(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. official said Friday it’s believed the undercarriage of the Chinese spy balloon shot down Saturday — where the surveillance equipment and other technology was housed — has been located in waters off South Carolina.
The official told ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz it was found Thursday and is largely intact.
It has not yet been retrieved, the official said, but that will likely be done with a crane or a winch from a vessel.
(WASHINGTON) — White House communications director Kate Bedingfield is departing the administration at the end of this month — halfway into President Joe Biden’s term and just ahead of a possible reelection campaign.
Bedingfield has held the role since his inauguration. Prior to that, she served as Biden’s deputy campaign manager for his 2020 run and served in various communications roles in the Obama administration.
The White House, in announcing Bedingfield’s departure, said she “played an integral role in the successes of the first two years of the Biden-Harris Administration, from the American Rescue Plan through the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Biden called her a “loyal and trusted adviser, through thick and thin.”
“She was a critical strategic voice from the very first day of my presidential campaign in 2019 and has been a key part of advancing my agenda in the White House,” he said. “The country is better off as a result of her hard work and I’m so grateful to her — and to her husband and two young children — for giving so much.”
Bedingfield was set to leave the Biden administration last summer but decided to stay on in her role, saying at the time the “work is too important and too energizing and I have a lot of gas left in the tank.”
She will be replaced by Ben LaBolt, a former adviser to President Barack Obama.
Bedingfield’s exit comes on the heels of Biden’s longtime chief of staff Ron Klain leaving the administration. Klain was a senior adviser on Biden’s 2020 campaign, and the two had a decades-long working relationship that dated back to Biden’s time in the Senate.
Klain officially ended his time as chief of staff last week, and was sent off with cheers from White House staff gathered outside the West Wing.
Before he left, Klain gave a nod to a potential reelection campaign by Biden.
“I look forward to being on your side when you run for president in 2024,” Klain said to applause at a transition ceremony earlier this month.
Biden is expected to soon announce whether he will seek a second term. The president told reporters on Thursday he intends to run, but is “just not ready” to make the final decision.
In his State of the Union address earlier this week, Biden touted his accomplishments as he called on Congress to “finish the job” on remaining priorities such as police reform, gun control and more.
The administration has also been on a post-State of the Union “blitz” with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cabinet officials visiting 22 states, according to the White House.
But in the lead-up to a possible 2024 announcement, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found many Democratic voters were apathetic about seeing Biden run again. Nearly six in 10 Democratic-aligned adults don’t want to see Biden renominated.
(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Election Commission is asking embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., to clarify by March 14 if he’s running again in 2024, according to a letter sent by the agency.
The letter, sent to Santos on Tuesday, noted that his primary campaign committee, Devolder-Santos for Congress, reported raising and spending funds for the 2024 election, triggering a requirement for officially declaring a reelection campaign.
The letter comes after the Santos campaign, which lost its longtime treasurer last month amid questions regarding the source and use of his campaign funds, reported in its latest disclosure filing more than a dozen contributions amounting to $28,000 and expenditures amounting to $43,000 that are dated after the November election day and attributed to the 2024 primary and general election.
“You must either disavow these activities by notifying the Commission in writing that you are not a candidate, or redesignate your principal campaign committee by filing a Statement of Candidacy,” the FEC wrote in the letter.
A spokesperson for Santos’ congressional office declined to comment when reached by ABC News. Asked last month if he was planning to run for reelection, Santos said, “That’s too early. I told you, I just got here.”
Under federal election law, candidates must file a statement of candidacy to the FEC if they raise or spend more than $5,000 for an election.
It’s not uncommon for newly elected officials to raise more than the $5,000 threshold immediately after a successful contest — usually to pay off debts from the previous election cycle or to build a war chest for their reelection campaign.
But the freshman New York congressman, whose campaign didn’t report any debt in its latest filing, now finds himself in the position of having to either declare his 2024 candidacy in the midst of a political firestorm, or clarify that those contributions and expenditures were not for the 2024 candidacy within 35 days of the receipt of the letter.
Members of both parties have asked Santos to resign after he was caught fabricating large swaths of his background, and he is being investigated by the New York attorney general, federal prosecutors in New York, the Nassau and Queens County district attorney’s offices, and the FBI, according to previous ABC News reporting.
