(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration plans on Tuesday to unveil a new initiative to combat the supply chain for fentanyl and other illicit synthetic drugs in the U.S. and abroad.
The effort will aim to “prevent illicit drug manufacturing, detect emerging drug threats, disrupt trafficking, address illicit finance, and respond to public safety and public health impacts,” the White House said.
The rollout includes cooperation with international governments, which were unnamed in a fact sheet released on Tuesday.
The initiative will also include a strengthening of the “coordination and information-sharing among U.S. intelligence and domestic law enforcement agencies” to break up drug trafficking networks, the administration said.
Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, which have come to dominate the illicit drug market, will be the main target of the effort, the administration said in a fact sheet.
“The nature of these drugs, and their ease of access and potency, presents a national security, public safety, and public health threat,” the administration said.
Along with a “global coalition” of governmental partners, the administration also said it plans to work more closely with private sector companies in the U.S. and abroad to disrupt drug trafficking.
The White House plans to “strengthen cooperation with international and domestic express consignment carriers to interdict more illicit substances and production materials,” it said. It will also include education for companies to safeguard “against the sale and distribution of dual-use chemicals and equipment that could be used to produce illicit fentanyl.”
The administration also said it plans to “intensify” its engagement with private chemical industries around the world, increase financial sanctions against drug traffickers and call on Congress to permanently close a loophole for synthetic drugs, the White House said.
(WASHINGTON) — The posting on social media of what appears to be several highly classified U.S. intelligence documents might be just the beginning of what could turn out to be the most serious U.S. intelligence breach in more than a decade.
After last week’s seeming leak, an ABC News review found dozens more top-secret documents posted in early March in a hard-to-find corner of the internet shortly after the documents were drafted.
The content of those additional documents appears to be U.S. intelligence about the war in Ukraine and in other parts of the world. And the disclosure has raised diplomatic issues as it appears that U.S. intelligence has been spying not only with its adversaries, but on allies and partners.
The apparent leak has triggered a criminal investigation by the Justice Department that will try to find out who posted the documents on the internet and why.
Here’s what you need to know about what happened and what the documents contain:
What are the leaked documents?
What has been posted on the internet are dozens of photographs of printouts of what appear to be highly classified documents that show creases from having been folded.
ABC News has been able to review 38 of these apparently classified U.S. intelligence documents drafted in late February and on March 1 and March 2.
The documents are a mix of tactical statistics and maps of the battlefield in Ukraine apparently drafted by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Others appear to be more strategic-level U.S. intelligence analyses that touch on Ukraine’s fight with Russia and other regions of the world that seem to have been put together by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.
Almost all of the 38 documents are classified as top secret and contain specific information about whether they can be shared with foreign partners. They also include how the information was obtained, including signals intercepts.
More than a dozen documents apparently prepared by the Joint Staff describe the military situation in Ukraine on March 1 especially around the battlefields of Bakhmut, Kharkiv and the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
They contain many statistics about Ukrainian troop levels, the training of Ukrainian forces, equipment provided to Ukraine by the U.S. and other countries and casualty numbers. One of these documents posted on social media last week was apparently altered from the previous version posted in early March to reflect lower fatality numbers for Russian forces.
The bulk of the remaining documents appear to have been produced by U.S. intelligence and are presented in paragraph form. They describe specific analytical intelligence for other parts of the world and include intelligence gathered from both adversaries and friendly nations.
There is also what appears to be a two-page CIA document summarizing the major intelligence analysis for March 2.
Who had access?
It is unclear how many U.S. government officials would have had access to any of the documents since they were not limited to only military personnel or those working only on issues related to Ukraine.
Because of their content, the documents, apparently produced by the Joint Staff, would presumably have been made available to hundreds of U.S. military personnel or U.S. officials involved in the situation in Ukraine, not just at the Pentagon but in other U.S. government departments as well.
But they would not be limited to just those officials — so those with access could conceivably include hundreds and possibly thousands of U.S. military or civilian officials based stateside or overseas.
In order to access the materials, these officials would need access to the secure classified servers where this information would be available to them.
What’s in the 38 pages of documents reviewed by ABC News?
