(MIAMI) — The judge overseeing the probe into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents is set to hear arguments Wednesday as she considers a request from Trump to extend deadlines in the case.
At issue is how the classified materials at the center of the probe are to be handled by the defendants and their attorneys, based on national security requirements.
After Judge Aileen Cannon established several deadlines for ruling on those issues, Trump’s legal team filed a motion asking her for a three-month extension, saying that Trump and his co-defendants have still not received access to “significant portions of the materials that the Special Counsel’s Office has characterized as classified.”
Cannon subsequently paused any litigation involving the classified materials in question in order to consider the request.
Special counsel Jack Smith previously said that some documents were so sensitive that they couldn’t even be viewed in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF — a specially-equipped secure room for viewing highly classified materials. In a subsequent filing, the government said that a SCIF had been approved to store the documents, and that they were prepared to arrange for delivery of those documents.
Last month, Cannon issued a protective order over the classified information central to the case, clearing the way for the special counsel to begin providing classified discovery materials to Trump and his lawyers to review in a SCIF.
On Tuesday, Trump joined his attorneys in Miami for a visit to a SCIF to conduct his first known review of classified evidence, according to sources.
Trump’s legal team has also asked the judge to consider their request for the trial to take place following the 2024 presidential election. The trial is currently set to begin this coming May.
Wednesday’s hearing could provide an indication from Cannon as to whether she intends to keep or move the trial date.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors 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.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is facing increasingly vocal opposition from a small group inside his own party on what they suggest is his bias toward Israel and against Palestinians following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Biden has offered full-throated support for Israel, an ally, as its war with Hamas rages on in the Middle East — yet several members of the Democrats’ progressive wing, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, have criticized his approach.
In a joint news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month, Biden said the U.S. “will continue to have Israel’s back” and that the U.S. will stand with Israel “today, tomorrow and always — we promise you.”
But that approach does not acknowledge the Palestinian point of view, said Tlaib, the first woman of Palestinian descent in Congress.
“President Biden has not expressed one bit of empathy for the millions of Palestinian civilians facing brutal airstrikes and the threat of a ground invasion of Gaza that would intensify this humanitarian crisis,” Tlaib said in a statement earlier this month.
She said the Biden administration is failing in its duty to protect all civilian and American lives in Gaza. Hamas terrorists’ surprise attack killed more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials. More than 8,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
“I cannot believe I have to beg our country to value every human life, no matter their faith or ethnicity. We cannot lose sight of the humanity in each other,” Tlaib said.
Biden said last week that the lives on both sides are precious.
“Israelis and Palestinians equally deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity, and peace,” the president said during a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Biden also came under fire when last week he expressed skepticism about the death toll numbers coming out of Gaza, saying he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
Some progressive Democrats say Biden is giving lip service when he says lives on all sides matter. Omar said there appears to be a double standard when it comes to lives of civilian Israelis compared to Palestinians.
“How do you look at one atrocity and say, ‘This is wrong,’ but you watch as bodies pile up as neighborhoods are leveled? Israel has dropped more bombs in the last 10 days than [the U.S.] dropped in a whole year in Afghanistan. Where is your humanity? Where is your outrage? Where is your care for people?” Omar said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., an ardent Biden supporter, said she is uneasy about the president’s attitude toward Israel.
“I am certainly concerned about his approach to this,” Jayapal said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
“He needs to call us to a higher moral place,” she added.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., spoke at a cease-fire rally on Friday where he condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and said “every single life is precious.”
“I am ashamed, quite ashamed to be a member of Congress at times when Congress doesn’t value every single life,” Bowman said. “I am ashamed to be a member of Congress when I hear our president not valuing every single life.”
White House spokesperson John Kirby said during Monday’s White House press briefing that all loss of life should be prevented, and that all efforts are being made to avoid civilian casualties — no matter the side.
“Every single innocent life lost is a tragedy, every one, whether it’s a Palestinian life lost or an Israeli life loss. Every one should be prevented,” Kirby said. “There’s no reason for these families to keep grieving — and we’re going to keep doing everything we can to work with our Israeli counterparts on the minimization of civilian casualties.”
Many Democrats are deviating from Biden when it comes to a call for a cease-fire as Israeli ground forces push deeper into Gaza.
More than a dozen lawmakers introduced a resolution that urged the Biden administration to “call for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine, to send humanitarian aid and assistance to Gaza, and to save as many lives as possible.”