Santos has acknowledged and apologized for lying about parts of his background, but has maintained that he was only embellishing his resume and has stated that he is not a criminal.
Santos can easily remedy the FEC issue by filing a new statement of candidacy, said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance expert and the deputy executive director of the government watchdog group Documented.
“But given the level of scrutiny and criticism that Santos has been receiving, he might make some political waves once he complies with the FEC’s request and formally declares his 2024 candidacy,” Fischer told ABC News.
Adding to the complication, the Santos campaign, which filed its latest disclosure at the end of last month amid an apparent lack of a treasurer, included a disclaimer in the report that it was “filed based on the limited information provided to the campaign from the previous treasurer Nancy Marks.”
Several campaign finance experts contacted by ABC News described Santos’ most recent filing as “sloppy” and “messy,” pointing to donations that are far over the federal campaign contribution limit of $2,900 per election and the seemingly inconsistent reporting of his campaign debt.
“What’s interesting is that the god-awful reporting that Santos’ campaign has done appears to indicate that they don’t have any campaign debt,” said Saurav Ghosh, former enforcement attorney at the FEC and now director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center. “So the inference from that is that the money he’s taking in can’t be for the purpose of retiring existing debts, as he’s not claiming he has any.”
“The funny thing here is that this should be as simple as saying officially that I’m running for reelection, here’s my statement of candidacy,” Ghosh said. “But nothing’s simple with Santos, right?”
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., was attacked in her Washington, D.C., apartment building on Thursday morning, her office said later that day, and police have since arrested a suspect.
“This morning around 7:15 a.m., Rep. Craig was assaulted in the elevator of her apartment building,” Nick Coe, Craig’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “Rep. Craig defended herself from the attacker and suffered bruising, but is otherwise physically okay,” he added.
Craig, who has represented Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District since 2019, called 911 and the attacker fled the scene, according to Coe. He said there was no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
“Rep. Craig is grateful to the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) for their quick response and asks for privacy at this time,” Coe said.
The MPD announced Thursday that they had arrested 26-year-old Kendrick Hamlin, charging him with simple assault. It was unclear Thursday night if he was still in custody or when he could appear in court.
A police report obtained by ABC News states that the altercation began when Craig reported seeing a man acting erratically in her apartment building, as if “as if he was under the influence on an unknown substance.”
Craig said she told the suspect “good morning,” according to the police report, and she went to the elevator where the suspect followed her and started to do push-ups in the elevator.
The congresswoman told police that with “a closed fist [the suspect] punched her on the chin area of her face, and later grabbed her neck.”
Craig fended him off by pouring hot coffee on him, and he escaped before officers could arrest him, according to the report.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said Thursday afternoon that he had spoken with Craig and she was doing OK.
“Angie’s a dear friend of mine,” Walz said at a governor’s panel hosted by Politico in Washington. “She represents part of a district that was part of my district when I was in Congress at one time. I was able to speak with her this morning and she talked a little bit about this. At this time, we do not know that it was politically motivated.”
Walz continued, “I think Angie is physically going to be OK. Nobody, you know, at this point in time, [knows] the trauma that she’s experiencing.”
While Craig’s office said her attack did not appear to be political, threats against lawmakers have been high in recent years, according to authorities.
A record-breaking 9,625 such threats were reported in 2021, according to statistics released by the U.S. Capitol Police, and 7,501 threat cases were investigated by Capitol Police in 2022.
“The threats against Members of Congress are still too high,” U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said last month.
In a statement, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called the attack on Craig a “terrifying assault” and said he had asked the House sergeant-at-arms and Capitol Police to work with the congresswoman to “to ensure that Angie and her family are safe while in our nation’s capital and at home in Minnesota.”
ABC News’ Mariam Khan, Davone Morales Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — At the first public hearing by the House Judiciary subcommittee committee on the alleged “weaponization” of the federal government, Republicans on Thursday continued to make arguments criticizing federal agencies and “big tech” companies like Twitter while Democrats called the hearing an effort to “showcase conspiracy theories.”
Much of what Republicans said at the hearing — which lasted more than three hours — echoed familiar claims they have made on other panels since taking control of Congress, including Wednesday’s House Oversight hearing on Twitter’s handling of a story about Hunter Biden’s purported laptop.