The 38 documents reviewed by ABC News use different styles, formatting and cover varying topic areas.
They include the dozen or more slides about the battlefields of Ukraine that were apparently prepared by the Joint Staff.
Two of these documents appeared to note that Ukraine’s air defense systems are at risk of experiencing supply shortfalls in coming months. Another slide lays out scenarios under which the U.S. could apparently pressure Israel into providing Ukraine with lethal aid. Other slides contain information providing apparently specific casualty numbers for Ukraine and Russia, as well as what appears to be highly specific information about the number of tanks, armored vehicles, helicopters and aircraft that have been destroyed or are available for combat.
Also included in the documents is a two-page copy of what appears to be the CIA worldwide intelligence summary for March 2. The copy of this apparent CIA document includes analysis, among other things, about the Russian Defense Ministry’s views on supplying munitions to the Wagner Group, Iran readying for a space launch, South Korea’s National Security Council concerned about the U.S. request to provide artillery ammunition to Ukraine, an update on the Nigerian elections and North Korea preparing for an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.
Another set of presumably highly classified documents provides more strategic-level intelligence about America’s adversaries and partners. Among the details included in this apparent set of documents is information that a pro-Russia hacking group has gained access to Canadian gas infrastructure. There is also what appears to be an assessment that a Ukrainian military strike deep inside Russia or targeting Russia’s leaders could give China the opportunity to provide lethal aid to Russia. This set also contains what appears to be intelligence on North Korean preparations for an ICBM test flight and describes North Korea’s display of ICBM launchers at a recent parade as overselling their actual capabilities.
There is also what appears to be an eight-page strategic analysis document where most of the contents appear to have been gleaned from intercepted communications, including descriptions of South Korea’s National Security Council’s internal discussions about the U.S. request to push artillery ammunition to Ukraine via a third country.
Indicative of how U.S. intelligence appears to have been able to penetrate Russia’s internal communications, this set of documents includes specific information about Russia’s plans in Ukraine and elsewhere.
For example, there are what appear to be precise descriptions of Russian plans to carry out two separate aerial attacks in early March aimed at Ukrainian military targets and Ukrainian energy infrastructure and bridges. There is a description of what appears to be Russia’s plans for combatting the tanks being sent to Ukraine by NATO countries by setting up a layered defense and training Russian troops on the tank’s vulnerabilities. This set of documents also describes apparent plans by Russia’s intelligence agency to conduct an influencing campaign in Africa to promote Russia’s foreign policy.
The documents appear to show the U.S. has not only been spying on Russia, but also apparently on Ukraine: They describe what are said to be internal Ukrainian discussions about striking at Russian troop locations deployed to a region inside Russia.
Managing the diplomatic fallout
The State Department has not announced any plans to correct any potential misinformation contained in the documents.
Ukraine has publicly dismissed the leaked material as Russian disinformation and an attempt to sew distrust between Kyiv and Washington. But at least one report citing a source close to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asserts that the leak has forced Ukraine to alter some of its military plans.
While the leak may temporarily complicate coordination between the U.S. and South Korea on support for Kyiv, lasting damage to the relationship appears unlikely. South Korea’s president said on Monday that the alliance was still strong, and his office has said that it will hold off on making demands of the Pentagon until the investigation wraps.
The Israeli government hasn’t commented on the claims about the Mossad or what it might take for Israel to provide lethal aid to Ukraine.
What’s next in the DOJ’s criminal investigation?
The Pentagon announced this week that the Justice Department is now carrying out a criminal probe into the documents and who posted them on the internet.
According to David Aaron, a former top national security lawyer for the Justice Department involved in past high-profile leak investigations, a first step at this juncture is determining the potential line of custody of who would have had access to the materials posted online.
“If it’s a lot of information, then sometimes that gives you an opportunity to narrow down your list because you’re making a matrix with it,” Aaron said. “If it’s at a relatively low level of classification or if it’s operational and needs to be kind of widely available, that gets harder to do. And it’s going into repositories that people don’t have to log into with certificates that identify them specifically, then that also gets obviously harder to do.”
