Politics

(WASHINGTON) — At the center of Donald Trump’s historic federal indictment is the Espionage Act, under which prosecutors have charged the former president with illegally keeping government information after leaving the White House and then refusing to give it back.

Trump pleaded not guilty during an appearance in court on Tuesday in Miami.

On social media, he called his indictment a “DARK DAY” for the country and insisted in a speech on Tuesday that he “did everything right” and “I had every right to have these documents,” an argument which has been disputed by outside legal experts.

What is the Espionage Act? How it’s used in Trump’s indictment

The vast majority of charges in the 37-count indictment against Trump were brought via the Espionage Act, a century-old law that, among other things, broadly outlines the type of information that is so sensitive to U.S. security that it becomes a crime to mishandle.

The Espionage Act predates the modern American system regulating the spread of the federal government’s secrets and does not use the term “classified information.”

Instead, the law makes reference to material known as “national defense information.”

U.S. courts have worked to define what qualifies as national defense information under the Espionage Act, but the exact parameters remain in question.

Signed into law in 1917, after the U.S. entered World War I, the act was aimed at cracking down on disloyal wartime activities.

Trump is specifically charged with 31 violations of Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act.

That section makes it illegal for anyone who has “unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over” national defense information — such as documents, blueprints, photos, plans and more — and who “has reason to believe [the information] could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation” then either shares it with unauthorized people or “willfully retains the same and fails” to return it.

Congress has tweaked the broader Section 793 multiple times, but since 1917, “the bulk of the text has remained the same,” according to nonpartisan congressional researchers.

Despite the law’s name — and despite what some Trump defenders, including GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, have suggested — Trump is not accused of spying on the U.S. — but rather of holding onto and not returning potentially damaging government information.

The other six charges Trump faces are not under the Espionage Act and include conspiring to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheming to conceal and making false statements and representations.

Espionage Act ‘not a weaponization’ here: Experts

Separate from Trump’s case, the Espionage Act has been criticized by some civil liberties advocates.

The American Civil Liberties Union has called the law overly broad, unfair and unconstitutional as it applies to information disclosed for the public.

Skeptics of the Espionage Act’s expansive language have also challenged how it makes no exception for whistleblowers — people who may share sensitive information in order to expose wrongdoing. Leakers like former National Security Agency contractors Reality Winner and Edward Snowden were both charged under the Espionage Act. (Winner agreed to a plea deal; Snowden now lives in Russia and has never been prosecuted.)

But Trump’s case is different because he was previously empowered to share government information as he saw fit, experts said.

“I think Trump is a completely distinct case,” Ben Wizner, the ACLU’s director for speech, privacy and technology, told ABC News. “He was president for four years. He had the ability and opportunity during that time to make public anything that he wanted to make public and could have done so if he thought it was in the public interest.”

Republicans have echoed Trump’s claims that the Biden administration has “weaponized” the Department of Justice, but outside law and policy experts said they did not share that concern, based on what prosecutors have disclosed.

“This looks like a case where there are a lot of receipts based on actual hard evidence and that is not a weaponization,” ABC News contributor and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa said Tuesday. “And I don’t think that it is even controversial or debatable that this really presented a threat to our national security.”

Special counsel Jack Smith, who was named to oversee the DOJ investigations of Trump after Trump launched his 2024 White House campaign, said on Friday that “this indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”

George Washington University Law School professor Stephen Saltzburg told ABC News that the U.S. has a history of carefully prosecuting Espionage Act cases.

“We don’t get many of these [Espionage Act] cases,” Saltzburg said. “And when we do get cases, it’s generally because there’s outrageous behavior.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who became infamous for leaking the Pentagon Papers to news outlets in 1971, has died, according to his family. He was 92 years old.

Ellsberg died Friday of pancreatic cancer, which he was diagnosed with in February, his family said.

Ellsberg worked as an analyst for the RAND Corporation in the late 1950s and early ’60s, before working in the Pentagon and in the State Department, for which he traveled to South Vietnam for two years. He rejoined RAND in the late 1960s and worked on secret documents about the Vietnam War for the U.S. government. Those documents would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

The Harvard graduate and former Marine would eventually become sympathetic to the antiwar movement in the U.S. against involvement in Vietnam.

