Politics

(WASHINGTON) — In a dramatic move to differentiate himself on a key foreign policy issue, former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday made a surprise trip to Ukraine, projecting solidarity against Russia in a way, so far, unmatched by his Republican competitors.

His visit comes about four months after President Joe Biden walked through the capital of Kyiv.

A divide on support for Ukraine emerged early in the GOP field when then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked candidates and hopefuls in March to respond to a questionnaire about the war. Former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis took similar isolationist positions, with DeSantis facing criticism for distilling the conflict down to “a territorial dispute.”

“The war in Ukraine is not a territorial dispute. It’s a Russian invasion,” Pence told ABC News This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl in March, staking out a position opposite from the two front-runners. “It’s just the latest instance of Russia attempting to redraw international lines by force, and the United States of America must continue at a quickened pace to provide the Ukrainian military the support that they need to repel the Russian invasion — and the stakes are that high.”

Pence has only amplified this split since making his bid official this month.

In a CNN town hall from Iowa on the day he launched his campaign, he said, “Frankly, when Vladimir Putin rolled into Ukraine, the former president called him a genius. I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal.”

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, he interjected the difference on his own when talking about Trump.

“My former running mate, seeing war raging in Eastern Europe, is signaling an ambiguous message, not even able to say who he would prefer to see win the war in Ukraine,” Pence said. “The United States needs to stand by the courageous fighters in Ukraine, give them the resources more quickly than Joe Biden has, to take the fight to the Russians and repel this invasion.”

Pence contends there’s no place for Putin apologists in the Republican Party. Asked why then some in his party, particularly Republicans in the U.S. House, resist aid to Ukraine, Pence said any skepticism there and among the American people “is more a reflection of lack of confidence in Joe Biden as commander in chief.”

“Joe Biden talks about glossy goals of democracy. No. Look, if Russia overwhelms Ukraine. I predict it would not be too long before the Russian army crosses the border, where our men and women in uniform would have to go and fight by crossing into a NATO ally,” he told NBC.

Pitching himself as a Reagan-era Republican, Pence has pushed the Reagan Doctrine — of fending off enemies on their soil to prevent America’s direct involvement — to explain how he would handle foreign policy. While he says he doesn’t support sending a “blank check” to Ukraine, he’s also warned that “withholding or reducing support will have consequence.”

Biden made a surprise trip to Ukraine in February to mark the war’s anniversary, proclaiming, “Kyiv still stands” in a defiant moment alongside Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with air sirens sounding overheard.

Among others in the 2024 field, former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson all support aiding Ukraine — while tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy takes the opposite view, saying he doesn’t consider the possibility of Russia overtaking Ukraine “a top foreign policy priority.”

Pence’s visit comes as Republican support for Ukraine has dwindled, according to some polls.

While solid majorities of Americans still support providing weapons to Ukraine, the share who say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine has steadily increased since the war began, driven by a shift among Republicans.

According to Pew Research Center, 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents currently say the U.S. is giving too much aid to Ukraine. That share has more than quadrupled, from 9%, since March 2022 just after Russia’s invasion began.

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(WASHINGTON) — One of the top advisers on Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is among the individuals identified but not named by special counsel Jack Smith in his indictment against the former president for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Susie Wiles, one of Trump’s most trusted advisers leading his second reelection effort, is the individual singled out in Smith’s indictment as the “PAC Representative” who Trump is alleged to have shown a classified map to in August or September of 2021, sources said.

Trump, in the indictment, is alleged to have shown the classified map of an unidentified country to Wiles while discussing a military operation that Trump said “was not going well,” while adding that he “should not be showing the map” to her and “not to get too close.”

“Jack Smith and the Special Counsel’s investigation is openly engaging in outright election interference and meddling by attacking one of the leaders of President Trump’s re-election campaign,” a Trump campaign spokesperson told ABC News. “This sham investigation by Joe Biden and his weaponized DOJ are clearly designed to inflict maximum political damage and to prevent President Trump … from reclaiming the White House.”

