Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is facing backlash after claiming political violence will break out if former President Donald Trump is indicted for mishandling presidential records.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday, while not mentioning Graham by name, appeared to call him out at a political rally in Pennsylvania, saying, “the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying if such and such happens, there’ll be blood in the street. Where the hell are we?”

Graham’s comments came at a time when Trump supporters’ threats against law enforcement have escalated following the Mar-a-Lago search and at least one man citing it attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was later killed by police.

Law enforcement officials told ABC News they were investigating social media posts apparently linked to the suspect that called for violence in the days after the FBI search.

During an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said there “will be riots in the street” if Trump faces legal ramifications for taking at least 184 classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office.

After months of the Justice Department and National Archives negotiating with Trump’s legal teams to get him to return the documents, the FBI executed a search warrant on Aug. 8 at Mar-a-Lago. But since then, Graham and many other Republicans have argued that Trump is facing a double standard from how the DOJ treated Hillary Clinton.

Specifically, Clinton, Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival for president, was not charged after probes into her use of a private email server containing classified information while she was secretary of state.

The two cases are not the same, however. In both cases, the FBI launched criminal investigations, obtaining search warrants to obtain or access relevant documents. But in Clinton’s case, the FBI said in findings released in July 2016, the classified information had been improperly transmitted via carelessness, not in an attempt to circumvent the law.

The caliber of “classified information” found on Hillary Clinton’s private servers was not the same as what was found at Mar-a-Lago, particularly as it relates to highly-sensitive Special Access Programs. According to the Department of Justice’s report on the Clinton case, investigators found seven email chains on Clinton’s servers that were “relevant to” and “associated with a Special Access Program, while it appears Trump was keeping SAP materials themselves at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s case is ongoing, but an unsealed search warrant and property receipt from the FBI raid confirmed that the former president took properly marked classified documents from the White House.

Experts have said it’s highly unlikely that the Justice Department would have pursued such a search warrant without significant evidence. “The department does not take such a decision lightly,” Garland said during the press conference following the FBI search.

“If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hilary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street. I worry about our country,” Graham said to Fox News host and former South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy. Later in the program, Graham repeated the threat of violence again.

Graham again doubled down on his earlier remarks in Charleston on Monday, again likening Trump’s FBI search to the probe into Clinton, saying: “America cannot live with this kind of double standard. I thought what she did was bad, but she got a pass at the end of the day.”

Using less inflammatory language, he said that that there would be many “upset people” if Trump was prosecuted. “I reject violence. I’m not calling for violence. Violence is not the answer, but I’m just telling you,” he said.

Despite growing evidence against the former president, Trump and allies like Graham have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of being biased against him.

The Justice Department on Friday made public the redacted affidavit that supported the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. ​​ ​​The affidavit outlines months of interactions between the National Archives and Records Administration and Trump’s team to secure the return of records that were improperly taken from the White House.

“Most Republicans, including me, believes when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him. There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump,” Graham said.

Trump posted a video clip of Graham’s comments on his Truth Social media platform but without comment.

Asked for a response to Graham’s comments Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we have seen MAGA Republicans attack our democracy. We have seen MAGA Republicans take away our rights, make threats of violence, including this weekend …”

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., tweeted on Monday about Graham’s remarks in contrast to the legislative victories that Democrats have seen throughout the summer.

“We are fighting for relief from prescription drug costs for Seniors, relief from inflation for working-class families, relief from mass shootings for parents, relief from the climate crisis for farmers. Republicans like @LindseyGrahamSC are promising riots,” he tweeted.

The Washington Post editorialized, “There is no excuse for this irresponsible rhetoric, which not only invites violence but also defies democratic norms.”

A new joint intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News confirms that the FBI has seen an uptick in threats and acts of violence, including armed encounters, to its agents and law enforcement since their search of Trump’s Florida home.

Since the search, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant, according to the bulletin.

Graham has been a staunch defender of the former president, despite briefly breaking with Trump right after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

He’s currently resisting a grand jury probe into potential election interference in Georgia, fighting a subpoena to testify in connection with the investigation into Trump’s alleged effort to intimidate Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other state officials into overturning his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, asking Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to ensure his victory.

Graham had recently hired former president Trump’s first White House counsel, Donald McGahn, to be part of his legal team.

The probe is led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who subpoenaed Graham in July. In fighting the order, Graham has argued, among other things, that he was acting “within [his] official legislative responsibilities” as a senator and chairman of the Judiciary Committee when he allegedly made calls to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.

On Monday, new court filings from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office blasted the temporary subpoena block granted to Graham by a federal appeals court. The motion mentions that the strength of Trump and Graham’s relationship weakens the senator’s push against testifying.

“Senator Graham’s repetition of his previous arguments does not entitle him to partial quashal, and the District Attorney respectfully requests that his motion be denied,” Donald Wakeford, Fulton’s chief senior assistant district attorney, wrote in a motion filed on Monday.

The Fulton County DA’s response comes after Graham told Gowdy on Sunday that he’s got a “good legal case” against testifying before a grand jury.

“If we let county prosecutors start calling senators and members of Congress as witnesses when they’re doing their job, then you’ve got out of kilter our constitutional balance here,” Graham said about the probe on Sunday to Gowdy.

