Politics

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — During their first hearing investigating the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sought Wednesday to evoke memories of the frenzied final days of the occupation, relying on emotional testimony from veterans who witnessed the evacuations and a deadly explosion outside of Kabul’s airport that killed 13 American service members along with scores of Afghans.

One of the witnesses at the hearing, Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, was badly injured by that blast — a suicide bombing carried out by the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K.

Through tears, Vargas-Andrews described in poignant detail the moment he was thrown 12 feet by “a massive wave of pressure.”

“I opened my eyes to Marines — dead or unconscious — lying around me,” he said. “A crowd of hundreds vanished in front of me, and my body was catastrophically wounded.”

Vargas-Andrews lost an arm and a leg in the explosion, but much of his testimony focused on the hours leading up to the attack — the moments when he believes he and his fellow Marines could have stopped it from ever happening. He testified that on Aug. 26, 2021, the day of the attack, the military had intelligence that a suicide bomber traveling with a companion intended to strike Abbey Gate, the entrance to the airport, as well as a description of their physical appearances.

His team spotted two men matching that description who were “consistently and nervously looking up at our position through the crowd,” Vargas-Andrews said, adding that the older of the two appeared to be coaching the younger one.

Although they sent photos to their higher ups and asked for permission to shoot them, Vargas-Andrews said the only answer they received from their battalion commander was “I don’t know.”

Shortly after, the blast came.

While tacticians and other experts might debate the merits of pulling the trigger on an unconfirmed target, Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, argued that the lack of clear answer from Vargas-Andrews’ superiors at the time was indicative of a broader issue — the Biden’s administration’s disorder.

In his opening statement on Wednesday, McCaul accused diplomats and the White House of ignoring grim intelligence assessments depicting the realities on the ground in Afghanistan as the Taliban crept closer to Kabul, eventually overtaking the city in August 2021. At the time, the final American troops were preparing to leave the country as part of what the president said then was a necessary if difficult end to a historically long conflict that had stretched far beyond its goal, costing too much in lives and money.

But in McCaul’s view on Wednesday, “We simply weren’t ready” to leave.

Another veteran, former Army Spc. Aidan Gunderson, spoke to the lack of preparedness. He recalled embarking on a rapid deployment to help secure the Kabul airport in 2021 while evacuations of American citizens and allies were underway, saying the only food they had was whatever they happened to stash in their rucksacks before departing the U.S.

“Not a single person on that plane was prepared for Kabul,” Gunderson said of his unit’s crossing into Afghanistan. “To say supplies were scarce is an understatement.”

Gunderson said that immediately upon landing in Kabul, the disorder and desperation was apparent. He vividly described seeing the airport swarmed with Afghans trying to flee and completely encircled by heavily armed Taliban fighters, who were permitting the withdrawal.

He also recalled the remains of those who had been so desperate to escape that they tried clinging to the landing gear of a plane as it took off.

“At this moment, I truly understood that the Afghans were risking everything — even death — to escape the Taliban,” he said, choking up. “I see the faces of all the people we cannot save — all those we left behind.”

Retired Army Special Forces Lt. Col. David Scott Mann, another witness, spoke to the trauma inflicted on the veteran community by the withdrawal, predicting the U.S. was on the “front end of a mental health tsunami.”

“We might be done with Afghanistan, but it’s not done with us,” he said.

Although Democrats listened attentively to the witnesses and expressed a desire to learn from mistakes made throughout the decades-long war, some of them accused Republicans of putting on a partisan show and unfairly pinning the blame solely on the Biden administration.

“Today’s hearing should be focused on examining the full scope of this conflict — its failures and its successes,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. “I fear, however, that today’s hearing was not convened in that spirit but rather as an attempt to distract us from the full picture and even in some cases to try and score political points, which I believe dishonors the lives lost and the bravery of those who sit in front of this committee.”

Republicans disagreed.

Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry accused Democrats in turn of attempting to avoid accountability and called for a full hearing with “the folks at the top” — the secretaries of defense and state, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“That’s certainly our game plan,” McCaul replied.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — As the Biden administration prepares for the possible end of the immigration restriction known as Title 42 — which could lead to an increase of people attempting to cross the southern border — sources say government officials are weighing whether to detain migrant families who illegally enter the country, a politically fraught move on an issue that invites near-constant scrutiny.