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment. The Justice Department and the White House have both denied any political interference in the special counsel’s investigation.

The alleged exchange between Trump and Wiles is the second of two instances detailed by prosecutors in the indictment showing how Trump allegedly disclosed classified information in private meetings after leaving the White House. The first was a July 2021 audio recording, obtained by ABC News earlier this week, in which Trump is heard showing people what he describes as a “secret” and “highly confidential” document relating to Iran.

ABC News has reported the meeting involved people who were helping Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with his memoir, according to sources. Smith’s team has spoken to the meeting’s attendees, which included the writers helping Meadows with his book and at least two aides to Trump, according to sources.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and continues to claim he was not showing off classified documents, as he seems to be doing during the meeting, according to an audio recording of the meeting.

“I would say it’s bravado,” Trump told ABC News Tuesday about his conversation in the recording. “If you want to know the truth, it was bravado. I was talking about just holding up papers and talking about, but I have no documents. I didn’t have any documents.”

It does not appear, based on the indictment, that Trump was charged specifically for his retention of either the Iran document or the classified map shown to the person identified as Wiles. Rather, the two instances speak to what Smith’s prosecutors see as Trump’s state of mind in how he handled and sometimes shared classified materials in his possession after leaving the White House, sources said, as well as his alleged efforts to subvert the government’s efforts to get the documents back.

If the identification of Wiles by sources is accurate, it also raises the prospect that should Trump’s case go to trial prior to the 2024 election, one of the top figures leading his reelection bid could be called to testify as a key witness. Wiles, who previously helped lead Trump’s now-GOP primary opponent Ron DeSantis’ two campaigns for governor, is seen as one of Trump’s most trusted confidants.

She also led Trump’s campaign operations in Florida in 2016, and was later CEO of Trump’s Save America political action committee.

While Trump has not named a 2024 campaign manager, Wiles, along with Chris LaCivita and Brian Jack, are the team steering the campaign’s efforts, including all spending, fundraising and infrastructure.

Sources have also further identified some of the other figures mentioned by Smith’s team in the indictment. Hayley Harrison and Molly Michael are said to be “Trump Employee 1” and “Trump Employee 2,” respectively. The indictment details their text messages back and forth about moving Trump’s boxes out of the business center at his Mar-a-Lago estate to create room for staff to work.

Michael, whose name was previously reported as an individual identified in the indictment, is Trump’s former executive assistant who no longer works for him, while Harrison is currently an aide to Trump’s wife, Melania Trump.

“There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is. Is it only his papers he cares about?” Trump Employee 1, identified by sources as Harrison, wrote Trump Employee 2, identified by sources as Michael, according to the indictment. “There’s some other stuff in there that are not papers. Could that go to storage? Or does he want everything in there on property.”

According to the indictment, Trump’s longtime aide Walt Nauta and Trump Employee 2, identified by sources as Michael, exchanged text messages between November 2021 and January 2022 about bringing boxes from the storage room to Trump’s residence so he could personally review their contents. In one instance in December 2021, Nauta texted Trump Employee 2 about finding that several of Trump’s boxes had fallen on the floor with their contents spilled, and sent a photo to her whose image included a document with visible classification markings.

Nauta was charged alongside Trump earlier this month with conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements.

Nauta and Trump Employee 2, identified by sources as Michael, exchanged messages back and forth about the status of Trump’s review of the boxes, and on Dec. 29, 2021, Trump Employee 2 texted “Trump Representative 1,” who sources say is former Trump lawyer Alex Cannon, to provide him an update, according to the indictment. Cannon was in touch with the National Archives and responsible for facilitating the initial transfer of 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago back to the National Archives in January 2022.

None of the people named by sources as being individuals described in the indictment are accused of any wrongdoing.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for mid-July to address the handling of classified materials in the trial.

Trump, who earlier this month pleaded not guilty to all the charges outlined in Smith’s indictment, has dismissed the special counsel’s probe as a politically motivated witch hunt.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration has selected the new head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sources confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday.