After attempting to call attention to the classified documents — which showed the U.S. did not believe it could win the war in Vietnam despite claims to the contrary from the administration — among politicians, Ellsberg eventually passed the documents to The New York Times, which published them on the front page in June 1971.

“Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an antiwar activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more,” Ellsberg’s wife, Patricia, and three children — Mary, Robert and Michael — said in a statement. “He will be dearly missed by all of us.”

The government sued The New York Times to stop publishing of the Pentagon Papers, but the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually rule in favor of the Times and the publication would resume. Ellsberg would leak the documents to The Washington Post days before the Supreme Court ruling.

The leak by Ellsberg would eventually set in motion the downfall of President Richard Nixon. The leak was the impetus for the White House to set up the so-called “White House plumbers,” who would try to discredit Ellsberg and eventually take part in the Watergate break-in.

The story was retold in the HBO miniseries “White House Plumbers,” which aired just weeks before Ellsberg’s death. The opening episode features stars Woody Harrelson, as E. Howard Hunt, and Justin Theroux, as G. Gordon Liddy, breaking into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office — as actually happened on Sept. 3, 1971.

Ellsberg was survived by his wife and three children as well as five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

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(AUSTIN, Texas) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached on May 27, becoming the state’s first statewide official to be impeached since 1917.

The proceedings were sparked by claims from former employees in Paxton’s office that he was misusing his power to aid a friend and donor. The impeachment also underlines the conflict between Paxton and a number of other Republicans, many of whom voted in the state House for his impeachment.

In a defiant statement last month, Paxton called the proceedings “unjust” and a partisan “sham,” labeling the state House Speaker Dade Phelan a traitor.

Phelan, for his part, has defended the process. “What happened this week is nothing I take pride in. It is not anything I was proud of. But it was necessary,” he said before the impeachment vote.

Who is Ken Paxton?

Paxton was suspended while serving his third term as Texas attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement officer, after holding office in the Texas House and Senate for approximately 10 and two years, respectively. Before that, he worked as a corporate lawyer and in private practice.

During his career as attorney general, Paxton has brought several significant lawsuits against both the Obama and Biden administrations, including an effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields some immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. as kids.

As an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, Paxton led an unsuccessful lawsuit contesting the 2020 presidential election results in four states.

While Paxton easily won two of his three attorney general elections, his time in office has also been marred by scandal.

When did the impeachment begin and what is Paxton accused of?

The case for Paxton’s impeachment traces back to 2020, when top aides accused him of abuse of office to benefit donor Nate Paul, himself and Paxton’s alleged mistress. That led to an ongoing FBI probe and multimillion-dollar whistleblower lawsuit, with some of those Paxton staffers claiming they were fired for speaking out.

An attorney for Paul declined to comment to ABC News. Paul has previously denied any wrongdoing.

Earlier this year, Paxton agreed to a $3.3 million settlement with the former staffers and to apologize for calling them “rogue,” but he said he was settling in order to move past the allegations and that he’d done nothing wrong. He also sought to have the state — taxpayers — cover the cost. After that, state House lawmakers began looking into him, they have said.

On May 24, the state House’s investigative committee brought 20 articles of impeachment against Paxton alleging misconduct, including bribery, obstruction of justice and misappropriation of public resources.

By that Saturday, he was impeached and temporarily suspended from office, as required under state law, pending his trial in the state Senate.

He faces other legal troubles, too.

In 2015, he was charged with securities fraud related to investments in a tech company and has pleaded not guilty, though he has yet to stand trial. That case is referenced in the impeachment charges against Paxton.

Separately, last year, Paxton was also sued by the state bar over alleged professional misconduct for backing the lawsuit against the 2020 election results. “Texas Bar: I’ll see you and the leftists that control you in court,” he said then.

The state House investigating committee, which recommended the impeachment, held a public forum in May detailing the whistleblower claims. The evidence presented to legislators included three hours of testimony from investigators.

Afterward, the House voted to impeach Paxton in a bipartisan 121-23 majority vote.

What’s next?

Paxton awaits trial in the state Senate, which must start by Aug. 28. The chamber will review a set of trial rules on Tuesday, to be proposed by a seven-member committee chosen by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick who, like Paxton, has historically aligned himself with Trump.

