Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Almost 72 hours after 23-year-old U.S. Army Private 2nd Class Travis King entered North Korea, American officials say they have not been able to gain clarity on his location or condition — and even the circumstances that led him to cross the border remain a mystery.

The Pentagon announced on Thursday that Army counterintelligence officials were investigating what prompted King to separate from a tour group visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing South and North Korea, where witnesses say he sprinted across the border sometime on Tuesday.

He was originally supposed to fly out of Seoul after being taken to the airport on Monday, officials have said. Back in Texas, he was set to face a “pending administrative separation actions for foreign conviction,” one U.S. official has said. He had been in detention for more than a month after an altercation with locals, according to an official.

So far, efforts to gather information have been hamstrung by Pyongyang’s stonewalling. Although various agencies and intermediaries have attempted to communicate with the North Korean government about King, none say they have received any response and the country’s state media has also remained uncharacteristically silent.

“We’re still doing everything we can to try to find out his whereabouts, his well-being and condition and making it clear that we want to see him safely and quickly returned to the United States and to his family,” White House spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.

“Not for lack of trying, we just don’t have anything,” he said.

One U.S. official said that after King entered North Korea, he was immediately taken away in a van. But the Pentagon says they see no reason to suspect the soldier pre-planned his crossing with the North Korean government.

Asked whether the State Department feared for King’s safety, its spokesperson Matthew Miller said Thursday that Pyongyang’s past treatment of American nationals held in its custody was cause for worry.

“Certainly, I think we would always have concern given the treatment by North Koreans of past detained individuals — we would have that concern and that’s why, one of the reasons why, we are reaching out to ask for more information about his well-being,” he said.

But those asks continue to go unanswered — illustrating just how much communication between the countries has deteriorated under the Biden administration.

Although the U.S. government has made multiple attempts to engage with Pyongyang on issues like nuclear proliferation, those efforts have yet to elicit any response from the hermit kingdom.

“There is no regular contact. I will say communications between our two countries are limited,” Miller said.

Anthony Ruggiero, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program and the former deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, said North Korea may just be biding its time.

“They’re probably taking the time to speak with [King] and see what to do next,” Ruggiero said.

In prior cases involving Americans held in North Korea, Pyongyang has ignored outreach from the U.S. and Sweden — America’s diplomatic liaison in North Korea — for weeks on end.

Ruggiero said that Pyongyang could seek to turn the latest incident into “a benefit” if it senses having the American soldier in its custody is a source of diplomatic pull.

If that’s the case, Ruggiero explained, its reticence to engage with U.S. officials could evaporate.

“I think you’re likely to see that the North Koreans want to talk to an American official directly as possible,” he predicted.

Kim Jong Il, the former supreme leader of North Korea and father of its current ruler, Kim Jong Un, approved the release of American detainees after visits from former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

But even if there is direct contact between the U.S and North Korea, Ruggiero and other experts expect that the Biden administration will be reluctant to expend any significant political capital to secure the freedom of a soldier who fled while facing disciplinary action.

If that’s the case, North Korea may elect to release King, Ruggiero said, as they did with Bruce Byron Lowrance — a U.S. national who entered North Korea in 2018 and was freed a month later — a move that helped set the stage for the first summit between then-President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

“The North Koreans may believe that this is more headache than it’s worth,” Ruggiero said.

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Luis Martinez, Martha Raddatz and Matt Seyler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The three separate criminal statutes that sources say are referenced in the target letter former President Donald Trump received over the weekend could offer hints as to what he could ultimately be charged with if special counsel Jack Smith moves forward with indicting him over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The three statutes include conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States; a civil rights conspiracy charge; and tampering with a witness, victim or informant, according to sources.

It’s not clear whether Smith will seek an indictment based on any of the statutes sources say are referenced in the target letter, or what range of charges Trump could ultimately face. The former president has denied all wrongdoing and dismissed Smith’s probe as a political witch hunt.

Here’s what legal experts say the indictment could look like if Trump is ultimately charged with respect to his and others’ alleged conduct regarding his election loss.

