(WASHINGTON) — The Democratic chairs of the House Homeland Security and House Oversight committees on Tuesday threatened the Department of Homeland Security inspector general with a subpoena, accusing him of delaying responding to the committee’s request for answers regarding missing Secret Service text messages on and around the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“If you continue to obstruct, we will have no choice but to consider alternate means to ensure compliance,” Rep. Bennie Thompson and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, both Democrats, write to Joseph Cuffari in a letter dated Aug. 16.
This is the second letter they have jointly sent to the DHS IG requesting information, amid new allegations that career staff in Cuffari’s office prepared a notice to Congress earlier this year about their difficulty obtaining Secret Service text messages connected to Jan. 6, but the notice was not included in the government watchdog’s required regular report to lawmakers.
The DHS inspector general has been under scrutiny for his handling of the deleted Secret Service text messages on and around Jan. 6. He previously waited more than a year to notify the committee about the missing texts.
A Secret Service spokesman last month acknowledged text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted after being sought by the DHS inspector general.
A letter Cuffari sent last month to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees said the messages were deleted “as part of a device-replacement program,” despite the inspector general having requesting such communications.
Guglielmi, the Secret Service spokesman, subsequently dismissed any “insinuation” the agents had “maliciously” deleted the texts.
The agency sent out communications to employees on how to upload digital files on their local devices if they are government records, according to a source familiar with the Secret Service migration process.
The letter sent by the committee chairs lays out how they say the inspector general might have violated the Inspector General Act.
“In response to the Committees’ requests, you have refused to produce responsive documents and blocked employees in your office from appearing for transcribed interviews,” the members write. “Your obstruction of the Committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an Inspector General.”
The DHS IG has instructed the Secret Service to stop its internal investigation because his office has now turned the deleted text message issue into a criminal investigation, according to three sources familiar with the situation.
The congressional committees say Cuffari made no mention of the Secret Service’s retention issues in the semi-annual report to lawmakers, despite knowing about them.
The inspector general’s office has not responded to ABC News request for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed the Democrats’ massive climate, health and tax bill into law, marking a major accomplishment for his domestic agenda less than three months before midterm elections.
Speaking from the White House’s State Dining Room, Biden touted the Inflation Reduction Act as “further proof that the soul of America is vibrant, the future of America is bright and the promise of America is real and just beginning.”
“The American people won and the special interests lost,” he said before swiping at Republicans for their unanimous opposition to the law.
“That’s the choice we face. We can protect the already powerful or show the courage to build a future where everybody has an even shot,” Biden said.
Taking advantage of some political momentum, Biden interrupted his summer vacation for the signing just days after the House approved the measure, following Senate passage by just one vote amid some political drama. He has spent much of the past week in South Carolina. Biden arrived at the ceremony wearing a mask after spending his vacation with first lady Jill Biden, who has tested positive for COVID-19.
In attendance for the ceremony were Sen. Joe Manchin, a key negotiator of the package, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“I am confident this bill will endure as one of the greatest legislative feats in decades. It’ll lower costs, create millions of good paying jobs and is the boldest climate bill ever,” Schumer said during the event.
A larger celebration for the law is being planned for Sept. 6.
The White House also said that, “in the coming weeks,” Biden will host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the new law and will also travel across the U.S. to promote it.
The Biden administration has planned a cross-country rollout campaign for the legislation, which aims to make prescription drugs and health insurance cheaper; invest in clean energy and curb climate change; raise taxes on the wealthy; and cut the deficit.
Starting this week through the end of August, Cabinet members plan to travel to 23 states, on more than 35 trips, to tout the “Inflation Reduction Act,” according to the White House.
The administration also plans to roll out information online and on social media about the legislation’s impact, and to collaborate with members of Congress to host hundreds of events, the White House said.
The blitz will highlight will highlight other major legislative wins as well as part of a “Building a Better America Tour.”
In a memo the White House made public from Senior Adviser Anita Dunn and Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon to Chief of Staff Ron Klain, the administration plans to not only tout passage of the IRA, but also the CHIPS Act aimed at boosting the U.S. semi-conductor industry over China’s and easing a pandemic-cause shortage, the bipartisan gun control bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Ahead of Tuesday’s signing, the White House on Monday put out what it said would be the Inflation Reduction Act’s impact.
According to the White House, about 1.4 million Americans who are on Medicare who usually spending more than $2000 per year on prescription drugs will see their costs capped at that amount. Overall, it says, there are about 50 million Americans on Medicare Part D who are eligible for that cost cap.
