overrule Roe v. Wade’s national guarantees to abortion access.
Since then, efforts to either protect or expand abortion rights have succeeded in both red and blue states around the country when put up directly for a vote.
“Arizona just rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote – and, by his own admission, there’s one person responsible: Donald Trump,” Harris said in a statement on Tuesday.
She argued Trump would sign a federal abortion ban if elected again and “if he has the opportunity,” though Trump this week put out a new statement insisting that he wants to leave the choice to individual states — without specifying what he would do on a national ban.
President Joe Biden, in a statement through the White House, also blasted the Arizona ban, which only has exceptions to save the life of the pregnant woman. Biden called the restrictions “cruel” and the “result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom.”
The ban is temporarily blocked pending a trial court decision. Anyone found guilty of violating the ban will face two to five years in state prison.
Republicans, meanwhile, appear to be walking a tightrope on the issue.
Senate candidate Kari Lake, who narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2022, said she supports Trump’s stance on abortion, that he’d leave it up to states, and claimed she would oppose both “federal funding” and “federal ban[s]” on abortion in the Senate.
“I wholeheartedly agree with President Trump — this is a very personal issue that should be determined by each individual state and her people,” Lake said in a statement Tuesday. “I oppose today’s ruling, and I am calling on [Gov.] Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support. Ultimately, Arizona voters will make the decision on the ballot come November.”
However, Lake also regularly says she’s “100% pro-life” and supports “saving as many babies as possible.”
Asked last month how she would vote on a pro-abortion access initiative if it made it on the ballot in Arizona, Lake dismissed the question to simply say, “I’m pro-life.”
Freshman Rep. Juan Ciscomani, who represents a swing district, also called Tuesday’s ruling “a disaster for women and providers” — after having praised the U.S. Supreme Court decision against Roe two years ago and after having said he’ll support a preexisting 15-week ban in his state regarding abortion.
“In Arizona, our 15 week law protected the rights of women and new life. It respected women and the difficult decision of ending a pregnancy – one I will never personally experience and won’t pretend to understand,” Ciscomani wrote in a post on X, adding, “I oppose a national abortion ban. The territorial law is archaic. We must do better for women and I call on our state policymakers to immediately address this in a bipartisan manner.”
Former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey posted on social media that the decision was not his “preferred” outcome and urged elected leaders to find “a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.” However, Ducey also appointed the four justices who supported the court’s majority in the opinion.
“I signed the 15-week law as Governor because it is thoughtful policy, and an approach to this very sensitive issue that Arizonans can actually agree on,” Ducey wrote on X. “The ruling today is not the outcome I would have preferred, and I call on our elected leaders to heed the will of the people and address this issue with a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.”
Republican strategist Barrett Marson called the ruling “ground-shifting” for Arizona politics and argued the decision will reverberate through November’s elections, even if lawmakers do meet in the meantime for a special session to change the law amid public fallout.
“The Arizona Supreme Court ruling may be a huge victory for the pro-life movement in Arizona, it will be short term. The decision will only bring out more voters in 2024 to approve the abortion initiative and likely vote for Democratic candidates,” Marson said in a series of posts on X on Tuesday. “When [Gov. Katie] Hobbs calls a special session to open access to abortion and repeal the 1864 law, Republicans will be in a difficult spot.”
Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, expected to face Lake in the Senate race in the fall, seized on her previously calling the pre-statehood ban a “great law” and sent a fundraising pitch to supporters reminding them that as a senator he would vote to end the filibuster rule as a means to protect abortion access nationwide, unlike Lake.
“This is not what Arizonans want, and women could die because of it,” Gallego said in a statement. “Yet again, extremist politicians like Kari Lake are forcing themselves into doctors’ offices and ripping away the right for women to make their own healthcare decisions,” adding he’s “committed to doing whatever it takes to protect abortion rights at the federal level.”
Potential ballot initiative gains momentum
Voters may have a chance to weigh in on abortion access directly in November.
Arizona for Abortion Access, which is working to get a constitutional amendment on the state’s ballot enshrining abortion access, attacked Tuesday’s ruling but said it would motivate more people to join their campaign ahead of the state’s July 3 deadline for signatures.
The proposed amendment would amend Arizona’s Constitution to prohibit the state from legislating against abortion up until fetal viability, around 24 weeks into pregnancy, and enshrines other abortion protections into law.
The group said earlier this month that they had gathered more than 500,000 signatures — surpassing the threshold to get an initiative on the Arizona general election ballot.
“This ruling will put the lives of untold Arizonans at risk and robs us of our most basic rights,” Arizona for Abortion Access campaign manager Cheryl Bruce said in a statement. “Implementing a near-total abortion ban from before women even had the right to vote only further demonstrates why we need politicians and judges out of our healthcare decisions. Now more than ever, our campaign is driven to succeed in passing this amendment and protecting access to abortion in Arizona once and for all.”