“You wouldn’t even have to look at the document at the printout of the document, you’d have to look at records of who printed that document,” Aaron said.
He said once a potential suspect or suspects are identified, there will be a variety of factors for investigators to consider in moving towards charging and arresting the person or people.
“You’re probably going to not want to charge them until you have more than probable cause,” he said. “So you’ll watch them. You’ll watch them electronically. You’ll watch them physically. And if they do something that kind of forces your hand maybe you’ll arrest them sooner than you might otherwise — but as a general matter, and this is a little different, but as a general matter, you know, this is a slower burn than a terrorism case, for example.”
Another complicating factor for investigators, Aaron noted, could be that some of the documents appear to have been posted several months ago.
“Depending on how all of this was done there could be electronic evidence that has been lost,” he said. “If there was information that you could have gotten and followed up on, within days of the incident, have you lost either access to that initial information or other places it would take you with the passage of more time? That’s always a big impediment.”
(NEW YORK) — The three Tennessee lawmakers at the center of a controversial and unprecedented expulsion vote last week said Monday that their fight continues — to reduce gun violence and to see the two of them who were ousted back in their seats.
Four days ago, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson were expelled from the state House of Representatives by the Republican super-majority after participating in a raucous, unrecognized gun violence protest on the Legislature floor.
The pair and Rep. Gloria Johnson, who also faced expulsion but survived by one vote, sat down for a group interview with ABC News on Monday.
Johnson called the ousting of Jones and Pearson a “huge threat to democracy.”
“We are silencing dissenting voices. We aren’t listening to the people. The whole point of democracy is a people rule,” Johnson said in the interview.
Jones and Pearson, both Black, and Johnson, who is white, all feel that race was a factor.
“I want to commend sister Gloria as a 60-year-old white woman for standing with us,” Jones said. “And then even after having her expulsion canceled, still standing for the truth and saying it’s about race.”
For more from the three lawmakers’ interview about the expulsion and what’s next, watch ABC News Live Prime and ABC’s “Nightline.”
The state House speaker, Cameron Sexton, has challenged that view. “That’s a false narrative on her part,” he said on “Fox & Friends” on Friday, of Johnson. “It’s unfortunate. She’s trying to put political racism in this, which there was nothing on this.”
Leading Tennessee Republicans have defended the expulsions — the first such partisan removals in the state in modern history — as necessary to restore order.
“It’s not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor,” state Rep. Jeremy Faison, the chair of the state House Republican Caucus, previously told CNN. “There’s got to be some peace.”
Faison also said that the expulsion proceedings included “due process.” All three members were able to speak in the chamber to defend themselves before the votes.
On Monday, however, Johnson pushed back. “They tried to put on a show that day because they knew the world was watching. … They allowed us to speak more that day than they have in the last three to four years, I would say,” she said.
Jones and Pearson concurred, emphasizing that their goal is to help their concerned constituents.
“This is going to set the tone for the years ahead if it’s not addressed,” Jones said. “And we went to that well [on the floor], calling for them to ban assault weapons. They responded by assaulting democracy.”
Three days after the Nashville school shooting that killed three children and three adults, hundreds reportedly protested for gun control at the state House.
During the March 30 protest, Jones and Pearson used a bullhorn, leading chants on the House floor, which caused a disruption in legislative business. (Johnson, who wasn’t expelled, was not seen using the bullhorn.)
“We had no idea that what we were doing would break a rule that could lead to our possible expulsion or our actual expulsions,” Pearson told ABC News. “This was a tragedy that happened at the Covenant School in Nashville. But instead of addressing the tragedy, the Republican super-majority in Tennessee decided that using our First Amendment right to listen to the thousands of protesters deserved expulsion.”
Jones said that they were “silenced” during the March 30 demonstration and their microphones were cut off, prompting him to bring a bullhorn to speak.
An educator for 27 years before she became a representative, Johnson told ABC News she was present during a school shooting while working as a teacher. She said that she has for years been pushing for more gun regulations but “they get killed in subcommittee immediately on a party-line vote.”
In response to gun violence, state Republicans have touted their efforts at “hardening” school security and increasing mental health resources.