“I’ve got a good legal case, I’m going to pursue it …. You love the law, I love the law. I’ve never been more worried about the law and politics as I am right now. How can you tell a conservative Republican that the system works when it comes to Trump?”

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Olivia Rubin and Will Steakin contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, on Tuesday tried to distance himself from an aide’s comment last week that appeared to mock the stroke suffered by Oz’s opponent, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

“The campaign has been saying lots of things,” Oz told KDKA, a Pittsburgh radio station. “My position — and I can only speak to what I’m saying — is that John Fetterman should be allowed to recover fully and I will support his ability, as someone who’s gone through a difficult time, to get ready.”

Oz was responding to a question about a comment attributed to Rachel Tripp, his communications adviser, who was quoted saying that if Fetterman “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”

Tripp’s comment was first reported by Insider on Aug. 23.

Amid near-instant condemnation, including from pro-Fetterman doctors and Fetterman himself, Oz’s campaigni nitially doubled down, calling the comment “good health advice” from a former cardiothoracic surgeon.

Until Tuesday morning, Oz had yet to personally speak about the campaign’s comment.

A spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests from ABC News to speak to the candidate after a town hall Monday night outside Pittsburgh — even as Oz criticized Fetterman for dodging the press at campaign stops of his own.

The spokesperson, Brittany Yanick, and Tripp did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

The backstory

The Pennsylvania Senate race took a heated — and personal — turn when Oz’s adviser was quoted derisively blaming Fetterman for his own stroke.

Tripp, the aide, had given a statement for the campaign, to Insider in response to Fetterman’s attacks on Oz as elitist and out of touch.

The Oz campaign comment drew immediate reaction on social media, including from Fetterman, who tweeted, “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”

“I had a stroke. I survived it. I’m truly so grateful to still be here today,” he added.

Fetterman — who told a local outlet in 2018, when he was mayor of a small Pittsburgh suburb, that he had lost nearly 150 pounds by adopting a diet that included more vegetables — acknowledged in the days after the stroke in May that he “should have taken my health more seriously.”

But the tone of Tripp’s statement was deemed inappropriate by a group of pro-Fetterman physicians who earlier spoke out against Oz at an event organized by Fetterman’s campaign.

“No real doctor, or any decent human being, to be honest, would ever mock a stroke victim who is recovering from that stroke in the way that Dr. Oz is mocking John Fetterman,” Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, the Democratic chair of the board of commissioners in Montgomery County, said in a statement provided on Tuesday by a Fetterman spokeswoman.

The Oz campaign went on to tell ABC News in a statement late on Aug. 23: “Nice try. Dr. Oz has been urging people to eat more veggies for years. That’s not ridicule. It’s good health advice. We’re only trying to help.”

The salvo — in a race in a battleground state that could tip control of Congress — represented a departure from Oz’s other lines of attack since Fetterman’s stroke, which had involved largely dancing around it by jeering at Fetterman for his absence from the trail without referencing what sidelined him.

Oz struck an even more sympathetic tone immediately after Fetterman announced his stroke. He tweeted then: “I am thankful that you received care so quickly. My whole family is praying for your speedy recovery.”

“I think he just had it,” Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer and a co-chair of Oz’s campaign, told ABC News on Aug. 23. “I think he just got tired. He’s probably tired of hearing about veggies,” she said, referring to the Fetterman team’s repeated swipes over a video showing Oz shopping for vegetables to make crudités and criticizing Democrats for grocery prices.

The volley of statements threatened to overshadow Fetterman’s separate appearance on Aug. 23 afternoon in Pittsburgh to tout a key labor endorsement — only his second public campaign stop since his stroke. With many eyes still on his health, he spoke for roughly four and half minutes and exhibited patterns similar to those he showed at a rally in Erie earlier this month, speaking often in choppy sentences. (He told a newspaper last month that he was working with a speech therapist as he recovered.)

Amid now-routine jokes about the “crudités” video and Oz’s residential history outside of Pennsylvania, Fetterman also pledged to “stand with the union way of life” before exiting the venue without answering a group of reporters who flanked him as he walked.

Among those ignored questions was whether Fetterman would agree to debate Oz this fall, an issue Oz has hammered as Fetterman has remained largely mum about his plans to share a stage with his opponent.

“We’ve said we’re open to debating Oz,” Joe Calvello, a spokesman, said in response to a question that a reporter posed to Fetterman.

Oz’s campaign says he has agreed to five debates, including one on Sep. 6. Fetterman’s campaign says it refuses to set a schedule on Oz’s terms.

But according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, the campaign did not initially respond to an invitation emailed nearly a month ago to both campaigns by a politics editor at KDKA, a TV station in Pittsburgh planning the Sep. 6 debate.

Oz has accepted the invitation, the station’s news director told the Post-Gazette.

Asked by ABC News to respond to that report, a Fetterman spokesperson sent a statement from Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to the campaign, who called Oz’s focus on debates “an obvious attempt to change the subject during yet another bad week for Dr. Oz.”

On Tuesday, Fetterman declined in a statement to take part in the debate, prompting a spokeswoman for Oz to call him a “liar” and a “coward.”

Fetterman did not commit to debating Oz this fall but did not rule it out, either.