The White House said there are about 3.3 million Americans on Medicare who use insulin, who will benefit from the new $35 monthly price cap.
The White House also estimates about 5-7 million Americans could see their prescription drug costs decrease once Medicare begins negotiating costs.
Lower Obamacare premiums will be extended for the 13 million Americans insured under that program, the White House said.
And the White House also claims greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by a billion metric tons in 2030 thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.
ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — First lady Jill Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, according to her office.
Jill Biden tested negative on Monday during her routine testing, and then developed “cold-like symptoms” Monday night, according to her communications director, Elizabeth Alexander.
“She tested negative again on a rapid antigen test, but a PCR test came back positive,” Alexander said in a statement.
She’s been prescribed the antiviral treatment Paxlovid, which President Joe Biden also took after testing positive last month.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is going on the offense for Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly less than two months before the first ballots go out in the state for the midterms — in which Kelly’s race and a handful of others could decide the balance of power in the upper chamber.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) on Tuesday launched its first ad campaign of the general election cycle against Republican Blake Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist who is running to unseat Kelly in his first bid for political office.
Arizona voters will wake up in the West to television, digital and radio spots trying to depict Masters as “not like normal Arizonans,” as part of a previously announced $33 million independent expenditure reservation from the DSCC, which has a particular interest in protecting incumbents like Kelly.
Not a single ad of the three launching Tuesday mentions former President Donald Trump, who saw a slate of his endorsees win in Arizona two weeks ago — Masters included.
The campaign, instead, argues Masters has “dangerous beliefs and plans that are deeply out of step with the state’s values and would be harmful to Arizona’s families,” the DSCC told ABC News.
“Walk Away,” a TV ad airing both English and Spanish, highlights a remark Masters made at a GOP Senate debate in June — and later walked back — in which he said, “Maybe we should privatize Social Security, right? Private retirement accounts. Get the government out of it.” (Arizona has one of the highest percentages of residents ages 65 years and older.)
Since winning his primary, Masters has played down that remark. In a 45-minute interview with the Arizona Republic last week, he said he doesn’t want to privatize Social Security. “I, think, in context I was talking about something different,” he said.
In another new video ad targeting Masters, titled “His Own Words,” Democrats cite Masters’ past statements on abortion, arguing he would likely support a nationwide ban if given the chance.
The ad points to Masters saying in a podcast interview last year that abortion is “a religious sacrifice to these people. I think it’s demonic.”
Betting on Arizona voters reacting as voters did in Kansas and turning against strict abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning constitutional abortion protections, Democrats are raising the issue in various battlegrounds. The DSCC has also reserved ad space in Nevada, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania ahead of competitive races there to defend their Senate majority, and they launched a campaign last week in Wisconsin against Sen. Ron Johnson, also hitting the incumbent on abortion.
Masters told the Republic, in the same post-primary interview last week, that he thinks Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest, is appropriate for his state but that he would support a federal “personhood law” to ban all third-trimester abortions. (Such procedures represent fewer than 1% of all abortions in the U.S. and are usually done to save the life of the mother or if dire fetal anomalies are detected).
A final spot reserved by the DSCC is a Spanish-language radio ad.
Masters — backed by millions in funding from billionaire Peter Thiel (his former employer and a major ally with whom he’s partnered since taking Thiel’s class at Stanford University) — has also launched his first TV ad of the general election campaign, pitching himself as a “true independent” for Arizona, a strategy which helped Kelly win in 2020.
The spot featured his wife, Catherine, speaking and Masters playing with his three sons — in a dramatic shift in tone from primary ads attacking his opponents and standing with Trump.
He said in a primary ad in November, by contrast, “I think Trump won in 2020. Maybe you disagree, but you gotta admit this election was really messed up.”
Kelly, a Navy veteran and former NASA astronaut married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, won his spot in the Senate in a special election two years ago for the late Sen. John McCain’s seat — and did so by just 2.4%.
(NEW YORK) — Tuesday’s primaries in Alaska and Wyoming will spotlight two big Republican detractors of former President Donald Trump — and now two big targets of his revenge tour this election cycle.
The incumbents, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Liz Cheney, may also see two diverging results at the ballot box.
Polls close in Alaska at 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday and in Wyoming at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Cheney learns her fate
Wyoming is the state that handed Trump his widest margin of victory in the 2020 election.