Jones previously told ABC News that the removals were a “lynching of democracy.”
While the expelled lawmakers have said they were disciplined beforehand, losing their committee assignments and ID badge access among other things, Jones believes the situation escalated when Sexton compared the post-Covenant gun control protests to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“What that did is you created this false narrative of violence when our protest was doing the opposite. We were calling for the end of gun violence so that our children can live,” Jones said.
Sexton did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment. On “Fox & Friends” on Friday, he defended the expulsion votes.
“In my house on the floor, since I’m speaker, we have rules, we have decorum, we have a process, we have procedures,” he said.
Although Jones acknowledged that there may have been a rule broken on the House floor, he argued on Monday that he was exercising his duty as a representative: “We were obedient to … the oath we took to our constituents: Article Two, Section 27, of the Tennessee Constitution says that any member of the House or Senate has a right to dissent from and protest against any action or legislation that is injurious to the people.”
Nashville Vice Mayor Jim Shulman told ABC News that his community has been demanding Jones and Pearson be back in the House.
“We’re getting hundreds of emails and lots of phone calls. People want us to send them right back up,” Shulman said. “This is how our democracy works — proper representation. I think there’s an understanding that we need to move promptly and quickly.”
On Monday night, the Nashville Metro Council voted unanimously to reinstate Jones in an interim role until a special election is held.
Separately, a special meeting will be held on Wednesday by the Shelby County Commission to discuss next steps for Pearson.
“I believe they failed to recognize that they didn’t send us to these positions,” Pearson told ABC News on Monday. “It’s the people in our communities who did.”
ABC News’ Faith Abubey, Kiara Alfonseca, Ella McCarthy, Ivan Pereira and Amanda Su contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to return to New York City Thursday to sit for a second deposition as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud lawsuit, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Trump previously sat for an hourslong deposition in August, prior to James filing her lawsuit that accused Trump, his eldest children and his company of fraudulently inflating the value of the Trump real estate portfolio and his net worth.
The attorney general’s office has the right to depose relevant parties after the filing of the lawsuit as part of the discovery process.
Trump is expected to sit for this new deposition Thursday at the attorney general’s downtown office.
The former president did not answer many questions in the first deposition other than affirming he understood the ground rules and the procedures.
When Kevin Wallace, the attorney general’s senior counsel, asked what Trump did to prepare for the deposition he answered: “very little.”
When asked questions about his finances, Trump repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and continued to do so for the next several hours.
The suit claims that Trump’s Florida estate and golf resort, Mar-a-Lago, was valued as high as $739 million, but should have been valued at $75 million. Trump is also alleged to have overvalued assets such as his Trump Tower apartment; Trump Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland; and 40 Wall Street.
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest children, also previously sat for depositions in the case.
Trump had initially countersued James for filing the lawsuit against him. But Trump withdrew the lawsuit in January after U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks warned Trump’s legal team that the lawsuit appeared to verge on frivolous.
Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images, FILE
(BOSTON) — Democratic governors from at least three states — Massachusetts, California and Washington — have announced they’ve begun stockpiling abortion medications, ahead of a court-ordered injunction that could pull the drug from the market as early as Friday.
It’s a dramatic escalation in the fight over abortion rights that’s pitted red states versus blue, and emboldened Democrats to look for novel ways to defy the potential nationwide injunction slated to go into effect at the end of the week.
The court ruling “harms patients, undermines medical expertise, and takes away freedom. It’s an attempt to punish to shame to marginalize women. It’s unnecessary. It’s terrible,” said Gov. Maura Healy of Massachusetts.
Healy announced on Monday that under her direction the University of Massachusetts Amherst has already purchased 15,000 doses — more than a year’s worth of mifepristone for the state. Another $1 million from state coffers would be offered to health care providers in the state to buy the drug before a nationwide injunction takes hold.
The governor also said she would sign an executive order noting that existing state law protect pharmacists and providers from criminal and civil legal liability if they continue to stock and dispense the drug.
“Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said in a statement. “The action we are taking today protects access to mifepristone in Massachusetts and protects patients, providers and pharmacists from liability.”