One rule the committee will determine is whether the attorney general will be allowed to present a defense, which is an allowance that was not made for the state House proceedings and that Paxton criticized.

“My office made every effort to present evidence, testimony, and irrefutable facts that would have disproven the countless false statements and outright lies,” Paxton wrote on Twitter in May.

Where do legislators stand?

While a majority overwhelmingly supported Paxton’s impeachment in the state House, the Republican-controlled upper chamber requires two-thirds support to convict him, which would permanently remove and bar him from holding future Texas office.

State senators have largely remained mum on the pending trial, likely because of a commitment to protect the integrity of the proceedings, where they will essentially function as jurors, as stressed by the lieutenant governor, who presides over the Senate. In a streamed event with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Patrick spoke directly to the press, saying he couldn’t speak further on the case and asking for privacy as the trial proceeds.

“This is very serious. These are very serious people, and the Senate is going to do our job in a professional way,” he said.

The potential jurors include one unusual member, should she not recuse: the attorney general’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton. The Paxtons have long supported one another’s political endeavors: She could be found with a guitar in hand singing at his events and he gave a $2 million loan toward her state Senate campaign in 2018. She has not yet commented on the impeachment and has not been accused of doing anything wrong.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, has called the impeachment a “travesty” and defended the attorney general on Twitter. “Virtually all of the information in the articles was public BEFORE Election Day, and the voters chose to re-elect Ken Paxton by a large margin,” Cruz wrote.

Most state House Republicans voted for the impeachment. One of them, Rep. Stan Kitzman, issued a statement calling the charges “a slap in the face to every Texan who believes in the rule of law and the integrity of our public offices.”

In the legislative session that recently ended, the state House was able to pass multiple conservative priorities it set forth, like banning hormonal treatments for children under the age of 18. But it also failed to agree on other proposals, like more stringent immigration legislation — an example of the disagreements between the party’s more centrist and more hard-line wings.

The state GOP chair, Matt Rinaldi, alluded to that tension in a statement about Paxton: “The impeachment proceedings against the Attorney General are but the latest front in the Texas House’s war against Republicans to stop the conservative direction of our state.”

What could happen to Paxton?

Until Paxton’s trial, while he remains suspended, John Scott has been appointed interim attorney general by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Should the state Senate not reach a two-thirds majority to remove Paxton, he will continue to serve in his role as before, albeit alongside legislators, many from his own party, who voted to impeach him.

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(WASHINGTON) — It was a history-making moment Tuesday when special counsel Jack Smith and former president Donald Trump appeared together for the first time in the same Miami courtroom.

Then, hours later, after Trump pleaded not guilty to federal charges, he got on stage in front of supporters at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, and blasted the man who oversaw his indictment as a “deranged lunatic.”

“He’s a raging and uncontrolled Trump-hater, as is his wife,” Trump said.

As part of his strategy to discredit the investigation, Trump has repeatedly gone after Smith and his wife, who produced a 2020 documentary about Michelle Obama, as well as documentaries about other high-profile figures.

Trump’s repeated attacks on Smith and his family follow a familiar pattern of his lashing out at those leading probes into his conduct. His inflammatory comments about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the judge overseeing his hush-money criminal case in New York prompted questions about whether a gag order would be issued.

“Trump has done this with [New York Attorney General] Letitia James, he has done this with [Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis, just every prosecutor that’s investigated him,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, told ABC News. James has sued Trump for alleged fraud and Willis is looking into Trump’s efforts to interfere with the presidential election in Georgia.

Trump has entered a not guilty plea to the fraud charges and had repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

Smith, a career prosecutor, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November to oversee the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office as well as his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The special counsel probe resulted in a 37-count indictment against Trump accusing him of willfully retaining documents containing the nation’s top secrets and obstructing authorities seeking to get them back.

Then on Tuesday, in court, the first public encounter between Smith and Trump unfolded. Smith sat in the first row, not far from Trump, who at times frowned and looked down at the floor, but never looked back at Smith.

That evening, Trump slammed Smith as a “thug” and accused him of doing “political hit jobs.”

Various legal experts have pushed back on claims by Trump and GOP congressional allies that the Smith’s prosecution is political “weaponization” of the Justice Department.

