(WASHINGTON) — GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, once a rising star in the Republican Party and considered a potential speaker of the House, told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that she has no regrets about her political career, including her primary landslide election loss in Wyoming on Tuesday, saying she now is laser-focused on keeping Donald Trump out of the White House.
During an exclusive and wide-ranging interview set to air Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the Capitol attack, told Karl she still hopes former Vice President Mike Pence testifies before the committee in the near future and that conversations with his legal team are still ongoing.
Pence had indicated this week that he would consider testifying before the committee if he were invited to do so.
“We’ve been in discussions with his counsel,” Cheney said, speaking with Karl in the Jan. 6 committee hearing room where millions of Americans have watched her during this summer’s series of hearings.
“Look, he played a critical role on January 6. If he had succumbed to the pressure that Donald Trump was putting on him, we would have had a much worse constitutional crisis. And I think that he has clearly, as he’s expressed, concerns about executive privilege, which, you know, I have tremendous respect. I think it’s, you know, hugely important constitutional issue in terms of separation of powers,” Cheney said.
“I believe in executive privilege. I think it matters. But I also think that when the country has been through something, as grave as this was, everyone who has information has an obligation to step forward. So, I would hope that that he will do that,” Cheney said.
“So, you think we’ll see him here in September in this room before the committee?” Karl asked.
“I would hope that he will understand how important it is for the American people to know every aspect of the truth about what happened that day,” Cheney said.
Cheney was asked if Trump would be asked to testify but she demurred.
“I don’t want to make any announcements about that this morning. So, let me just leave it there,” she said, adding that Trump’s interactions with the committee would be under oath.
(WASHINGTON) — Just ahead of Labor Day weekend, the federal government is doubling down on U.S. airlines, calling disruptions seen over the past few months “unacceptable” and demanding change.Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote to carriers on Thursday, calling on them to improve their customer service and warns airlines that new rules may be coming to better empower travelers who face flight disruptions within the airlines control.
“Americans expect when they purchase an airline ticket they will arrive at their destination safely, reliably, and affordably,” the secretary wrote.
According to data from the department, roughly 24% of domestic flights of U.S. airlines have been delayed and 3.2% have been canceled during the first six months of this year.
DOT said it will launch a new website in the coming weeks where travelers can see exactly what they are owed and the differences in compensation among all major airlines.
“When passengers do experience cancelations and delays, they deserve clear and transparent information on the services that your airline will provide, to address the expenses and inconveniences resulting from these disruptions,” Buttigieg wrote.
Buttigieg said airlines need to “assess” their customer service plans, and asks that carriers, at minimum, provide meal vouchers for delays of three hours or more and hotels for passengers who must wait overnight at an airport due to disruptions within the airline’s control.
Airlines for America (A4A), the group that lobbies on behalf of all major U.S. airlines, responded to the letter saying its members are “committed” to working with stakeholders to overcome these challenges.
Carriers have pointed to increased demand and staffing issues for the disruptions. A4A also cited data that indicates 63% of the cancelations for the first five months of 2022 were caused by weather and the National Airspace System (NAS) collectively.
The DOT letter comes amid a push for consumer rights – earlier this month the department announced a new rule that would “strengthen” protections for customers seeking refunds.
The rule, if enacted, would define the terms of a “significant” change and cancellation for the first time and also require airlines to issue refunds for flights delayed by three hours.
(FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that state officials have criminally charged 20 people for voting while ineligible during the 2020 general election. The alleged fraudsters are now being arrested, DeSantis said, the highest-profile move yet by the newly minted Florida office tasked with policing voting.
Flaunting the Office of Election Crimes and Security, rolled out in early July, DeSantis said during a press conference that the individuals were convicted of murder or felony sex offenses, which by Florida law stripped them of their right to vote.
“Yet they went ahead and voted anyways. That is against the law, and now they’re going to pay the price for it,” DeSantis said at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale.
The announcement comes just days before the state’s primary election on Aug. 23. Some voting rights groups have spoken out against the introduction of the new voting office, suggesting it might intimidate voters and slow turnout at the polls.
DeSantis said the “real protections for voter integrity” will be “live” on the ballot on Aug. 23, when voters hit the polls to cast their ballots in Florida’s primary election.
“Our new election crimes office has sprung into action to hold individuals accountable for voter fraud. Today’s actions send a clear signal to those who are thinking about ballot harvesting or fraudulently voting. If you commit an elections crime, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.
Those charged now face third-degree felonies, up to a $5,000 fine and a maximum of 5 years in prison.
