Politics

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden used to steadfastly avoid uttering the name, “Donald Trump.”

But now, bolstered by stronger poll numbers and relatively positive economic news, Biden as of late has been seeking to make the midterm elections a referendum on the former president — and the extreme ideas he says Trump’s supporters espouse.

“There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the ‘MAGA Republicans,’ and that is a threat to this country,” Biden said Thursday during a prime-time speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

His remarks represented the culmination of weeks of ramped-up rhetorical attacks on not all Republicans but Trump-loyal Republicans, whom he has blasted as “ultra-MAGA Republicans” and “MAGA extremists.”

Last week, he said “the entire philosophy that underpins” the GOP was akin to “semi-fascism.”

Trump complicates Republican strategy

Biden has increasingly sought to portray Americans’ choice this November as one between light and darkness — with Trump and his supporters representing “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” as he said Thursday.

“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards,” Biden said. “Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”

And he has been helped by Trump, whose actions have put him in a less-than-positive light.

Since the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump has publicly fought back — even making the raid public in the first place. His haphazard approach has led to sensational headlines as the Justice Department pushes back on his claims.

By holding onto hundreds of documents — many allegedly classified — in the first place, the former president has left Republican candidates who want to look tough on crime struggling to answer for those in their party publicly attacking the FBI, all while U.S. intelligence agencies are assessing the fallout.

“I think that Trump is making this a referendum on himself by the way he’s behaving, and it’s causing a lot of problems for other Republicans,” James Thurber, a professor of government emeritus and author who founded American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, told ABC News. “He’s the story, rather than inflation and other issues they’re accusing the Democrats of failing on.”

Fortunes reverse for Biden

Historically, midterm elections have served as a referendum on the current president. And this year’s did not look good for Biden, who faced sagging poll numbers, roadblocks on Capitol Hill and Democratic candidates who signaled they did not want him to join them on the campaign trail.

But in just a few months, he’s notched up a string of legislative victories: a historic climate, health and tax package; a gun reform law; hundreds of billions to boost the domestic semiconductor industry; and new protections for veterans. Last year’s $1.9 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, whose results are now starting to materialize.

By overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away the constitutional right to an abortion, the Supreme Court has energized voters — with signs Democrats could benefit this fall.

Last week, a Democrat who declared “choice is on the ballot” won a special congressional election in upstate New York, and last month, voters in traditionally conservative Kansas voted to protect abortion rights.

Biden has benefited from his own rapidly rising poll numbers, after suffering record-low approval ratings earlier this year. In a Quinnipiac University survey conducted Aug. 25-29, 40% of Americans said they approved of the job Biden was doing, up 9% from the month before.

At the same time, Americans are acutely aware of developments surrounding Trump — and most view them in a negative light.

In that same poll, 76% of Americans said they had been following the news about the Mar-a-Lago seizure. Fifty-nine percent said they think Trump acted inappropriately, and 50% said they thought he should be prosecuted on criminal charges.

While Biden has repeatedly deferred questions about the investigation to the Justice Department, he has — by implication — made clear the choice he says voters have.

“In 2020, you and 81 million Americans voted to save our democracy,” he told thousands of supporters at a rally in Maryland last week. “That’s why Donald Trump isn’t just a former president, he is a defeated former president.

“It’s not hyperbole,” he continued. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again.”

Changing economic tides

Biden has also been buoyed by changing economic tides.

For much of his presidency, he has struggled to persuade Americans he had a handle on the economy, as prices for gas and other goods skyrocketed and inflation hit 40-year highs. Presidents historically foot the blame for high gas costs, even though they don’t have much control over them.

But now, prices at the pump have dropped 11 weeks in a row, and there are signs inflation is slowing.

Still, inflation could remain a weak point for Biden, who understands the economy is always a top issue for voters, according to Todd Belt, a professor and expert on the presidency at The George Washington University.

“Republicans wanted to run on inflation and crime,” Belt told ABC News. But Trump retaining government documents and Republicans’ attacks on the FBI have allowed Biden to take the side of law enforcement and look tougher on crime, he said.

“The question is, are there enough voters for whom other issues are more important, such as abortion, such as saving democracy, such as health-care benefits,” that Biden and the Democratic Party can push candidates past the finish line in enough Senate and House elections to retain power in either body, Belt said.