Conspiracy to commit an offense and defraud

According to the U.S. criminal code, this potential charge would relate to 18 U.S.C. 371, a general conspiracy statute making it an offense if “two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”

Randall Eliason, a law professor at George Washington University and a former assistant U.S. attorney, described the conspiracy statute as a “go-to” for prosecutors who are seeking to join together one or more defendants in a common charge that tells the story of a case.

“Once you have conspirators then it’s a charge you’ll almost always see included, because it covers the agreement to commit any federal crime,” Eliason said.

Widge Devaney, a former assistant U.S. attorney, told ABC News the conspiracy charge would be the “easiest” for Smith to prove.

“That’s almost like an omnibus that you could fit a lot of conduct under, as long as the government is the victim,” Devaney said.

The statute includes two separate prongs: conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

While the first prong could involve a conspiracy to violate any criminal statute, the second is less commonly deployed, according to Eliason — but has been interpreted by the Supreme Court “to include any conspiracy to obstruct or impede the lawful functions of the U.S. government through deceit or unlawful methods.”

“It gives prosecutors kind of an alternative way to charge the idea that these defendants agreed to obstruct the lawful functions of the U.S. in conducting and certifying the presidential election,” Eliason said. “So you can argue that conspiracy was pressuring state officials, part of the conspiracy was sending the fake electors, part of it was summoning the mob on Jan. 6 and sending to the Capitol, part of it was pressuring [former Vice President] Mike Pence.”

“They can all be part of a single charge,” Eliason said. “And so it’s a really great vehicle to get the whole story and wrap it all up into one.”

Trump wouldn’t necessarily need to be charged alongside another individual as part of the conspiracy, according to experts, as any eventual indictment could instead make reference to others “known and unknown to the grand jury,” who could be cooperating with the government or even added to a later superseding indictment.

Conspiracy against rights

Conspiracy against rights is the title for 18 U.S.C. 241, which makes it a crime for two or more persons to “conspire to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in the United States in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his or her having exercised such a right.”

The references to the Reconstruction-era federal civil rights statute has caught some legal experts by surprise, even as some argue that it could technically apply to some of the actions Trump took in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when he sought to overturn the election results in seven swing states that voted for Joe Biden.

“I’m guessing the way they would frame this would be that Trump conspired with others to deprive the voters, maybe those seven states where they were contesting the election — deprive those voters of their right to vote, basically,” Eliason said.

Eliason said that there is no explicit “right to vote” stated in the Constitution, so a legal argument behind such a charge would have to allege Trump and others conspired to deprive voters of other rights expressed in the Constitution such as due process or equal protection under law.

“Equal protection meaning other people’s votes are counting and mine aren’t, because you’re throwing my votes out or diluting my vote or things like that,” Eliason said.

Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent and ABC News contributor, said the statute could also offer a way for Smith to address the assault on the Capitol in his indictment of Trump without having to tie Trump directly to it.

“It seems like a way to charge insurrection without charging the statute that would create First Amendment challenges,” Rangappa said. “The victims would be the millions of voters whose votes Trump was trying to prevent from being counted via the false elector scheme.”

Obstruction

While sources say the target letter to Trump cites tampering with a witness, victim or informant, the reference to obstruction is the title of the 18 U.S.C. 1512 statute, which involves a much broader range of various obstruction offenses.

Legal experts ABC News spoke with agreed this most likely relates to a provision of the statute involving obstructing an official proceeding, which the Justice Department has used in more than 310 cases against individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

The statute was long believed to be among those weighed by prosecutors examining Trump’s efforts to prevent then-Vice President Mike Pence from certifying President Biden’s election win on Jan. 6. The charge was also the first named by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in their final report, in which they issued criminal referrals for Trump to the Justice Department.

Unlike many of the rioters who have been convicted of the charge, Trump was not part of the physical breach of the building that disrupted the certification of the vote.

But the Justice Department has used the statute to achieve successful convictions of others who never entered the Capitol — including Oath Keepers militia founder Stewart Rhodes, who was in the area but remained outside the Capitol building during the attack, and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who wasn’t even in Washington, D.C. during the riot.