Cheney, Wyoming’s lone member of the House, has since cemented herself as the one of the most vocal anti-Trump members of Congress.
She earned the ire of Trump, his ardent supporters and many of her fellow Republican lawmakers after she crossed party lines — with nine other House Republicans — to impeach him after the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.
She was censured one month later by the Wyoming Republican Party and, though she initially survived a leadership vote among the House GOP caucus, she was subsequently booted from her position as the No. 3 House Republican.
Legislatively, Cheney and Trump were not political foes: As noted by FiveThirtyEight, Cheney voted with him on the issues 92.9% of the time.
But she has broken with Trump on what she calls the greatest issue of all: His continued, baseless attacks on elections. As vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, she has taken a major role in a year-long investigation into Trump’s conduct before, during and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Cheney is the last of six House Republican incumbents to seek reelection after their impeachment vote last year. So far only two — Rep. David Valadao of California and Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington — have successfully fended off their primary challengers.
The other three — Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan and Tom Rice of South Carolina — all lost to Trump-endorsed challengers. Cheney’s chances of reelection also seem slim, according to polling cited by FiveThirtyEight, though surveys of the race are sparse and Cheney insists she still has a shot.
Cheney’s main opponent is boosted by Trump: Attorney Harriet Hageman is a former Republican National Committee member — and a former Cheney ally and Trump critic.
Once an adviser to Cheney in Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign, Hageman won Trump’s approval in September 2021 and has since embraced his false messaging about the last presidential race, claiming that it was “absolutely” rigged.
Hageman, her supporters will say, also has a home-field advantage over Cheney: She is a lifelong Wyomingite while Cheney — whose father held Wyoming’s House seat for a decade in the ’70s and ’80s — was raised in both Wyoming and the Washington, D.C., area. before she went on to work in national politics.
Hageman ran for Wyoming governor in 2018, pledging to “reform federal land management and access” in a state where nearly half of the land is federally owned. During that primary, she took the position of transferring federal public land to the states and suggested that 1 million acres of Wyoming be part of the pilot plan. The proposal raised eyebrows among leading conservation groups, most of whom endorsed Republican Mark Gordon, who went on to win.
Palin and Murkowski on the ballot
Further north, in Alaska, voters on Tuesday will be making a bit of history: The state has scrapped its party-line primaries in favor of a top-four system, where every candidate competes together, and has implemented a ranked-choice voting system for its general elections.
The special general election held Tuesday along with the primaries will be the first time Alaskan voters rank candidates on the ballot.
The new system works like this: If a candidate gets more than 50% of the votes, they win outright; otherwise, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters’ ballots are distributed to the voters’ second-choice picks. This process continues until a candidate gets more than 50%.
According to the new system’s supporters, ranked-choice encourages more moderate candidates who can appeal to the most voters, especially in crowded fields.
One of the critics of the new system is also eyeing to win the special election to serve the few months remaining in late Rep. Don Young’s term in the House. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is backed by Trump, seeks a return to elected office after running as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2008. Between then and now, Palin was a face of the Obama-era tea party movement — a precursor, in style and substance, to Trump’s platform — and was a conservative pundit and TV personality.
She has called Alaska’s new voting system a “convoluted” process that will result “in voter suppression.”
Facing off against Palin are Nicholas Begich III — Republican heir to a local Democratic dynasty whose family members include a former representative and state senator — and Democrat Mary Peltola, a former Alaska state representative.
The polling aggregate from FiveThirtyEight shows Peltola doing well against both Begich and Palin. (The fourth candidate who advanced in the special primary, Al Gross, withdrew and urged people to back Peltola.)
The three are also the front-runners in the regular House primary election simultaneously being held Tuesday, in which 22 candidates are vying to advance to November’s general election and secure a full two-year term in the House.
On the Senate side, incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski faces her first major electoral test in years — though, as history has shown, she is no stranger to surprising victories.
Murkowski is the only one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict in Trump’s impeachment trial last year to be on the ballot this year. Her vote, like Cheney’s, led to a censure from her state’s Republican Party.
Unlike Cheney, Murkowski has built a profile as one of the Senate’s most moderate Republicans and repeatedly crosses political lines — notably, supporting abortion access, voting against Trump-nominated Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and negotiating last year’s infrastructure spending bill.
Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, hopes to unseat her. Backed by Trump, Tshibaka has cast doubts on the integrity of the 2020 election but ultimately recognized Joe Biden as the president. She also called last week’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago a “gross abuse of power.”