The deliberations about potentially detaining migrant families, which the Biden administration stopped doing in 2021, were confirmed by sources familiar with the matter.

One source, who declined to be named in order to discuss internal policy deliberations, stressed that no decisions have been made and the conversations about migrant family detention have been limited in scope and focused on the short period of time needed for swift processing.

The detentions, under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would be limited to a small number of days, another source told ABC News — unlike during the Trump administration, which tried to detain families indefinitely.

The sources also insisted that processing for those detained would comply with federal standards, including a 20-day cap on the amount of time they are held.

The administration has, more broadly, taken steps in recent months to speed up its processing of detained migrants.

But the possible return to detaining migrants families quickly ignited political blowback from key members of President Joe Biden’s party.

“I’m alarmed by news reports that the Administration is considering reinstating family detention policies,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday. “If the reports are true, I strongly urge the Administration to reconsider this policy change and instead work towards implementing immigration policies that are humane, orderly, and in line with our American values.”

Rep. Nanette Barragán, the chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called reports that the Biden administration is considering detaining migrant families “deeply concerning.”

“A just, safe, and humane immigration system should not place families in detention,” Barragán said, in part, in a statement. “We should not return to the failed policies of the past where families are detained in substandard conditions with long term damage to children.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday declined to comment on the possibility that the administration could go back to detaining migrant families while not ruling it out either.

“I’m not saying it is being considered … and I’m not saying it is not,” Jean-Pierre said. “I’m saying that I’m not going to speak to rumors,”

When asked why Biden might consider detaining migrant families, given he stopped the policy shortly after taking office, Jean-Pierre again punted.

“He is going to use the tools that he has before him to make sure that we deal with an immigration system, where we build an immigration system that’s again, safe, orderly and humane,” she said.

The administration has continued to prepare for the end of the public health order known as Title 42, which restricts immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A federal judge initially ruled the restriction had to lift by December, finding it “arbitrary and capricious,” with minimal public health impact. But 19 largely Republican-led states appealed and the matter is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Luis Miranda reiterated in a statement this week that while “no decisions have been made” about family detention, “The Administration will continue to prioritize safe, orderly, and humane processing of migrants.”

But Republican state leaders like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP lawmakers in Washington have argued that the president’s policies are “reckless” and expose the U.S. to too much harm from immigration — including as a burden on government resources and via the flow of deadly narcotics.

Conservatives often cite record numbers of border crossings over the past year.

Recently the administration has taken steps to crack down on unauthorized migration while opening new, limited avenues for humanitarian relief for those fleeing violence and persecution.

Parole programs allowing Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants to apply for entry from abroad have been paired with new restrictions that allow authorities to return migrants from those countries back to Mexico.

The administration is also currently working to implement a new rule to bar entry for migrants who cross illegally, seeking asylum, without first seeking refuge elsewhere.

But the administration has been under fire from both Republicans, who have fought the humanitarian pathways in court, and from Democrats concerned about turning away migrants with legitimate claims.

Immigrant advocates said this week that the administration considering again detaining families along with some of the other recent proposals were an embrace of Trump-like policies and a reversal of campaign promises from Biden.

“Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents immediately. This is pretty simple, and I can’t believe I have to say it: Families belong together,” then-candidate Biden tweeted in 2020.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has levied legal challenges against family detention by other administrations, said it will consider fighting any attempt by Biden to implement similar policies.

“If President Biden moves forward with these plans, he will be putting vulnerable, traumatized immigrant children at risk. We will fight him every step of the way,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.

The Immigration Hub’s Executive Director Sergio Gonzales said family detention would not deter migrants rom seeking asylum in the U.S. and may also prompt people to separate out of fear that their children would be detained.

“There’s no credible research that I have seen that has shown that when you jail families, it actually stops people from coming to our border,” Gonzales told ABC News. “They’re literally fleeing for their lives when they come to our border. They believe they have no other choice.”

In 2018, Drs. Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, two subject matter experts in medical and mental health who work with the DHS’ Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, raised alarm to DHS and Congress about the dangers family detention poses for children.