The president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser, who opposes abortion, called the decision an “enormous victory for unborn children and their mothers” and indicated abortion opponents in the state will now work to defeat the ballot initiative.
“The compassion of the pro-life movement won in court today, but we must continue to fight,” Dannenfelser said in a statement.
“Governor Hobbs and her pro-abortion allies will pour millions into deceiving the voters about the upcoming amendment that permits abortion on demand when babies can feel pain and survive outside the womb,” she said. “We must defeat this extreme measure that would force Arizonans to pay for abortions and eliminate health protections for women.”
Alongside Hobbs, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said she will not prosecute any abortion providers under the law she deemed “draconian.”
(LONDON) — U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron on Tuesday defended his meeting with former President Donald Trump, describing engagements between foreign envoys and political opposition leaders or major opposition candidates as standard practice.
“This was entirely in line with precedent of government ministers meeting with opposition politicians in the run-up to elections,” Cameron said.
“I remember when I was prime minister meeting Mitt Romney when he was a candidate. I remember Gordon Brown meeting Barack Obama when he was a candidate, and I think Tony recently had a meeting with Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, in Munich,” Cameron said, referring to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “So these things are entirely proper.”
Cameron, a former U.K. prime minister who returned to his country’s government last year, told reporters at a State Department briefing that he and Trump had a “private meeting” where they “discussed a range of important geopolitical subjects,” but he declined to be more specific.
The two met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Monday, people familiar with the meeting confirmed. Cameron was the first U.K. official to meet with Trump since Trump left office in 2021.
The Trump campaign said in a statement that he and Cameron had dinner together and talked about “the upcoming US and UK elections, policy matters specific to Brexit, the need for NATO countries to meet their defense spending requirements, and ending the killing in Ukraine,” as well as their “mutual admiration for the late Queen Elizabeth II.”
Cameron and Trump have disagreed on issues before, as when Cameron — as prime minister — denounced Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering America, which Trump called for during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and later modified to a narrower restriction once he entered the White House.
Cameron in 2016 called the Muslim ban proposal “divisive, stupid and wrong,” and Trump soon responded that “it looks like we are not going to have a very good relationship, who knows.”
Cameron is also in the U.S. to meet with Biden administration officials including Blinken, who told reporters on Tuesday that “it is, as always a great pleasure to have Foreign Secretary Cameron here at the State Department in Washington.”
“We’ve had an ongoing conversation and ongoing consultation about the major challenges that both of our countries are facing and facing together, and today was another important chapter in those conversations,” Blinken said.
At the briefing on Tuesday, Cameron suggested his talk with Trump was on matters like conflict in the Middle East, support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and strengthening NATO that mirrored his public talking points.
“Whoever I’m talking to, I tend to make the same points — which is that we’ve got to do everything we can this year to get NATO in its strongest possible shape for its 75th anniversary,” Cameron said. “And getting everyone up to 2% [in defense spending], having the new members joining — Sweden and Finland — having the strongest possible alliance, [that is] the best thing we can do.”
Cameron then recapped his case for backing Ukraine’s war efforts, which has become increasingly divisive in America as some Republicans argue funds can be better spent on domestic priorities after more than two years of support.
“They’re fighting so bravely. They’re not going to lose for want of morale. The danger is we don’t give them the support that they need,” Cameron said. “And I make that argument to anyone who will listen to me: I argue that it is extremely good value for money for the United States and for others, perhaps for about 5 or 10% of your defense budget, almost half of Russia’s prewar military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in United States security.”
Pushing ahead to his sessions with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, Cameron said he was reluctant to wade into the debate but was spurred on by his convictions.
“I always do this with great trepidation. It’s not for foreign politicians to tell legislators in another country what to do. It’s just that I’m so passionate about the importance of defending Ukraine against this aggression that I think it is absolutely the interests of U.S. security,” he said.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders, Lalee Ibssa, Soo Rin Kim and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Foreign adversaries and terrorist groups are sharpening their aim at the United States — targeting cyber operations, security and “mafia-like” tactics in an “increasingly concerning” way, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech on Tuesday.
At the American Bar Association luncheon in Washington, D.C., Wray said the agency is working to prevent a coordinated attack from terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, an affiliate of ISIS.
“Foreign terrorists, including ISIS, al-Qaida and their adherents, have renewed calls for attacks against Jewish communities here in the United States and across the West in statements and propaganda,” Wray said. “The foreign terrorist threat and the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, like the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago, is now increasingly concerning. Oct. 7 and the conflict that’s followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come.”
The warning comes as experts predict ISIS will try to carry out an attack on the United States.
“We should believe them when they say that. They’re going to try to do it,” retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz last month.
On Tuesday, Wray also touched on threats both seen and unseen from a bad actors from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
Russia is targeting “underwater cables” that are critical to global communications, he said.