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate, Murkowski and Tshibaka trade off the lead in various surveys.
Still, because of the primary’s top-four rules, Murkowski is likely to advance from Tuesday to the general election. And even if she doesn’t, she could still win: She famously lost the Republican primary in 2010 to tea party-challenger Joe Miller but went on to win the general election after more than 100,000 Alaskans voted for her as a write-in candidate — in part, due to ads that taught voters how to correctly spell her name.
ABC News’ Chris Donovan and Tracy Wholf contributed to this story.
(WASHINGTON) — Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney has gone from House GOP leadership to party gadfly in the span of just over 18 months as she stands out as the loudest Republican critic of former President Donald Trump — which could cost her her job in Tuesday’s primary
After first winning election in 2016, Cheney quickly rose through the ranks to become the No. 3 House Republican, with rumored aspirations toward the speakership. She was also one of Trump’s most reliable votes in Congress, backing him on nearly every issue, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Yet her continued, impassioned rebukes of Trump and his allies over last year’s insurrection brought an even swifter political downfall — one that saw her booted from her leadership perch and her state party, an increasingly isolated apostate in a party still led by Trump.
“She could have cruised to another term if she had just kept her head in the sand like everybody else did,” Mark Christensen, a former Campbell County commissioner and Cheney ally, told ABC News. “But she’s not really the person who does that. She’s not really that person who shies away from a fight.”
Cheney began her House career boasting a legendary last name in Republican politics and sterling conservative credentials.
After an earlier false start as a candidate — seeking a Wyoming Senate seat in the 2014 cycle — she won Wyoming’s only House seat in 2016, the same year Trump won the White House.
While she did note during her campaign that she and Trump differed on foreign policy, she focused much of her bid on domestic issues, lambasting former President Barack Obama and even hinting that she was open to joining the hardline House Freedom Caucus, which today is filled with some of her most vocal detractors.
“Wyoming needs a strong voice in Congress to lead the effort to undo the devastating policies of the last seven and a half years and restore our freedom. I will be that voice,” Cheney said after winning her primary that year. “I will be that leader.”
Two years later, after winning only her second House term, she was elected by Republican members to be their conference chair, making her the third-highest ranking GOP lawmaker in the chamber.
While campaigning for the leadership spot, she pushed for the implementation of an aggressive messaging platform for the party.
“We need to be able to drive our message across all platforms,” she said at the time. “We need to own the daily news cycles. We need to lead and win the messaging wars. Too often we have found ourselves playing catch up without access to useful information, and we have not been on offense. Constantly playing defense in the battle of communications is a recipe for failure. We need to work as a team to use all our messaging tools to drive our agenda.”
Her rapid rise fueled whispers she had her eye on the speakership one day. That chatter only grew when she decided to stay in the House in 2020 rather than run for an open Senate seat, which many considered to be hers for the taking.
During her first two terms in Congress, Cheney built a staunchly conservative record, voting with Trump nearly 93% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis. And while disagreements with the then-president flared over foreign policy, Cheney did not stand out as a major roadblock to his messaging or domestic agenda.
On top of that, her allies in Wyoming recall having someone in the House who would keep a strong eye on local issues.
“With Liz, we actually would have in-depth policy discussions and then we would discuss together what our approach was going to be for, say, approaching Interior on a policy or something with Department of Energy or something else. And then not only that, she would actually do the follow up herself and then we hear back from her again, too. And I never got that from any other elected official,” said Christensen, the former county commissioner.
Yet last year’s Capitol attack marked an inflection point for Cheney, who made underscoring Trump’s role with the mob a focal point of her work — transforming her political fortunes nearly overnight.
She quickly and repeatedly denounced Trump and, when she was still the conference chair, became the highest-ranking Republican to vote for his impeachment. She later agreed to serve as the vice chair of the select House committee investigating the riot and the former president’s unfounded election fraud claims, lending it a sheen of bipartisanship.
While Cheney has traveled to Wyoming for smaller campaign events, the highly publicized work of the Jan. 6 panel swamped her travels — landing her in hot water both in Washington, where House Republicans were angered at her focus on Trump (who insists he did nothing wrong), and in Wyoming, a state he won with 70% of the vote in 2020.
“After she jumped in on the Jan. 6 thing, and she jumped in on the impeachment … she was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t meeting with the people. She doesn’t care about us,” local voter Myrna Burgess told ABC News.