On Tuesday, the doctors sent a letter to President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warning the same.

“No amount of programming can ameliorate the harms created by the very act of confining children to detention centers,” they wrote.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — First lady Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday hosted the 17th annual International Women of Courage Awards — and for the first time, the ceremony took place at the White House, on “the biggest stage we could,” Biden said.

The pair honored 11 global women leaders — some from countries embroiled in crisis — to mark International Women’s Day and recognize those with “exceptional courage, strength, and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, gender equity and equality, often at great personal risk and sacrifice.” Since 2007, the State Department has given out the courage awards to more than 180 women from more than 80 countries.

“Today, we’re here to tell girls everywhere the truth that they need to hear: Yes, you matter. Yes, you can make a difference,” Biden said at the White House’s East Room.

“That’s why we wanted to bring the leaders we’re honoring today, and the stories that they share, to the biggest stage we could: The White House. And, Tony, thank you for helping us do that,” she said.

The 2023 event honored Yuliia “Taira” Paievska, who led a volunteer unit of paramedics in Ukraine and spent three months in Russian captivity after getting detained in Mariupol for attempting to evacuate women and children in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

Earlier on Wednesday, the White House released a statement from President Joe Biden to mark the day. He noted the gender abuses in conflict-ridden countries like Afghanistan and Ukraine.

“Despite decades of progress, in far too many places around the world, the rights of women and girls are still under attack, holding back entire communities,” he said.

“We see it in Afghanistan, where the Taliban bars women and girls from attending school and pursuing employment. We see it in Iran, where the regime is brutally repressing the voices of women who are courageously standing up for their freedom. And in the face of Russia’s vicious and unjust invasion of Ukraine, including the use of rape as a weapon of war, we see countless stories of women bravely fighting for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Ukrainians,” he continued.

At Wednesday’s ceremony, Jill Biden applauded Blinken’s leadership in addressing foreign crises like in Ukraine, and Blinken highlighted the administration’s work to push forward gender equality abroad.

“President Biden has made gender equality and women’s rights a priority of our foreign policy,” Blinken remarked, nodding to the creation of the “first ever” cross-government strategy on women’s global economic security, a gender policy council and updated strategies to respond to gender-based violence globally, including new efforts to expand access to programs for historically marginalized communities.

Other honorees at the courage awards included independent Ethiopian journalist Meaza Mohammed, who has been covering gender-focused violence in the country; Zakira Hekmat, an Afghan doctor and advocate who grew up and was secretly educated under Taliban rule; and Doris Ríos, an indigenous rights leader from Costa Rica, among others.

The Madeleine Albright Honorary Group Award went to the women and girl protestors of Iran who embarked on months of grassroots demonstrations across Iran’s 31 provinces following the suspicious death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian woman taken into custody for allegedly improperly wearing a hijab.

MORE: Afghans and advocates speak out after Taliban bans women from working with aid groups
“Women in all of their diversity are often the ones on the front lines of change. And yet at the same time, they face still greater obstacles to their political participation,” Blinken said Wednesday.

“Defending the rights of women and girls is rooted in our democratic values of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the State Department marked International Women’s Day by announcing coordinated action with its allies intended to “to promote accountability for the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses,” particularly against women and girls in the wake of the death of Amini.

Blinken announced sanctions against two Iranian officials overseeing prisons in Iran which he alleged were complicit in the gross mistreatment of prisoners, two senior Iranian security leaders who he said ordered the detention and torture of protestors, three companies that supply Iranian law enforcement & their CEOS, and another high-ranking law enforcement officer in the country for imposing censorship policies.

Jill Biden closed her Wednesday remarks with a call for accountability of men to uphold gender-based freedoms.

“As much as we need women who are willing to speak up, we need more men who are willing to listen and act,” she said.

“We need more men to hold each other accountable when their sisters are being hurt or left behind. We need more men who nurture families, who feed and teach and mentor, who build safer communities. We need more men who know that caring, collaboration, and kindness are signs of strength, not weakness.”

ABC News’ Shannon Crawford contributed to this report.

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(ARKANSAS) — In a major legislative victory for Arkansas’ new governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday signed the LEARNS Act into law, making the state the latest to adopt what she calls a system-changing universal school voucher program, which critics warn could decimate the public school system.