Patrick “P.J.” Lechleitner, a career ICE official, will become acting director of the agency after more than 20 years with the Department of Homeland Security.

Lechleitner’s predecessor as acting director, Tae Johnson, announced his retirement last month.

A founding member of DHS in the early 2000s, Lechleitner worked his way up through Homeland Security Investigations, the division of ICE responsible for combating human trafficking and smuggling.

“He is someone whose counsel I have sought, and whose advice and guidance I have trusted,” HSI Special Agent in Charge Scott Brown said in a statement to ABC News. “PJ gets it. He gets it at all levels. He has the ability to translate the day-to-day challenges in the field into actionable plans to address those challenges.”

DHS has led a series of operations in recent months targeting transnational narcotics smuggling with a particular focus on the ultra-deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Authorities seized nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl over a two-month period as part of the recent crackdown, according to DHS.

Lechleitner’s purview will be much broader than investigations at the top of a federal law enforcement agency with a high public profile but which has also been a lightning rod for controversy, particularly among migrants’ advocates.

In part because of polarization around the agency, the Senate hasn’t confirmed a permanent director since Barack Obama was president.

ICE detention came under close scrutiny in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Civil liberties groups like the ACLU regularly rang alarm bells about conditions while in custody and began taking legal action.

Although typically reserved for individuals who may attempt to evade authorities, ICE detention does not require the same criminal burdens of proof as required to criminally incarcerate U.S. citizens.

The agency has also been criticized for how it handles child migrants who are detained, among other issues.

Lechleitner’s predecessor, Johnson, testified before a House committee in 2021 that ICE’s work is broad and the agency is “committed to enforcing immigration laws humanely, effectively, with professionalism.”

“Every day, the over 20,000 dedicated, proud, professionals at ICE work to promote homeland security and public safety through the broad enforcement of over 400 federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration,” he said. “I am proud to serve beside them.”

Lechleitner’s new role is among the latest in leadership changes at the Homeland Security immigration agencies. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz plans to retire Friday, multiple sources told ABC News.

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(WASHINGTON) — Twice in 24 hours President Joe Biden misspoke when discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, referring to it instead as the war “in Iraq.”

The first apparent gaffe occurred Tuesday when Biden was courting Democratic donors at a fundraiser in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

“Think about this: If anybody told you — and my staff wasn’t so sure, either — that we’d be able to bring all of Europe together in the onslaught on Iraq and get NATO to be completely united, I think they would have told you it’s not likely,” Biden said. “The one thing Putin counted on was being able to split NATO.”

The second mistake happened Wednesday as Biden departed Washington for Chicago, where he delivered a major speech on his economic philosophy. On the South Lawn, Biden was asked about whether Russia’s Vladimir Putin is weakened after a short-lived mutiny by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The rebellion, in which Prigozhin’s armed forces marched toward Moscow, represented the most significant risk to Putin’s authority in his decades in power.

“It’s hard to tell, but [Putin’s] clearly losing the war in Iraq, losing the war at home. And he has become a bit of a pariah around the world,” Biden told reporters.

The White House has not addressed Biden’s slips.

Biden’s long been prone to such gaffes verbal blunders, even predating his presidency.

Biden’s critics and Republicans have often seized on the miscues as an opening to criticize his age and question his fitness for office.

At 80, Biden is the oldest sitting president in history and would be 82 if reelected and sworn in for a second term. Former President Donald Trump, the early Republican front-runner, just turned 77 and would be 79 at the time of his swearing-in were he to win the general election.

As he’s faced scrutiny about his health and age after announcing his reelection campaign, Biden’s often responded with a common refrain: “Watch me.”

Biden previously told ABC News he took a “hard look” at his age himself when weighing whether to run for reelection and respects Americans doing the same.

“I took a hard look at it before I decided to run, and I feel good,” Biden told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce in April. “I feel excited about the prospects, and I think we’re on the verge of really turning the corner in a way we haven’t in a long time.”