Cheney’s political peril was put into stark relief when Trump endorsed Harriet Hageman in September and made ousting Cheney a top priority as part of his ongoing campaign of retribution against GOP lawmakers who turned against him.
“Unlike RINO [Republican in name only] Liz Cheney, Harriet is all in for America First. Harriet has my Complete and Total Endorsement in replacing the Democrats number one provider of sound bites, Liz Cheney. Make America Great Again!” Trump said in a statement at the time.
Cheney allies insist she’s still the right person for the job, casting her reelection bid as a broader fight for the direction of the GOP.
“This is bigger than one person’s presidency. This is our Constitution. This is our history. This is what we’re going to be remembered for. And that’s exactly what Liz is remembering,” Republican state Rep. Landon Brown told ABC News. “And there’s a lot of people in my district alone, but as well as other people out there, that they feel the exact same way.”
Cheney has focused her campaign messaging around that theme, shedding the Republican red meat that characterizes other House campaigns and adopting a more forward-looking lens.
“Here’s my pledge to you: I will work every day to ensure that our exceptional nation long endures. My children and your children must grow up in an America where we have honorable and peaceful transitions of power. Not violent confrontations, intimidation and thuggery. Where we are governed by laws and not by men. Where we are led by people who love this country more than themselves,” Cheney said in her closing ad.
Yet in a sign of her increasingly rough chances in a state where voters can change their registration the day of the primary, her campaign has been advertising how non-Republicans can back her.
Jim King, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming, put it bluntly: “There aren’t enough Democrats.”
As FiveThirtyEight has noted, public polling in the race has been sparse but favors Hageman. Speculation has already begun over where Cheney’s future ambitions lie beyond the House, including among her supporters, some of whom maintain that the possibility of defeat is really just a hidden victory.
“This race is the first battle in a much larger and longer war that Liz is going to win, because the future of the country depends on it,” said one ally. “And, regardless of what the results in this election turn out to be, she is going to lead a broad coalition going forward of Americans across the political spectrum who will stand up for freedom and restore the foundational principles that Donald Trump continues to dangerously undermine.”
Cheney has been rumored as a potential 2024 presidential candidate who could run as an anti-Trump Republican. And while she insists she’s focused on her reelection, she hasn’t ruled out a future White House run.
“I don’t know if she’d want to stay in politics. She could probably go to Virginia and may get back in, but I don’t know if she would get the Republicans support if she came back. I don’t know what she’d do,” said Natrona County Commissioner Paul Bertoglio. “I feel almost gut-punched because I really like her. And I am sorry that she’s most likely going to lose. And that’s self-inflicted.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden plans to sign the Democrats’ massive climate, health and tax bill into law on Tuesday at the White House, marking a major accomplishment for his domestic agenda less than three months before midterm elections.
Biden will deliver remarks and sign the bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, at an event in the White House’s State Dining Room, the White House announced Monday.
It will likely be a smaller ceremony, with most members of Congress involved in the bill’s passage out of town, with Congress out of session.
Taking advantage of some political momentum, Biden is interrupting his vacation in South Carolina for the signing, just days after the House approved the measure, following Senate passage by just one vote amid some political drama.
A larger celebration is being planned for Sept. 6.
The White House also said that, “in the coming weeks,” Biden will host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the new law and will also travel across the U.S. to promote it.
The Biden administration has planned a cross-country rollout campaign for the legislation, which aims to make prescription drugs and health insurance cheaper; invest in clean energy and curb climate change; raise taxes on the wealthy; and cut the deficit.
Starting this week through the end of August, Cabinet members plan to travel to 23 states, on more than 35 trips, to tout the “Inflation Reduction Act,” according to the White House.
The administration also plans to roll out information online and on social media about the legislation’s impact, and to collaborate with members of Congress to host hundreds of events, the White House said.
The blitz will highlight will highlight other major legislative wins as well as part of a “Building a Better America Tour.”
In a memo the White House made public from Senior Adviser Anita Dunn and Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon to Chief of Staff Ron Klain, the administration plans to not only tout passage of the IRA, but also the CHIPS Act aimed at boosting the U.S. semi-conductor industry over China’s and easing a pandemic-cause shortage, the bipartisan gun control bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Ahead of Tuesday’s signing, the White House on Monday put out what it said would be the IRA’s impact.
According to the White House, about 1.4 million Americans who are on Medicare who usually spending more than $2000 per year on prescription drugs will see their costs capped at that amount. Overall, it says, there are about 50 million Americans on Medicare Part D who are eligible for that cost cap.