DeSantis said during the press conference that some local prosecutors might be slow to uptake and litigate election crimes. But now, with the election policing unit, Attorney General Ashley Moody and the state office, which was approved earlier this year by the GOP-controlled legislature, can bring the cases directly.
“As elected leaders, it is incumbent on us to ensure free and fair elections and instill confidence in the voting process,” Moody said at the press conference on Thursday.
“No voting system can stand without the backing and confidence of the people it serves, and thanks to Governor DeSantis, we are reinforcing that trust, and Florida’s elections system will serve as the standard-bearer for the rest of the nation.”
DeSantis’ announcement also comes on the heels of news that Andrew Warren, a Democratic Tampa Bay-area state attorney who was suspended by DeSantis earlier month, would be suing him.
Moody was also present at a press conference held by DeSantis earlier this month when the governor announced the suspension of Warren, who said he would not prosecute abortion crimes.
Warren announced on Wednesday that he’s suing the governor, claiming his removal from office violated his First Amendment rights. Warren called his suspension “political theater” on the part of DeSantis, who has long been seen as a potential contender for the White House in 2024.
On Sunday, DeSantis traveled to Arizona to speak at a Turning Point USA conference in support of Donald Trump-backed Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters and GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake. He visited Carlsbad, New Mexico earlier in the day– both appearances part of a larger tour of battleground states ahead of a hotly contested midterm cycle. DeSantis will resume a national rally tour on Friday in Pennsylvania.
DeSantis also said on Thursday that his Office of Elections Integrity and Security is looking into other classes of fraud and is slated to pursue people who cast multiple ballots in the state, as well as “illegal aliens.”
“There are investigations ongoing into people that have voted in two different jurisdictions. And I imagine you are going to see prosecutions on that,” DeSantis said.
“We also have folks who are voting who are illegal aliens who are not citizens of the united states. And as we know in Florida’s constitution, the only people eligible to vote are U.S. citizens and we think it’s really important that we do that.”
Democrat gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist called the press conference a “voter intimidation event.”
“This is about playing politics, intimidating Democratic voters, and his desire to run for president, not securing elections,” he said in a statement.
Crist’s primary opponent, Nikki Fried, also fired back at DeSantis following his announcement.
“Ron DeSantis went to Broward County today for one reason and one reason only — to intimidate voters and suppress turnout in the most Democratic counties in Florida,” she said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — The designated press area at a recent Doug Mastriano event in Indiana County was a small, roped-off square tucked into the back corner of an airport hangar where the Republican nominee to be Pennsylvania’s governor spoke to a crowd of more than 100 people in fold-up lawn chairs.
There were no audio jacks, as are typically provided at campaign events to route high-quality sound to TV cameras, and no risers to give reporters a clear view of the stage. The five journalists in the press area left enough room for only about five more.
The scene in moderately populated Indiana County, roughly 60 miles east of Pittsburgh, is emblematic of much of the campaign for Mastriano, a right-wing state senator who has shunned the news media, relying instead on small events, Facebook, conservative press and campaign volunteers to project his message.
“It’s like an underground network,” Patricia Poprik, the Republican chair in Bucks County, told ABC News.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, Poprik said: “I can tell you: My county’s got a huge, huge amount of volunteers.”
Indeed, interviews this month with more than a dozen voters, Republican leaders and campaign workers depict an extensive grassroots movement that has energized conservatives around a candidate that had been seen by many — including some Republicans — as flawed and too extreme for the governor’s mansion, which he will reach only by defeating state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.
With about three months to go before Election Day, Shapiro holds a nine-point lead in the race, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. His campaign touts its own bottom-up prowess, citing an app the campaign says has pulled in hundreds of volunteers and thousands of accounts that have joined the official pro-Shapiro group on Facebook.
“While Josh is campaigning across the Commonwealth, bringing people together around his positive vision for Pennsylvania’s future, Doug Mastriano continues to be defined by his dangerous extremism,” Manuel Bonder, a spokesman, said in a statement.
Some Republican experts consider Mastriano’s chances in November slim, but certainly not zero.
Nationally — and particularly before the overturning of Roe v. Wade brought the issue of abortion access back on the ballot — there had been many indicators this year that voters soured on the Democratic majority in Washington, including concerns about President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy.
“I think Mastriano is a terrible candidate,” said Josh Novotney, a Philadelphia-based Republican consultant, “but I think he actually has a shot of keeping it very close, and in a crazy situation actually winning.”
Mastriano, an Army veteran who won his state Senate seat in a 2019 special election, is staunchly anti-abortion, introducing a bill soon after taking office that would ban the procedure after six weeks. (The bill has not yet been brought to the floor for a vote.)