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(WASHINGTON) — As the 2024 election gets underway, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who hasn’t yet endorsed anyone in the Republican presidential primary, was quick this week to walk back a comment casting doubt on Donald Trump’s reelection chances.

McCarthy called Trump on Tuesday to explain what he said earlier that day on CNBC — highlighting the fact that the speaker still has loyalty to the former president, a source told ABC News.

“Can he win that election? Yeah, he can win that election. The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer,” McCarthy had said during an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. “But can anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat them. It’s on any given day.”

McCarthy also said then that “Trump’s policies are better” than Biden.

The speaker quickly backtracked the part of his remarks about Trump’s chances, initially telling Breitbart that “Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016” and pointing to a Morning Consult poll that showed Trump beating Biden. (Other recent surveys have showed Biden with an edge over Trump.)

“As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s [Department of Justice] accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice,” McCarthy told the right-wing outlet.

ABC News’ Rachel Scott — who was one of two reporters on a plane with Trump to New Hampshire on Tuesday — said Trump was taking note of what McCarthy said: While on the plane, he pulled out a stack of papers, which included McCarthy’s comments.

This is not the first time the two were at odds. After the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, McCarthy said Trump “bears responsibility” for what happened.

Weeks later, McCarthy visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and posed together for a picture. “I can talk to anyone,” McCarthy said at the time. “Just as I can go talk to Joe Biden if President Biden wants to talk.”

Trump supported McCarthy during the House speaker race in January and made calls to several GOP holdouts to help change votes in McCarthy’s favor. In order to keep his slim majority, McCarthy has also, at specific moments, pledged to take actions in the House to defend Trump.

The speaker said last week that he supports two resolutions to “expunge” Trump’s two impeachments — the most of any former president — and has publicly slammed the DOJ for Trump’s indictment after allegedly mishandling government secrets while out of office.

McCarthy said the House GOP will also use its power to, in his words, hold Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accountable and had the Judiciary Committee chairman push for documents and information from the prosecutor, who brought charges against Trump for falsifying business records, to which Trump pleaded not guilty.

Bragg’s attorney has said McCarthy and other lawmakers “have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Republican presidential candidates who qualify for the first primary debate will have to satisfy one final, somewhat controversial requirement, sources say: signing a pledge to back whomever the party’s eventual nominee is, including if it’s Donald Trump.

Two sources familiar with the discussion told ABC News that the pledge will only be presented to candidates for their signature after they earn their spot on the debate stage, in Milwaukee in August, rather than earlier in the process.

This order would signal that they cannot lean on the pledge as a reason not to participate.

Three GOP hopefuls who are critical of Trump — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd — have expressed concerns about the pledge.

Trump himself has not committed to backing another candidate should he lose the primary.

A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, asked for comment, referred ABC News to what RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said on Fox News last week: that the pledge was about backing voters’ views.

“Anybody who wants to seek the nomination of our party should pledge to support the voters,” McDaniel said then. “If you go through this process and you take time on the debate stage and you’re going to be there, the No. 1 pledge should be: Beat [Joe] Biden.”

All candidates have up until 48 hours prior to the Aug. 23 debate to prove to the RNC that they’ve hit at least 1% in three national polls or in a mix of national and early state polls recognized by the committee plus accrued 40,000 individual donors to their campaigns from at least 200 unique donors per state in 20 or more states.

Hutchinson, who is polling at 1.1% according to an average from FiveThirtyEight, has publicly objected to both the loyalty pledge requirement and donor threshold, which he said was too limiting.

His campaign pressed RNC officials to reconsider the pledge after Trump was federally charged earlier this month, now facing two criminal prosecutions. (Trump has pleaded not guilty in both.)

During a call between RNC leaders and a staff member of the Hutchinson campaign on June 15, party officials insisted there would not be any changes to their debate guidelines.