The list of witnesses on Thursday included two Republican senators, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (who recently left the Democratic Party), former FBI agents Thomas Baker and Nicole Parker and Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor and Fox News contributor.
Before Thursday’s hearing, subcommittee member Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., had suggested billionaire businessman and Twitter CEO Elon Musk might be the first witness. However, that ended up being Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
The panel has a broad purview, including the ability to investigate how any part of the federal government collects and analyzes information on Americans, along with “ongoing criminal investigations” and civil liberties issues.
The subcommittee also gets access to highly classified information shared only with the House Intelligence Committee.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana has compared its work to the so-called Church committee of the 1970s, in which Democratic Sen. Frank Church led an investigation of intelligence abuse by the executive branch.
“We’re going to set up that Church committee to look at some of these federal agencies that are weaponizing government to go after families across this country based on their political views. That’s not what the government should be doing,” Scalise said last month.
The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, maintained in his opening remarks that “dozens and dozens” of FBI agents had come to him and other Republicans “talking about what’s going on, the political nature at the Justice Department.”
“I have never seen anything like this. Dozens and dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents, coming to us,” Jordan claimed, adding, “Not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives — good, brave FBI agents.”
In one heated exchange, however, New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman — who served as an impeachment manager against then-President Donald Trump — called out Jordan, contending that the chairman had not provided Democrats on the panel with information regarding any discussions with the alleged FBI agents.
U.S. Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett, the Democrats’ ranking member, who also served as a Trump impeachment manager, said in her remarks that the subcommittee was “weaponizing Congress” and that Republicans were using their newfound power in the majority to “settle scores” and “showcase conspiracy theories.”
“I’m deeply concerned about the use of this select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risk undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” Plaskett said.
Later in the hearing, Goldman ripped into Republicans’ witnesses — including former FBI agent Baker — pointing out similarities between Baker’s opening statement and a book he previously published.
“Next time, make sure you give us a heads up and we can set up a table for you to have a book signing after this,” Goldman said.
ABC News’ Libby Cathey and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — After months of contention which began shortly after the midterm elections, the House, led by the Republican majority, voted Thursday to prevent a pair of local Washington, D.C., bills from going into effect.
One of the bills would allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections. The other, more controversial bill would update Washington’s criminal code for the first time since 1901.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy urged all of his colleagues to approve resolutions disapproving of the two measures.
“Under the Constitution, Congress — not the city council — has the final say over the laws governing the nation’s capital,” McCarthy said in remarks on the floor. “We have a responsibility to hold Washington, D.C., accountable and stop the new criminal code from taking effect.”
The move is a defeat for local officials who, shortly after the midterm elections, called on the Republican-led House to give the city sovereignty and not to meddle in their laws.
But the district’s lack of statehood has consistently made it a target of some Republican lawmakers. Congress has ultimate jurisdiction over the district.
“I think these resolutions are emblematic of why D.C. needs statehood,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s non-voting representative, told ABC News.
Despite the Democratic Party’s general support for statehood, 42 Democrats joined Republicans to reject D.C. legislation allowing non-citizen voting and 31 Democrats voted to reject the city’s new criminal code.
The resolutions blocking the legislation now head to the Senate, where they need a simple majority vote to pass and go to President Joe Biden’s desk.
The Biden administration said in a statement Monday that the White House opposed both resolutions, describing them as “clear examples of how the District of Columbia continues to be denied true self-governance and why it deserves statehood.”
“That gives me some hope that this will not pass and this will not become law,” Norton said.
However, the administration’s statement did not explicitly say whether Biden would veto the resolutions if they came to his desk.
Controversy over D.C.’s new criminal code
The so-called crime bill, which has been worked on for more than 16 years by local officials and was unanimously passed by the city council last year, has come under fire from some lawmakers and activists in D.C. — including Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.
Bowser publicly opposed the legislation, citing concern that the new requirement for jury trials for misdemeanor offenses would cause the courts to be overburdened. She also took issue with the reduction of penalties for certain crimes.
After much public discourse, Bowser vetoed the bill, but her decision was overridden by the city council.
Despite Bowser’s opposition to parts of the criminal code, the mayor slammed the action taken by the U.S. House on Thursday.