Biden has said of a cease-fire, “we should have those hostages released, and then we can talk.” Kirby said last week that a “cease-fire right now really only benefits Hamas.”
Netanyahu on Monday rejected calls for a ceasefire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war.
“Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” Netanyahu said at a news conference Monday. “That will not happen.”
And it’s not just lawmakers who have expressed dissatisfaction with the administration and its perceived Israel bias — some younger voters and college students have spoken out on the topic as pro-Palestinian students in colleges and universities around the country have held protests and walkouts.
Notably, multiple student groups at Harvard University, led by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, released a statement on the day of the attack saying Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” — a move that prompted backlash from Jewish student groups and university leaders. Even before the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas, the U.S. had designated it as a terrorist organization.
The intraparty divide comes as Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign ramps up, and he works to present himself as a tested leader on the global stage — and one with his party’s support.
Jayapal said, to win in 2024, the president has demonstrated courage with his domestic policy, but needs to match that with his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“The president needs to be just as courageous on this issue so that we keep the unity within our country for the support of the incredible things he has done,” she said on Meet the Press.
“The American people are actually quite far away from where the president and even a majority of Congress has been on Israel and Gaza,” Jayapal said. “They support the right for Israel to defend itself to exist, but they do not support a war crime exchange for another war crime. And I think the president has to be careful about that.”
(WASHINGTON) — New House Speaker Mike Johnson, as one of his first moves, is forcing a showdown over emergency aid to Israel.
He’s pushing a vote Thursday on a bill that would provide more than $14 billion to the American ally — but not include $61 billion in aid to Ukraine as President Joe Biden, House and Senate Democrats — and even many Senate Republicans — want tied to the same measure.
The bill House Republicans released Mondaywould pay for the Israel aid by slashing the same amount from the Internal Revenue Service, which critics say could affect some taxpayer services and hurt enforcement actions against tax cheaters.
Johnson has set up the showdown as making a choice between what’s considered more important.
White House: Bill is ‘nonstarter’
The White House is bashing the House GOP bill, calling it a “nonstarter” for tying aid to Israel to cuts in IRS funding — money already passed under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“Demanding offsets for meeting core national security needs of the United States — like supporting Israel and defending Ukraine from atrocities and Russian imperialism — would be a break with the normal, bipartisan process and could have devastating implications for our safety and alliances in the years ahead,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
She said what she called “political games” would set an “unacceptable precedent” for current and future funding and call the U.S. commitment to Israel “into question.”
“Threatening to undermine American national security unless House Republicans can help the wealthy and big corporations cheat on their taxes — which would increase the deficit — is the definition of backwards,” Jean-Pierre wrote.
Senate leaders agree: Israel and Ukraine aid ‘intertwined’
Just after House Republicans unveiled the Israel aid bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor to reassert the importance of passing Biden’s supplemental aid package that, in addition to aid for Israel and Ukraine, also includes money for Taiwan and southern border security.
“All of these challenges share one thing in common: they directly impact America’s national security, America’s democratic values, and the international world order that has allowed democracy to take root,” Schumer said. “The way forward is exceptionally clear: we must pass the presidents supplemental request.”
Schumer slammed the bill as a “partisan and woefully inadequate package” that includes “poison pills” that help tax cheats.
“The House GOP bill is woefully inadequate and has the hard-right’s fingerprints all over it,” Schumer said, referring to growing opposition among House Republicans to more Ukraine aid, especially without conditions.
“It’s insulting that the hard right is openly trying to exploit the crisis in Israel to try and reward the ultra-rich. The new speaker knows perfectly well that if you want to support Israel, you can’t propose legislation that is full of poison pills,” he said..
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke next on the floor Tuesday, and he largely echoed Schumer’s message, calling the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine “intertwined” and demanding a comprehensive U.S. response.
“So, at the risk of repeating myself, the threats facing America and our allies are serious and they’re intertwined. If we ignore that fact, we do so at our own peril,” McConnell said.
“I had for a brief moment hoped that the House might be getting their act back together,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said of the package. “But that sounds disastrous to me.”
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee played an essential role in crafting the IRS enforcement portion of the Inflation Reduction Act, said using the IRS funds to pay for Israel relief could actually cost the country money by decreasing tax revenue.
“This new proposal is, I think, just horrifying, it’s a non-starter, and I’m going to fight it. I’m going to use every tool I have as chairman of the Finance Committee,” Wyden said.