“Individuals who are seeking the Republican nomination for President are being asked to respect the decision of Republican Primary voters and support the eventual nominee they pick to beat Biden,” RNC senior adviser Richard Walters told ABC News’ Rachel Scott in a statement. “Candidates who are complaining about this to the press should seriously reconsider their priorities and whether they should even be running.”

Hutchinson’s campaign subsequently took issue with the party’s plan not to deliver the loyalty pledge to candidates until they have met donor and polling benchmarks.

“It’s been our understanding that the text of the pledge would be provided to the campaigns well in advance of whatever deadline is set by the RNC,” Hutchinson’s campaign manager, Rob Burgess, told ABC News.

Nonetheless, Burgess said, “I am confident Gov. Hutchinson will be on the debate stage in order to demonstrate what true consistent conservative leadership looks like.”

Christie has also made his displeasure with the pledge clear, calling it a “useless idea” and telling ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos earlier this month that he would take the pledge “just as seriously as” Trump did in the 2016 election cycle — that is to say, he would disregard it as needed.

During the 2016 cycle, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and then Ohio-Gov. John Kasich also suggested they would drop the pledge. Cruz later endorsed Trump.

A spokesperson for Christie’s campaign referred ABC News to what Christie said on CNN in regard to his thoughts on the pledge, which they said he’s also expressed directly to McDaniel and the RNC.

“In all my life, we never had to have Republican primary candidates take a pledge. You know, we were Republicans. And the idea is you support the Republicans, whether you won or whether you lost. And you didn’t have to ask somebody to sign something. It’s only the era of Donald Trump that you need somebody to sign something on a pledge. So I think it’s a bad idea,” Christie said on CNN.

“But look, I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three time loser Donald Trump.”

Hurd, upon his long shot entrance into the GOP field last week, hesitated when asked on CNN if he thought he would be able to get on the debate stage.

He also said he wouldn’t sign a candidate pledge or support Trump should Trump become the nominee. He suggested that the RNC was attempting to tip the scales of the primary by implementing debate requirements like the pledge.

“The bottom line is this: I’ve taken one pledge and that’s when I put my hand on the heart to pledge allegiance to the flag. I’ve taken one oath, asked to defend the Constitution of America. And I’ve taken one vow, to my amazing, beautiful wife,” Hurd said.

In response to the RNC’s claim that they will not deliver the loyalty pledge to candidates until they qualify for polling and donor thresholds, Hurd told ABC: “I’m not in the business of lying to the American people for the sake of a microphone. I fully intend to get to 40,000 donors, meet the polling threshold, and show up to Milwaukee for the debate. I will not sign a pledge to any political leader, so go to my website and donate to see what the RNC does on August 23rd.”

Meanwhile Trump’s chief primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, said earlier this month that he would “respect the outcome of the process” but stressed that he intended to win.

“I think I’m going to be the nominee,” he said. “No matter what happens, I’m going to work to beat Joe Biden.”

ABC News’ Libby Cathey, Will McDuffie and Rachel Scott contributed to this report.

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(HOLLIS, N.H.) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a rare comment on Tuesday about the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol two years ago, which he has previously condemned while suggesting they are over-covered.

During an event in Hollis, New Hampshire, the GOP presidential hopeful was asked by a 15-year-old audience member if he believed that Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power.”

DeSantis emphasized the electoral danger, as he put it, in “re-litigating things that happened three years ago” before saying, “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing what happened, but we’ve got to go forward on this stuff.”

“If this election is about [President Joe] Biden’s failures and our vision for the future, we are going to win. If it’s about re-litigating things that happened three years ago, we’re going to lose,” he said, adding, “I can tell you this: I can point you to Tallahassee, Florida, on, I believe, Jan. 5, 2023. We had a peaceful transfer of power from my first administration to my second because I won reelection in a historic fashion. And at the end of the day, you know, we need to win, and we need to get this done.”

“We cannot be looking backwards and be mired in the past,” he said.

In the hours after the insurrection in 2021, which occurred as Congress gathered to certify Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump, DeSantis condemned the “unacceptable” actions of the rioters and said, “The perpetrators must face the full weight of the law.”