Sanders’ signature at the state Capitol in Little Rock comes 16 days after the 144-page bill was introduced.

“I am not interested in being a caretaker of the failed status quo. I vowed to be a changemaker for our people,” she tweeted ahead of the signing. “Today, I am delivering on that promise, and will sign into law my transformational education plan, unleashing a new era of freedom, opportunity and prosperity for all.”

Backed by a Republican supermajority in the state Legislature, the omnibus bill cornerstone to Sanders’ education agenda saw a 26-8 vote in the State Senate and 78-21 in the House.

“I know it is not popular, I know it went against the Republican Party platform, but right is right and wrong is wrong,” said State Rep. Jim Wooten, a former public school teacher, questioning his colleagues’ support. “I would say that 50% of them are trying to get close to the governor, and the other 50% are afraid of her.”

In its short lifespan, the LEARNS Act, intended to revamp education from early childhood classes through the 12th grade, has seen both praise and protests.

The legislation calls for raising minimum teacher salaries, introducing universal pre-K, banning teaching on “gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction” before fifth grade — prompting comparisons to similar legislation in Florida — and banning curriculum that would “indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory.”

When I sign my education plan into law today, CRT and all forms of racism and leftist indoctrination in our schools will be outlawed.

Under my leadership we will do what’s right, not what’s politically correct or convenient.

— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) March 8, 2023

It also makes Arkansas the fifth state — following Arizona, Iowa, Utah and West Virginia — to enact a universal program for so-called school choice, as more Republican-led legislatures prioritize taking up voucher policies.

“Arkansas is the 5th government school monopoly domino to fall in the past 2 years. A school choice revolution has ignited and there’s nothing the teachers unions can do about it,” Corey DeAngelis, a prominent advocate for such programs and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, tweeted on Wednesday.

Supporters of school choice say the vouchers, or “Education Freedom Accounts,” as they’ll be called under Sanders, allow taxpayers to support “students not systems” in the redirection of public funds to private schools.

“This isn’t an us vs. them, red vs. blue, teachers vs. the legislature,” said State Sen. Breanne Davis, who introduced the bill. “This is all of us working together and rooting for the success of our children.”

The cost of each student’s “Education Freedom Account” to pay for private and home-schooling must be equal to 90% of the state’s per-student funding for public schools, which is currently $7,413, according to the Associated Press.

But critics say the voucher program essentially functions as a tax stipend for families with the means to enroll their child into private or charter institutions or home-schooling, among other concerns like funding the program long-term.

“At the end of the day, this is only going to be for a few people,” said Jim Ross, a history teacher at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who said the program could serve to “re-segregate” Arkansas schools. “And it’s gross that no one will be honest about that.”

Those voting against the bill also expressed wanting separation of its sweeping reforms.

“We’ve never put this many important topics into one piece of legislation and voted on it with one vote,” state Sen. Reginald Murdock, a Democrat, said on Tuesday.

‘The education governor’
In her inaugural address, Sanders — a former Trump White House spokesperson whose father, Mike Huckabee, previously served as Arkansas’ governor — said she hopes to be known as “the education governor.” She then laid out details of her agenda in the Republican State of the Union response last month.

But the overwhelming support she’s seen since in the legislature hasn’t been matched by a universally positive public response.

More than 1,000 students at Little Rock Central High School, Sanders’ alma mater, walked out of classes on Friday to protest LEARNS.

On Tuesday, when a group of 10 students tried to speak about the bill at the state Capitol, State Sen. Jane English required the students only speak on its procedural amendment, leaving them feeling “silenced” and “belittled,” according to Little Rock Central senior Gryffyn May.

“It was already stressful to have to speak in front of a Senate but then to have to speak without a prepared speech, while you’re constantly getting interrupted, was much worse,” May told ABC News in a phone interview. “I absolutely had frustrated tears, but they were also tears of embarrassment … I think it just hit me that this bill was going to be passed on their time, no matter what.”

Little Rock Central Junior Addison McCuien told the lawmakers on Tuesday, “I started off my speech here by saying that I wanted to thank y’all for the opportunity to speak. However, I take that back. You’re not allowing us the opportunity to speak.”