The White House said. there are about 3.3 million Americans on Medicare who use insulin, who will benefit from the new $35 monthly price cap.
The White House also estimates about 5-7 million Americans could see their prescription drug costs decrease once Medicare begins negotiating costs.
Lower Obamacare premiums will be extended for the 13 million Americans insured under that program, the White House said.
And the White House also claims greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by a billion metric tons in 2030 thanks to the IRA.
ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department said in a new court filing Monday that it opposes an effort by multiple media organizations, including ABC News, to unseal the supporting affidavit behind the now-public search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
“There remain compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed,” the filing states.
In a footnote, department officials write that they “carefully considered” whether they could release the affidavit with redactions, but the redactions necessary to “mitigate harms to the integrity of the investigation would be so extensive as to render the remaining unsealed text devoid of meaningful content, and the release of such a redacted version would not serve any public interest.”
However, if the magistrate judge were to order the partial unsealing of the affidavit, “the government respectfully requests an opportunity to provide the Court with proposed redactions.”
The department also says that it does not object to the unsealing of other materials filed in connection with the search warrant, “whose unsealing would not jeopardize the integrity of this national security investigation,” but with minor redactions to protect government personnel. This would consist of “cover sheets associated with the search warrant application, the government’s motion to seal, and the Court’s sealing order.
The government has filed those under seal and is asking the court to unseal them.
Further explaining their request to keep the underlying affidavit sealed, prosecutors note it “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.”
They briefly detail some of the information in the affidavit that has been reviewed by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, noting that, “it contains, among other critically important and detailed investigative facts: highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government; specific investigative techniques; and information required by law to be kept under seal” under grand jury rules.
“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,” prosecutors note — highlighting stories regarding an increase in threats to law enforcement that has followed the search of Mar-a-Lago.
“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,” the filing states. “The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential for harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or improperly.”
The unsealing could also impact the civil liberties of those whose actions are detailed in the underlying affidavit, prosecutors said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(PHOENIX, Ariz.) — Republican candidate for Arizona governor Kari Lake, a former Phoenix news anchor who has seized the conservative spotlight in recent weeks, was careful not to forget former President Donald Trump when she joined Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a rally Sunday, even as DeSantis seeks to raise his national profile ahead of a potential presidential run against Trump.
“Someone said, ‘Kari, you’re going to be the DeSantis of the West,’ Lake said to an adoring crowd that organizers said numbered up to 4,000 supporters. “Honestly, other than being called ‘Trump in a dress,’ that is the greatest compliment you could pay me, and I appreciate that. And that means that you know what you will get with me — you’re gonna get somebody who fights for you every single day.”
Outside the rally in downtown Phoenix, notably located in Maricopa County — the state’s most populous– MAGA supporters dressed in “Trump-DeSantis” gear, with “Vote Lake & Blake” signs and chanting “Let’s Go Brandon!” lined up for several hours in more than 100-degree heat. The first man in line said he’d been there since 3 a.m. local time to see DeSantis headline the event with Lake and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, also endorsed by Trump.
The “Unite and Win” rally was hosted by Turning Point Action, a conservative youth group founded in Arizona by activist Charlie Kirk, who blasted the FBI for escalating what he called a “paperwork dispute” with Trump.
“They raided our president’s home. There is no going back from this everybody,” Kirk said. “The raid at Mar-a-Lago only makes me like Donald Trump even more,” prompting many in the crowd to a standing ovation in apparent agreement.
Notably, both Trump-backed Abe Hamadeh, candidate for Arizona attorney general, and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, who like Lake and Masters espouse without evidence Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, were not on the schedule with DeSantis, though the four ran as a primary slate. But Finchem, who has previously identified as an Oath Keeper and was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, was front row and center in the audience, and people cheered for him as he walked up to the venue.
DeSantis stopped earlier in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and delivered a similar stump-like speech in Phoenix Sunday, ticking through his anti-COVID, anti-transgender policies in Florida and criticizing the federal government, all without once mentioning Trump’s name.
“I think the difference between today and when [President Ronald] Reagan was here is these federal agencies have now been weaponized to be used against people the government doesn’t like. And you look at the raid at Mar-a-Lago, and I’m just trying to I’m trying to remember, maybe someone here can remind me, about when they did a search warrant at Hillary’s house in Chappaqua,” DeSantis said, going on to sow doubt in the federal government’s top law enforcement agency.