House Democrats, and even some Republicans, oppose
At least two House Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — said they will not vote for aid to Israel, reducing the already slim number of House GOP votes Johnson can afford to lose and still get the bill passed.
“If Congress sends $14.5 billion to Israel, on average we’ll be taking about $100 from every working person in the United States. This will be extracted through inflation and taxes. I’m against it,” Massie posted on X.
“I’m voting NO as well. We are $33 TRILLION in debt and our wide-open border is a national security crisis,” Greene posted to X.
During a local radio interview Monday, GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said while he supports helping Israel, he argues that the U.S. should not “write another blank check to anyone, including ourselves.”
“I support Israel. But I am not going to continue to go down this road where we bankrupt our country and undermine our very ability to defend ourselves, much less our allies, by continuing to write blank checks,” Roy said.
Some House Democrats don’t like the proposal, either.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida said in a statement, “Support for defending Israel should not come with conditions, be it cutting foreign military financing by 30% or offsetting aid in a time of crucial need. I am deeply disturbed by Speaker Johnson playing political games with Israeli emergency funding, something our nation has never done in a time of crisis.”
“We cannot afford to politicize the battle against Hamas and Iran, giving ammunition to anti-Israel extremists around the world,” she added.
Johnson: Israel aid is an ‘immediate and urgent need’
Speaker Johnson said his plan addresses the “immediate and urgent need” for aid to Israel, he told Fox News’ Outnumbered co-host Kayleigh McEnany. The interview, which aired Tuesday, was recorded Monday before the bill text was released.
“My intention and my desire in the first draft of this bill is to take some of the money that has been set aside for building and bulking up the IRS right now,” he said to McEnany.
“They have about $67 billion in that fund and we’ll try to take the $14.5 [billion] necessary for this immediate and urgent need,” Johnson said.
When asked if offsetting the bill will drive Senate Democrats away, Johnson said, “it may, but my intention is to call Leader Schumer over there and have a very direct and thoughtful conversation about this.”
“I understand their priority is to bulk up the IRS. But I think, if you put this to the American people, and they weigh the two needs, I think they’re going to say standing with Israel and protecting the innocent over there is in our national interest and is a more immediate need than IRS agents,” Johnson said.
ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday wrestled with where to draw the line when it comes to the personal social media accounts of government workers and steps to censor comments or block access for certain individual users.
In a pair of cases, citizens who were restricted online by local officials sued them for an alleged violation of their First Amendment right to free speech. But the officials insist their online pages are personal property, not part of their official duties, and not public forums.
“This is a case where there are First Amendment interests on both sides,” said Justice Elena Kagan, citing the need to protect the private speech of government employees but also preserve the ability of citizens to access their government.
It’s a high-stakes balancing act in a digital age in which public officials increasingly rely on social media to engage with members of the public via their official accounts — but also desire to maintain personal online accounts that they can fully control.
Constitutional protections for free speech govern official conduct and limit government employees’ ability to silence certain commentary in the public square, but those protections do not generally extend to private conduct or property.
During more than three hours of oral arguments, the justices were divided over how to decide when a government employee’s personally-owned social media activity can be treated as an official action.
Several suggested it would only occur when officials were “doing their jobs” — not just posting about their jobs — on their personal accounts.
“Why isn’t all of Facebook the equivalent of running into someone at the grocery store, unless, on that personal page, you’re announcing some governmental rule or some official notice?” asked Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that measure would “not be adequate at all,” since many public officials say they are “on duty 24 hours a day.”
“If they are, during that 24 hours, creating themselves and posting [to] Facebook and doing all of the communications they’re doing, why isn’t that state action?” she said.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested the appearance of an official’s page — whether it gives the impression of a government-sanctioned site — should be taken into account, even if it is personally owned or created.
“What if something that looks an awful lot like an official event but is not labeled as such is held on private property?” Alito wondered aloud.
Chief Justice John Roberts said “one clear rule” could be to draw the line on the wider availability of the information that is communicated on a personal page.
“If it’s the only place they can go and you’re talking about governmental activities [and] that’s the place to go, that’s government speech,” Roberts said. “In other words, here, perhaps the significant characteristic is that there wasn’t any other place to go.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested the onus should be on public employees to make clear whether their social media accounts are personal or official.
“Why should they get to choose whether or not they’re doing one or the other without, say, making a clear disclaimer or making it clear to people that this is actually happening in their personal capacity?” she asked.
In one case, California school board members deleted comments from disgruntled parents and blocked their access to message boards.