Also on Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that his state will purchase an emergency stockpile of up to 2 million pills of misoprostol – a drug not approved for abortion but commonly used around the world as an alternative to terminate early pregnancies.
Misoprostol is considered slightly less effective when taken without mifepristone. It also comes with more painful side effects because it needs to be taken in larger doses to end a pregnancy.
When asked why the California governor didn’t buy mifepristone instead, spokesperson Brandon Richards said the state would continue to “fight this battle on multiple fronts.”
“California is purchasing and securing misoprostol to ensure people across California and the country know medication abortion will remain accessible and affordable regardless of what happens in the courts,” he said.
The announcements from Massachusetts and California follow Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s decision last week to purchase a three-year supply of the drug for that state.
The bulk buys comes after a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas ruled to suspend he FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the only drug specifically approved to end early pregnancies up to 10 weeks. The judge gave the Biden administration until this coming Friday to appeal with ruling.
Since then, the Biden administration has appealed the case and asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday to put a hold on the judge’s nationwide injunction while the case is being considered by the upper court. It’s expected that the case will eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the 5th Circuit does not agree to freeze the judge’s ruling as the Biden administration has asked, production and manufacturing of the abortion drug mifepristone would stop as early as Friday. Abortion clinics were expected to continue to offer the drug to patients until their supply runs out.
ABC News’ Teresa Mettela contributed to this report.
Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images, FILE
(BOSTON) — Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey on Monday announced her state has begun stockpiling the abortion drug mifepristone ahead of a court-ordered injunction that could pull the drug from the market as early as Friday.
It’s a dramatic escalation in the fight over abortion rights that’s pitted red states versus blue, and emboldened Democrats to look for novel ways to defy the potential nationwide injunction slated to go into effect at the end of the week.
Under the governor’s plan, Healy said the University of Massachusetts Amherst has already purchased 15,000 doses — more than a year’s worth of mifepristone for the state. Another $1 million from state coffers would be offered to health care providers in the state to buy the drug before a nationwide injunction takes hold.
The governor also said she will sign an executive order noting that existing state law protect pharmacists and providers from criminal and civil legal liability if they continue to stock and dispense the drug.
“Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said in a statement released Monday. “The action we are taking today protects access to mifepristone in Massachusetts and protects patients, providers and pharmacists from liability.”
Later, she said, “It harms patients, undermines medical expertise and takes away freedom. It’s an attempt to punish, to shame, to marginalize women. It’s unnecessary. It’s terrible.”
The announcement follows Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee’s decision last week to purchase a three-year supply of the drug for that state.
The bulk buys follow a ruling last Friday from a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas that would suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the only drug specifically approved to end early pregnancies up to 10 weeks. The judge gave the Biden administration until this coming Friday to appeal with ruling, which it gave notice it would do late this past Friday.
The Biden administration is expected to ask the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday to put a hold on the judge’s nationwide injunction while the case is being considered by the upper court. It’s also expected that the case will eventually go to the Supreme Court.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Monday filed an emergency stay motion with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to block the order from a federal judge in Texas striking down the FDA’s approval of the abortion medication drug mifepristone.
“Rather than preserving the status quo, as preliminary relief is meant to do, the district court upended decades of reliance by blocking FDA’s approval of mifepristone and depriving patients of access to this safe and effective treatment, based on the court’s own misguided assessment of the drug’s safety,” the DOJ said.
“The district court took this extraordinary step despite the fact that plaintiffs did not seek relief for many years after mifepristone’s original approval, waited nearly a year after the most recent FDA actions they seek to challenge, and then asked the court to defer any relief until after a final resolution of the case,” the motion reads.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, ruled late Friday to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone — the first time a federal judge has blocked a drug approved for humans despite the FDA’s position. Kacsmaryk put the order on hold for seven days to give the Justice Department time to appeal.
The DOJ said the district court’s unprecedented order should be stayed pending appeal. it argued the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of a drug they neither take nor prescribe; their challenge to FDA actions dating back to 2000 is manifestly untimely; and they have provided no basis for second-guessing FDA’s scientific judgment.