“His main focus as a prosecutor is, ‘Can I prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt?’ And what we’ve seen with him, just looking at who he’s prosecuted, he’s prosecuted people in all parties,” Steve Friedland, a law professor at Elon University and a former federal prosecutor, said of Smith.

Former colleagues of Smith lauded his experience and temperament in previous interviews with ABC News, with one calling him “completely apolitical.”

“This is someone that is not doing this for political reasons,” Rahmani said. “There’s plenty of evidence to support these charges.”

J. Michael Luttig, a retired conservative federal appeals court judge, shared that view in a Twitter post on Tuesday: “There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president.”

Garland, speaking on the Trump indictment for the first time Wednesday, also came to Smith’s defense on the weaponization claims, although he didn’t comment specifically on Trump’s attacks.

“Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor,” Garland said. “He has assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his commitment to integrity.”

Government prosecutors on Tuesday did not ask the magistrate judge overseeing his arraignment to warn Trump to stop the attacks, nor have they asked the judge handling the case to do so, as a judge in New York warned Trump about comments he made about Manhattan District Attorney Bragg.

Trump and his defenders have taken aim at Smith’s cases involving one-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who was charged in an alleged plot to violate campaign finance laws, and former Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was indicted on corruption charges. The Edwards case ended in a hung jury, while McDonnell’s conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.

“He destroyed that man and he destroyed that family,” Trump said of Smith’s prosecution of McDonnell. “And by the way, I will tell you, I’m here and I love you all. And I can take it. But what these thugs have done to my family is a disgrace.”

Smith has not responded to Trump’s disparaging remarks.

“Smith is not going to play this case out in public,” said Friedland, who closely followed the Edwards case in 2011. “And we’ve seen that with John Edwards. We’ve seen that in other cases, and that’s true for most prosecutors.”

In his statement after charging Trump, in which he urged the public to read the indictment and emphasized the defendants — Trump and his personal aide Walt Nauta — he said they “must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”

“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” Smith said. “Applying those laws. Collecting facts. That’s what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The White House is responding after several transgender guests exposed their chests at the administration’s Pride celebration this past weekend.

The incident drew backlash as inappropriate, including from conservative commentators like CJ Pearson who suggested online that it brought “shame” on the country.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “The behavior was simply unacceptable. We’ve been very clear about that.”

“It was unfair to the hundreds of attendees who were there to celebrate their families,” she continued. “So, you know, we’re going to continue to be clear on that. … It’s not appropriate. It’s disrespectful. And let’s not — it really does not reflect the event that we hosted to celebrate the LGBTQ+ families.”

The individuals in the video won’t be invited to future events, Jean-Pierre said.

“This has not occurred before,” she said. “This was not a normal thing that has happened under this administration. But we’ve been very clear about how we saw this particular behavior.”

Rose Montoya, a transgender model and activist who posted the video to TikTok in which she and other guests posed topless, responded Friday in a 3-minute video posted to her social media platforms.

“Today I need to apologize,” Montoya said, describing how she was invited by the president to attend the Pride event and was proud to speak at the National Press Club during her trip to Washington.

“In a quick moment of fleeting and overwhelming trans joy, I decided to do something unbecoming of a guest of the president at the White House lawn celebration,” she said. “More so than ever before, I have learned how powerful and just how impactful my actions are and how impactful it is when we share our stories and experiences and how we do so with the world. I want to take this moment to apologize for the impact of my actions.”

“It was also never my intention to create a situation that would lead to harassment and harm of myself and others, nor for trans joy,” she continued, adding she feels “energized to educate and articulate to others the importance and power of trans joy in a more effective way.”

The Bidens welcomed hundreds of LGBTQ families from across the country on Saturday to mark Pride month. The administration described the event as the largest-ever Pride celebration at the White House.

Montoya posted a one-minute video to TikTok showing different aspects of the event. At one point, Montoya can be seen meeting President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden.

At another point, the video shows Montoya and other individuals bearing their chests while posing in front of the White House South Portico. Montoya is seen covering her bare chest with her hands.

“Are we topless at the White House?” someone can be heard saying in the video. It’s not clear who the other individuals are in the video.

Montoya first responded to criticism to the toplessness in a separate TikTok post before the White House’s statements.