Republicans across the board were quick to defend the former president when the FBI conducted a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, with Arizona candidates, including Lake and Rep. Paul Gosar, leading calls to “defund the FBI” two years after the GOP lambasted Democrats for “defund the police” slogans in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. As the federal agency says it’s fielding threats to agents, dozens of individuals gathered outside the FBI field office in Phoenix to protest the raid one day before DeSantis dropped in.
“They’re enforcing the law based on who they like and who they don’t like. That is not a republic. Well maybe it’s a banana republic, when that happens,” DeSantis said.
For her part, Lake has blasted the raid on TV hits on conservative media outlets and on Twitter, all but suggesting Arizona should secede from the country, but only briefly mentioned the Trump search in her half-hour remarks, tacked onto an attack on Democrats for passing the Inflation Reduction Act and in support of arming school resource officers.
“They decided to hire 87,000 armed IRS agents to go after us in case we’re late on our taxes. Can you imagine if they hired 87,000 school resources and armed them? We’d have safe schools,” she said. “And then these people sent politically motivated, federal agents to President Donald Trump’s home and raided it. How dare they? Joe Biden, we have had enough,” she went on, shaking her finger.
Lake laced her stump speech with praise for DeSantis for being a “fighter” in his response to COVID-19 mandates and criticized California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who she called, “Witch-mer,” in Trump-like name-calling.
“Amidst all of the insanity, there was one governor who stood out in the crowd and he was talking about he’s right up there, right now. And his name is Governor Ron DeSantis,” she said to cheers.
But when she added that he had what she called “BDE” — “Big DeSantis Energy” — she made sure to say Trump has it, too, careful not to fall out of favor with her most famous supporter.
“[DeSantis] has a backbone made of steel. I’ll tell you what he’s got. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but he’s got the B-D-E,” Lake said. “Ask your kids about it later. I call it ‘Big DeSantis Energy.’ Right? He’s got the same kind of BDE that President Trump has.”
Returning her enthusiasm, DeSantis met Lake’s call on border security, a top campaign issue as she’s said she’ll declare an invasion on “Day One.” He said he told Lake, “Look, if you’re willing to put people on that border and keep them from coming in to begin with, I’ll send National Guard to help with that,” to roaring applause.
Before invoking the Bible in his closing, the Florida governor called on the crowd to “have the courage to stand in the way of the Brandon administration.”
DeSantis will make stops later this week in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which governor’s candidate Doug Mastriano said Saturday he would like to make “the Florida of the North,” to boost Republican candidates in battleground states ahead of the midterm elections including his own. But leaving his home state to do so further suggests he’s testing the waters for something bigger.
“There’s no doubt Ron DeSantis is the second biggest draw in the Republican Party. But Trump is still the biggest draw. And right now, they do have a common goal of electing people like Kari Lake,” said Barrett Marson, a longtime Republican strategist in Arizona.
“There’s room enough to have two national supporters in these races. It’s not like the battle between Pence and Trump, where they took opposite candidates. Here, they’re on the same team,” he told ABC News, referring to races like the governor’s primary in Arizona where former Vice President Mike Pence backed a candidate competing with Trump’s.
DeSantis’ rallies, announced last Monday morning, still risk being overshadowed by the Mar-a-Lago search that has dominated headlines since last Monday night. Trump, DeSantis’ primary opponent if both decide to run, continues to tease announcing his bid own before the November midterms — and while he’s fielding a barrage of legal issues.
Asked this week about Trump saying that he would not oppose the release of documents related to the search, Lake told ABC News the “overreach” would only encourage more MAGA supporters to get out and vote.
Her first public reaction was a lengthy statement on Twitter calling the Biden administration an “illegitimate, corrupt Regime” which “hates America and has weaponized the entirety of the Federal Government to take down President Donald Trump,” adding, “We must fire the Federal Government.”
Masters tweeted the search was “politically motivated” and “should terrify us all.” And DeSantis, for his part, tweeted: “The raid of [Mar-a-Lago] is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves.”
Their Democratic opponents in November, aside from Kelly who declined to comment, criticized both the reaction and the rallies.
“Ron DeSantis is traveling the country campaigning for 2020 election deniers,” tweeted Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor seeking the Democratic nomination to run against DeSantis. “He’s running for president by mobilizing the same people who tried to overthrow our democracy.”
Secretary of State and Democratic nominee for Governor Katie Hobbs, who Lake has called on to resign as she runs for governor, said in a statement, “Far from putting ‘America First,’ Kari’s repeated calls to defund law enforcement and her talk of secession are dangerous and belong nowhere near our state’s highest office.”