Another case involves a Michigan city manager who deleted criticism from a resident during the COVID-19 pandemic and blocked his access to write future comments.
The officials in both cases argued that the accounts were personally-owned and not maintained as part of their job responsibilities.
The high court dispute mirrors a 2017 case between then-President Donald Trump and seven people he blocked from accessing his personal profile on then-Twitter. A federal appeals court sided with the Trump critics, saying that the president’s account was cloaked in official business and that the blocks amounted to a violation of the users’ civil rights.
Trump “seemed to be doing a lot of government business on his Twitter account,” posited Kagan on Tuesday. “It was an important part of his authority, and to cut off citizens would cut them off from their government.”
“People don’t have a right to access other people’s personal property,” replied Hashim Moopan, an attorney representing the California school board members.
The court is expected to hand down a decision in the cases by next June.
(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday gave the most specific number to date on how many Americans are trapped in Gaza following Hamas’ surprise terrorist attack on Israel.
“We’re working on this every single day. We have about 400 American citizens and their family members, so it’s roughly 1,000 people who are stuck in Gaza and want to get out. I’m focused on this intensely,” Blinken said in an exchange with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., during Tuesday’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Appropriations.
While between 100 and 120 U.S. citizens are estimated to live in Gaza, the majority of those 400 were visiting the enclave when it was sealed on Oct. 7. Although shipments of aid have been able to cross into the area through Gaza’s border with Egypt, no foreign nationals have been permitted to leave. Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza amid Israel’s siege.
The secretary again cited Hamas as the only hurdle blocking their exit.
“The impediment is simple: It’s Hamas. We’ve not yet found a way to get them out by whatever — through whatever place and by whatever means that Hamas is not blocking, but we’re working that with intermediaries,” he continued.
“They are also another roughly 5,000 third-country nationals from other countries seeking to get out,” Blinken added.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller signaled during a Tuesday afternoon press conference that the administration might be close to securing safe passage through the Rafah crossing into Egypt for the American citizens trapped in Gaza, saying negotiators “have made good progress on this even in the past few hours” — but stopping just short of making any announcement.
“I will say that we are making very good progress on this issue. You may see have seen some reports that have moved from the region just in the last few hours about the possibility of Rafah gate opening tomorrow,” Miller said, without confirming the reports he mentioned.
Miller was asked specifically about reports from Egypt state-linked TV channels claiming the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza will open Wednesday to receive injured Palestinians, but he suggested that if they prove to be correct, it would possibly clear the path for Americans.
“If that report turns out to be true, it will mean that Rafah is open for not just one way traffic — trucks going in — but also individuals going out. And we would hope that any agreement to get any individuals out would also unlock the possibility of American citizens or their families and other foreign nationals coming out,” Miller said.
Blinken also stressed during the hearing that State Department officials had been in frequent contact with U.S. citizens in Gaza over the past few weeks.
“We’ve been in close communication as best we can with Americans who are stuck in Gaza. We’ve had about 5,500 communications that we’ve initiated — phone calls, emails, WhatsApp — to be in touch with them to try to guide them as best we can and to work for their ability to leave,” he said.
The hearing, held to discuss President Joe Biden’s $106 billion national security supplemental request for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, was interrupted multiple times by protesters in the chamber.
First, demonstrators raised their red painted hands in the back of the chamber. Later, while Blinken was speaking, they shouted demands for an immediate ceasefire and chanted, “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go.”
During each outburst, the committee’s chair and vice chair paused the testimony while Capitol Police escorted the protesters out of the chamber, but it took several moments to restore order.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration has released the first draft of a debt relief policy targeted at the hardest-hit student loan borrowers, providing more clarity on what the next steps are in a monthslong rulemaking process to make good on President Joe Biden’s efforts to provide debt relief.
The first attempt at broad debt relief, rolled out by Biden last year, was overturned by the Supreme Court in June. That policy would’ve cancelled debt for more than 40 million borrowers. After it was halted by the court, Biden announced that the administration would try again, under a different law called the Higher Education Act.
Since then, the rulemaking process has been playing out with updates on a monthly basis. Though it’s still preliminary, the latest draft released Monday by the Department of Education focuses on borrowers who have more debt now than they initially took out, have loans that they first took out over 25 years ago, have large loans from schools that provided insufficient career advancement opportunities, and who qualify for debt relief already under programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness or income-driven repayment plans, but haven’t received it.