“Those defects foreclose plaintiffs’ claims, and the court flouted fundamental principles of Article III and administrative law in holding otherwise. Indeed, no precedent, from any court, endorses plaintiffs’ standing, timeliness, or merits theories,” the DOJ said.
“The court’s sweeping nationwide relief was especially unwarranted given the balance of harms: If allowed to take effect, the court’s order would thwart FDA’s scientific judgment and severely harm women, particularly those for whom mifepristone is a medical or practical necessity. This harm would be felt throughout the country, given that mifepristone has lawful uses in every State. The order would undermine healthcare systems and the reliance interests of businesses and medical providers. In contrast, plaintiffs present no evidence that they will be injured at all, much less irreparably harmed, by maintaining the status quo they left unchallenged for years.”
“The district court granted a seven-day administrative stay. This Court should extend the administrative stay pending resolution of stay proceedings in this Court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court. The Court should then stay the district court’s order pending appeal,” the DOJ told the appeals court.”The government requests that this Court enter an administrative stay or grant a stay pending appeal by noon on April 13, to enable the government to seek relief in the Supreme Court if necessary.
Future access to the abortion pill mifepristone — on the market since 2000 and used in more than half of abortions in the U.S. — also hangs in limbo after contradictory rulings late Friday by Kacsmaryk and a second federal judge in Washington State.
Within hours of the Kacsmaryk’s order Friday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice, an Obama appointee, ruled that mifepristone should continue to be available in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Those states had sued in anticipation of a ruling limiting access.
When there’s such a conflict between lower courts — especially appeals courts — the Supreme Court typically steps in.
“Because they’re at a similar level, the heads will butt until they get to a higher court,” said ABC News legal contributor Brian Buckmire, when asked about the conflicting cases on “GMA3” Monday. “It could be a Supreme Court argument deciding this all.”
“A lot of people are predicting already that [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh may be the person to look to, because he was the one that said, yes, we may stop short of Roe v. Wade, but we will allow the states to decide themselves,” Buckmire said, referring to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the Dobbs case that overruled a constitutional right to abortion.
The 5th Circuit, seen as one of the most conservative, is expected to weigh in before the ruling takes effect on Friday.
“In other words, Kacsmaryk’s ruling will go into effect at midnight (CDT) on Saturday, April 15 unless either the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court freezes it in the interim,” wrote Steve Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas.
“If the Fifth Circuit grants either form of relief before the end of the day Friday, then this probably stays out of the Supreme Court for now; it seems more than a little unlikely that the plaintiffs in the Amarillo case would try to ask the Supreme Court to vacate such a stay,” he said.
Until then, experts have speculated on what the high court might decide.
“It’s easy to imagine that there are four votes to, at the very least, put the ruling on pause for however long it takes for the case to make its way through the lower courts (including Chief Justice Roberts and the three dissenters in Dobbs). The question to which we might have an answer by the end of the week, an answer that will have implications far beyond the specific (but massively important) future of mifepristone, is whether there are five,” Vladeck wrote.
ABC News’ Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — With former President Donald Trump now formally charged on criminal charges, a majority of Americans (53%) believe he intentionally did something illegal, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.
An additional 11% say he acted wrongly but not intentionally. Only 20% believe Trump did not do anything wrong, and 16% say they don’t know, per the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.
As part of the Tuesday charges against the former president, Manhattan prosecutors alleged that Trump engaged in a “scheme” to boost his election chances during the 2016 presidential race through a string of hush money payments made by others to boost his campaign, and then “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records” to conceal that criminal conduct.
A “statement of facts” paired with the 34-count indictment alleges that Trump discussed the scheme while he was in the Oval Office and made reimbursement payments to his lawyer for a year while in office.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 felony counts and has long denied any wrongdoing.
Democrats are largely convinced of Trump’s culpability, with 87% saying he intentionally did something illegal, and a majority of independents (57%) agree.
Of note, the former president is enjoying weaker-than-usual support from his own partisans with only a plurality of Republicans (45%) thinking Trump did nothing wrong, and the rest of the party split among the belief he intentionally did something illegal (19%), he was wrong but it was unintentional (18%) or they simply do not know (17%).