“When it comes to Trump, the 1512 charge wouldn’t be limited to just the riot,” Eliason said. “The charge isn’t limited to that — it doesn’t require force or violence. So I think against Trump the charge would be broader and very similar to the conspiracy charge in that it would have all these different prongs [that] he sought to obstruct the congressional proceeding.”

However, attorneys representing other Jan. 6 defendants have challenged the use of the 1512 charge with respect to the Capitol attack. Earlier this year, a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the charge’s use against three rioters accused of violence — but a separate challenge regarding the requirement of proof that a defendant acted “corruptly” in their effort to obstruct the vote certification is still being considered by another appeals court panel.

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Chuck Grassley on Thursday released a confidential FBI informant’s unverified claim that, years ago, the Biden family “pushed” a Ukrainian oligarch to pay them $10 million.

The exceedingly rare step by Grassley, R-Iowa, further promulgates an allegation that Democratic critics warned against accepting at face value and which the White House continues to deny, saying it has been investigated under the Trump administration and “debunked.”

Details of the unclassified document, known as an FD-1023, have emerged in recent months as Republicans search for any evidence that President Joe Biden engaged in the controversial overseas business dealings of his son Hunter Biden, which the president and his aides have repeatedly said he didn’t do.

Republicans in Congress in May first subpoenaed the FBI for the FD-1023, which documents information relayed by a confidential human source in June 2020. The bureau later showed a redacted version to the top two members of the House Oversight Committee and then, under threat of a contempt vote against FBI Director Christopher Wray, shared it with the full panel.

The FBI’s deputy director, Paul Abbate, testified before the Senate last month that the FD-1023 had been redacted to protect the source: “This a question of life and death, potentially.”

In a statement on Thursday, Grassley said he was motivated by transparency: “The American people can now read this document for themselves, without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.”

Grassley’s office said he obtained his version of the FD-1023, which is only lightly redacted, “via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers,” though the bureau said in a statement that such a release “at a minimum – unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source.”

Democrats pounced on Grassley for publishing the FD-1023, accusing him of selectively highlighting uncorroborated information to hurt a political opponent.

“It is remarkable that congressional Republicans, in their eagerness to go after President Biden regardless of the truth, continue to push claims that have been debunked for years,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement responding to the release. “It’s clear that congressional Republicans are dead-set on playing shameless, dishonest politics and refuse to let truth get in the way,” Sams said.

In a statement of his own, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, reiterated there had been “no actual evidence of wrongdoing” by President Biden and argued that “releasing this document in isolation from explanatory context is another transparently desperate attempt by Committee Republicans.”

But House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., challenged that, saying in a statement, “The American people must be able to read this record for themselves.”

The FD-1023 cites an unnamed source who recounts a series of interactions in 2015 and 2016 with Mykola Zlochevsky, the chief executive of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that hired Hunter Biden as a board member in 2013.

The source says in the FD-1023 that in a meeting and in phone calls over the next year, Zlochevsky claimed that he was “forced” to pay Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each, apparently in exchange for firing a Ukrainian prosecutor named Viktor Shokin who was purportedly investigating Burisma at the time.

The assertion that the elder Biden, who was then vice president, acted to have Shokin removed in an effort to protect Burisma has been undercut by widespread criticism of the former Ukrainian prosecutor by several high-profile international leaders.

Securing Shokin’s ouster was the U.S. State Department’s official policy stance at the time, and once Shokin was removed, the European Union’s envoy to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, lauded the decision as “an opportunity to make a fresh start.”

The source cited in the FD-1023, who was previously known to the FBI, added that Zlochevsky told him he had “17 recordings” involving the Bidens, including two with Joe Biden and 15 with only Hunter. Abbate, the FBI’s deputy director, testified in June that he had “no idea” if the recordings were real.

As a presidential candidate in September 2019, the elder Biden told reporters, “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” The White House has since reaffirmed that statement.

Grassley has in the past criticized the release of raw intelligence. He was one of Congress’ most vocal critics of Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Trump-Russia dossier. Steele, like the confidential source cited in the FD-1023, was also known to the FBI and trusted by the FBI when he provided his unverified reports about Trump’s activities Moscow ahead of the 2016 presidential election. (Trump has long denied any allegations of wrongdoing.)