Democrats had long expected to lose control of both the Senate and House, but that dynamic is shifting.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month that Republican “candidate quality” may hurt Republicans’ chances of flipping the Senate — after a handful of Trump-endorsed nominees have stumbled campaigning before the wider, general electorates in their states.

And while Republicans are still favored to gain control of the House, they may pick up fewer seats than originally expected.

Voting to save ‘the soul of the nation’

Making the November midterms a choice between those who want to save democracy — the “soul of the nation,” as Biden has put it — and those he says seek to destroy it fits a central theme Biden has returned to repeatedly for years.

His Philadelphia remarks harkened back to the moment he says he decided to run for president in 2017, when Trump defended white nationalists after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia. Then, Biden declared, “We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation.”

“I ran for president because I believe we were in a battle for the soul of this nation,” he said Thursday. “I still believe that to be true.”

His Philadelphia remarks were deeply partisan in nature, but the White House had insisted the president was holding an “official,” as opposed to political, event, since most a majority of Americans agreed with its theme that “we need to save the core values of our country.”

Biden has shown a particular interest in Pennsylvania; his Thursday trip was the second of three planned in just one week.

His speech may not have reached as many voters’ eyeballs, though, with Penn State football kicking off its season at the same time.

And none of the three largest broadcast television networks aired the speech live nationally; while the networks often show more official addresses like those from the Oval Office, they typically eschew airing speeches that are more political in nature, like Biden’s.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats hope to pick up a Senate seat during a race between Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, and Republican Mehmet Oz. The state has also hosted a hotly contested race for the governor’s mansion, with Trump-supporting Republican Doug Mastriano taking on Democrat Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general.

ABC News’ Mary Bruce and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(PHILADELPHIA) — President Joe Biden, in a rare prime-time speech, condemned Donald Trump and his “MAGA Republicans” as he urged the nation to unite against threats to American democracy.

Biden took the stage shortly after 8 p.m. on Thursday at Independence Historical Park in Philadelphia, where several hundred people were sitting in white lawn chairs and Independence Hall’s facade was lit up in red and blue.

“This is where the United States Constitution was written and debated,” Biden said. “This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known.”

“But as I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault,” he continued. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. So, tonight, I’ve come to this place where it all began, to speak as plainly as I can to the nation about the threats we face, about the power we have in our hands to meet these threats and about the incredible future that lies in front of us if only we choose it.”

The president mentioned his Oval Office predecessor by name as he assailed Republicans who refuse to accept the 2020 election results, defend those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 or want to strip away abortion rights and other privacy concerns.

“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he said. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Pres. Biden: “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” https://t.co/ARxiYL3o54 pic.twitter.com/ttpqDid2HJ

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 2, 2022

Biden made a distinction between the so-called MAGA Republicans and other conservatives, stating “not every Republican embraces that extreme ideology.”

“I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans,” he said. “But there’s no question that the Republican party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans and that is a threat to this country.”

Biden’s urgent rhetoric mirrors his 2020 messaging, in which he presented himself as a clear contrast to Trump and the race itself as an inflection point for the nation.

He made that comparison again Thursday, telling the crowd: “Now America must choose to move forward or to move backward, to build a future obsessed about the past, to be a nation of hope, unity, and optimism or a nation of fear, division and of darkness.”

Administration officials had teased Biden’s speech as an extension of his “soul of the nation” message, which first emerged in 2017 after white nationalists clashed with counter protesters in Charlottesville, West Virginia — the incident Biden said inspired him to run for president.

Biden on Thursday said all Americans are called by “duty and conscience to confront extremists” and to reject political violence.

“We are still at our core a democracy, and yet, history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy,” he said.

Pres. Biden: “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: Either they win, or they were cheated. And that’s where the MAGA Republicans are today.” https://t.co/ARxiYL3o54 pic.twitter.com/b417lzzwBp

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 2, 2022

Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia is his second of three stops in the battleground state of Pennsylvania this week alone.

At Wilkes University, where made the case Tuesday for his administration’s plan for policing and crime prevention, Biden went after MAGA Republicans for their response to the Jan. 6 attack and the FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

“For God’s sake, whose side are you on? Whose side are you on?” a fired-up Biden asked.