ABC News/Ipsos asked nearly identical questions of the American public in polling conducted last week immediately following the historic indictment and once again after the charges were made public and Trump was formally arraigned.
Between the weeks, some modest but clear trends have emerged.
The announcement of formal charges has nudged public opinion slightly against Trump, particularly among independent voters. As of April 1, exactly half of the public said the charges against Trump were either very or somewhat serious, and 36% said they were not. Now, after the indictment has been unsealed and the public has heard Trump’s condemnation of the investigation, 52% find the charges very or somewhat serious, and 39% deem the charges not too serious or not serious at all.
But either way, more Americans are making up their minds — while 14% of the public did not know how they felt about the severity of the charges as of April 1, that figure has shrunk to 8%.
Independents had an 11-point point shift in their views of the severity of the views, the polling showed. Last week, 43% of independents found the charges very or somewhat serious. This group, a critical voting bloc for the once-again presidential candidate, has swung against him, as 54% now say the same.
More Americans believe this week that Trump should have been charged with a crime, with 50% saying he should have been, 33% saying he should not, and 17% not knowing. Roughly the same percentages say that the charges are politically motivated, with 50% saying they are, 36% saying they aren’t, and 13% not knowing.
Slightly more Americans (48%) also believe Trump should suspend his bid for the White House, compared to the 43% who suggested so in the last ABC News/Ipsos poll. Again, independents were most likely to shift on this question, going from 41% saying he should suspend his campaign on April 1 to 52% now.
Views of Trump overall have taken a hit too, with only 25% thinking favorably of him, down 10 points since right before the last presidential election. In comparison, President Joe Biden’s favorability rating currently stands at 34%, according to the poll.
In a speech at his Mar-a-Lago estate Tuesday night, Trump claimed the “fake case” was brought “only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election” and said it should be “dropped immediately.”
Joe Tacopina, a Trump attorney, said the indictment “shows that the rule of law died in this country.”
“While everyone is not above the law, no one’s below it either,” Tacopina said. “And if this man’s name was not Donald J. Trump, there is no scenario we’d all be here today.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a press conference claimed Trump and his associates engaged in a “catch-and-kill scheme.”
“These are felony crimes in New York state, no matter who you are,” Bragg said. “We cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® April 6-7, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 566 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.4 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 26-25-40 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson said Sunday he expects to be quickly reappointed after what he called his “unprecedented” expulsion for participating in a raucous, unrecognized gun violence protest on the Legislature floor.
“I do hope to continue to serve District 86 in the reappointment,” Pearson, a Memphis Democrat, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “If there is a special election, I would definitely run in that special election because our voters have been disenfranchised.”
Pearson was ousted from the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday along with Democratic Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville. It was the first such partisan expulsion in the state’s modern history.
During protests on March 30, Jones and Pearson used a bullhorn to lead chants on the House floor, briefly disrupting legislative business. State Rep. Gloria Johnson, a fellow Democrat who also faced expulsion, was not seen using the bullhorn and was spared from removal by one vote.
Jones and Pearson are both Black; Johnson is white. All three have said they believe race was a factor.
“This is one of the greatest tactics of voter disenfranchisement and voter oppression that I’ve ever witnessed,” Pearson argued on “This Week.”
“The reality is we have a super-majority Republican legislature that doesn’t want to see progress, that prefers to listen to the NRA rather than the constituents,” he said.
Pearson said the Covenant school shooting in Nashville, which killed six before police killed the shooter, “has catalyzed the conversation about the need to end gun violence in our communities.”
“To realize that yes, it is in schools and that’s something that we need to deal with, but it is also in our communities,” Pearson said. “That’s because there’s been a proliferation of guns and also a proliferation of laws in Republican-led majority legislatures like here in Tennessee that continue to have negative consequences for our communities.”
There are two possible ways Pearson and Jones could return to the Legislature: appointment by their respective county commissioners to the vacant seats or running for reelection.