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(WILKES-BARRE, Penn.) — President Joe Biden continued his sharpened attacks on the Republican Party as he visited Pennsylvania on Tuesday, criticizing “MAGA Republicans” for their response to the Mar-a-Lago search and Jan. 6 as he highlighted his administration’s policing and crime prevention efforts.

“A safer America requires all of us to uphold the rule of law, not the rule of any one party or any one person,” Biden said as he spoke at Wilkes University.

“Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on Jan. 6,” he continued. “For God’s sake, whose side are you on?”

Biden, once apprehensive about directly criticizing his Oval Office predecessor, has ramped up his rhetoric ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, recently accusing some in the Republican Party of “semi-fascism.”

The president also addressed Republican criticism of the FBI in the wake of the search warrant executed at Donald Trump’s Florida estate, including their calls to defund the bureau. Biden’s comments on the search have been limited, besides stating he had no prior notice about the search and leaving questions of national security risk to the Justice Department.

“Now it’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the lives of law enforcement agents and their families for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said. “There’s no place in this country for endangering the lives of law enforcement.”

Biden on Tuesday also touted his “Safer America Plan,” unveiled in July, which calls on Congress to add $37 billion for the training of 100,000 additional police officers, to clear court backlogs and to establish new grants for communities to prevent violent crime and ease the burden on police officers in responding to non-violent situations

“I’ve not met a cop who likes a bad cop,” Biden said. “There’s bad in everything. There’s lousy senators and lousy presidents and lousy doctors and lousy lawyers. No, I’m serious. But I don’t know any police officer that feels good about the fact that there may be a lousy cop. I’m tired of not giving them the kind of help they need.”

In addition to making the case for the additional funding, Biden discussed the need to build on the bipartisan gun safety legislation passed earlier this summer by enacting a ban on assault weapons. The gun safety law, while the first major piece of reform in decades, didn’t go as far as Democrats and gun control advocates had hoped.

“The NRA was against it which means a vast majority, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress couldn’t even stand up and vote for it, because they’re afraid of the NRA,” he said.

Biden’s speech in Wilkes-Barre was his first of three stops in the battleground state in a week.

Meanwhile, Trump will also be in Pennsylvania this week for his first rally since the Aug. 8 search.

The former president will be campaigning for Republicans in two key Pennsylvania races: the gubernatorial election and the U.S. Senate contest.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for Senate, will be in attendance at Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre. Trump has endorsed them both.

Biden on Tuesday gave a shout out to the two Democrats going up against Mastriano and Oz: Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman, respectively.

“Josh Shapiro is a champion for the rule of law as your attorney general, and he’s gonna make one hell of a governor,” Biden said. “I really mean it.”

Fetterman, he said, will make “a great United States senator.”

ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — As some federal student loan borrowers across the country prepare to see their loans wiped out following President Joe Biden’s debt cancellation plan, some borrowers may be wondering if the effort holds up legally.

The legality of Biden’s plan largely depends on who you ask. However, the Biden administration has vehemently defended canceling student loan debt for 20 million people and that the move is legally justified.

For the remaining 55%, Biden’s plan will offer more relaxed terms for loan repayment, according to the Biden administration. Those terms include cutting the amount that borrowers have to pay each month in half — from 10% to 5% of discretionary income — as well as covering borrowers’ unpaid monthly interest, among other efforts.

“The Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel and the general counsel’s office of the Department of Education have looked at the text of the statute and belief that the action that the Secretary took, the administration took here is legally justified,” National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti said during a press briefing Friday.

“The president was clear from the beginning that he did not want to move forward on this unless it was clear that it was legally available to him,” Ramamurti said. “… One of the first things that he did when he came to office was ask for that legal opinion.”

The Department of Education, alongside the Department of Justice, released a legal opinion last Tuesday in defense of the groundbreaking administrative move, citing the HEROES Act.

The act provides the Secretary of Education broad authority to grant relief from student loan requirements during specific periods — such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — for particular purposes, like addressing financial harms of wars or national emergencies.

“The Secretary of Education has used this authority, under both this and every prior administration since the Act’s passage, to provide relief to borrowers in connection with a war, other military operation, or national emergency, including the ongoing moratorium on student loan payments and interest,” the opinion reads.

The White House has repeatedly faced questions concerning the future of Biden’s plan in court, during a Friday press conference where officials said they expect legal challenges.

A June decision against the Environmental Protection Agency from the Supreme Court cited the “major questions doctrine,” which requires Congress to clearly and explicitly grant agencies the authority to employ extraordinary actions. He says this strategy may be used to jeopardize Biden’s plan.

“Recent rulings from the Supreme Court suggest that at least some of the justices on the current court could view sweeping executive action like this as running afoul of congressional intent,” Adam S. Minsky, a student loan attorney, told ABC News. “But this is not necessarily the same type of case that was recently decided.”

“It’s going to be up to the courts to decide whether those are valid claims or not, but we believe that we’re on very strong legal grounds,” Ramamurti said.

Jed Shugerman, a professor at Fordham Law, said he doesn’t see the order “surviving a legal challenge.”

“My bottom line is that if the Biden administration wants to prevail in an inevitable legal challenge, it needs to switch to the more appropriate statute as the legal basis for this policy (under the Higher Education Act of 1965) or significantly narrow its policy for specific COVID relief claims (and even then, it would be vulnerable),” Shugerman told ABC News.