“The Russian government continues to invest heavily in their cyber operations, in part because they see cyber as an asymmetric weapon to keep up with us,” Wray said. “Russia continues to target critical infrastructure — including underwater cables and industrial control systems both in the United States and around the world. Since its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen Russia conducting reconnaissance on the U.S. energy sector. Adding to that concern is that the Russians — like our other adversaries — don’t care if their cyber campaigns affect civilians.”
The Chinese government “plays the long game,” he said.
“To put it simply, [China] is throwing its whole government at undermining the security and economy of the rule-of-law world,” he said.
The Chinese cyber program is larger than any other governments’ programs, Wray said, adding that it outnumbers the United States’ 50 to one. The country’s Chinese cyber threat and “mafia-like” tactics make it particularly worrisome, he added.
He also offered a full-throated defense of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which lays the groundwork for the government to be able to collect the communications of non-Americans overseas who message on U.S.-based platforms without use of a warrant. Section 702 is up for reauthorization in the House this week.
“The consequences of tying our hands are not merely hypothetical,” Wray said.
He also took questions after his speech, in which he blasted House Republicans proposed $500 million cut to the FBI budget.
“China ain’t cutting their budget,” he said.
Cutting the FBI’s budget is a “form of setting us back,” he said.
“Who does cutting the budget help?” he asked. “It helps the violent criminals, the child predators, the Chinese government, cyber hackers and ransomware actors, The cartels … and terrorists. Who does it hurt? It hurts our law enforcement partners, state local law enforcement partners who depend on us every day and all whole host of ways, and ultimately hurts the American people in the neighborhoods.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s plan to build a humanitarian pier floating off the coast of Gaza that could enable delivery of food, water and medicine into the devastated region is expect to cost at least $180 million and could top $200 million, ABC News has learned.
The price tag was described by two people familiar with the initial estimate, which has not been released by U.S. Central Command.
The tally is expected to fluctuate as U.S. officials scramble to finalize key details on the project, including which humanitarian relief organizations and foreign governments are willing to help carry the shipments to shore and distribute them to ease the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.
Officials also continue to discuss how to protect service members who will be operating three miles offshore of Gaza, where Hamas is believed to still operate.
The project — which triggered the deployment of six Army and Navy ships and will involve some 1,000 U.S. military troops — is on track to become operational in early May, enabling the delivery of some 2 million meals a day.
“No U.S. boots will be on the ground,” Biden promised when announcing the project in his State of the Union speech last month. “A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”
The effort has largely been seen as a political move by the president, who faced criticism for not doing more to try to rein in Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks inside Israel and for not forcing Israel to allow more humanitarian aid to get through. White House officials have acknowledged the pier is still weeks away and not as efficient in delivering aid as via ground convoys. But they describe the deployment as part of a broader effort to open up every aid route possible to address potential famine in Gaza.
For its part, Israel defended its initial refusal to open more humanitarian channels in recent months, noting a need to screen supplies carefully to ensure they don’t help Hamas.
That dynamic changed in recent days. After Israel struck and killed seven aid workers last week — an incident Israel called a grave mistake — Biden threatened to change U.S. policy toward Gaza condition if Israel didn’t do more to allow humanitarian aid inside the enclave.
This week, Israel opened up ground checkpoints, allowing more than 1,000 trucks into Gaza — the most since the war began.
It is unlikely Israel’s new policy on allowing aid in would impact the deployment as the U.S. military ships neared the region. Aid groups say much more needs to be done to help Gaza residents.
The floating dock is expected to be nearly the size of a football field — about 97 feet wide and 270 feet long — stationed about three miles offshore. Container ships would screen their cargo in Cyprus before taking it to the floating dock and unloading it. From there, the aid would be moved aboard small Army ferries that would transport it to an 1,800-foot “trident” pier that connects to shore.
But with U.S. troops not allowed to go onshore, it’s still not clear who will bring the cargo from the pier to shore and then distribute it. Officials have said only that it’s working with “regional partners” on a solution that will ensure no American boots are on the ground in Gaza.
Deputy Defense Secretary Sabrina Singh said the military, State Department and USAID are working “around the clock” to find partners and set up the system.
“Still no boots on the ground. That is the policy that has been set by the president. We will not have boots on the ground when it comes to setting up this pier,” she said.
Those operational details though became increasingly complicated after the recent Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers.
José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, said much more needs to be done to ensure humanitarian groups can operate safely in Gaza.
“It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems — moves. This doesn’t seem a war against terror. This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel,” he told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
“This really, at this point, seems it’s a war against humanity itself,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser, Ophir Falk, pushed back against claims that the attack on the WCK vehicles was intentional.
“That’s absurd,” Falk told ABC News last week. “The last thing we would want in the world is to endanger civilian lives.”