“We know that the Congress, especially the Republicans, will attack largely social things or they will try to do things in the district that they can’t do at home to score points, and so I think that’s what you’re seeing in this debate today,” she said.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwab similarly accused House Republicans of “political grandstanding.” Schwab earlier this week wrote a letter to Speaker McCarthy urging him not to take up the issue.
“Today’s move to overturn our laws is not about making the District safer or more just … District residents are on notice that lawmakers seek to undermine our democratic process to gain political favor and are substituting uninformed politics for the views of those impacted most, DC residents,” Schwab said.
House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., told fellow lawmakers that the new code would turn “this crime crisis into a catastrophe.”
Del. Norton, in turn, noted to her colleagues that the new law would toughen some sentencing in the district. The maximum punishment for charges such as attempted murder increased to 23.5 years from five years. Attempted sexual assault, which currently has a five-year maximum sentence, now would be punished by up to 15 years.
Where statehood stands
Josh Burch, the founder of the advocacy group Neighbors for D.C. Statehood, told ABC News that he was “disgusted but not surprised” by Thursday’s action.
The resolutions, Burch said, were “a fulfillment of the promises that [some Republicans] already were making before the election to attack” the district’s autonomy under the 1973 Home Rule Act.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., recently reintroduced legislation to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state. Norton has introduced a statehood bill in the lower chamber, which twice passed her proposal when it was under Democratic control.
Bowser said Thursday that they “will continue the fight” for statehood. But with a Republican-led House, neither measure is likely to make it to Biden’s desk.
“In some ways, the next two years are going to be a little bit of a defensive, being on defense against any democratic aggressions led by House Republicans. But we also need to use those opportunities to highlight just how undemocratic it is,” Burch said.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. John Fetterman, D.-Pa., remained hospitalized in Washington on Thursday after he was admitted because he felt lightheaded during a Democratic retreat on Wednesday, his staff said.
Fetterman’s spokesman, Joe Calvello, said in a statement that an MRI done on Fetterman at George Washington University Hospital “along with the results of all of the other tests the doctors ran” had ruled out “a new stroke.”
“John is being monitored … for signs of seizure – so far there are no signs of seizure, but he is still being monitored. Our team will continue to provide information as it comes in and we will have more updates as we get them,” Calvello said.
Fetterman, who was elected in November after a widely watched race against TV personality and celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, had a stroke during his campaign due to a heart condition, his campaign said at the time.
A Pittsburgh doctor who treated Fetterman wrote in October that he had “no work restrictions” and could “work full duty in public office.”
Calvello had said in an initial statement Wednesday night that Fetterman became lightheaded that day at the retreat.
“He left and called his staff, who picked him up and drove him to The George Washington University Hospital,” Calvello said then.
Doctors on Wednesday ran initial tests, but didn’t see signs of a stroke, Calvello said. More tests were underway and Fetterman was staying in the hospital overnight “for observation,” he said.
“He is in good spirits and talking with his staff and family,” Calvello said. “We will provide more information when we have it.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
It’s not immediately clear what information the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith is seeking, but it follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence’s legal team.
Smith was appointed in November to oversee the investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents after leaving the presidency and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them — as well as a separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
A spokesperson for Pence did not respond to a request for comment by ABC News. The special counsel’s office also declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Trump also did not immediately respond.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(BOSTON) — A Massachusetts legislator said he’s going to change a proposed bill that would have given state inmates reduced sentences if they signed up to donate an organ, following an outcry from several groups.
Last month, Democratic Rep. Carlos Gonzalez co-introduced a bill that would establish an individual bone marrow and organ donation program for Massachusetts inmates. As part of the originally proposed program, eligible inmates would be able to reduce their sentences by as little as 60 days to as much as a year “on the condition that the incarcerated individual has donated bone marrow or organs.”
Word of the bill’s language set off a slew of criticism from prisoner’s rights groups and advocates for organ donations who called the move a quid pro quo.
Alexandra Glazier, the president and CEO of New England Donor Services, which coordinates organ and tissue donation in the area, told ABC News she was surprised by the bill.
“There is substantial concern that our system is free of coercion or personal gain,” she said. “That public trust in the system has to be based on people making a free and fair choice.”
Gonzalez told ABC News in a statement on Wednesday that even though his proposal was never intended to be a quid pro quo for prisoners, he was amending the language to remove the incentives.