Minksy said this is uncharted territory, adding that both Biden and former President Donald Trump have used the HEROES Act to pause federal loan payments, interest, and collection since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden’s plan will erase at least $10,000 in federal student loan debt for Americans who made less than $125,000 per year in the 2020 or 2021 tax year, or less than $250,000 as a household.

For Americans under that same income bracket who took out Pell grants to pay for college, it would erase up to $20,000.

It is unclear when borrowers will see a change in their account balance. The White House says the applications for student debt relief will be launched by early October, with relief beginning to reach borrowers by early to mid-November.

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(WASHINGTON) — In Colorado, supporters of Donald Trump seeking evidence of 2020 election fraud have flooded some county offices with so many records requests that officials say they have been unable to perform their primary duties.

In Nevada, some election workers have been followed to their cars and harassed with threats.

And in Philadelphia, concerns about the potential for violence around Election Day have prompted officials to install bulletproof glass at their ballot-processing center.

With 10 weeks to go until the 2022 midterms, dozens of state and local officials across the country tell ABC News that preparations for the election are being hampered by onerous public information requests, ongoing threats against election workers and dangerous misinformation campaigns being waged by activists still intent on contesting the 2020 presidential election.

The efforts, many of which are being coordinated at both the national and local level, range from confronting election officials at local government meetings to training volunteers to challenge the vote-counting process on Election Day, according to election officials.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told ABC News he’s concerned that the efforts are a reflection of the prevailing attitude among 2020 election deniers that “the folks running elections in this county or this city are up to no good.”

‘A weaponized tool’

Election officials said that records requests, which are designed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make the vote-tallying process transparent to the public, have increasingly been used by election deniers to disrupt the system.

At the “Moment of Truth Summit,” a two-day meeting of election deniers hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell last week in Springfield, Missouri, activists instructed attendees on how to request election-related records, and pointed them to templates to make it easier to submit the forms.

“Save your county! Get your cast vote records now!” was one of the calls to action, urging supporters to request ballot logs containing information on each ballot cast. One speaker boasted about his efforts, saying, “I have one of the best groups of followers in the world … and I basically set them out to start making public records requests everywhere for this information. And lo and behold, over time and working together, they managed to get hundreds and hundreds of these records.”

In Wisconsin, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell told ABC News that just days after the summit, a Wisconsin activist filed one of those very requests — a lengthy inquiry that not only sought specific and detailed information, but offered guidance on how local officials should retrieve the data. McDonell said he’s received as many as 50 of these kinds of requests over a two-day period.

Elizabeth Howard, senior counsel in the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks election rules, said it smacks of a coordinated effort.

“Election officials are clearly getting, like, a copy-and paste-job of a FOIA request from some centralized entity,” she said. “They can see in the FOIA request because it’ll be bracket, insert county here, close bracket — and the requestor doesn’t insert the name of the county.”

Election officials said many of the onerous requests seek ballot records, information on voting machines, and even the personal information of election workers — which election offices will not provide.

“They have become a weaponized tool against us to keep us from being able to do our job,” said Trudy Hancock, president of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators.

Marc Early, the supervisor of elections in the state of Florida, said that all the requests are making it harder to prepare the state for the upcoming midterms.

“We are under obligation to respond to these records requests in a very proactive way — but the volume and the nature of these requests are such that it’s difficult to just keep track of it all,” Early said. “And it’s become a big problem, because we have elections to conduct but we also have our obligations … to take these requests seriously. And we are, but it’s a difficult environment to live under.”

In Michigan, election officials have found themselves facing accusations from a one-time state officeholder. The clerk for Michigan’s Canton Township told ABC News that former state Sen. Patrick Colbeck has inundated the township with so many records requests that the clerk invited Colbeck to his office to let him see the township’s election management system in action, in the hope that Colbeck’s concerns about voter fraud would be assuaged.

“We have spent hours with him,” clerk Michael Siegrist said of Colbeck.

But the visit didn’t satisfy Colbeck, who Siegrist said is now asking the Michigan township to release the election management system’s programming files — something officials say they can’t do.

Such files are “not subject to public disclosure under the FOIA laws in Michigan, because they are both proprietary and a blueprint for election programming, and if they were distributed could result in individuals having a resource to hack future elections,” said Siegrist.

Colbeck, however, told ABC News the information he is seeking is not programming data, but timestamp information associated with cast vote records already provided by the township.

“This timestamp data would be very useful in an analysis of cast vote data,” he said, adding that “the election results database and associated log files created by the Dominion Election Management System software are not examples of source code any more than a MS Word document created by the MS Word application is source code.”

Colbeck called the disagreement “but one example of concerted statewide obstruction regarding FOIA requests.”

The township said it was still working through its backlog of records requests — eight of which have come from Colbeck alone.

‘Let your voices be heard’

Officials in Washoe County, Nevada, have also been flooded with records and information requests that they describe as “numerous” and “onerous.” But their election workers have also been the targets of threats and harassment.

Election workers have been followed to their cars and threatened with rhetoric like “Traitors are dealt with,” county spokesperson Bethany Drysdale told ABC News.