The department is also looking into debt relief for borrowers who are “experiencing financial hardship” that isn’t recognized by the current student debt repayment system.
The meeting for committee members to discuss the policy draft takes place next week, on Nov. 6 and 7. The 16 members include people from civil rights organizations, student borrower advocacy groups, higher education officials and government officials.
On a call with reporters Monday night, senior department officials declined to provide a number for how many borrowers could be impacted by the policy, citing “outstanding policy questions” that have yet to play out.
“But we do think these are, generally speaking, large categories of borrowers that would provide significant amounts of relief,” one official said.
For some categories of borrowers, the entirety of their debt would be canceled, whereas other people might see partial debt cancellation.
But officials cautioned that elements of the policy could change over the next few months.
“We are still in the early stages of our rulemaking process. And we are releasing this text for discussion with the negotiated rulemaking committee. We’re required to include and consider public feedback at a variety of stages between now and the time in which the rules will be finalized. And we think the final rules will be better as a result of that process,” a department official said.
To move into final stages, the committee needs to reach a consensus — and then the policy has to be enacted by the Department of Education, which could face legal challenges from Republicans who have said they’ll argue that debt relief is not within the administration’s bounds.
In the meantime, the Department of Education has continued to cancel debts for different borrowers who have been caught up in errors in the repayment system. So far, those efforts are estimated to impact 3.6 million borrowers — though there have been issues with servicers carrying out the cancellation process.
So far, the Department of Education is aware of at least 16,000 people who were sent bills they should never have gotten because they’d had their debts forgiven after their colleges had been deemed fraudulent, according to an internal memo confirmed to ABC News by a department spokesperson.
In all, however, the department has identified 1.3 million borrowers in total who will have their debts canceled because their universities have been cheated by their schools.
The department has also canceled debt for 855,000 borrowers who were eligible for forgiveness through income-driven repayment but hadn’t seen their debts canceled because servicers had lost count of their payments and 715,000 people enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) programs who hadn’t seen their debts canceled after 10 years.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden received a commitment from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to increase the flow of aid into Gaza, the White House said Monday.
Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Sunday as Israeli forces expanded their ground operations in Gaza, in what it called the “second phase” of its war on Hamas after the terrorist group’s attacks earlier this month.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in that call Biden “did receive a commitment that Israelis will endeavor to support a significant increase in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, so additional trucks.”
Forty-five trucks carrying food, water and other kinds of humanitarian aid were able to make it across the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, according to the administration — well below the at least 100 trucks a day the United Nations has said is required to cover Gaza’s needs.
Kirby said a “first goal” is to get up to 100 trucks each day across the border, though he said that still wouldn’t be enough.
“So, we’re not going to let it go, we’re not going to drop it, we’re going to continue to see what we can do to increase that volume,” he said.
The administration said the U.S is closely monitoring the Middle East as Israeli troops move into Gaza, with Biden being continuously briefed as the conflict unfolds. The death toll in Gaza has climbed to over 8,300, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. In Israel, authorities said at at least 1,400 people have been killed since Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7.
Kirby said while the administration is asking Israel “hard questions” about its aims in going after Hamas, it is not “lecturing” Netanyahu when discussing the need for Israel to follow the rules of war.
“It’s something that even the prime minister brings up in the conversation,” with Biden, he told reporters. “That they both recognize that as democracies it’s important to abide by the law of war to protect innocent life and to try to minimize civilian casualties.”
While aid has been allowed to move from Rafah into Gaza, the corridor remains closed to foreign nationals who want to flee the Palestinian territory, including 500 to 600 Americans, the U.S. State Department has said. Kirby had no updates on securing a passage for people to leave Gaza.
State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said for the first time Monday that Hamas was making “a number of demands” for opening Rafah gate to foreign nationals.
“I’m not going to speak to those demands, but it’s something we’re continuing to try to work through,” he told reporters.
Miller also said the U.S. encouraged Israel to reopen telecommunications lines in Gaza over the weekend, but that the administration could not guarantee they would not be taken down again.
“Recognizing the importance of keeping these channels open during such pivotal times, we made clear to the government of Israel over the weekend that communications networks needed to be restored and we are pleased that they took steps to do that,” Miller said. “Maintaining these channels is not just about connectivity, it is about ensuring that vital information flows, humanitarian coordination continues, and families can stay in touch.”
Kirby said the U.S. continues to support temporary, humanitarian pauses in the conflict so aid can get through and perhaps to help people leave, but that they won’t support a ceasefire.