“It doesn’t matter what banner you’re flying under — the violence is wrong, the rioting and disorder is wrong,” he later told reporters.

More than 300 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees that day, the Department of Justice has said, and more than 100 defendants have been accused of using deadly weapons.

About 140 police were attacked on Jan. 6, according to DOJ.

In 2022, DeSantis reiterated that law-breakers should be held “accountable,” but he mocked continued news coverage of the insurrection, comparing Jan. 6 to “Christmas” for “D.C.-New York media” and suggesting the attention was a way to attack Trump supporters while deflecting from problems plaguing the Biden administration.

“When they try to act like this is something akin to the Sept. 11 attacks, that is an insult to the people who were going into those buildings,” DeSantis said. “And it’s an insult to people when you say it’s an ‘insurrection’ and then, a year later, nobody has been charged with that.” (Multiple people have since been found guilty of seditious conspiracy.)

When reelection opponent Charlie Crist criticized DeSantis for, he claimed, not more forcefully calling out the events of Jan. 6, a spokeswoman for the governor told PolitiFact last year: “Gov. DeSantis stands for law and order. He has always condemned all rioting and unlawful behavior, regardless of any political affiliations.”

In the days after DeSantis’ presidential campaign launch this year, however, he appeared to leave open the possibility of pardoning rioters who have been convicted even though he did not mention any specific Jan. 6 cases by name.

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(WASHINGTON) — The White House is going all in on “Bidenomics” branding as the 2024 election cycle heats up.

President Joe Biden is taking his economic philosophy, which emphasizes building the economy from the middle out and bottom up, on the road with the first stop being in Chicago on Wednesday.

There, he’s expected tout his “Investing in America” agenda and significant pieces of legislation passed in his first term.

“Now is the time where with all of those accomplishments, the president can take this message to the American people and say, this is what ‘Bidenomics’ is and here’s what we have to show for it,” White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters Tuesday.

“Let’s put our foot on the gas and keep moving forward instead of returning to these failed trickle-down policies that never seem to ever trickle down,” Dalton continued.

The official push by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris comes as polls show the president under water with voters on economic issues after a year of persistent inflation, which has recently eased, and high interest rates.

Republican presidential hopefuls frequently hit Biden over the economy, accusing him of fueling higher prices with big spending packages and harming corporations through so-called “woke” policies.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll last month found Americans 54-36% said former President Donald Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was in office than Biden has done so far.

The branding could carry some political risk, if the economy worsens.

Dalton defended Biden’s economic message, a rebranding of the ideas he’s articulated for years, when pressed on the poll numbers by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce.

“Well, what I would say to you is look at where we were when we came into office after four years of Donald Trump,” Dalton responded, citing a near historic low unemployment rate and a cooling in inflation.

The administration’s recently been buoyed by a May jobs report that showed payrolls grew by 339,000, beating expectations. Consumer prices rose 4% in May compared to a year ago, also a better figure than anticipated, and down from the 40-year high of more than 9% last year.

And the White House asserts the nation is just starting to see the positive impacts of its major legislative wins, including massive investments in semiconducter production, domestic manufacturing and clean energy initiatives.

Biden on Monday rolled out how more than $40 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be used to expand high-speed internet access across the nation, specifically in underserved areas and rural communities.

During remarks in the East Room, Biden said the announcement represented what his economic vision is all about.

“I ran for president with a fundamentally different vision: to build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up instead of the top down; to grow the economy by educating and empowering workers, by promoting competition to support small businesses, and investing in ourselves again for the first time in a long time,” he said.

-ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is continuing to insist there was no wrongdoing in his handling of sensitive government documents after he left the White House — and supporters continue to stand by him — in the wake of an audio recording, obtained by ABC News and other outlets, where Trump acknowledges he held onto a “secret” military document post-presidency and knew it wasn’t declassified.

“I don’t care about any recordings,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday during a campaign stop in Concord, New Hampshire.