Tom Wolf, the incumbent Democratic governor, has vowed to veto any legislation that restricts the right to an abortion. Mastriano, meanwhile, has suggested he would sign his bill into law as well as similar ones that arrive at his desk.
“January 22, 1973 was one of the darkest days in American history. On that day, seven justices of the Supreme Court ruled that the right to life could merely be reduced to a decision of convenience,” he said in a statement this spring, referring to Roe, the decision that granted a constitutional right to abortion which was overturned by the Supreme Court this summer.
Mastriano has also called climate change “fake science,” said gay marriage should “absolutely not” be legal and argued that LGBTQ couples should not be allowed to adopt. His campaign did not respond to questions asking whether he still holds these positions.
Perhaps most notoriously, at least to his critics, Mastriano also attended then-President Donald Trump’s rally outside the White House preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection and was reportedly among a group of people who appeared in a video from that day walking through police lines at the Capitol — although he denied that he breached the security barriers, saying he and his wife left when the violence began.
“I join with all patriotic Americans in condemning what occurred in the Capitol,” he said in a statement at the time.
He was also a “point person” in the scheme to send alternate Pennsylvania electors to Washington, according to The New York Times, although Poprik — one of the “fake” electors — told ABC News that she “never saw Doug at anything for the electors.” Separately, sources told ABC News last week that he was set to be interviewed by the House Jan. 6 committee.
GOP voters overwhelmingly favored Mastriano in the crowded field and he won the May primary by more than 20 points.
Despite the qualms of other Republicans, he has also impressed party officials with his grassroots approach, which he carried into the general election against Shapiro.
“It is one of the best ground campaigns I’ve ever seen,” Randy Degenkolb, the chair of the Indiana County Republican Committee, told ABC News. “I’ve been in politics a long time and on a county level, this is a really energized grassroots group.”
“He’s not trying to do a top-down campaign where it’s all marketing and politics and commercials,” added Degenkolb. “He’s really doing community events, person to person, keeping it real and keeping it fairly low-budget, which is really driving the grassroots campaign to do as much as they can to support him.”
Glenn Geissinger, the Republican chair in Northampton County, a swing county, recently told ABC News that there were “easily” at least 100 Mastriano volunteers in the county, an effort he called “exceptional.”
“We have a constant request for his stuff,” he said.
Don Clark, a 72-year-old who makes and distributes Mastriano lawn signs in Indiana County, told ABC News that he believes Mastriano is “fighting for the people.”
“The other [candidates] are fighting to pad their pockets,” he said.
Along the way, Mastriano’s campaign has kept the media at arm’s length. A video posted to Twitter in May shows a man appearing to prevent a Washington Post reporter from entering a venue hosting a campaign event. The man does not identify himself in the video or answer when asked if he works for the campaign.
ABC News was not restricted from accessing the event in Indiana County or speaking to voters there — but has not received a response to multiple messages it has sent the campaign this month.
When reached by phone, Dennis Zappone, a coordinator for the campaign in Montgomery County, told ABC News, “I don’t really know if we’re permitted to even be talking to the news media.”
“You have a lot of media folks who have basically been hostile in the past to either the senator or conservatives,” Sam DeMarco, the Republican Party chair in Allegheny County, suggested when asked why he thinks Mastriano rejects many traditional news outlets.
“He’s going to focus on taking his campaign and his message to the voters,” DeMarco said — and Mastriano wouldn’t be the first to try.
Yet, some supporters and party leaders who spoke to ABC News said they hope Mastriano will open up to the press this fall.
“I think he has to,” said Tom Eddy, the Erie County Republican chair. “You’ve got to be able to work with those people. Because if he doesn’t, I have to believe he’s not going to get any good press.”
“It might be helpful,” acknowledged Pat Jonner, a supporter in her late 60s, as she left the Indiana event. “But he’s done quite well just working closely with local people who are involved in campaigns throughout the state.”
(WASHINGTON) — After federal prosecutors unsealed charges Wednesday against a Missouri man who allegedly sent a voicemail threat to an Arizona election official last year, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer confirmed the death threat and expressed confidence in the Justice Department task force on elections, despite the group’s indictments remaining in the single digits more than a year after it was formed.
“The reality is that all prosecution agencies receive gazillions more referrals than they have the capacity to investigate. So it is, perhaps, a result of shifting priorities within the department,” Richer told ABC News in a phone interview Wednesday. “It is an allocation of resources gain, and that’s not to say that they didn’t care about it previously, but this could signal a shift in priorities.”