“My trans masculine friends were showing off their top surgery scars and living in joy, and I wanted to join them,” she said in the video. “And because it is perfectly within the law in Washington D.C., I decided to join them and cover my nipples just to play it safe.”

At the Pride event, President Biden spoke out against anti-LGBTQ legislation being introduced and passed in various state legislatures around the country.

He also had a message for “the entire community,” but particularly for transgender youth.

“You are loved. You are heard. You are understood,” he said. “And you belong.”

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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump tried again in a new court filing to get his criminal prosecution in New York moved to federal court, arguing the alleged crimes “took place while the president was in office.”

Trump’s attorneys accused the Manhattan district attorney’s office, known by the acronym DANY, of “deceptively mischaracterizing and ignoring the applicable facts and body of law” by seeking to keep the case in state court.

“According to DANY, the crux of its case was a purportedly ‘illegal scheme that was largely perpetrated before defendant became [P]resident.’ Such an alleged scheme, albeit nonexistent, could only violate federal, not state, campaign finance laws, as made clear by both the federal jurisprudence and the New York State election board,'” the defense filing said.

Trump and the prosecutors have filed dueling motions over the appropriate place to put the former president on trial for allegedly falsifying business records connected to the 2016 hush payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts.

Trump has argued he was an officer of the United States when he was president and his case is best handled by federal court. There may be a more practical reason: If Trump’s bid for the White House in 2024 is successful he could, in theory, take steps to make a federal prosecution go away.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has argued Trump’s alleged criminal conduct regarding his business records had nothing to do with his job as president. Instead, Bragg’s team has argued payments to Trump’s then-fixer Michael Cohen, who had written the $130,000 check to Daniels, were solely reimbursements for campaign contributions, and therefore not acts done under the color of federal law.

Trump plans to argue the business records were truthful because the money paid to Cohen was, in part, “retainer,” so Cohen could handle Trump’s personal affairs while he was president.

“The question answers itself—clearly these actions were ‘connected or associated’ with President Trump’s official duties of ensuring that there was no doubt that he was complying with the Constitution of the United States of America, including the Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Take Care Clause,” the filing said.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has scheduled oral argument at the end of the month.

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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. officials are emphasizing the importance of face-to-face diplomacy as the nation’s top diplomat prepares to embark on the first visit to China by a sitting secretary of state in nearly five years — but insisting they are “clear-eyed” about the long odds of improving the strained relationship amid continued acts of aggression by Beijing.

The Biden administration emphasized the need for “intense diplomacy” with China despite the country’s military carrying out dangerous provocations earlier this month in the Taiwan Strait, according to U.S. officials.

“Intense competition requires intense diplomacy to ensure that competition does not veer into confrontation or conflict and that’s what we intend for this visit,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday.

Timing of the trip

Last week, White House spokesperson John Kirby condemned a close call in the Taiwan Strait that occurred days prior when a Chinese warship crossed just about 150 yards across an American destroyer’s bow, a move the Pentagon described an “unsafe maritime interaction.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s initially planned to journey to Beijing in February, but his travel was scrapped by the Biden administration at the last minute after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted hovering over sensitive sites in the U.S.

After repeatedly saying Blinken’s visit would be rescheduled “when the time is right,” the White House isn’t clearly explaining why it’s moving forward with the trip now.

ABC News’ Mary Bruce asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “Why is this now the right time?” during a briefing on Wednesday.

“We believe that we are in the right footing, especially in the work that the president has done the last two years. When you look at the economy, when you look at the competition, and look at what we have been able to do. And so we want to continue to have those open lines of conversation. And this is about diplomacy, which is why the secretary of state is heading is heading to China on Saturday,” Jean-Pierre answered.

President Joe Biden confirmed Thursday that he had spoken with Blinken ahead of his trip, but he would not say what he hopes the secretary can achieve during the visit.

Months after the spy balloon incident, China’s efforts to surveil the U.S. are still a hot button issue. Earlier this week, Blinken addressed Beijing’s recently exposed intelligence-collection activities in Cuba and claimed diplomacy had slowed the country’s efforts to expand its military power.

Although the relationship remains fraught and senior State Department officials don’t anticipate a turnaround in the near future, they say there are still benefits to direct diplomatic engagement.