The GOP issued a preemptive rebuttal of Biden’s remarks, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaking in Scranton (Biden’s hometown) just hours before the president took the stage in Philadelphia.

McCarthy criticized Democrats on inflation, crime and the border before demanding Biden “apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists” after the president previously described the ideology being adopted by MAGA Republicans as “semi-facism.”

“What Joe Biden doesn’t understand is that the soul of America is the tens of millions of hard working people, loving families, and law-abiding citizens whom he vilified for simply wanting a stronger, safer, and more prosperous country,” McCarthy said.

“The soul of America is not the ruling class in Washington, it is the law-abiding, tax-paying American citizen,” McCarthy said. “The soul of America is our determination to get up and go to work everyday, provide for our families, to love our children, be involved in their education and ensure that this nation and its people always come first.”

– ABC News’ Justin Gomez, Mary Bruce, Sarah Kolinovsky and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection sent a letter to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Thursday seeking information and records related to what it said were his conversations and communications with former President Donald Trump’s team before and after the attack on the Capitol.

In its letter, the committee said it had obtained emails from Gingrich, an influential Republican, to Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Miller offering talking points and direction for television ads about election fraud in December of 2020.

The panel specifically said those communications were sent after Trump’s voter fraud allegations “were shown to be false.”

“The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.] . . . If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors,” Gingrich wrote in an email, according to the panel.

In its letter, the committee said Gingrich repeatedly emailed then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows before and after the attack with questions about coordination of a push to send fake electors to the Electoral College and letters from state legislators regarding the electors — including after the mob was cleared from the Capitol.

“On the evening of January 6th, you continued to push efforts to overturn the election results. You emailed Mr. Meadows at 10:42 p.m., after the Capitol had been cleared of rioters and members of Congress had returned to finish certifying the election results, and asked, ‘[a]re there letters from state legislators about decertifying electors[?]'” the committee wrote.

“Accordingly, you appear to have been involved with President Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of the election results, even after the attack on the Capitol.”

The committee requested a voluntary interview with Gingrich the week of Sept. 19.

“A full and accurate accounting of what happened on January 6th is critical to the Select Committee’s legislative recommendations. And the American people deserve to understand the relevant details of what led to the attack,” the panel wrote.

The committee has previously sought information from aides to Gingrich who did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

In December 2020, the committee said, Gingrich emailed senior Trump aides urging the campaign to run national television ads promoting the conspiracy theory that Georgia election workers smuggled suitcases full of ballots into State Farm Arena.

Senior Justice Department officials at the time, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, told the committee and said publicly that they investigated this and other claims of election fraud, and found no merit to them.

“We looked at the tape, we interviewed the witnesses,” former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue told the committee about his conversation with former President Trump about the claims. “I said, ‘No sir, there is no suitcase. You can watch the video over and over. There is no suitcase.'”

The letter to Gingrich, a prominent Trump ally, is a reminder of the House committee’s work while much of the national attention is on the unprecedented FBI raid on Trump’s Florida residence as part of an investigation into his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

The panel is expected to resume public hearings at some point this month after already publicly interviewing several former Trump administration officials and rioters.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department’s Tuesday night court filing in its ongoing investigation into classified documents stored at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate included previously unreleased details about the probe — but perhaps none were as revealing as an FBI photograph of documents recovered from Trump’s personal office during the bureau’s August 8 raid.

Since the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, some members of Trump’s team have downplayed the documents he kept at the resort as keepsakes that contained little sensitive information. But the photo released by Justice Department appears to refute those claims, showing document after document clearly labeled Secret and Top Secret.

In a court filing Wednesday evening, attorneys for Trump criticized the photo and its inclusion in the brief the government filed opposing Trump’s request for a special master to review the retrieved documents.

“The Government’s Response gratuitously included a photograph of allegedly classified materials, pulled from a container and spread across the floor for dramatic effect,” the filing said. “The Government pretends these are not historically important moments, telling this Court that not only does it object to a Special Master, but that the Movant should have no opportunity to challenge any aspect of this behavior and decision-making.”

While portions of the FBI photo are redacted, a close review of the image reveals new clues about the kind of classified materials the former president was continuing to hang onto even after the Justice Department had issued a subpoena for their return.