Launched last year to address the rise in threats against election workers and officials, the task force, as of Aug. 1, has charged just four federal cases and joined one other case that was charged prior to its establishment. Richer’s case brings the total to six, with one conviction.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. said at the beginning of August that agents have reviewed over 1,000 so-called hostile contacts, and only a fraction of those, approximately 11%, met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation, amounting to roughly 100 probes. Though the task force has faced criticism for not more aggressively prosecuting threats against election officials, Richer advised patience.
“I have great respect and patience, and even admiration for law enforcement that treads carefully and doesn’t bring something unless it is in the interest of justice in doing so,” Richer said. “Here, we’re complaining about people not operating within the confines of the law. They have to operate within the confines of the law.”
In the case involving Richer, Walter Hoornstra, 50, of Missouri, faces one charge of communicating an interstate threat and another count of making a threatening phone call, with the charges coupled carrying out a maximum of seven years in prison and $500,000 in fines.
“You call things unhinged and insane lies when there’s a forensic audit going on. You need to check yourself,” Hoornstra allegedly said on May 19, 2021, in a voicemail targeting Richer. “You need to do your [expletive] job right because other people from other states are watching your ass. You [expletive] reneg on this deal or give them any more troubles, your ass will never make it to your next little board meeting.”
A lawyer for Hoornstra did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Richer, a Republican who was elected as Maricopa County Recorder in 2020, said threats multiplied when he started pushing back on election fraud claims amplified by former President Donald Trump and Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann. Fann, notably, hired the Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based cybersecurity firm, which had no experience auditing elections, to oversee a widely-criticized review of results in Maricopa County as Trump’s false claims gained popularity with Arizona supporters.
“This was one of the first fever pitch moments,” he told ABC News, recalling receiving the voicemail. “And it was because the county started pushing back against some of the allegations.”
Last May, days before Hoornstra’s alleged threat, a “war room” account Richer alleges was run by the Cyber Ninjas Firm publicly and falsely claimed, without evidence, that Maricopa County had deleted election files unlawfully. When Trump amplified the false claim of deleted files to his base in a written statement, Richer rebuked him on Twitter — calling the former president’s comments targeting the state’s election “unhinged.”
“We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country,” Richer said in a tweet.
“We decided it was time to start pushing back against this because this was spilling over outside of what we had seen as the usual course of crazy politics,” Richer recalled to ABC News. “We had people quite literally calling for the heads of some of our IT members, for doing nothing.”
Richer is far from the only Arizona election official to be targeted.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democratic nominee for governor, was the target of an alleged bomb threat from Massachusetts man James W. Clark, 38. Prosecutors on the DOJ task force charged Clark in July with one count of making a bomb threat, one count of perpetrating a bomb hoax and one count of communicating an interstate threat. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
“Election officials across the country are being threatened regularly for doing their jobs,” Hobbs said in a statement last month confirming she was the target of the threat. “It’s unconscionable and undermines our democracy. This harassment won’t be tolerated and can’t be normalized. We thank the FBI for their persistence on further investigating this incident.”
Richer continues to criticize the so-called audit and its supporters for dredging up “very real-world consequences for me, for the board, for our collective offices,” over an allegation that was “facially ludicrous.”
“The whole endeavor was supposed to be towards improving confidence, but I think it has damaged it, in fact,” he said.
He said he still gets thousands of negative messages a day.
Still, he called his job “worthwhile.”
“Most people don’t get to work, wake up and say, ‘I’m going to be part of one of the most meaningful conversations in the world right now.’ And I’m going to do it with people I like,” he said. “So yeah, that’s pretty lucky.”
ABC News’ Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott defended sending buses of migrants from the Texas-Mexico border to Democrat-led cities amid a feud with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who accused Abbott of using migrants as “political pawns” amid a crisis on the southern border.
Abbott and Adams spoke with “Nightline” co-anchor Byron Pitts in interviews that aired on Wednesday, where Adams criticized the Republican governor for not coordinating the arrivals of migrants with NYC officials and Abbott doubled down on his policy to bus migrants out of Texas.
“We’ve got to secure our border because the Biden administration is not securing it,” Abbott said. “And then the reason why we began putting people on buses in the first place is because the Biden administration, they were literally dumping migrants off in small little towns of 10 or 25,000 people, and they were completely overwhelmed.”
Meanwhile, Adams criticized Abbott for not coordinating with NYC officials as buses of migrants arrived over the past two weeks.
“It’s the worst type of politics,” Adams said. “It’s hateful politics to raise his national profile and, you know what, you should not be doing it by taking away the respect and dignity of people who are in need.”
According to Adams, more than 6,000 migrants seeking asylum have arrived in NYC since May – many of whom were sent there due to Abbott’s busing policy.