McCuien and May are among the students and educators planning to hold a protest on Wednesday afternoon at the state Capitol. Although the bill will have already been signed, May said it will give students the chance to voice concerns they weren’t able to during the session.

“We were completely shut down when people were voting on it, but we’re not going to give up the walk away,” May said. “We’re still going to be out here calling out what’s a bad idea.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said Wednesday they are planning a visit with some defendants who are being held in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who also sits on the panel, told ABC News that the committee is planning to send a letter this week to lawmakers regarding the planned visit to the Washington, D.C., detention facility.

Greene said the visit would focus on the conditions of those jailed over Jan. 6, including what she claimed to be “reports of abuse.”

“They’re pretrial and they haven’t even been convicted and they’re not allowed to see their families, many times are not allowed to see their attorneys — the food has been a major complaint,” Greene alleged. “There’s been complaints of it tasting like cleaner.”

The vast majority of defendants charged in connection with Jan. 6 have not been ordered to be detained pending trial, but in the several dozen cases where individuals have been held, a judge has determined that there’s no combination of conditions that could be placed on them to ensure that they either wouldn’t pose a danger to the general public or risk obstructing justice in their case.

In late 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service conducted an inspection of the D.C. jail’s Central Detention Facility – a separate facility from where the Jan. 6 defendants have been detained — and said they would relocate roughly 400 inmates to a separate jail in Pennsylvania after finding the conditions there did not meet minimum federal standards.

An inspection of the facility holding the Jan. 6 defendants, however, “did not identify conditions that would necessitate the transfer of inmates,” the Marshals Service said in 2021.

Greene has previously visited some Jan. 6 defendants in jail where she saw they were “suffering greatly,” she said in 2021.

She was criticized in December for what she said was a “sarcastic joke” about the riot at the Capitol: “If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. … Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

She said Wednesday that the jail visit would be open to members outside of the Oversight Committee but that a date has not been confirmed.

“We’re gonna try and see what it looks like … that’s part of what the Oversight Committee does with everything pertaining to the federal government, so we have some members that are going to hopefully tour that prison,” Comer told reporters.

The news comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces bipartisan backlash over exclusively sharing security footage from Jan. 6 with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who used the clips to try and downplay the Capitol attack — drawing a rebuke from the Capitol Police chief. McCarthy said Tuesday he released the video in the interest of “transparency.”

The Department of Justice said earlier this week that at least 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol assault, which sent lawmakers briefly into hiding. One of the people who breached the building, Ashli Babbitt, was also fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer.

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(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of a federal agency’s new assessment that COVID-19 “mostly likely” emerged from a lab leak rather than natural human exposure, a special panel formed by House Republicans to investigate the origins of the virus will hold its first hearing on Wednesday.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, chaired by Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup, will meet at 9 a.m. ET to tackle a question that’s plagued intelligence and health officials for the past three years: Where did the virus that has killed more than one million Americans and nearly seven million people worldwide come from?

The two prevailing theories are a leak from a laboratory in China, which the Chinese government vehemently disputes, or humans being exposed to an infected animal.

U.S. agencies have said they remain “divided” on the matter and with no “smoking gun” and limited access to raw data, including via cooperation from China, discussion of the science has played out in a haze of circumstantial evidence.

Witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing will include Dr. Robert Redfield, the Trump-era director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Paul Auwaerter, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“The American people deserve real answers after years of suffering through the Coronavirus pandemic and related government policies,” Wenstrup said in a statement. “This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to ‘predict, prepare, protect, or prevent’ it from happening again.”

Jamie Metzl, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and former national security official in the Clinton administration, will also appear before the panel. According to a copy of his prepared testimony reviewed by ABC News, Metzl will say that “understanding how this pandemic began is essential to prioritizing our response” going forward and will help gear future oversight and attention to new threats.

“If, for example, we knew for certain the pandemic stems from a lab incident in Wuhan [in China], I can assure you that efforts to regulate the rapid proliferation of high-containment, and all too often high-risk, virology labs across the globe would get a massive boost,” Metzl plans to say. “Critically important biosafety efforts would finally get the high-level national and international attention they deserve.”