By mid-June, shortly after the Nevada primaries, Drysdale says the harassment had become so severe that the Washoe County voter registrar resigned their position, prompting the Washoe County Commission to propose a support plan to help county employees that “are unfairly publicly attacked, harassed, or disparaged by members of the public or by political organizations.”

That effort was assailed by members of the Republican Women of Reno, who in an online post asked, “Is it 1984 in Washoe County?” The organization, which has been leading local election challenge efforts and training poll watchers, urged others to “show up and let your voices be heard” at county commission meetings.

In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia officials are so concerned that they have installed bulletproof glass at their ballot-processing center ahead of the midterm elections.

In Otero County, New Mexico, David Clements, a former college professor who gained national prominence for pushing baseless claims of voter fraud, has been attending town hall meetings and confronting officials about the 2020 election.

“We want to let you know that this issue isn’t going to go away,” Clements said at a county commissioner meeting last week. “In fact, I’ll be here every two weeks, no matter how futile you think this exercise is.”

Clements, who was suspended last year from New Mexico State University, has traveled across the country to advocate for audits of the 2020 election. A week after speaking at Lindell’s “Moment of Truth Summit,” he was back in New Mexico, where he was escorted out of a Doña Ana County commission meeting after pressing the commissioners to investigate election-related claims.

“This has been brought up multiple times and there’s just no fact to it,” a commissioner told Clements.

At the Doña Ana meeting, Clements also publicly asked for the resignation of county clerk Amanda Lopez Askin.

“It was almost a joke to me,” Askin told ABC News. “I’m serving my community, and then you have 50,000 people that voted for me. All he does is feed my determination.”

Askin has had to report several death threats to the FBI, and she said the vitriol she’s receiving from election denial groups is becoming the new normal.

“It’s disheartening, and the thing that they don’t realize is, I’m a fellow New Mexican,” she said. “I was born and raised here, and I’m more against voter fraud than anyone.”

“It’s unfortunate he’s harassing public forums and public officials with baseless lies,” Alex Curtas, director of communications for the New Mexico secretary of state, said of Clements.

Contacted by ABC News for comment, Clements replied with a list of poll results from the conservative polling company Rasmussen Reports showing the percentage of likely voters who believe cheating affected the results of the 2020 election, and other related statistics.

‘A different level of intensity’

Back in Washoe County, Nevada, officials say election deniers have also spread dangerous misinformation — such as when one activist posted a clip from the election office’s livestream and questioned what an election worker was doing with their computer.

“When they posted the video, they said, ‘What is he doing? Look at him, he looks shifty. Look at him, he must be up to something,'” said Drysdale, the county spokesperson. “And that kind of caught fire.”

The employee was actually just shutting down a computer at the end of the day, Drysdale said.

“Misinformation yields threats against election officials that make it a lot more difficult to do our job, whether those threats be violent in form or whether they be harassment,” said Michigan Secretary of State Joselyn Benson.

In Maine, a local election denier transformed a former movie theater into a “Constitutional Hall” to hold so-called “election integrity” events and poll watcher trainings. The events have resulted in an increase in “requests for information about things that don’t exist,” according to the Maine secretary of state.

“To the election deniers who are hosting phony training, filling our citizenry with misinformation and disinformation, I would say our elections are free, fair, and secure,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told ABC News.

Officials in other states, including Missouri, Indiana, Colorado and Kansas, told ABC News they were concerned about election deniers being trained as poll workers.

“This is a different level of intensity that I was not expecting,” said a Johnson County, Kansas, election commissioner.

A report released two weeks ago by the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee said election officials are facing unprecedented challenges.

“These new pressures on election officials make their core job of running elections far more difficult by draining already scarce resources and undermining public confidence in election processes,” the report said.

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(WASHINGTON) — With the primaries nearly all finished, it will soon be time for the general election debates — except there may not be all that many debates to tune into.

Across nine key battleground states, five debates for major offices have so far been confirmed for the fall, according to an ABC News count.

A bulk of the resistance is coming from Republican candidates who, they say, wish to debate on their own terms. While that’s not a stunning split from cycles past — for example, Trump’s team in 2020 tried to make demands of what the final presidential debate covered — it’s more than possible that in at least a handful of races pivotal to who holds the balance of power in Washington, such efforts will lead to no formal TV debates at all this fall.

Few swing states have confirmed events on the calendar. In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke will debate at the end of September in the Rio Grande Valley.

In Florida, potential face-offs are anticipated, but not certain. The Sunshine State hosted two gubernatorial debates in 2018 and while there’s been no official word if the candidates have agreed to debate this year, host group “Before You Vote” has begun marketing events in the contests for both governor and senator.

From there, the logistics become more contentious.

Here’s the breakdown in major battlegrounds:

Arizona

Arizona Republicans Kari Lake and Blake Masters — gubernatorial and Senate hopefuls, respectively — have deployed a campaign strategy to paint their opponents, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly, as having something to hide in lieu of debate RSVPs, while the Democrats’ teams say they’re negotiating terms with the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, the leading group in the state for the last 20 years. The commission has asked for RSVPs by the end of the week.

So far, only in the Arizona secretary of state race have both candidates, Republican Mark Finchem and Democrat Adrian Fontes, committed to debating.