Adams said during a June 21 press conference that the city will find shelter for migrants arriving from Texas under the state’s “right to shelter” law.
But as thousands of asylum seekers arrived in New York City over the past couple of months, the shelter system has been strained and city officials acknowledged that the NYC Department of Social Services violated New York City’s right to shelter mandate when it failed to place four families in shelters overnight.
Asked about Adams’ accusation that the policy to move migrants to New York City is political showmanship and “un-American,” Abbott accused Adams of “playing politics” and called him a “hypocrite.”
“He’s also being a hypocrite because New York City is a self-declared ‘sanctuary city,’” Abbott said. “And so why he’s ever complaining for one moment about these people being bused into a city goes against his own self-declaration of being a sanctuary city.” The term “sanctuary city” refers to municipalities like New York City that are willing to defy federal immigration laws in order to protect undocumented immigrants.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has requested help from the National Guard to deal with the crisis.
A defense official told ABC News in a statement on Aug. 5 that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “has declined to approve the DCHSEMA request for DCNG to provide personnel and the DC Armory to assist the NGO, SAMU First Response, with transportation and reception of migrants arriving in the DC area.”
“We have determined providing this support would negatively impact the readiness of the DCNG and have negative effects on the organization and members,” the official said, adding that there is sufficient funding through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program to address the crisis.
But Bowser renewed her call for help from the National Guard later that week.
“We need help from our federal partners as we seek to stabilize and manage our operating environment in this critical moment,” Bowser tweeted on Aug. 11. “I have been honored to work with the men and women of the DC National Guard many times and today we renewed our request for their assistance.”
Asked if he may also request help from the National Guard, Adams said, “We’re going to do everything that’s possible at this time.”
“We believe that we can continue to carry out our moral and legal responsibility,” he added. “We are calling on Washington. It is Washington’s purpose to assist the states and cities during these difficult times. So we are looking for help from Washington, D.C.”
Adams urged Abbott to coordinate with NYC officials as buses continue to arrive in the city.
Asked if he had spoken directly with Abbott, Adams said, “no, I have not.”
“He should have picked the phone up, and we should communicate because, as I stated, this is a crisis,” Adams said.
Pressed on whether he would work with Adams to coordinate migrant arrivals, Abbott said that he previously sent Adams a letter and urged him to visit Texas to witness the “chaos” of the migrant crisis in the state firsthand, but Adams did not take him up on the offer.
“Before we began busing illegal immigrants up to New York, it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all of the chaos and all the problems that come with it. Now, the rest of America is understanding exactly what is going on,” Abbott said.
The feud between Adams and Abbott comes amid a heated policy battle between the Republican governor, who is currently seeking reelection, and the Biden administration over a surge of migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border.
ABC News’ Armando Garcia, Beatrice Peterson, Luis Martinez and Kyla Guilfoil contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A magistrate judge in Florida heard in-person arguments Thursday on a request from a coalition of media outlets to make public the affidavit supporting the search warrant executed at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week.
After hearing the Justice Department’s case, the judge appeared inclined toward deciding that at least a portion of could be unsealed with government redactions.
The Justice Department had urged the judge, Bruce Reinhart, to keep the affidavit fully under seal, arguing that if it were to be made public it could “cause significant and irreparable damage” to an ongoing criminal investigation involving highly classified materials related to national security.
Arguing on behalf of the Justice Department Thursday, Jay Bratt, the head of the agency’s counterintelligence and export control section, acknowledged the heightened public interest in this case, but argued there is another public interest which is the government’s position to keep the underlying affidavit sealed as it would provide a roadmap and “suggest next investigative steps that we would be about to take.”
Bratt said the investigation is in its “early stages” and feared for the safety of witnesses and potential witnesses and the threat of “possible obstruction and interference.”
“This investigation is open. It is in its early stages,” Bratt said.
Bratt argued that redactions to the affidavit would not be sufficient, as information in it could identify witnesses based on the descriptions of events that only certain people would have knowledge about.
But after hearing the government’s arguments, Judge Reinhart said, “I am not prepared to find that the affidavit should be fully sealed.”
The judge said he believes there are portions of it that presumptively could be unsealed — whether they would be meaningful is for someone else to decide, he said. The government may disagree with him on some points, he said, giving DOJ until next Thursday to file its proposed redactions.
ABC News and a number of other media organizations have called for the release of the affidavit, noting the historical significance of the unprecedented law enforcement search of a former president’s residence and the “immediate and intense public interest as well as a vociferous reaction from Mr. Trump and his allies.”
Officials said in their Monday filing, however, that they believed the redactions that would be necessary to protect the investigation “would be so extensive as to render the remaining unsealed text devoid of meaningful content.”