“Understanding how this crisis began and determining how we can do better is and must be the ultimate bipartisan and nonpartisan issue,” Metzl will say while urging pressure on and “demanding accountability from” Beijing.

“Doing so is not a hostile act, but the opposite,” Metzl will say. “Supporting and joining a full and unfettered investigation has always been the best way for the Chinese government to demonstrate its commitment to understanding what went wrong.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian previously said in a statement, “Origins tracing is a matter of science. China always supports and will continue to participate in the science-based origins study.”

According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal last week, the U.S. Energy Department, which oversees a network of labs, said it now believes COVID-19 “most likely” was the result of a leak from a lab — an assessment in line with that of the FBI.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” FBI Director Chris Wray said in response to the Energy Department’s evaluation, which the Journal wrote was made with “low confidence,” citing people who read the report.

Four other U.S. agencies, however, believe the virus was a result of natural transmission and that it jumped from animals to humans at a wet market. Two other agencies are undecided as to how it started.

“There’s just no consensus across the government. The work continues,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters last week.

While no firm conclusion has been made as to where exactly the virus originated, none of the findings so far indicate it was leaked intentionally.

Experts have said that, regardless of the number of hearings, successful investigation of COVID-19’s origins will almost certainly require fuller cooperation from the Chinese government. Looking into how outbreaks began takes extensive, on-the-ground scientific work.

Congressional Republicans have set their sights on investigating the origins of the virus, with House Republicans launching a probe not long after taking back majority control of the chamber.

A group of GOP senators are also now demanding to see the individual assessments on COVID-19 origins from each of the U.S. agencies.

“Congress should be able to review the independent evaluations without filters, ambiguity or interpretations of the intelligence,” a group of Republican senators, led by Kansas’ Roger Marshall, wrote in a letter sent Monday to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who is set to separately appear this week before members of Congress’ intelligence committees.

“The ODNI has failed to be transparent with Congress and the American people by standardizing agency conclusions and thereby ignoring the breadth of scientific and other expertise in each agency,” the senators wrote.

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(WASHINGTON) — Intelligence chiefs from across the U.S. government face a grilling Wednesday from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, with China likely a main focus.

The annual “Worldwide Threats” hearing features the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, CIA director William Burns, FBI director Christopher Wray and Director of the National Security Agency Gen. Paul Nakasone, among others.

In recent weeks, Intelligence Committee leaders have gotten briefed by officials on a multitude of issues, including the spy balloon the United States shot down off the coast of South Carolina and classified documents found at the homes and offices of former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

The balloon was a People’s Republic of China asset, according to U.S. officials.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, ranking member on the committee, said in a letter sent to the Department of Defense on Feb. 8 that lawmakers needed more answers about how officials let the Chinese spy balloon travel over the U.S.

“There are a number of outstanding questions about what happened and why the Administration allowed an adversarial intelligence platform to move from Alaska to the Carolinas uninterrupted,” Sen. Roger Wicker and Rubio wrote.

Wicker is a ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We also lack a clear understanding of our senior national security leaders’ response to the Chinese surveillance balloon’s trajectory from first detection to January 28, when the Commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD Gen. Glen VanHerck notified his chain of command of the balloon, and until February 1, when President Biden finally ordered the Department to shoot down the balloon over water,” the lawmakers wrote.

China is also expected to take center stage on a variety of other fronts.

On Tuesday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, unveiled a bill that would empower the president to ban TikTok and maybe other Chinese technology in the United States — a measure with White House and bipartisan congressional support.

Wray will also face questions on China, after he said in an interview with Fox News that the COVID-19 pandemic “most likely” originated from a potential lab incident in Wuhan, China, and faulted the Chinese government for not acting quickly enough to prevent spread of the disease.

An FBI spokesperson, when asked about the hearing, said Wray will face a number of topics, but declined to share anything specific about what the focus would be.

“The hearing will have multiple speakers and cover a variety of topics,” FBI spokesperson Christina Pullen told ABC News in an e-mail.

GOP senators on Monday sent a letter to Haines demanding they receive an intelligence briefing on the origins of COVID-19.

“We write to request that you immediately deliver to Congress each IC assessment used and relied upon by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for its consensus publications,” Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine and Roger Marshall of Kansas wrote.