John Cohen, a former congressional investigator and federal law enforcement official, said it was “highly disconcerting” to see a lawmaker release “uncorroborated, raw intelligence without additional detail on what those who received this reporting found when they investigated it.”

“Releasing the report in this manner creates the perception that is was done to reinforce a political narrative and if true, then it should be viewed with skepticism by the public,” said Cohen, who is also an ABC News contributor.

The FBI has previously described FD-1023 forms this way: “They do not reflect the conclusions of investigators based on a fuller context or understanding. Recording this information does not validate it, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI in our investigations.”

The FD-1023 related to Biden states that the source reported to the FBI that they met Burisma’s CEO once and spoke with him on the phone twice and was unable to “provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of what the CEO claimed.

Rep. Raskin said last month that in 2020, the Justice Department interviewed the source, investigated the source’s claims and then closed the investigation.

Comer, however, said then that the FBI told him that the allegations had “not been disproven.”

In a speech on the Senate floor, Grassley said in June that “the Justice Department and FBI must show their work.”

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy denied a report claiming he promised former President Donald Trump that the House will hold a vote before August recess on expunging Trump’s past impeachments.

“There’s no deal, but I’ve been very clear from long before — when I voted against impeachments — that they put them in for purely political purposes. I support expungement but there’s no deal out there,” McCarthy said.

Politico reported McCarthy had made a promise to Trump.

The symbolic measure is not likely to come to the floor before recess because it lacks enough GOP votes to pass. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters, “I don’t think full membership has chimed in yet” on these resolutions and mentioned the focus next week is appropriation bills.

McCarthy has previously backed the symbolic resolutions, which were introduced by top Trump defenders on Capitol Hill Reps. Elise Stefanik and Marjorie Taylor Greene in June.

“I support that,” McCarthy said about both resolutions in June. “You should expunge it because it never should have gone through.”

Stefanik, who serves as the Republican conference chairwoman and is widely viewed as a top candidate to become Trump’s running mate should he win the nomination, said she speaks to the former president often.

Greene’s resolution seeks to expunge Trump’s first impeachment stemming from a call he made to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Stefanik’s resolution focuses on the second impeachment, downplaying the events of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s role.

Stefanik said in a statement that the resolutions would “expunge the unconstitutional impeachments of President Trump as if such Articles of Impeachment had never passed the full House of Representatives,” but there is no explicit consequence of an expungement resolution, according to the House Parliamentarian’s office. The effort seemingly cannot undo the impeachment votes because they would still live in the congressional record.

While McCarthy has defended Trump throughout his legal troubles, the speaker has not yet endorsed Trump out of a desire to remain neutral — a sticking point for the former president, who touts his own role in securing McCarthy the gavel after 15 rounds of contentious voting earlier this year, Politico reported. McCarthy has openly questioned whether Trump is “the strongest to win the [general] election,” comments he later walked back.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday — for the first time — voted to advance legislation that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics more stringent disclosure requirements and explain recusal decisions to the public.

The vote was 11-10 along party lines, with all Democrats in support and all Republicans opposed. The bill — “Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act” — is now cleared for a full Senate vote.

“We are here because the highest court in the land has the lowest standards for ethics anywhere in the federal government,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who sponsored the measure.

The move follows a wave of news reports that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito failed to disclose ties to wealthy businessmen and political donors, including acceptance of luxury travel and accommodations, and that Justice Sonia Sotomayor used taxpayer-funded court staff to help sell her books.

Alito personally defended himself — arguing, in a rare op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, that he acted appropriately. In Thomas’ case, he maintained that he thought he didn’t have to disclose those ties; while in Sotomayor’s case, the court said she and the others had been urged to follow proper protocols.

“This is a bill not designed to make the court stronger or more ethical, but to destroy a conservative court,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., ahead of the vote. “It’s a bill to rearrange the makeup of how the court governs itself.”

The bill would mandate greater oversight of the justices — binding them to the same disclosure rules for gifts, travel and income as apply to lower court judges — and create a system to investigate complaints about their behavior.

It would also boost transparency around the process by which justices determine potential conflicts of interest with parties before the court and require them to explain recusal decisions, which are now entirely at their discretion.