DOJ would likely seek an immediate appeal on any ruling by Judge Reinhart that would reveal further substantive details underlying their investigation.
The government said, though, it would not object to the unsealing of other materials filed in connection with the warrant, such as cover sheets for the application, the government’s motion to keep the warrant under seal and Judge Reinhart’s original sealing order — none of which will likely reveal much beyond the materials already disclosed.
Thursday afternoon, the court posted the other redacted materials that the Justice Department did not object to being unsealed.
The redacted copy of the search warrant released last Friday sent shockwaves through Washington, as it revealed the Justice Department was investigating the potential violation of at least three separate criminal statutes in its search of Mar a Lago, including obstruction of justice and one crime under the Espionage Act.
A property receipt accompanying the warrant shows agents seized 11 boxes of documents of various classifications, including one set referring to “classified/TS/SCI documents” (the acronym stands for top secret/sensitive compartmentalized information that not everyone with even top-secret clearance can view) and four other sets of top-secret documents.
The documents were discovered by authorities after a lawyer for Trump signed a statement in June to the FBI affirming that all classified documents on the premises had been handed over to investigators, sources confirmed to ABC News.
Trump’s team has yet to take court action despite publicly trying to pressure the Justice Department to release the full affidavit.
Christina Bobb, who is on Trump’s legal team, said they had no plans to file anything or speak publicly, but told reporters she came to watch the hearing.
Trump in recent days has called for the “immediate release” of the affidavit while leveling various attacks at the FBI and Justice Department, while also demanding over his social media website that the documents be returned to him. But Trump’s legal team has yet to take any sort of legal action on either front in response to the search.
Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin are among multiple other witnesses interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation, ABC News confirmed Tuesday, with sources saying both sat with investigators sometime in the spring. But there’s no indication that the Justice Department’s filing referencing officials’ hopes of protecting witnesses who testified in the investigation was a direct reference to Cipollone or Philbin.
ABC News’ John Santucci contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Internal Revenue Service does not plan to use the nearly $80 billion it’s set to receive in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to hire 87,000 new agents in order to target middle class Americans, a Treasury Department official told ABC News, rejecting a claim widely circulated by Republican lawmakers and right-wing media personalities.
A sizable portion of the money will go toward improving taxpayer services and modernizing antiquated, paper-based IRS operations, Treasury Department spokesperson Julia Krieger said, in an effort to update the agency — well documented as being chronically starved of resources for decades.
The agency also is planning on hiring auditors who can enforce the tax laws against high-income Americans and corporations, not the middle class, along with employees to provide customer service to taxpayers, the official said. The majority of hires will fill the positions of about 50,000 IRS employees on the verge of retirement, Krieger said, which will net about 20 to 30-thousand workers, not 87,000.
“The resources to modernize the IRS will be used to improve taxpayer services — from answering the phones to improving IT systems — and to crack down on high-income and corporate tax evaders who cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars each year. The majority of new employees will replace the standard level of staff departures over the next few years,” Krieger said in a statement.
“New staff will be hired to improve taxpayer services and experienced auditors who can take on corporate and high-end tax evaders, without increasing audit rates relative to historical norms for people earning under $400,000 each year,” she said.
The IRA, the wide-ranging tax, climate and health care bill signed into law by Biden on Monday and touted as a major legislative achievement for Democrats, includes roughly $78 billion for the IRS over the next 10 years.
The heightened funding will also act as a key part of how will provisions under the IRA will be paid for — increased tax enforcement of the wealthy and large corporations is expected to raise revenue by $204 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Congress has cut funding for the IRS for most of the past decade, leaving the agency with technology systems dating back to the 1970s and as of July, a backlog of over 10 million unprocessed individual returns, according to the IRS.
“Bringing IRS technology into the 21st century is long past due. Our technology system is over 60 years old, the oldest in government, and fuels both taxpayer frustration and government waste,” said Executive Director Chad Hooper of the Professional Managers Association – formed in 1981 by IRS managers.
Republicans, ahead of the midterm elections, have been denouncing the package as irresponsible spending while inflation reaches record highs. They’ve hammered the claim that the bill’s IRS provisions would would bad news for the middle class.
“Do you make $75,000 or less?” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you—with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k.”
The 87,000 new agent number that GOP leaders have been circulating is in reference to a year-old report released by the IRS, which described what the agency could do with nearly $80 billion in new funding if Congress would pass the American Families Plan.
In a table in that report, the IRS shows by 2031 the IRS could increase the size of its workforce by 86,852 full-time employees. But most of those hires would not be IRS agents and wouldn’t be new positions, according to the Treasury official, and the report is not in reference to IRA funding.