Lake and Masters joined Trump for a July rally in Prescott Valley, historically the most Republican county in Arizona, ahead of the state offering Trump his most successful primary night of the season.
ABC News’ Miles Cohen and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — On the one-year anniversary Monday of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, House Republicans and the Biden administration quarreled over who is to blame for the series of events that led to the Taliban victory and the handling of the chaotic withdrawal of 120,000 Afghans.
A 121-page report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee that investigated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan blames the Biden administration for failing to plan accordingly for what would happen once all U.S. troops left the country. The report, in which committee Democrats did not participate, was made available to ABC News and other news outlets ahead of its public release.
Ahead of that release, the White House issued a memo denouncing the Republican investigation as a “partisan report” that “is riddled with inaccurate characterizations, cherry-picked information, and false claims.”
“It advocates for endless war and for sending even more American troops to Afghanistan,” Adrienne Watson, the National Security Council’s top spokeswoman, said in the memo. “And it ignores the impacts of the flawed deal that former President Trump struck with the Taliban.”
Citing a lack of cooperation from the Biden administration, the report relied on open source reporting, independent interviews with former officials, and interviews with U.S. military commanders included in U.S. Central Command’s investigation of the Abbey Gate suicide bomb attack at Kabul’s airport that killed 13 American service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians.
“The choices made in the corridors of power in D.C. led to tragic yet avoidable outcomes: 13 dead service members, American lives still at great risk, increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe,” said the Republican report.
In its response, the NSC said Biden’s decision reflected the tough choice he had to make to either “ramp up the war and put even more American troops at risk, or finally end the United States’ longest war after two decades of American presidents sending U.S. troops to fight and die in Afghanistan.”
The Republican report claims President Biden was “likely aware” that his stated reasons for withdrawing from Afghanistan were “inaccurate” when he announced the withdrawal in April 2021 and that he ignored recommendations by U.S. military commanders that it would be prudent to keep a small U.S. military presence of at least 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.
“The decision to withdraw U.S. military forces was made by President Biden, despite advice from his military commanders that such a move could lead to Taliban battlefield gains,” said the report.
Watson also pushed back on that claim, citing congressional testimony last fall by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley that leaving a force of 2,500 would have likely led to a troop increase if the Taliban targeted U.S. forces.
The Republican report criticizes the Biden administration for not having prepared for the quick Taliban takeover of Kabul saying President Biden “was warned repeatedly that the return of the Taliban was a question of when, not if.” Meanwhile, the White House response shifted blame to the Doha agreement negotiated by the Trump administration said “empowered the Taliban and weakened our partners in the Afghan government.”
In the two weeks after the fall of Kabul, 120,000 Afghan civilians were evacuated as part of a hastily-planned U.S. military airlift, but those that left were the lucky ones who were able to clear Taliban checkpoints and U.S. military entrances to Kabul’s airport.
The chaotic images of thousands of Afghan civilians attempting to be allowed into the airport became the signature image of that withdrawal.
The Republican report blamed the State Department for not planning accordingly earlier in the year and noted that at the peak of the withdrawal there were only 36 U.S. consular officers at the airport to process the claims of the tens of thousands ultimately evacuated.
Only a small number of those who were evacuated had received for applied for the Special Immigrant Visas (SIV’s) offered to Afghans who served as interpreters or contractors working for the United States. More than 77,000 Afghans who applied for those visas remain inside Afghanistan and the report criticizes the Biden administration for not developing a plan for how to get them out of Afghanistan.
The report also disclosed the previously undisclosed figure that more than 800 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan since last year, a much larger number than the 100 to 200 Americans that the administration had claimed were still in the country at the end of the chaotic withdrawal.
Republicans also disclosed that a “significant” number of highly trained Afghan commandos crossed into Iran seeking refuge after the Taliban takeover and expresses concerns that they “could be recruited or coerced into working for one of America’s adversaries that maintains a presence in Afghanistan, including Russia, China, or Iran.”
The report described last week’s CIA drone strike that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri as proof that Afghanistan has once again become a safe haven for terrorists.
But the White House responded that the Zawahiri strike showed that the U.S. did not need a troop presence to go after the top terrorist leader and cited a U.S. intelligence assessments that al Qaeda has not reconstituted itself in Afghanistan. According to that assessment, there are only 12 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and only Zawahiri has attempted to restart operations in Afghanistan.