In a rare joint statement released in April, all nine current justices said they voluntarily adhere to a code of “ethics principles and practices” and oppose the push for independent oversight.

“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in May during his first public remarks since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roberts declined an invitation to testify before the Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the court’s ethics process and lawmakers’ proposal for an overhaul, citing separation of powers concerns.

The justices are already subject to a federal disclosure law — applying to all federal employees — that requires them to file annual public reports on outside income and gifts; but “personal hospitality” is generally exempt.

“If I or any member of the Senate failed to report an all-expense paid luxury getaway or if we used our government staff to help sell books we wrote, we’d be in big trouble. The same would be true for members of the House or Cabinet officials in any presidential administration,” Durbin said Wednesday. “But the same, sadly, is not true for the nine justices across the street.”

The justices argued in their joint statement in May that proposals to force members of the court to recuse themselves under specified circumstances, publicly elaborate on the recusal process and subject their decisions to review could create more harm than good.

“If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual justices,” they wrote, “it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its members may participate.”

Later, they added that public disclosure of the basis for recusal could “encourage strategic behavior by lawyers who may seek to prompt recusals in future cases” by framing them a certain way in an attempt to disqualify a particular member of the court.

Many conservative lawmakers and legal scholars point out that justices already face the prospect of discipline for misbehavior: impeachment. It remains the only constitutionally authorized mechanism for removing a life-appointed justice accused of wrongdoing.

Many Republicans have viewed court reform proposals as a partisan attempt to delegitimize the court.

If the legislation is scheduled for a full Senate vote, it would need some Republican support to pass, given Democrats only hold the chamber with 51 votes.

The Republican-led House has shown no interest in taking up the issue, rendering enactment of any Supreme Court ethics legislation unlikely in this Congress.

“This bill is going nowhere,” Graham said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday appeared before a House subcommittee to testify at a hearing on censorship — but it was his past comments that drew sharp rebuke from Democrats as Kennedy sought to defend himself.

Testifying in front of the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on alleged government “weaponization,” Kennedy denied that he is racist or antisemitic following comments that leaked over the weekend where he appeared to be citing a false conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was “targeted to” certain ethnicities while Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews were more immune.

Kennedy said that he had “never uttered a phrase that was either racist or anti-semitic” and, despite repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation on public health issues in the past, insisted that he was not anti-vaccination.

“I’m subjected to this new form of censorship, which is called targeted propaganda, where people apply pejoratives like ‘anti-vax.’ I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” he argued. “But everybody in this room probably believes that I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”

Kennedy’s testimony comes after 102 Democratic representatives signed a letter earlier this week opposing his appearance before the panel, citing his comments that were recorded on video and published by The New York Post on Saturday, during what the paper described as a press dinner in New York City last week.

In the video obtained by the Post, Kennedy can be heard making a series of false and misleading claims, including saying, “We don’t know whether it [COVID-19] was deliberately targeted or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”

“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted,” specifically against Caucasian and Black people, Kennedy can be heard saying in the video.

Health officials worldwide have determined the virus disproportionally killed some groups of people not because of their race but because of underlying health inequities

U.S. Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett, the ranking member on the subcommittee, on Thursday blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the subcommittee’s chair, Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, for allowing Kennedy to testify in the wake of his recent remarks.

“They intentionally chose to elevate this rhetoric to give these harmful, dangerous views a platform in the halls of the United States Congress,” Plaskett said. “That’s endorsing that speech. That’s not just supporting free speech. They have co-signed on idiotic, bigoted messaging.”

“It’s a free country. You absolutely have a right to say what you believe,” Plaskett said. “But you don’t have the right to a platform, public or private. We don’t have to give one of the largest platforms of our democracy — Congress, this hearing. Our right does not mean that we as Americans are not free from accountability.”

Earlier this week, McCarthy said of Kennedy, “I disagree with everything he said. The hearing that we have this week is about censorship. I don’t think censoring somebody is actually the answer here.”

In his testimony, Kennedy claimed that other Democrats were seeking to silence him based on his views.