The claims appeared to have been ramped up after last week’s FBI search of Trump’s Palm Beach residence, with GOP leaders capitalizing on current Republican mistrust of bureaucratic agencies.
The search is said to have been part of a wider investigation into whether Trump took classified documents from the White House at the end of his presidency, with no reports of a connection to the IRS.
“After todays raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, after news of the raid broke.
GOP voices have also claimed that the hypothetical IRS agent hiring splurge would include armed tax enforcers. Fox News host Tucker Carlson and guest U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. on Aug. 4 claimed the government is beginning to treat “the IRS as a military agency.”
“Well, Joe Biden is raising taxes, disarming Americans, so of course they are arming up the IRS like they are preparing to take Fallujah,” Gaetz said.
Treasury officials rejected the claim that agent hires would be carrying weapons — saying the faction of armed agents are an “extremely critical but small” piece of the IRS, representing less than 3% of its total workforce.
The armed agents do not interact with average Americans, they focus only on specialized issues like narcotics, money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act violations, they said. Recently, they’ve been involved in the task force that is tracking assets of Russian oligarchs.
But the widely debunked claims may have begun to have an impact on some American voters.
“Even the Democrats, they heard, they just hired 85,000 IRS agents, they’re not not happy about it,” said John Ellingson, an Iowa GOP strategist, noting that the claims have been widely discussed since the information has been circulated by leading Republican voices.
Democrats have attempted to quell concerns over assertions that average Americans might be targeted by the federal government.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia refuted GOP claims on Twitter, telling Americans they are “being lied to.”
“In typical fashion, Republicans have chosen to lie and embellish in order to scare the American people. There is no army of 87,000 new IRS agents. It’s entirely made up. The truth is that the Republican Party hollowed out the IRS and has repeatedly slashed its budget over the years. Rich tax cheats run wild, meanwhile the average American can’t even get someone from the IRS on the phone. The Inflation Reduction Act will restore the IRS so it actually works for the American people,” Connolly said in a statement to ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — A magistrate judge in Florida is set to hear in-person arguments Thursday on a request from a coalition of media outlets to make public the affidavit supporting the search warrant executed at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week.
The Justice Department earlier this week urged the judge, Bruce Reinhart, to keep the affidavit under seal, arguing that if it were to be made public it could “cause significant and irreparable damage” to an ongoing criminal investigation involving highly classified materials related to national security.
“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” officials said in a Monday filing, noting that the affidavit contained “highly sensitive information about witnesses” already interviewed by the government.
“In addition, information about witnesses is particularly sensitive given the high-profile nature of this matter and the risk that the revelation of witness identities would impact their willingness to cooperate with the investigation,” the DOJ’s filing said. “Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations.”
ABC News and a number of other media organizations have called for the release of the affidavit, noting the historical significance of the unprecedented law enforcement search of a former president’s residence and the “immediate and intense public interest as well as a vociferous reaction from Mr. Trump and his allies.”
It is unclear how Judge Reinhart will ultimately rule on the request, but the Justice Department has requested that if he were to order even a “partial unsealing” of the affidavit that they be given a chance to provide the court with proposed redactions.
Officials said in their Monday filing, however, that they believed the redactions that would be necessary to protect the investigation “would be so extensive as to render the remaining unsealed text devoid of meaningful content.”
DOJ would likely seek an immediate appeal on any ruling by Judge Reinhart that would reveal further substantive details underlying their investigation.
The government said, though, it would not object to the unsealing of other materials filed in connection with the warrant, such as cover sheets for the application, the government’s motion to keep the warrant under seal and Judge Reinhart’s original sealing order — none of which will likely reveal much beyond the materials already disclosed.
The redacted copy of the search warrant released last Friday sent shockwaves through Washington, as it revealed the Justice Department was investigating the potential violation of at least three separate criminal statutes in its search of Mar a Lago, including obstruction of justice and one crime under the Espionage Act.
A property receipt accompanying the warrant shows agents seized 11 boxes of documents of various classifications, including one set referring to “classified/TS/SCI documents” (the acronym stands for top secret/sensitive compartmentalized information that not everyone with even top-secret clearance can view) and four other sets of top-secret documents.
The documents were discovered by authorities after a lawyer for Trump signed a statement in June to the FBI affirming that all classified documents on the premises had been handed over to investigators, sources confirmed to ABC News.
It’s not immediately clear whether lawyers for President Trump will be present at Thursday’s hearing in Florida.