“We do not believe that a ceasefire is the right answer right now,” Kirby said. “We believe that a ceasefire right now benefits Hamas, and Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now as Israel continues to prosecute their operations against Hamas leadership.”
(DENVER) — Hearings began this week on whether the 14th Amendment disqualifies Donald Trump from running for president in 2024 because of his actions around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
On Monday morning in Denver, a historic five-day evidentiary hearing got underway for a lawsuit filed against Trump by six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters represented by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
A similar hearing is set for Thursday in St. Paul, Minnesota.
CREW President Noah Bookbinder has said that his organization brought its suit in Colorado because “it is necessary to defend our republic both today and in the future.” The group’s complaint accuses Trump of inciting and aiding the mob at the Capitol two years ago, which he denies. He was impeached on similar charges but acquitted by Republicans in the Senate.
Trump and his campaign have dismissed the 14th Amendment clause being used against him. “The people who are pursuing this absurd conspiracy theory and political attack on President Trump are stretching the law beyond recognition,” a spokesperson previously said in a statement.
Among their witnesses in the Denver hearing, CREW called two police officers who were at the Capitol that day and California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who was inside. The group also plans to call two professors.
“The events on Jan. 6, 2021, in the United States Capitol were horrific. It was a terrorist attack on the United States of America, an assault on democracy and an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power,” one of the officers, Danny Hodges, testified.
Swalwell, in his testimony, described his concerns that Trump wouldn’t accept the 2020 presidential election results and some of what he saw during the rioting. “War-like,” he called it.
Under cross-examination by Trump’s attorneys, Swalwell was shown past social media posts by Swalwell urging voters to “fight” for Democratic causes — and they showed Trump’s comments from later on Jan. 6 where he did ask for the violence to end.
An attorney for CREW claimed in an opening statement that “Trump incited a violent mob to attack our cattle to stop the peaceful transfer of power under our Constitution. … And we are here because Trump claims after all that he has the right to be president again.”
Trump’s attorney Scott Gessler, a former secretary of state for Colorado, said in his own opening remarks that the suit is “anti-democratic.”
“It looks to extinguish the opportunity … for millions of Coloradans, Colorado Republicans and unaffiliated voters, to be able to choose and vote for the presidential candidate they want,” Gessler said.
He said Trump’s team will call two professors as witnesses to focus on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. They also plan to call organizers of the rally outside the White House on the morning of Jan. 6, where Trump gave a speech, and Gessler indicated they will call another House lawmaker.
He rejected the contention that Trump engaged in the insurrection.
Gessler said much of the case against Trump was based on the work done by the House special committee that investigated Jan. 6 and produced a series of lengthy committee hearings and a report outlining Trump’s behavior in the lead-up to the riot.
Over the past few months, efforts to bar Trump from the Republican primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was first enacted after the Civil War, have gained traction in a few states.
The idea has also been endorsed by some conservative legal scholars, though some notable Republican elections officials, like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has criticized Trump’s election rhetoric, have been skeptical of it.
Multiple state-level suits have been filed, but Colorado and Minnesota are seen as the most notable and have prompted the first major hearings on the issue.
Section 3 of the amendment states that someone isn’t eligible for future office if, while they were in office, they took an oath to support the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or [gave] aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” unless they are granted amnesty by a two-thirds vote of Congress.
Supporters of this theory argue it applies to Trump because of his conduct after he lost the 2020 election but sought to reverse the results, including on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. Previous such efforts focused on other Republicans have failed, except in New Mexico, where a local commissioner convicted of trespassing on Jan. 6 was booted from his office.
Trump maintains he did nothing wrong.
In an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted late September, some 44% of adults said Trump should be prohibited from serving as president under the 14th Amendment. Slightly more, 50%, said the amendment should not bar Trump from office.
The hearing in Colorado is the first time the 14th Amendment’s prohibition has been tested against a presidential candidate.
“I look forward to the court providing guidance, of course, to me in Colorado but to election officials across the nation as to whether Trump has disqualified himself for engaging in insurrection,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in an interview with ABC News.
Griswold, a Democrat, will certify Colorado’s presidential primary ballot on Jan. 5 and is named as a defendant in the 14th Amendment lawsuit because of her office.
She has not declared a position on Trump’s qualification standing, though she is critical of Trump’s character.