“Congress should be able to review the independent evaluations without filters, ambiguity or interpretations of the intelligence. There is clear bipartisan support in Congress to make these assessments available immediately in full as evidenced by the unanimous March 1, 2023 Senate passage of the COVID-19 Origin Act to declassify information related to the origin of COVID-19,” they said.

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(WASHINGTON) — According to law, former President Donald Trump can be elected president if indicted — or even convicted — in any of the state and federal investigations he is currently facing, experts tell ABC News. But there are practical reasons that could make it a challenge, experts say.

Trump said over the weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he would “absolutely” stay in the race for president even if he were to be criminally indicted.

“I wouldn’t even think about leaving,” Trump told reporters ahead of his speech on Saturday. “Probably it will enhance my numbers.”

Special counsel Jack Smith is currently investigating Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as his handling of classified material after he left office. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, have been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. And in New York, the attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney have been probing Trump’s personal finances and those of his namesake real estate company.

In all cases, Trump has denied wrongdoing and has characterized the probes as part of a “witch hunt” against him.

The U.S. Constitution does not list the absence of a criminal record as a qualification for the presidency. It says only that natural born citizens who are at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years can run for president.

Constitutional experts also told ABC News that previous Supreme Court rulings hold that Congress cannot add qualifications to the office of the president. In addition, a state cannot prohibit indicted or convicted felons from running for federal office.

“Some people are surprised to learn that there’s no constitutional bar on a felon running for president, but there’s no such bar,” said Kate Shaw, ABC News legal analyst and professor at Cardozo School of Law.

“Because of the 22nd Amendment, the individual can’t have been twice elected president previously,” Shaw said. “But there’s nothing in the Constitution disqualifying individuals convicted of crimes from running for or serving as president.”

Shaw said that while incarceration “would presumably make campaigning difficult if not impossible,” the impediment would be a “practical problem, not a legal one.”

James Sampler, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University, told ABC News that the Constitution sets the minimal requirements, but leaves the rest up to the voters.

“It depends on the wisdom of the people to determine that an individual is not fit for office,” Sampler said. “So the most fundamental obstacle that President Trump has in seeking office in 2024 is the obstacle that anyone has, but he has it in a different and more pronounced way — which is proving to the voters that the individual deserves the office.”

If Trump were to be indicted or convicted and prevented by law from traveling out of state, Sampler said, that would impose a practical limitation on his ability to travel the country and campaign — but it wouldn’t prohibit him from running.

Sampler also pointed out an irony in the electoral system, in which many states bar convicted felons from voting. According to the Sentencing Project advocacy group, 48 states have laws that ban people with felony convictions from voting.

“It is a sad day for a country that ostensibly values democratic participation and equality, that individuals who’ve been convicted of a felony can be prohibited from participating even as voters in our democracy, but a president convicted of a felony is still allowed,” he said.

Jessica Levinson, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School, agreed.

“You could conceivably have a situation where the president of the United States is not disqualified from being president … but can’t vote for himself,” Levinson told ABC News.

“The interesting thing about the qualifications like you have to be born here, you have to live here for a certain amount of time … all of that is kind of getting at the idea that we want you to be loyal to our country,” Levinson said. “But you could conceivably be convicted of crimes against our country, and still be able to serve as president.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch privately bashed then-President Donald Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, following the 2020 election, according to court records made public on Tuesday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Murdoch wrote that Trump and Giuliani were “both increasingly mad” — using the British expression for “crazy” — in an email whose contents were read during a deposition taken as part of the lawsuit.

The voting machine company has filed court documents containing private communications from Fox News personnel appearing to cast doubt on claims that Dominion’s voting machines had somehow rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor.

Tuesday’s newly unveiled records included additional correspondence between Fox network executives and on-air hosts regarding Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.

“The real danger is what he might do as president,” Murdoch wrote of Trump, according to a transcript of the deposition. “Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls!”

Murdoch also acknowledged in a Jan. 21, 2021, email to a Fox News executive that “maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” referring to Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, two primetime hosts who echoed Trump’s claims of election fraud. The email was sent in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?” Murdoch wrote.