Classified cover sheets

The photo shows numerous documents on the floor of Trump’s personal office, including colored-coded cover sheets baring classification markings in big, bold lettering.

“An examination of these cover sheets alone tells you a lot,” Douglas London, a 34-year CIA veteran, told ABC News regarding the DOJ photo. “As the most important intelligence customer, it should be no surprise that the president receives the most sensitive information — and that’s reflected in these documents.”

The markings on the cover sheets include “TOP SECRET/SCI,” which refers to Sensitive Compartmented Information classified as national intelligence “concerning or derived from intelligence sources,” according to a separate document from the Director of National Intelligence reviewed by ABC News. This material may come from allies or informants, or from spying or eavesdropping.

A cover sheet near the bottom center of the photo also appears to show a “HCS-P/SI/TK” classification marking. HCS-P refers to HUMINT Control System, which is “designed to protect intelligence information derived from clandestine human sources, commonly referred to as “human intelligence.” SI, or Special Intelligence, refers to a Sensitive Compartmented Information control system “designed to protect technical and intelligence information derived from the monitoring of foreign communications signals by other than the intended recipients,” according to the FBI.

London, who is also the author of “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” said, “If HCS is on the cover sheet, it means at least some of that information was drawn from human sources. And HCS-P is sensitive even by human source standards.”

“Without being melodramatic, anything that helps an adversary identify a human source means life and death,” he said. “People’s lives are truly at stake.”

There is also a handwritten marker next to the document that reads “2A,” which appears to refer to “Item 2A” on the property receipt that was given to Trump’s lawyers following the search. On the receipt, “Item 2A” is described as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents.”

Dates on documents

Even though the contents of the documents can’t been seen in the photo, the dates on some documents are visible. While it’s not clear how or if the dates correlate to the classified information, they could provide potential clues regarding what Trump was publicly dealing with at the time.

Two documents with a “limited access” marker appear to be dated Aug. 26, 2018. While little else about those documents is visible, it’s known that in August 2018, Trump was in the thick of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

The day before Aug. 26, Trump, posting on Twitter, unloaded on Muller and then-attorney general Jeff Sessions, who had by then recused himself from the Russia probe, according to records maintained by The American Presidency Project by UC Santa Barbara.

One month prior to that, Mueller had indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers for hacking and releasing Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign.

In addition, days before Aug. 26, 2018, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was found guilty on eight counts of tax fraud.

Aug. 26, 2018, was also the day after Sen. John McCain died.

A separate document shown in the photo bears the date May 9, 2018, which is the same day Trump gave a speech announcing he was withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

On that same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, which led to Trump announcing that Pompeo would be returning to the U.S. with three Americans who had been released from prison in North Korea.

“I’m very honored to have helped these great folks, but the true honor is going to be if we have a victory in getting rid of nuclear weapons,” Trump said standing on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. “We have a meeting scheduled in a very short period of time. We have the location set. We’ll see if we can do something that people did not think was going to happen for many, many years.”

Trump ended up meeting with Kim the following month at a summit in Singapore, after which Trump announced that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat to America. However North Korea resumed constructing new missiles the following month.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has sentenced former New York Police Department officer Thomas Webster to 10 years in prison for assaulting officers outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot.

The sentence is the longest prison term yet for a defendant in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of Jan. 6, but short of the 17.5 years prosecutors had sought for Webster.

The DOJ had previously released harrowing officer body camera footage that showed Webster, 56, assaulting law enforcement.

The sentencing in D.C. court comes after a jury found Webster guilty on six charges, including assaulting a police officer, in May.

Webster was found guilty of assaulting D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Noah Rathbun, who testified during the trial.

According to testimony and video of the riot, Webster, clad in a bulletproof vest and waving a Marine Corps flag, pushed toward the front of the crowd and yelled at Rathburn to “take your s— off!”

Video shows Webster swing a metal flagpole and breaking apart bike racks that were acting as a police perimeter. As Rathbun backed away, Webster tackled him and then pulled at the officer’s gas mask. Rathbun testified that he began to choke on his chin strap as Webster pulled at the mask. Video shows that Rathbun hit Webster’s face while trying to push him away.

During the trial, Webster claimed that Rathbun had provoked the fight and that he pulled at Rathbun’s mask as a form of self-defense.