Thursday’s vote was “not only unprecedented, it is historical in nature, it is a historical abuse of power by [Speaker] Cameron Sexton and the super-majority Republican Legislature who would rather expel our voices and tried to expel our people’s voices from the people’s house, rather than address the issue of gun violence and the need for real gun safety reform legislation that could prevent people from dying in the first place.”
Tennessee state Rep. Jeremy Faison, the chair of the state House Republican Caucus, previously defended the move in an interview with CNN.
“It’s not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor,” Faison said. “There’s got to be some peace.”
He also said that the expulsion proceedings included “due process.” All three members were able to speak in the chamber to defend themselves before the votes.
During Sunday’s interview with Karl, Pearson referenced Tennessee’s 2021 permitless carry law and how it affects his district, linking it to rising homicides. “Murders are up 44% relative to this point last year in our city,” he said. “There are real consequences to the decisions of people in power.”
“We can never forget that it was tragedy that has brought us to this moment,” Pearson said. “The speaker had the audacity to call some of those children and some of those parents and grandparents ‘insurrectionist,’ likening them to Jan. 6, because they’re demanding that their voices be heard in a democracy.”
It’s young people, Pearson said, that are pushing the movement forward.
“It’s children and teenagers by the thousands, who continue to protest, who continue to march, who continue to raise their voices to say, ‘We need to do something to end gun violence,'” Pearson said. “I pray to God to be able to use my voice as a member of the state Legislature to represent Memphis and Shelby County and Millington, to continue to fight to pass reasonable, sensible legislation that the majority of people in Tennessee want.”
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr warned Sunday that, in his view, Trump faces more legal peril from the federal probe into his possession of classified documents after leaving office than from the case in New York City over hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.
“I don’t think it has any merit. I think it is transparently an abuse of prosecutorial power to accomplish a political end,” Barr told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.
However, Barr added, “I’d be most concerned about the documents at Mar-a-Lago.”
“I think that’s a serious potential case. I think they probably have some very good evidence,” he said.
He pointed to the prolonged back-and-forth between Trump and the government when, according to court records, Trump resisted returning the classified materials — leading to an FBI search of his home last year.
“I think he was jerking the government around and they subpoenaed it, and they tried to jawbone him into delivering the documents. But the government is investigating the extent to which games were played and there was obstruction and keeping the documents from them,” Barr said.
His remarks come after Trump was arraigned last week on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records related to paying Daniels, a porn actress, over her long-denied claims that they had an affair. Trump pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on Tuesday.
Bragg, the district attorney, has alleged the money was part of a “scheme” in violation of state election laws to ensure Daniels’ allegations didn’t surface during the 2016 presidential campaign and harm Trump politically.
Barr said on “This Week” that, conversely, Trump being charged could help his current presidential bid.
“It … may accomplish his purpose, which is to get into the middle of the Republican primary process and turn it into a circus,” Barr said. “And I think, ultimately, the savvy Democratic strategists know this is going to help Trump, and they want him to be the nominee because he is the weakest of the Republican candidates and the most likely to lose again to [President Joe] Biden.”
However, Trump is currently mired in at least three other criminal investigations, including into his possession of classified documents after leaving office, his conduct related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot and his efforts to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020.
Trump denies wrongdoing in each case and has insisted he is being persecuted.
Barr singled out the investigation into Trump’s possession of classified material, even though President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence were both also found to have retained classified documents while out of office.
Barr noted the difference in the cases is that Biden and Pence appear to have immediately informed the government of the documents once they were discovered, while Trump sought to keep them.
“My read was, before they found the documents in Biden’s house and Vice President Pence’s house, my read was that they were going to indict [Trump] and I still think there’s a very good chance of that,” Barr said. “I think it depends on how sensitive the documents were, but also what evidence they have of obstruction and games playing for the president and whether he directed people to lie or gave them information that was deceitful to pass on to the government.”
Barr also suggested his former boss could hurt his own standing with attacks on Bragg and the judge overseeing his case in New York.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate or wise. The president notoriously lacks self-control, and he frequently gets himself into trouble with these midnight tweets and other things,” he said of Trump’s criticism, including calling Bragg, who is Black, a racist. “These are gratuitous comments and aren’t particularly helpful.”