“We’re not going to Beijing with the intent of having some sort of breakthrough or transformation in the way that we deal with one another,” Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said. “We’re coming to Beijing with a realistic, confident approach and a sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible.”

Blinken’s agenda

Still, senior State Department officials say that Blinken has three clear goals for his visit: keeping lines of communication with China open to avoid potential conflict, promoting American interests and exploring potential areas of cooperation.

A particular area of focus for Blinken will be revitalizing channels between the two countries’ armed forces. Although diplomatic ties have warmed somewhat in recent weeks, dialogue between high-level military officials has been practically nonexistent.

That facet of the relationship was further strained last month when China rebuffed an invitation to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and a summit in Singapore.

“We are going to continue to advocate for appropriate military-to-military contact and dialogues. We think that is an essential feature for maintaining communication. And these lines of communication can be critical during a crisis,” said deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.

Campbell added that the U.S. has “advocated for these discussions consistently” but said “China has resisted some of those efforts.”

Officials also said that China’s fentanyl production and trafficking activities would be on Blinken’s agenda, as well as the American citizens wrongfully detained in China.

Despite intense preparations that have been underway for weeks, Blinken’s schedule for the trip remains largely in flux, with the State Department confirming only that he is expected to meet with senior Chinese officials.

That will likely include China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, and Wang Yi — China’s top diplomat who met with Blinken in Germany after the spy balloon incident. U.S. officials later described that interaction as remarkably contentious.

Whether Blinken will meet with China’s President Xi Jinping during the upcoming trip is still not clear.

The future of U.S.-Chinese relations

Blinken’s visit to Beijing could also pave the way for future engagement between the highest levels of leadership. Biden and Xi met in Indonesia last November, and there is speculation they could hold another in-person discussion later this year.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has attempted to set a firm tone in the runup to Blinken’s visit. In a readout of a call between the Secretary of State and Foreign Minister Gang, the ministry warned Washington to “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs.”

But the U.S. sees what China classifies as “internal affairs” as pivotal international issues — specifically, maintaining peace in Taiwan and the South China Sea as China makes preparations to invade the island nation. U.S. intelligence has indicated Xi is instructing his military to “be ready by 2027” to invade Taiwan.

Officials said Blinken would raise both matters during his visit and promised he would continue to “push back” on China’s “provocations” in the region.

“I think cross-strait issues and issues related to Taiwan have always been among the most important and challenging and sensitive issues between the United States and China,” Campbell said.

“And I think you can anticipate, as has been the case in every bilateral meeting I’ve been in with the Chinese, that there’ll be a candid exchange on the cross-strait situation,” he added.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump last fall rejected a proposal from one of his attorneys who was attempting to keep charges off the table in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents, multiple sources told ABC News.

The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to propose a settlement with the Department of Justice that would preclude charges — but the idea was quickly shut down by Trump and some members of his team who believed in a more adversarial approach to federal investigators, the sources said.

Based on Smith’s investigation, Trump was charged on Tuesday with 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.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Kise, who never approached prosecutors about the idea of a settlement, appeared with Trump during his arraignment Tuesday. News of the settlement idea was first reported by the Washington Post.

The former president has denied all wrongdoing in the case, saying that his handling of all documents was in line with the Presidential Records Act. Officials with the National Archives and Records Administration, however, have said that the act requires a president to separate personal and presidential documents “before leaving office.”

The episode represents one of several times that Trump’s lawyers and advisers had urged him and his team to be more cooperative with investigators as authorities pursued the return of classified documents, as sources previously told ABC News.

The news comes as Trump narrows down his list of potential attorneys as he and his team work to expand his legal team following the resignation last Friday of two of his lawyers, Jim Trusty and John Rowley.

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(WASHINGTON) — Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump, speaking to supporters hours after his arraignment, outlined potential legal arguments as he defends himself against his second indictment.

Trump took the stage at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club just hours after his appearance in a Miami courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts in relation to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“This day will go down in infamy,” he said.

Trump unloaded on the charges and in the process mischaracterized aspects of the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act, experts told ABC News.

Here’s a more in-depth look at the former president’s claims.

He cites the Presidential Records Act

“Under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil not criminal, I had every right to have these documents,” Trump said.

The 1978 law, not mentioned in the indictment, states just the opposite, as it requires records created by presidents and vice presidents be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.