The thousands of pages of new documents provide additional evidence that network leaders privately acknowledged that Biden had won the election despite what Fox News’ on-air personalities told their viewers.

In response to the documents, Fox News officials said that Dominion was misleading the public by not providing the full context behind some of the quotes. In one example, Hannity’s statement about election fraud that he “did not believe it for one second,” which was included in an early Dominion filing, was only a partial quote and did not include that he said that he “waited for the proof.”

“Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught red-handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” Fox News officials said in a statement. “We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”

Other documents released Tuesday show one of Fox’s biggest stars, Tucker Carlson, privately saying that he hated Trump “passionately.”

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson privately wrote on Jan. 4, 2021, according to the documents. “I truly can’t wait.”

“I hate him passionately,” he said.

Separately, in a group chat between Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham, the Fox News hosts vented privately about the network, its declining ratings, and their fellow employees in mid-November, the records show.

“We are all officially working for an organization that hates us,” Ingraham wrote on Nov. 16, 2020, according to the documents. “My anger at the news channel is pronounced,” she said later.

“I’m disgusted at this point,” Hannity said later in the conversation, per the records.

The new material also documents backlash to Fox News’ decision to call Arizona for Biden before other networks had done so. After Fox News made the call, Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, urged executives to “back off AZ” and retract the call.

“The sooner we pull it — even if it gives us major egg … the better we are. In my opinion,” Baier wrote on Nov. 5.

Murdoch also said during his deposition as part of the lawsuit that he “never” believed the theory that the voting company was involved in an effort to “delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump.”

“I never believed it,” he said during his deposition on Jan. 19, 2023, according to a more complete transcript that was released as part of the newer documents.

But elsewhere in the deposition, Murdoch acknowledged Trump’s importance, saying “nobody wants Trump as an enemy.”

When asked why, Murdoch said “because he had a great following, big.”

“Seventy-five million people voted for him,” Murdoch said.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is standing by his decision to grant Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to the raw security footage from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, telling reporters on Tuesday night that he has no regrets but repeatedly refusing to answer questions about what Carlson said on his show.

“Each person can come up with their own conclusion,” McCarthy said about what Carlson aired Monday night, which quickly drew rebuke from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, top Democrats and the U.S. Capitol Police chief, among others.

ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked McCarthy whether he had any concerns about what Carlson presented, pointing to an internal memo from Chief Tom Manger to Capitol Police officers where Manger described Carlson’s coverage as “cherry picked,” “misleading” and “offensive.”

“I didn’t see what was aired,” McCarthy said, insisting that he gave Carlson — and no other media outlet — access to the tapes for the purpose of “transparency.”

Carlson on Monday aired what he claimed to be new surveillance videos from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to minimize the rioting as a peaceful gathering and to discredit the work of the House Jan. 6 committee and federal investigators.

In contrast to Carlson’s claims now, in the days right after Jan. 6, McCarthy said, “Let me be clear, last week’s violent attack on the Capitol was undemocratic, un-American, and criminal.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland, asked on Tuesday about Carlson’s program, said, “I think it’s very clear what happened on Jan. 6.”

Carlson and some House Republicans had been hyping the report up for weeks, but after viewing 40,000 hours of video given to him by McCarthy, the host played on repeat only select scenes of the security camera footage.

Carlson defended “protesters” on Jan. 6, claiming they were “right” to “believe that the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted.” Notably, Carlson’s comments come on the heels of new court filings by Dominion Voting Systems in their lawsuit against Fox News that showed in mid-November 2020, Carlson texted one of his producers that “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election.

Despite what he’s said in private, Carlson said on Monday that “taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection,” though he also showed familiar footage of rioters violently breaking into the Capitol.

Reporters on Tuesday asked if McCarthy believed the Jan. 6 riot was an insurrection, but McCarthy avoided the question entirely.

He said he “worked with Capitol police” on what video would be provided to Carlson, but Chief Manger said in his memo that Fox News never reached out to the Capitol Police for context about what clips they aired.

A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the memo.

On his way to the House floor, McCarthy told ABC News “no” when asked if he had heard any concerns from any Capitol Police officers or any officers on his detail about what was show on Carlson’s show.

ABC News’ Luke Barr and Libby Cathey contributed to this report.

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