Trump in recent days has called for the “immediate release” of the affidavit while leveling various attacks at the FBI and Justice Department, while also demanding over his social media website that the documents be returned to him. But Trump’s legal team has yet to take any sort of legal action on either front in response to the search.
Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin are among multiple other witnesses interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation, ABC News confirmed Tuesday, with sources saying both sat with investigators sometime in the spring. But there’s no indication that the Justice Department’s filing referencing officials’ hopes of protecting witnesses who testified in the investigation was a direct reference to Cipollone or Philbin.
ABC News’ John Santucci contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — In June of this year, seven weeks before the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in search of classified materials, former Defense Department appointee and outspoken Trump loyalist Kash Patel vowed to retrieve classified documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website.
Trump had just issued a letter instructing the National Archives to grant Patel and conservative journalist John Solomon access to nonpublic administration records, according to reporting at the time.
Patel, who under Trump had been the chief of staff for the acting defense secretary, claimed in a string of interviews that Trump had declassified a trove of “Russiagate documents” in the final days of his administration. But Patel claimed Trump’s White House counsel had blocked the release of those documents, and instead had them delivered to the National Archives.
“I’ve never told anyone this because it just happened,” Patel said in an interview on a pro-Trump podcast on June 22. “I’m going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we’re going to start putting that information out next week.”
Patel did not provide a clear explanation of how he would legally or practically obtain the documents.
“White House counsel and company disobeyed a presidential order and implemented federal governmental bureaucracy on the way out to basically send the stash to the National Archives, and now that’s where it’s at,” Patel said in a subsequent interview on June 23 on a different pro-Trump internet show.
Trump and his allies have for years pushed aggressively to declassify materials related to the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation that examined alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia — a probe that was later put under the control of Robert Mueller following his appointment as special counsel. Patel, who previously served under then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) during Nunes’ time as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has claimed that nonpublic information provided to Congress undercut the Russia probe and helped support Trump’s claim that the investigation lacked merit.
The day before he left office, Trump authorized the declassification of a set of documents related to the Russia probe. The memorandum, released in January 2021, acknowledged that “portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public.”
So according to Patel, Trump asked him to work on retrieving the classified documents from the National Archives and then release them to the public. “President Trump was like, ‘Who knows those documents better than anyone?’ And I was like, ‘If you want me to go, I’ll go,'” Patel said.
“I know what’s there” in the Archives, said Patel. “I can’t still talk about them, but the whole process is going to be: Identify the documents, whether it’s Russiagate, Hunter Biden, impeachment, Jan 6th — and put them out.”
Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Patel, told ABC News that Patel was acting as “a representative on behalf of President Trump to work with the National Archives to get them to disclose information.”
“The GSA has their own policies and procedures for how presidential records must be handled, which Patel is in full cooperation with,” Knight said of the federal government’s General Services Administration, an adjunct of the National Archives.
Patel’s comments claiming that Trump had directed him to retrieve classified documents came in the middle of the former president’s growing dispute with National Archives officials. By June, the National Archives had asked the Justice Department to investigate the former president’s handling of White House records, after National Archives officials had in January retrieved 15 boxes of records that had been improperly taken to Trump’s home in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
And while Patel has said the former president said to declassify “a mountain of documents,” experts say there are protocols in place to ensure that national security is not harmed when information is declassified — even by the president.
“[Patel] is lashing out at the bureaucracy, but it’s that bureaucracy and those protocols that are in place to prevent damage to our national security by an inappropriate disclosure of national security information,” said John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor.
“I can’t stress how important those protocols are,” Cohen said. “For everyone who has a clearance, it is ingrained in your brain that even an inadvertent disclosure of top secret information could cause great harm to national security.”
According to Patel, the plan in June was to retrieve the documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website “for free,” then “make a big announcement every time” a new document was published.
Patel, a former GOP congressional aide who worked on Trump’s National Security Council before joining the Pentagon, was also involved in security preparations for the Jan. 6 counting of the electoral vote on Capitol Hill, according to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, citing records obtained from the Defense Department.
Last September, the Jan. 6 committee issued subpoenas to four former senior Trump administration officials, including Patel, who appeared before the committee for several hours in December.
This past April, Patel was brought on as a member of the board of directors for the former president’s media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which launched the “Truth Social” platform in February. Patel also published a pro-Trump children’s book titled “The Plot Against the King.”
As of last month, Patel was still pursuing his plan to publish documents currently in the National Archives.
“Now we’re in this fight,” Petal told conservative commentator Benny Johnson in a July 4 interview. “I’m working on it. And of course, the bureaucracy is getting in the way, but that’s not going to stop us.”
“I will be going to the National Archives in the coming weeks, I will be identifying those documents,” he said.