“‘I’ve spent my life in this party. I’ve devoted my life to the values of this party,” he said. “This — 102 people signed this. This itself is evidence of the problem that this hearing was convened to address. This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.”

The letter was initiated by Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Dan Goldman of New York, who are Jewish, and Rep. Judy Chu, who is Chinese American.

“If you think I said something that’s antisemitic, let’s talk about the details,” Kennedy maintained in his testimony. “I’m telling you, all the things that I’m accused of right now, by you and in this letter, are distortions, they’re misrepresentations.”

This story will be updated.

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(WASHINGTON) — At least one witness is expected to appear Thursday before the grand jury in Washington, D.C., investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources tell ABC News.

Trump aide Will Russell previously appeared before the grand jury, so Thursday would be a return appearance.

Russell served in the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president and the deputy director of Advance before moving to Florida to work as an aide to Trump after he left the White House.

Special counsel Jack Smith informed Trump on Sunday that he is a target in the election probe, suggesting that another indictment of the former president could be imminent.

As ABC has previously reported, multiple witnesses have appeared before the grand jury in recent weeks, including Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.

Recent witnesses have been asked specifically about Trump’s state of mind surrounding Jan. 6 and whether he was told and knew that he lost the election, sources have told ABC News.

Trump, who has denied all wrongdoing, has denounced Smith’s probe as a political witch hunt.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday will — for the first time — vote to advance legislation that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics, adhere to more stringent disclosure requirements and explain recusal decisions to the public.

The unusual step follows a wave of news reports that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito failed to disclose ties to wealthy businessmen and political donors, including acceptance of luxury travel and accommodations, and that Justice Sonia Sotomayor used taxpayer-funded court staff to help sell her books.

Alito personally defended himself — arguing, in a rare op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, that he acted appropriately. In Thomas’ case, he maintained that he thought he didn’t have to disclose those ties; while in Sotomayor’s case, the court said she and the others had been urged to follow proper protocols.

“They are the most powerful judges in the entire nation, and yet they are not required to follow even the most basic ethical standards. It’s time for that to change,” the Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor.

The bill, which is sponsored by Democrats, would mandate greater oversight of the justices — binding them to the same disclosure rules for gifts, travel and income as apply to lower court judges — and create a system to investigate complaints about their behavior.

It would also boost transparency around the process by which justices determine potential conflicts of interest with parties before the court and require them to explain recusal decisions, which are now entirely at their discretion.

In a rare joint statement released in April, all nine current justices said they voluntarily adhere to a code of “ethics principles and practices” and oppose the push for independent oversight.

“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in May during his first public remarks since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roberts declined an invitation to testify before the Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the court’s ethics process and lawmakers’ proposal for an overhaul, citing separation of powers concerns.

The justices are already subject to a federal disclosure law — applying to all federal employees — that requires them to file annual public reports on outside income and gifts; but “personal hospitality” is generally exempt.

“If I or any member of the Senate failed to report an all-expense paid luxury getaway or if we used our government staff to help sell books we wrote, we’d be in big trouble. The same would be true for members of the House or Cabinet officials in any presidential administration,” Durbin said Wednesday. “But the same, sadly, is not true for the nine justices across the street.”

The justices argued in their joint statement in May that proposals to force members of the court to recuse themselves under specified circumstances, publicly elaborate on the recusal process and subject their decisions to review could create more harm than good.

“If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual justices,” they wrote, “it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its members may participate.”

Later, they added that public disclosure of the basis for recusal could “encourage strategic behavior by lawyers who may seek to prompt recusals in future cases” by framing them a certain way in an attempt to disqualify a particular member of the court.

Many conservative lawmakers and legal scholars point out that justices already face the prospect of discipline for misbehavior: impeachment. It remains the only constitutionally authorized mechanism for removing a life-appointed justice accused of wrongdoing.

And many veteran court watchers note that few of the recently surfaced ethics allegations likely rise to that level.

None of the committee’s nine Republican members are expected to support the bill overhauling the high court’s ethics procedures. Many have viewed the process as a partisan attempt to delegitimize the court.

If the legislation wins committee approval, it would potentially advance to a vote in the full Senate, where it would need some Republican support to pass, given Democrats only hold the chamber with 51 votes.