He claimed that the rustling papers heard in the recording were “newspaper articles, copies of magazines, copies of different plans, copies of stories.”

“We had a lot of papers, a lot of papers stacked up. In fact, you could hear the rustle of the paper and nobody said I did anything wrong,” Trump added.

Before the audio was published, Trump previously maintained that “there was no document” at all.

Federal prosecutors allege otherwise, with the 37-count indictment against him claiming that he showed a record he knew was “highly confidential” to people who weren’t authorized to see it.

“Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing?” Trump says at one point in the recording. “This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me. As president I could have declassified, but now I can’t.”

Trump, who pleaded not guilty to his charges earlier this month, made no mention of the audio on Tuesday during a speech at the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women’s 76th Lilac Luncheon, appearing to brush off the development as some supporters in the state did the same.

“It’s not a video. I’m not sure if anything was there,” Larry Miller of Merrimack told ABC News. “He mentioned this document or something, but was there a document actually there? I don’t know where that tape came from. But it proves, or it doesn’t prove, very little. It’s just rhetoric and talk. Show me something else.”

“I haven’t heard the tape. But it doesn’t affect me at all because presidents are allowed to take confidential files out of the box,” argued Doreen Deshler, a state committeewoman for the Massachusetts Republican GOP Party.

Prosecutors say the audio tape, parts of which are quoted in his federal indictment, undercuts his argument that he declassified all of the documents in his possession before leaving the White House since he is heard on the recording acknowledging he could no longer declassify them.

Other 2024 Republican presidential candidates have so far avoided commenting on the newly-obtained audio recording.

Over in Hollis, New Hampshire, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a town hall event but ignored questions from ABC News about the audio. Eva Bushee, 76, an attendee, said she hasn’t listened to it but was planning to later on.

“I voted for him [Trump]. I hope I don’t have to vote for him again,” she told ABC News.

Ahead of hosting another evening town hall in the Granite State, former U.N. ambassador under Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was asked to react to the audio of Trump after a speech she gave on China at the American Enterprise Institute.

“In terms of the recording, we will let the courts play that out. I have long said anybody who wants to run for president can run for president. I think that’s for the people to decide,” Haley said.

Meanwhile former Rep. Will Hurd, a Trump critic in the GOP and a newly launched presidential candidate, was among the first in the field to go after Trump on Monday evening in a series of tweets after hearing the tape.

“We deserve a President who doesn’t lie and who takes his job as Commander-in-Chief seriously. It’s common sense,” Hurd wrote. Referring to a part of the audio in which Trump asks for a drink, he wrote, “Having a Coke and a smile while you willingly show classified information to those who shouldn’t see it, which could put American lives in jeopardy, is the definition of ‘Me First, America Last.'”

Although Trump didn’t address the tape directly during his New Hampshire speech, he did tout his two indictments — in federal court and, separately, in New York state court; he’s pleaded not guilty to both and claimed he is being politically persecuted.

He called the charges a “great, great, beautiful badge of honor and courage,” while teasing, without further details, that another indictment could be imminent. Those comments come as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sat with investigators Tuesday in special counsel Jack Smith’s office regarding the Justice Department’s probe of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“I got two of them,” Trump said in his Tuesday speech.

“There could be others coming like [that] for a perfect phone call,” Trump said, seemingly referencing his Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Raffensperger during which the then-president asked Raffensperger to “find” the exact number of votes he needed to win the state of Georgia.

“Numbers will keep going up,” Trump told the crowd Tuesday.

He has sought to project himself as the only candidate strong enough to fight off indictments while running for president — a sentiment shared by his supporters at his campaign office in Concord.

Deshler, a supporter since 2016, echoed the same talking points Trump made in his speech when asked what she makes of the charges against him.

“What these investigations are doing is they’re making it even stronger for Trump, because his poll numbers are going up, not down, up, because people are getting sick and tired of this two-tier justice system that we’re going through right now in this country,” she said.