“On the contrary, the former President had absolutely no right to have taken any presidential records with him to Mar A Lago,” Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at NARA, told ABC News in an email.

“Under the Presidential Records Act, the Archivist of the United States assumed legal custody of all Trump White House official records immediately upon President Biden’s swearing in as President,” Baron said. “Every piece of paper constituting an official document, whether it was classified or unclassified, should have been turned over to NARA. Moreover, when NARA staff asked for the return of the records improperly taken, the former President should have immediately given NARA every official document in his possession.”

Among the documents found at his Florida estate, according to prosecutors, were ones marked “top secret” and some about the country’s nuclear programs.

“I think it is misleading because the Presidential Records Act just isn’t the statute at issue,” Margaret Kwoka, a law professor at Ohio State University, told ABC News of Trump’s remarks.

“There’s no reason to think that the Presidential Records Act somehow overrides the Espionage Act,” Kwoka added. “And so this is not, in my view, going to provide a very strong sort of basis for defense against the charges in the indictment.”

He alludes to a judge’s decision in a case involving former President Bill Clinton

“Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and in the president’s sole discretion,” Trump said.

Trump has repeatedly pointed to a case involving former President Bill Clinton in the wake of the indictment.

In 2010, the conservative group Judicial Watch sued the National Archives and Records Administration, arguing audio tapes kept by Clinton for interviews he did with historian Taylor Branch during his years in office — and which he afterward allegedly kept in a sock drawer — were “presidential records” and should be made available to the public.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed the case, and Trump and his allies have taken to quoting different parts of her opinion in their defense.

The Presidential Records Act does contain an exception for personal records, according to Baron, including items such as “diaries, journals, and other personal notes that were never used in the transaction of government business.”

“President Trump had the right to keep those types of records. But the argument being made by some that he had some kind of absolute authority while president to declare classified records or other official records about government business as his personal records is absurd in its face,” he said. “It is also contrary to law. The decision by Judge Jackson cited prior precedent from the D.C. Circuit that stands for the opposite proposition.”

That citation included in Jackson’s opinion reads, in part, that the Presidential Records Act “does not bestow on the president the power to assert sweeping authority over whatever materials he chooses to designate as presidential records without any possibility of judicial review.”

“Judge Jackson went on to speculate about the level of deference to be afforded a president making a categorical decision about whether records of his were personal, but she never ruled on that issue,” Baron said. “Instead, the case was dismissed on the grounds that plaintiff had no standing to compel the Archivist to seize materials not in the government’s possession.”

There are also significant differences between the materials in question in the two cases.

“In that case, the records were very different and really did seem arguably personal,” Kwoka said of the Clinton matter. “We’re just sort of nowhere near the situation that we’re discussing today with the records that President Trump kept.”

He claims he was still negotiating with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

“I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided,” Trump said.

Trump continued to make an argument he and his team have been for months, asserting he’s allowed to negotiate with NARA over which documents are personal and what’s presidential after leaving office.

NARA, in a June 9 statement, said the law requires a president to separate personal and presidential documents “before leaving office.”

“There is no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports,” NARA said.

He says he’s being treated like a spy

“The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies. It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents,” he said.

Trump has been charged under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) of the Espionage Act, which prohibits unauthorized retention and disclosure of national defense information, and does not require that information be classified or disseminated to a foreign government.

Neither did the indictment charge him with disseminating information with the intent to harm the U.S.

Still, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed he’s accused of being a spy.

“This is not an uncommon argument for defendants to make,” David Aaron, a senior counsel at Perkins Coie and former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department’s national security division, told ABC News. “The title Espionage Act is kind of a misnomer because it includes much more than espionage.”

“Espionage is a different section entirely of Title 18. He’s charged simply with willfully retaining national defense information,” Aaron said. “He’s not charged with disclosing classified information to foreign governments or to anyone else, although there are references in the current indictment to his alleged disclosure to unauthorized people.”

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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. government networks were hit by a cyberattack affecting several federal agencies, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly confirmed Thursday.

The attack does not pose a major risk to national security, Easterly said.

CISA, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, previously identified a gap in software security believed to have been exploited in attack.

A spokesperson for Mandiant, the cyber intelligence arm of Google Cloud, said government data was stolen in the attack.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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