Webster was convicted of assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer using a dangerous weapon; civil disorder; entering and remaining in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; engaging in physical violence in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; and engaging in an act of physical violence on Capitol grounds.

During his sentencing, Webster was given three years of supervised probation and ordered to pay $2,060 in restitution.

Judge Amit Mehta chose to apply a 4-level enhancement because Webster was wearing body armor. This alone added 30 months to the minimum sentence he could have received.

Mehta described Webster as an ordinary American, a public servant in the NYPD and the Marine Corps, who “lost everything in a split second.”

While making a statement during his sentencing hearing, Webster wept, saying he should have never come to D.C. on Jan. 6. He said he was overwhelmed and frustrated by his emotions and political rhetoric and should have known to turn away but did not have the courage to do so. He also apologized to Rathbun.

Webster, of the village of Florida, New York, served in the Marine Corps from 1985 to 1989 and as an NYPD officer from 1991 to 2011.

“As a former Marine and retired police officer, Thomas Webster could readily see the growing dangers to law enforcement when he and other members of the mob targeted the Capitol on January 6th,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement Thursday. “He chose to escalate the situation, brutally going on the attack. Today’s sentence holds him accountable for his repeated attacks of an officer that day.”

Webster’s lawyers had argued that Webster’s years of service, “exceptional character,” “impeccable conduct” as a uniformed police officer and “love and devotion to his country” warranted a less severe sentence than the DOJ sought.

ABC News’ Gabe Stern contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — The DOJ and lawyers for former President Donald Trump faced off in a Florida court Thursday on whether there should be a special master review of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.

Lawyers for the Justice Department and former President Donald Trump faced off in a Florida courtroom Thursday over whether there should be a judge-ordered independent review of the documents the FBI seized last month at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Trump’s lawyers had said the third-party review was needed to deal with matters involving potentially privileged materials, including both attorney-client and executive privilege.

But the Justice Department has said a previously-established “filter team” has already finished its review of potentially attorney-client privilege materials that were seized in the raid. They have also urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reject any claims by Trump of executive privilege over the items, noting that his status as a former president means he has no right to continue to possess the documents.

At the end of Thursday’s hearing, Judge Cannon said she would not be ruling from the bench and would enter a written order in due time. She did not give a timeline.

But she indicated she is seriously considering appointing a “special master” to review the documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, an order that would put on hold investigators’ review of the materials.

Cannon, a federal judge nominated by Trump, indicated that if she were to appoint a special master it would not have an impact on the current ongoing assessment by the intelligence community.

The judge asked to hear from one of the lawyers on the government’s filter team that has already gone through the documents. The filter team has not shared what it has deemed to be potentially privileged with investigators.

During the arguments, Trump lawyer Jim Trusty equated Trump’s refusal to return documents to the National Archives and Records Administration to an “overdue library book,” adding that the ongoing dispute with the Archives “has been transformed into a criminal investigation.”

Christopher Kise, who was just recently added to Trump’s legal team, referenced the “significant lack of trust between the parties” and said that the “temperature is very high,” telling the judge that there is a “public lack of faith” in the Justice Department and “real or perceived lack of transparency.”

“We need respectfully to lower the temperature of both sides. We need to take a deep breath,” Kise told the judge.

“This is not a case about some Department of Defense staffer stuffing military papers” in a bag and sneaking out in the middle of the night, Kise said, arguing the documents Trump had in his possession were presidential records in the possession of the president of the United States.

Justice Department lawyer Jay Bratt took issue with that, saying , “He is no longer the president and because he was no longer the president he did not have the right to take those documents.”

“They aren’t his,” Bratt said, referring to the seized documents.

“They have put forth no evidence that there was any disregard for the former president’s rights,” Bratt said.

He told the judge the appointment of a special master would hinder their investigation. He said that doing so could give people access to the documents who didn’t have a right to see them — in other words, back in the hands of the former president.

Bratt said investigators would have no idea where they would be stored and the documents would be given back to people who don’t have the right to access them.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Two former top Trump White House lawyers are expected to appear Friday before a federal grand jury investigating the events surrounding Jan. 6, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, ABC News reported last month.

The move to subpoena the two men has signaled an even more dramatic escalation in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack than previously known. Members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff have also appeared before a grand jury.