He said the bill was created to allow inmates who wanted to voluntarily donate an organ to family members to cut through red tape.
“It is crucial to respect prisoners’ human dignity and agency by respecting their choice to donate bone marrow or an organ,” Gonzales said. “No law currently prevents incarcerated individuals from being donors. Inmates should have the same basic rights every citizen has in Massachusetts.”
The representative said he will be working with prison legal services and advocates to rework the bill’s language.
Elizabeth Matos, the executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, a non-profit group that represents inmates in the state, told ABC News that similar bills were introduced in the past in other states, but they didn’t gain traction. Matos said she was also surprised that the original language included the sentence reduction incentive.
“It’s not recognizing the power dynamics and how desperate people are to be reunited with their loved ones,” she said of that clause.
Matos said she has heard about the concern from inmates about donating organs to loved ones and was glad that Gonzales, who she said has pushed for major prison reforms in the past, is taking the issue head on.
She said her group is now in talks with the legislation’s sponsors about improving the bill’s scope and purpose as well as addressing other inmate health needs.
Glazier said she is also open to speaking with lawmakers about the issue.
She said that people who volunteer to donate an organ or tissue to a family member in need have to go through an extensive screening process that includes visits to approved clinics.
Inmates face a barrier as they likely have to coordinate with their prison system and the department of corrections with time off to visit the facility, undergo the screening and ultimately surgery for the donation, according to Glazier.
“I think there are a number of logistical and cost concerns for the population that needs to be considered when it comes to organ donations for that population,” Glazier said.
The bill comes at a time when the country has seen a jump in organ donations, according to Glazier.
Last year, there were 14,903 deceased organ donors in the U.S., which represented a dozen consecutive years of growth, she said. In the New England region, nearly 500 organ donors were responsible for 1,325 life-saving transplants in 2002, she added.
When it comes to inmates looking to donate their organs to loved ones, Glazier said that it would be imperative for corrections departments to hammer out rules if lawmakers want to see immediate results.
“We support removing any barriers with common sense proposals,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., was attacked in her Washington, D.C., apartment building on Thursday morning, her office said later that day.
“This morning around 7:15 a.m., Rep. Craig was assaulted in the elevator of her apartment building,” Nick Coe, Craig’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “Rep. Craig defended herself from the attacker and suffered bruising, but is otherwise physically okay,” he added.
Craig, who has represented Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District since 2019, called 911 and the attacker fled the scene, according to Coe. He said there was no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
“Rep. Craig is grateful to the DC Metropolitan Police Department for their quick response and asks for privacy at this time,” Coe said.
A police report obtained by ABC News states that the altercation began when Craig reported seeing a man acting erratically in her apartment building, as if “as if he was under the influence on an unknown substance.”
Craig said she told the suspect “good morning,” according to the police report, and she went to the elevator where the suspect followed her and started to do push-ups in the elevator.
The congresswoman told police that with “a closed fist [the suspect] punched her on the chin area of her face, and later grabbed her neck.”
Craig fended him off by pouring hot coffee on him, and he escaped before officers could arrest him, according to the report. D.C. police told ABC News that the attack is under active investigation.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said Thursday afternoon that he had spoken with Craig and she was doing OK.
“Angie’s a dear friend of mine,” Walz said at a governor’s panel hosted by Politico in Washington. “She represents part of a district that was part of my district when I was in Congress at one time. I was able to speak with her this morning and she talked a little bit about this. At this time, we do not know that it was politically motivated.”
Walz continued, “I think Angie is physically going to be OK. Nobody, you know, at this point in time, [knows] the trauma that she’s experiencing.”
While Craig’s office said her attack did not appear to be political, threats against lawmakers have been high in recent years, according to authorities.
A record-breaking 9,625 such threats were reported in 2021, according to statistics released by the U.S. Capitol Police, and 7,501 threat cases were investigated by Capitol Police in 2022.
“The threats against Members of Congress are still too high,” U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said last month.
In a statement, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called the attack on Craig a “terrifying assault” and said he had asked the House sergeant-at-arms and Capitol Police to work with the congresswoman to “to ensure that Angie and her family are safe while in our nation’s capital and at home in Minnesota.”
ABC News’ Mariam Khan and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