Lake formally committed to debating Hobbs on Wed., Oct. 12, after taunting her in a viral Twitter video while Hobbs’ team told ABC they “would like to participate” but “are asking them for some format tweaks.” Masters has used a similar strategy to Lake, challenging Kelly over Twitter to four debates — but so far only committing himself to one, on Thursday, Oct. 6, which Kelly’s team says they’re also planning to attend “pending some final discussions with the hosts.”

The debate for Arizona attorney general is being rescheduled from Aug. 29 to Sept. 28. In response to questions from ABC News, Hamadeh’s team said they were working with the clean elections commission to secure a date that worked for both parties, which the commission confirmed. Democrat Kris Mayes committed to the original date weeks ago.

Pennsylvania

Another state rife with squabbles is Pennsylvania. This month, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Senate Republican nominee, released a list of five debates he has agreed to attend and called upon his opponent, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, to disclose whether or not he will participate. Fetterman’s team has been mostly silent: The candidate, who has been recovering from a stroke he suffered in May, did not answer questions after a recent event in Pittsburgh but a spokesman, Joe Calvello, told reporters, “We are up for debating Oz.”

During the Democratic primary, Fetterman called debates “an important part of history” and that “voters deserve no fewer than three network televised debates.”

In late July, a local Pittsburgh station KDKA-TV invited the candidates to a debate it plans to host on Sep. 6 but has heard back from only the Oz campaign, an editor at the station told ABC News. By comparison, the candidates for Senate in the Keystone State debated twice in 2018.

Meanwhile, Doug Mastriano, the Republican state senator running for Pennsylvania governor, last week proposed rules that would ban news outlets from holding exclusive broadcast rights over debates with his opponent, Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and would let each candidate choose a moderator. A Shapiro spokesman called the proposal “a stunt” and an excuse to avoid questions by the far-right Mastriano, who has shunned nearly all traditional media while he pivots his campaign message away from the hardline stances he took during the primary — instead, for example, focusing on inflation and economic worries.

No debates have been announced publicly.

Ohio

Ohio Republican Senate nominee JD Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of his plans for general election debates. His Democratic challenger Rep. Tim Ryan’s campaign has agreed to three televised conversations.

“It’s well past time for JD Vance to venture out from his San Francisco mansion, pay Ohio a visit, and actually speak directly to the people he says he wants to represent. And once JD agrees to these three debates, Tim Ryan will debate JD any other time and place,” Ryan’s campaign director, Dave Chase, told ABC News.

Georgia

Another push-and-pull is in Georgia, where Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate, has agreed to take part in a debate on Oct. 14. That agreement comes after pressure from his opponent, Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock, who accused him of dodging debates in a campaign ad released last month.

However, the debate Walker is proposing to have is not one of the ones that Warnock had already agreed to: Warnock previously accepted invitations to debate in Savannah, Macon and Atlanta in October while Walker hasn’t committed to any of those invitations — another layer of discord.

Nevada

Both Nevada’s gubernatorial and Senate debates have been set — but the participation from candidates remains unclear. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and his Republican challenger, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, are set to face-off on Oct. 2.

As for the Senate race, a spokesperson for Republican nominee Adam Laxalt tweeted that while he “looks forward” to debating Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, Laxalt’s team has “not agreed to any debate invitations at this time and still reviewing all debate options.”

North Carolina

Democratic Senate candidate Cheri Beasley accepted the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters’ invitation to a debate in October — but there’s been no confirmation yet from her opponent.

Republican Senate candidate Ted Budd told ABC News he is open to debating but would not make decisions until after Labor Day. Budd did not debate any of his primary opponents and has made no indication that he would accept a general election debate invitation.

Michigan

Further disputes persist in the gubernatorial race in Michigan, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Republican nominee Tudor Dixon are locked in an argument over which dates are best, with Whitmer’s team confirming to ABC News that she has accepted two debates: on Oct. 13 in Grand Rapids and on Oct. 25 in Detroit.

Dixon’s team pushed back on the dates, however, writing on Twitter that “debates must start BEFORE voting begins, not after as Whitmer is demanding.” Dixon further argued that her opponent “wants to hide, but the people deserve answers.”

In response to Dixon’s comments, Whitmer’s campaign told ABC News that “for more than a decade, Michigan has held one to two statewide televised gubernatorial debates in October. Governor Whitmer looks forward to continuing that tradition with debates on October 13th and October 25th so Michiganders have an opportunity to see the clear contrast between the candidates as they make their decisions in this crucial election.”

Wisconsin

Neither Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes nor Republican incumbent Ron Johnson responded to requests for comments about their debate plans. Johnson previously debated his opponents in the 2016 and 2010 races.

The big picture

Last April, the national arm of the Republican Party walked away from the Commission on Presidential Debates, cutting ties with the general election debate process and dismantling a bipartisan process 30 years in the making.

The Republican National Committee voted unanimously at the time to leave the group, which they claimed was biased.

“We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement at the time.

“The CPD’s plans for 2024 will be based on fairness, neutrality and a firm commitment to help the American public learn about the candidates and the issues,” the CPD responded at the time.

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(WASHINGTON) — First lady Jill Biden has recovered from a “rebound” case of COVID-19 and will return to Washington nearly a week after again testing positive for the virus, her office said.

Biden, who has been isolating in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, has now tested negative, her spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement. She plans to travel back to the capital on Tuesday.