The Republican-led House has shown no interest in taking up the issue, rendering enactment of any Supreme Court ethics legislation unlikely in this Congress.

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(WASHINGTON) — The scientist and military intelligence officer leading the Pentagon’s task force for unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) — which the public calls UFOs — says being caught off guard by “intelligent or extraterrestrial technical supremacy” remains a top concern as investigators analyze more than 800 cases of mysterious sightings reported by U.S. military personnel dating back decades.

“Data and science has to guide where you go, and we will follow the data,” Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick said last month, in an exclusive first interview after his appointment to the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.

Congress established the office last year to coordinate efforts across federal agencies to “detect, identify and attribute” mysterious objects of interest in the air, in outer space and underwater, with special focus on mitigating potential threats to military operations and national security.

“The most common misconception is that [the possible phenomena] are all the same thing and they’re all extraterrestrial, and neither of those are true,” Kirkpatrick said.

“We have to go through the rigor of taking each one, matching it against our known objects and catalogs and then reviewing that — peer reviewing that — and making sure that everybody’s in agreement,” he said of the process, which has included establishing a government-wide data collection initiative.

The AARO has looked into some high-profile UAP sightings, highlighted in congressional hearings, including a 2019 video recording taken by Navy sailors of glowing triangles floating above them.

The vast majority of cases reviewed since the office was established are “readily explainable,” Kirkpatrick said, noting that final, evidence-based determinations remain slow and ongoing.

Many reported phenomena are later attributed as likely balloons, drones, debris or animals, such as large birds, he said.

That 2019 video was later determined to be ordinary drones distorted by night-vision goggles.

“I have a full range of hypotheses: On one end of the spectrum, it’s advanced technology that’s coming from an adversary. Right in the middle, I have all my known objects — balloons and drones and birds and whatnot. And then on the far end of the spectrum, we have extraterrestrials,” said Kirkpatrick.

A small number of the reports — roughly 2-5% of cases — are unexplained anomalies, including the so called 2004 “Tic Tac” incident.

“It’s really hard to guess on this, and I don’t like to guess,” Kirkpatrick said of the case. “The more things that I see that resemble a Tic Tac, then I can get more and more information about what that is.”

Sixty-five percent of Americans believe intelligent life exists beyond earth, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey. A majority — 51% — also said then that UAPs under investigation by the government are likely proof of contact.

“I can’t rule it out, but I don’t have any evidence,” Kirkpatrick said.

The House Oversight Committee announced earlier this week that it will hold a hearing on the phenomena on Wednesday as Republican lawmakers pursue unproven whistleblower allegations that the government is secretly in possession of “intact and partially intact” alien spacecraft, which the Pentagon has said is unsubstantiated.

Two former government intelligence analysts came forward last month alleging that details of the alleged craft are being illegally withheld from Congress and the American people. Neither has publicly provided any evidence to substantiate their claims.

“We’ve interviewed almost 30 individuals who have come in to provide their testimony. And out of all of those, none of it has yet led to any verifiable information that substantiates the claim that the U.S. government has those ships or has a reverse engineering program either in the past or currently,” Kirkpatrick said when asked about the allegations.

He downplayed the possible existence of a secret program that he is not privy to, saying, “Nothing has been denied us.”

“A number of these [whistleblowers] believe and have stated — and we believe them now — that they have seen something. And we are investigating,” he said.

The proliferation of conspiracy theories spawned by the UAPs has inspired a sense of bipartisan urgency on Capitol Hill.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, backed by other top Democrats and Republicans, this month called for greater transparency by the government. Legislation he proposed would force the National Archives to collect and publicly release records related to UAP reports within 25 years of when they were created unless there is a compelling national security concern.

“There is something there — measurable light, multiple instruments — and yet it seems to move in directions inconsistent with what we know of physics or science more broadly. And that, to me, poses questions of tremendous interest, as well as potential national security significance,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on UAPs in 2022.

Multiple congressional committees have also explored concerns that the mysterious sightings could be evidence of surveillance by other countries.

“My priority is that we understand the full range of threats posed by our adversaries in all domains,” Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said during an Armed Services Committee hearing on UAPs in April.