His attorneys have challenged the suit on various grounds, including arguing that the litigation is unfolding too soon before the state’s Republican primary in March and invoking anti-SLAPP laws, which are based on the notion that people should not be targeted with lawsuits for exercising their First Amendment rights as Trump claims he did in attacking the 2020 election results.
Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, has rejected motions to dismiss.
Trump’s team also unsuccessfully sought for the case to be moved from state to federal court.
Topics for this week’s hearing include the history and application of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, if the section is self-executing, if it applies to presidents, the meaning of “engaged” and “insurrection” as used in the section and how often and on what basis does the secretary of state exclude candidates based on constitutional deficiencies, among other items.
Then, on Nov. 15, the various parties will come back to court to deliver closing arguments. Wallace has indicated she will issue a ruling within 48 hours of that.
No witness lists have been released but Trump will not testify, according to his lawyers. An earlier motion to depose Trump so that his testimony may be presented at the hearing was denied by Wallace.
He has been fundraising off of the start of the hearing, however.
Griswold is not presenting evidence in the case but has said she will comply if called as a witness and would answer any legal questions about Colorado election law, their certification process or any other inquiries.
“We’ve never had a president incite an insurrection and attack our democracy like Donald Trump. And then we’ve never had a president who has done that and then decided to run for office again. So my job through all of this is to follow the law and uphold the Constitution,” Griswold said.
The Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday will hear a similar challenge brought by Free Speech For People (FSFP), a nonprofit representing several state voters, including a former state secretary and a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice.
That hearing, which is expected to be of a smaller scope than the multiday hearing in Denver, will decide whether or not Trump can appear on the Minnesota primary ballot.
Ron Fein, the legal director of FSFP, told ABC News in an interview that his group believes Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to the former president, claiming Trump broke his oath to the Constitution.
FSFP had unsuccessfully challenged the candidacies of several members of Congress in 2022, citing Section 3. In one notable case against Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the judge found the plaintiffs provided insufficient evidence.
Still, Fein argued that their challenge against Trump relies on “far stronger” evidence.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, is also named in the lawsuit because of his role.
Simon told ABC News that his office is not taking any position on the legal merits of the challenge but they will be taking a stance on the scheduling and timeline of the case to ensure that voters receive a timely answer ahead of the state’s March 5 primary.
Amid the various state-level suits against Trump’s eligibility, Simon predicted that if any legal jurisdiction agrees with the Section 3 argument, the U.S. Supreme Court will have to step in to make the ultimate decision.
“Donald Trump will either be on the ballot everywhere or nowhere,” Simon said. “There will be a blanket rule for the country.”
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI said it’s investigating a potential antisemitic hate crime at Cornell University, as President Joe Biden told ABC News he is “very concerned” about the rise in antisemitism.
Over the weekend, numerous threats to the Jewish community at Cornell were posted on a website “unaffiliated” with the university, Cornell University President Martha Pollack wrote in a letter to the community Sunday.
The online messages posted Sunday threatened violence to the school’s Jewish community, and specifically named the location of the Center for Jewish Living, where the kosher dining hall is located, Pollack said in her letter. One of the posts threatened to shoot Jewish students on campus, another encouraged others to engage in violence aimed at Jewish students, according to Cornell’s student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun.
Pollack said the FBI was investigating the incident as a “potential hate crime.” The FBI said it’s taking the threats seriously.
“The FBI is aware of the threats made to Cornell University’s Jewish community,” the FBI said in a statement to ABC News. “We take all threats seriously and are working closely with Cornell and our law enforcement partners at every level to determine the credibility, share information, and take appropriate investigative action.
The FBI is asking anyone who sees suspicious activity to immediately report it to law enforcement.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our communities and we will not tolerate violence motivated by hate and extremism,” the FBI said in its statement.
The incident at Cornell is part of a larger issue of antisemitism on college campuses, according to the White House, which has mobilized the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Education to combat hate speech on campuses. On Monday, Biden told ABC’ Mary Bruce that he is “very concerned” about the rise in antisemitism.
During the Monday press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president is thinking of the Cornell community and that the administration is doing everything it can to counter antisemitism, including making it easier for students facing discrimination to report it.
“President Biden has been clear, we can’t stand by and stand silent in the face of hate,” she said. “We must without equivocation, denounce antisemitism. We must also without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia.”
On ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday, John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that rising antisemitism on college campuses is a “deep concern” as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on in the Middle East.