The first lady — who first tested positive on Aug. 15 — then came out of her first isolation period from that infection in South Carolina on Aug. 21.

She subsequently tested positive for a rebound case last week after being treated with the antiviral Paxlovid.

President Biden tested separately negative for COVID-19 last Wednesday, according to the White House.

“The First Lady has experienced no reemergence of symptoms, and will remain in Delaware where she has reinitiated isolation procedures,” a spokeswoman said in a statement on Wednesday. “The White House Medical Unit has conducted contact tracing and close contacts have been notified.”

 

ABC News’ Molly Nagle, Arielle Mitropoulos and Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — With COVID-19 funding drying up and no fresh cash infusion from Congress, the Biden administration says it will suspend its offer of free at-home rapid tests through COVID.gov.

The program will be put on pause later this week.

“Ordering through this program will be suspended on Friday, September 2, because Congress hasn’t provided additional funding to replenish the nation’s stockpile of tests,” a banner alert on the federal website said. The U.S. Postal Service’s free test page also noted the impending halt to the program.

A senior administration official told ABC that the move to pause the program is “to preserve our limited remaining supply” — particularly, to have a reserve in case a potential new wave of the virus sweeps the country in the coming months — “so that we can ensure we have a limited supply of tests available in the fall, when we might face a new rise in infections and more acute need.”

“The administration has been clear about our urgent COVID-19 response funding needs. We have warned that congressional inaction would force unacceptable trade-offs and harm our overall COVID-19 preparedness and response — and that the consequences would likely worsen over time,” the senior administration official said.

“We were also clear that failing to provide resources to be prepared would mean that if a surge were to come later, the cost to the American taxpayer would be even higher. Unfortunately, because of the limited funding we have to work with, we have had to make impossible choices about which tools and programs to invest in — and which ones we must downsize, pause or end altogether,” the official said.

Of the 1 billion free tests President Joe Biden pledged to secure at the beginning of this year, so far more than 600 million tests have been distributed through COVID.gov/tests, the senior administration official said, offering “every household” the “opportunity” to get a total of 16 tests in the three rounds of orders that the government opened up to the public.

The senior official added that the administration “will continue to work within its limited existing resources to secure as many additional tests as we can.”

“Congress hasn’t provided the COVID funding we need to replenish the nation’s stockpiles of tests, as simple as that,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “This is an action we’ve been forced to take that will help preserve our limited remaining supply.”

Orders through the program will cease on Friday.

Meanwhile, tests will still be distributed at 15,000 federally supported, community-based sites such as local pharmacies and libraries. Americans with eligible insurance can also still be reimbursed for at-home tests through their private health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, the administration official said.

“In addition, the administration continues to ensure equitable access to tests through a number of programs, including free tests distributed directly to long-term care facilities, schools, child care and early learning centers, community health centers and food banks,” the senior official said.

“If Congress provides funding, we will expeditiously resume distribution of free tests through [COVID.gov/tests],” the official said. “Until then, we believe reserving the remaining tests for distribution later this year is the best course.”

Over the course of the spring, lawmakers failed to secure an additional $10 billion in funding for the program.

Then-press secretary Jen Psaki said in April, “The program that reimbursed doctors, pharmacists and other providers for vaccinating the uninsured had to end today due to a lack of funds. America’s supply of monoclonal antibodies that are effective at keeping people out of the hospital will run out as soon as late May. Our test manufacturing capacity will begin ramping down at the end of June,” adding that the failed Senate vote to secure additional funding at the time was “a step backward for our ability to respond to this virus.”

Democrats have vowed to continue the fight for additional funding this fall. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Pat Leahy of Vermont, introduced a $21 billion emergency funding bill in late July and has vowed — along with panel co-authors Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Chris Coons, D-Del. — to get it passed this year.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Trish Turner contributed to this report.

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(LOS ANGELES) — After drone sightings and even reports of a man flying in a jetpack around Los Angeles International Airport, the federal government is rolling out new tech that could better detect objects entering restricted airspace.

The project, called the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Bed Program, is the second of its kind nationwide and will begin testing technology designed to detect, track and identify drones entering the airspace of LAX.

“If a drone was to enter the space as you see with the aircraft taking off and landing, and a pilot having to make a quick decision and divert from that flight path that he or she is on — that could be a huge issue for both the safety of the passengers, the safety of the folks on the ground, it just creates all types of challenges,” Keith Jefferies, the federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration at LAX, told ABC-owned station KABC.

Since 2021, TSA has reported 90 visual sightings of drones and 5,200 technical detections within three miles of the perimeter at LAX. This year alone there have been approximately 38 drones visually detected at the airport – including a drone that was reported within 700 feet of an aircraft just before Super Bowl LVI.

Moreover, several pilots landing at LAX have reported sightings of a man flying at high altitudes around aircraft at the airport. While law enforcement later said the sightings could have been a life-sized balloon, the agency believes the new tech would be able to detect such objects.

The agency noted that the data collected at LAX will help expand the program to other airports as well as raise awareness of the risks of encroaching on restricted airspace.

“One of the main objectives of the TSA UAS Test Bed Program is to continuously assess relevant technologies and keep pace with the ever-evolving capabilities within the UAS community,” TSA’s UAS Capability Manager Jim Bamberger said. “Working together with our federal, state and local partners and the intelligence community, we are leveraging our collective technical capabilities to prevent disruptions within the transportation sector.”