Krisia Santiago, who moved to New Hampshire in 2015 from Puerto Rico, said outside Trump’s campaign office that she’ll always stand with him but can see new voters being deterred by the legal challenges.

“If you believe in him, you’re gonna be a supporter no matter what,” she said. “It’s just the new voters, people that are exploring options, I can see that affecting it because they won’t know what is the real truth.”

Andrew Dow, a former military officer who was at Trump’s campaign office, questioned whether the audio of Trump was “legitimate” and suggested prosecutors had gone “way overboard” in charging him compared to other former office-holders who may have retained government records.

“I think every president, in a certain way, violates that,” Dow maintained.

ABC News’ Abby Cruz and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley apparently backpedaled on her once tough rhetoric toward Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — suggesting Haley, who was once a Cabinet-level diplomat, may have malleable views on key foreign policy issues.

While Haley previously said she held Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “responsible” for the 2018 murder of journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, she seemingly changed her tune on the Saudi leader, known as “MBS,” in remarks on Tuesday, stressing that the United States needs Arab countries to “be with us.”

“We need more friends. I mean, look at what happened: Biden goes and basically calls Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah.’ Now, MBS is going to outlive every leader. He’s young. You called him a ‘pariah’ and what did you do? You sent him to China,” Haley said at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. “We need the Arab countries to be with us, not China, and my guess is they would rather be with us than China.”

In October 2022, Haley expressed some degree of understanding of the decision of OPEC+, which is led by Saudi Arabia, to slash oil production after President Joe Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” in 2019 — but notably made no mention of MBS, whom she previously strongly criticized.

“I don’t know why he’s mad when you go and you call for the rest of the world to make Saudi Arabia an international pariah, when you go in [and] you fall all over yourself to get into the Iran deal, which upsets all of the Arab countries,” Haley told Fox News in 2022.

In 2018, Haley said that “the Saudi government doesn’t get a pass” when speaking about whether the Saudi government needs to be held accountable for the murder of Khashoggi.

“The whole situation with Khashoggi is, we can’t give them a pass. We can’t,” Haley said in a 2018 interview with The Atlantic magazine. “The reason is, you have Saudi government officials that did this in a Saudi consulate. The Saudi government doesn’t get a pass. We can’t condone it, we can’t ever say it’s okay, we can’t ever support thuggish behavior, and we have to say that.”

Asked specifically whether there should be consequences for MBS, Haley said at the time, “It’s his government. His government did this, and so he technically is responsible.”

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations touched on several other international topics during her Tuesday remarks, calling out both former President Donald Trump and Biden for their handling of China.

“President Trump is almost singularly focused on our trade relationship with China. He was right about our trade abuses. It was instilled as a critical issue. But Trump did too little about the rest of the Chinese threat,” said the former ambassador. “China was militarily stronger when President Trump left office than when he entered. That’s bad. But Joe Biden’s record is much worse.”

Haley said Trump came up “short” with China and showed moral weakness.

“Even the trade deal he signed came up short when China predictably failed to live up to its commitment,” she said. “He also showed moral weakness.”

Haley has waffled in her loyalty to Trump since leaving his administration. Before launching her campaign in February, Haley said in 2021 that she would not mount a 2024 bid if Trump entered the race. But in early 2021, Haley suggested Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot should be disqualifying for seeking the presidency again, telling Politico magazine, “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

When asked Tuesday about the newly-released audio recording of Trump appearing to acknowledge he held onto a sensitive military document after leaving office although he could no longer declassify it because he was no longer president, Haley demurred, saying she will let the courts make a decision.

“In terms of the recording that’s happened, we’re going to let the courts play that out,” she said.

The contents of the recording, made during a July 21, 2021, meeting at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, have been previously reported and are quoted in the Justice Department’s 37-count indictment related to Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office. ABC News was able to confirm the authenticity of the recording from another source who has heard it.

Trump pled not guilty this month 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. He has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.

Trump has a comfortable lead in the race for the Republican nomination.

ABC News’ Carly Roman and Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.

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