For his part, Kirkpatrick is focused on the gathering of facts and evidence.

“A lot of these stories, a lot of these allegations, crop up again and again over history,” he said. “I’m not going to jump ahead to conclusions until we have more data.”

Asked whether he believes intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, Kirkpatrick said: “I think it’s statistically unrealistic to think it isn’t” and that finding it would be “probably the best outcome of this job.”

WATCH: Inside the Pentagon’s probe of unidentified anomalous phenomena — an ABC News Live PRIME exclusive. Stream Thursday night 7 p.m./9 p.m. ET on Hulu or anywhere you can find the ABC News app.

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday night hosted a screening of the film Sound of Freedom at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, one day after the revelation that special counsel Jack Smith has informed Trump he is a target of the federal investigation into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump has regularly kept up his campaign schedule despite mounting legal problems, including two indictments to which he has pleaded not guilty. He has also denied wrongdoing related to the 2020 election.

Wednesday’s event has a specific purpose, according to his campaign: to burnish both his record on human trafficking and his credentials with evangelical Christians, who are a key bloc in states like Iowa that are early in the GOP primary race.

Sound of Freedom is a faith-based film, and evangelicals are one of its main audiences. An adviser to Trump told ABC News that the screening was going to include a large faith-based element.

The movie is loosely based on Tim Ballard, who founded the anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad. The fictional story, starring actor Jim Caviezel as Ballard, follows his mission through the Colombian jungle to save a girl from child traffickers.

Between late 2019 and 2020, Ballard served on an anti-trafficking White House advisory council while Trump was president.

His and Operation Underground Railroad’s work has been closely scrutinized in an investigation published by Vice News that reported Ballard and the organization had at times seemingly exaggerated some of elements of their work.

Operation Underground Railroad said in 2020, in response: “We are proud to help play a part in giving better lives to children around the world” and contended that Vice was engaged in “an effort to find any, even minor, discrepancy, and to twist anything found into a negative portrayal of an honorable organization.” (Ballard has since left the group.)

Sound of Freedom emerged as a surprising box office success this summer, driven by conservative and religious audiences, according to analysts. Distributed by an independent company, it has built a nearly $100 million following — and counting — and has been buoyed by positive reviews and word of mouth.

But the film has some critics, too, who argue the film inaccurately depicts the reality of child sex trafficking.

Caviezel, the film’s star, has stirred controversy of his own.

He has repeatedly referenced some baseless claims embraced by the QAnon conspiracy, which sees Trump as a savior figure.

While promoting Sound of Freedom on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Caviezel warned without evidence that children are trafficked for their blood — a claim he has made before — and, in the past, he has invoked “the storm,” which QAnon followers think will be a kind of climatic battle against evil. (Efforts to reach Caviezel for comment were unsuccessful.)

Of QAnon, Trump himself said in 2020, “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much — which I appreciate.”

But on social media in the years since, he has shared posts that proudly link him to the conspiracy including one that warns “the storm is coming.”

QAnon believers have reportedly cheered Sound of Freedom, though those behind the film have flatly rejected any connection to conspiracies or politics.

“I can’t explain it and neither can they. … They just like to throw the word out, ‘QAnon,'” Ballard, the anti-trafficking advocate, said on Fox News. “They make zero connection to the actual story.”

The CEO of Angel Studios, which is distributing Sound of Freedom, has likewise pushed back on this claim, saying: “Everyone who’s seen this film knows that it has nothing to do with politics or conspiracy, and that it’s just a great, true story, well-told.”

Operation Underground Railroad’s website states that they don’t “condone conspiracy theories and [are] not affiliated with any conspiracy groups in any way, shape or form. Accurate information about child exploitation and human trafficking is imperative to effectively confront these issues.”

At the Wednesday screening, Trump was set to be joined by Ballard, Caviezel and the movie’s producer Eduardo Verástegui, who previously served on Trump’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity.

Trump’s campaign used the movie screening announcement to tout his presidential record on combating human trafficking, saying he signed nine pieces of bipartisan legislation and doubled the amount of Department of Justice funding to combat human trafficking.

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