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(WASHINGTON) — One year after a deadly U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians, including seven children, 133 family members and co-workers of the Afghan aid worker mistakenly targeted remain outside of the United States despite an American commitment they would be brought to the U.S.

According to ACLU attorney Brett Max Kaufman who represents the family of Zemari Ahmadi, the aid worker whose vehicle was mistakenly targeted as being that of a potential car bomber, only 11 of the 144 people the U.S. promised to help are in the United States.

One hundred and one are in third countries awaiting security reviews and the processing of immigration visas while the remaining 32 face an uncertain future in Afghanistan where it remains unclear if the Taliban will allow them to leave the country following the recent airstrike in Kabul that killed al Qaeda’s top leader Ayman Al Zawahiri.

The arrival of the 11 Afghans to the United States is a recent development as they only arrived in May and July.

“It’s been a year since a U.S. drone strike in Kabul wrongly targeted Zemari and wrecked countless innocent lives, said Kaufman in a statement issued on Monday’s one year anniversary of the deadly drone strike. “Unfortunately, the government still hasn’t made good on its promises to evacuate our clients, let alone resettle them in the U.S. “

“We’re grateful for what the government has done to bring many of Zemari’s loved ones to safety, but for those who remain, the situation is getting more desperate by the day” he added. “After the strike, the U.S. government made a rare promise to make amends for the dire consequences of their ‘mistake’ and it would be a tremendous institutional failure if the government failed to follow through. The government needs to urgently act before it’s too late.”

“On the one-year anniversary of the strike, I’m hoping my government will finally keep its promise and quickly evacuate all the survivors and their families, ” said Dr. Steven Kwon, the founder and president of Nutrition and Education International, the aid agency for whom Ahamadi had worked.

On August 29, 2021 U.S. forces in Afghanistan were on edge following the August 27 suicide bomb attack at the gates of the airport in Kabul that killed 13 American service members and dozens of Afghan civilians who had hoped to gain entry into the airport to leave Afghanistan as part of the U.S. military evacuation after the Taliban took control of the capital city.

Intelligence indicated that the terror group known as ISIS-K was planning a car bomb attack targeting the airport.

When U.S. military overhead drones spotted a suspiciously circuitous route by a white Toyota that had left the vicinity of what was believed to be an ISIS-K safehouse U.S. military officials called a preemptive drone strike on what they had concluded was the vehicle to be used in the possible attack.

The U.S. military defended the validity of the the strike even after reporters in Kabul began to piece together that the strike may have mistakenly targeted Ahmadi and several civilians , including children, as his car pulled into the courtyard of his home.

But two weeks later, Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, acknowledged that the drone strike had been “a tragic mistake” after a military investigation concluded that 10 civilians, including seven children, had been killed in the drone strike. Kwon identified the civilian casualties as Ahmadi, his three sons, and six nieces and nephews.

In December, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin agreed with military commanders that no one should be punished for the mistaken drone strike that was attributed to “a breakdown in process.”

In the wake of the drone strike, the Pentagon announced that it would be providing assistance for Ahmadi’s family to be taken out of Afghanistan and that they would also received condolence payments.

Ultimately 144 individuals, about two thirds of whom are Ahamadi’s immediate family and extended family were identified to leave Afghanistan according to Kaufman. The remainder were Ahmadi’s co-workers and their families.

“The Department of Defense, in coordination with other U.S. government departments and agencies, continues to take steps to respond to the Aug. 29, 2021, airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan,” according to Todd Breasseale, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said in a statement provided to ABC News. “To protect the privacy of the family members, as well as to help protect their safety and security, we are not able to provide more information regarding these efforts at this time.”

The status of the condolence payments to family members remains unclear though Kaufman told ABC News that the focus is on evacuating the individuals stuck in Afghanistan.

“Everyone involved has prioritized the safe evacuation of our full group before moving on to discuss any compensation or ex gratia payments,” said Kaufman.

“We’re all very disappointed that a year out from the strike we still have clients who are stuck in Afghanistan, and we think it is critical that the government follow through on its commitments to compensate the victims of the strike, but for the moment we’ll continue to focus the bulk of our resources on getting the remainder of our group out safely. “

Last week, the Pentagon announced new procedures intended to prevent civilian casualties in U.S. military operations under a plan ordered by Austin that was a direct result of last year’s Kabul drone strike and a high profile incident in Syria that resulted in significant casualties.

Over the next year the Pentagon will set up a new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence that it hopes will better education and training, and increased screening before strikes are launched.

The Kabul strike seemed to show that there was “confirmation bias” during the tracking of Ahmadi’s vehicle and the decision to carry out the drone strike.

The new Pentagon effort will try to prevent that in the future by sending teams to regional military commands, the services, and the DIA that will be tasked with challenging such assumptions to ensure that a drone strike is appropriate.

As part of the initiative military training, exercises will now include civilian casualty assessments so troops can practice procedures to avoid civilian casualties.

Also, a new reporting system will be put into place to more accurately report a civilian casualty and the DOD will formalize the process for acknowledging casualties and any subsequent condolence payments or assistance that will be provided afterward.

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