Since the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, DOJ and DHS have shared public safety information with campus law enforcement. The DOJ has also expedited antisemitic complaints to the DOJ’s Civil Rights division. The surprise attack by Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials. More than 8,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
On Monday, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul visited Cornell University’s Center for Jewish Life and hosted a news conference with Pollack. Hochul said no student should feel unsafe at Cornell and said threats like the ones targeting the university’s Jewish community will not be tolerated.
“I came here in person with one strong message, that we will not tolerate threats or hatred, or antisemitism, or any kind of hatred that makes people feel vulnerable and exposes people and makes them feel insecure in a place that they should be enjoying their campus life without fear that someone could cause them harm,” Hochul said.
Law enforcement is working to identify who is responsible for the posts, Hochul said.
“Identifying who made the threats, and holding them accountable because you want to let people know if you’re going to engage in these harmful actions, hate crimes, breaking our laws, you will be caught and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she said.
The Anti-Defamation League posted to X that it is “horrified and disgusted” by the antisemitic messages aimed at Cornell’s Jewish students.
“We have been in touch with Cornell students and parents this evening who are traumatized and in fear for their safety,” the Anti-Defamation League’s New York and New Jersey chapter wrote. “We thank law enforcement for responding quickly and for President Pollack’s strong statement of condemnation.”
ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — No offense to former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, but on Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence became the first big name to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. It’s big news because of Pence’s stature within the party, but it wasn’t necessarily a surprise: Thanks to his low polling and fundraising totals, some on the 538 team were predicting this as long ago as July. But if you’re expecting this to be the event that finally shakes up the Republican primary, think again: Pence’s withdrawal isn’t likely to give a meaningful boost to any of his fellow anti-Trump candidates.
Simply put, Pence’s campaign never got going. Thanks largely to his high profile, he started the year polling in third place with 9 percent support, according to 538’s average of national primary polls. But it all went downhill from there: By the time he actually entered the race on June 7 (his birthday!), he was down to 5 percent, and on Saturday when he dropped out, he was sitting in fifth place at 4 percent.
Normally, former vice presidents make for strong presidential contenders. Before Pence, six of the last seven former vice presidents who ran for president successfully captured their party’s nomination (Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore and Joe Biden). But as my colleague Geoffrey Skelley noted when Pence jumped into the race, Pence’s polling at the time was most similar to the one who didn’t get his party’s nomination: fellow Hoosier Dan Quayle. Bush’s vice president sought the White House in the 2000 election, but like Pence, he dropped out of the primary in the fall before the election year.
Pence’s main problem was that he had no base within the GOP. Of course, Pence served in the administration of former President Donald Trump, but he damaged his relationship with the Trump wing of the party on Jan. 6, 2021, when he refused to oppose the certification of the 2020 election. According to Civiqs polling, his net favorability rating among Republicans dropped from +76 percentage points on that day to +44 points just one week later. Still, his average net favorability numbers remained positive through the middle of this year — but they took hit after hit over the summer as Pence ratcheted up his criticism of Trump. In August, after Trump’s indictments for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election shone a spotlight on Pence’s opposition to Trump, his numbers dipped underwater. According to 538’s average, as of Friday, 45 percent of Republicans had an unfavorable opinion of Pence, and 43 percent had a favorable one.
At this point, Pence’s support was probably mostly coming from the minority of the party that would like to move on from Trump and Trumpism. Ergo, his withdrawal from the race may seem like good news for like-minded candidates such as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. But Haley et al. probably won’t experience a significant spike in the polls as a result of this.
In late September, WPA Intelligence and FairVote conducted a unique ranked-choice voting poll of the GOP primary that asked likely Republican voters not only who their first choice for president was, but also who their second, third, fourth, etc. choices were. And among voters who ranked Pence first, there was no consensus second choice. Twenty percent said their second choice was South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, 19 percent said Haley, 18 percent said businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, 15 percent said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 14 percent said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and 9 percent said Trump.
That’s just one poll, but it suggests that Pence’s support will flow relatively uniformly to all the other top-tier candidates, which would not help, say, Haley strengthen her argument that she is the candidate best positioned to defeat Trump. But of course, even if that poll is wrong and Pence’s support flows overwhelmingly to one alternative candidate, that wouldn’t significantly alter the trajectory of the race. Remember, Pence was polling at just 4 percent nationwide. At best, that would take Haley from 8 percent to 12 percent — not nothing, but still leagues behind Trump, who sits at 57 percent. No matter how much the anti-Trump vote coalesces, he will probably still win the Republican nomination unless someone else can figure out how to win some of that pro-Trump vote too.