Officials with the Department of Justice declined to comment when reached by ABC News. A representative for Cipollone and Philbin also declined to comment.

Sources previously told ABC News that attorneys for Cipollone and Philbin were expected to engage in negotiations around any grand jury appearance, while weighing concerns regarding potential claims of executive privilege.

In July, Cipollone spoke to the House Jan. 6 select committee for a lengthy closed-door interview, portions of which have been shown during two of the committee’s most recent public hearings.

Cipollone spoke to the committee on a number of topics, including how he wanted then-President Donald Trump to do more to quell the riot on the day of the attack, and how Cabinet secretaries contemplated convening a meeting to discuss Trump’s decision-making in the wake of the attack.

Both Cipollone and Philbin have also sat for interviews with the FBI regarding Trump’s handling of documents.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday will speak in prime time about the “soul of the nation” as he ramps ups his political messaging ahead of the midterm elections this November.

Biden is set to make the remarks from outside Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia at 8 p.m. in what will be his second trip to the battleground state this week.

Biden will “speak about how the core values of this nation — our standing in the world, our democracy — are at stake,” according to a White House official.

“He will talk about the progress we have made as a nation to protect our democracy, but how our rights and freedoms are still under attack,” the official said. “And he will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms, and fighting for our democracy.”

The ramped-up rhetoric appears to mirror Biden’s 2020 messaging, in which he presented himself as a clear contrast to Donald Trump and the race itself as an inflection point for the nation.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday’s speech would be in the same vein as his messages to the nation after the Charlottesville clash involving white nationalists and on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol.

Biden has repeatedly cited Charlottesville as the moment he decided he was going to run for president. In a 2017 article for the Atlantic, Biden said the deadly event was indicative that the “giant forward steps we have taken in recent years on civil liberties and civil rights and human rights are being met by a ferocious pushback from the oldest and darkest forces in America.”

“You think about the battle continues, and so what the president believes, which is a reason to have this in prime time, is that there are an overwhelming amount of Americans, majority of Americans, who believe that we need to … save the core values of our country,” Jean-Pierre told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce during Wednesday’s press briefing.

Jean-Pierre pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision striking down abortion rights — in which Justice Clarence Thomas called for the reconsideration of rulings involving same-sex marriage, contraception and other unenumerated rights — as evidence the rights of Americans are in jeopardy.

Biden’s speech Thursday comes after a stop in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, earlier this week, where he went after “MAGA Republicans” for their response to the Jan. 6 attack and the FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

“For God’s sake, whose side are you on? Whose side are you on?” a fired-up Biden pressed as he made the case for his administration’s plan for policing and crime prevention.

More criticisms of his Republican colleagues could be in store, as Jean-Pierre said Biden views MAGA Republicans as the “most energized part of the Republican Party” and won’t be “shy” about speaking out.

“The president thinks that there is an extremist threat to our democracy,” she said on Wednesday.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will be in Scranton ahead of Biden’s speech on Thursday to offer a preemptive rebuttal.

“He will talk about what he has heard from the American people this summer regarding rising crime, record high inflation and other hardships brought on by the Democrats’ harmful policies,” read a media advisory from McCarthy’s team.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Democrat Mary Peltola is projected to win the Alaska special general election for the state’s sole House seat, ABC News reports.

Peltola defeated two Republicans — former Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich — and will be the first Democrat to represent the state in the House in nearly half a century, succeeding Rep. Don Young, who died in March.

Peltola will also be the first Alaska Native to represent the state in Congress.

“What’s most important is that I’m an Alaskan being sent to represent all Alaskans. Yes, being Alaska Native is part of my ethnicity, but I’m much more than my ethnicity,” Peltola said following the announcements of the results according to the Anchorage Daily News.

The election, which was called on Wednesday some two weeks after voting ended, was historic for a more technical reason: It was the first Alaska race that used ranked-choice ballots.

The process — which advocates said would encourage more consensus-building but Palin criticized as “convoluted” — worked like this: If a candidate in the election had initially won more than 50% of first-choice votes, they would have won the race outright. That didn’t happen in the special race on Aug. 17. (Peltola ended up with about 40%.)

Then, the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes — Begich — was eliminated and that candidate’s voters instead had their ballots redistributed to their second choice until one candidate got at least 50%.

Peltola is an indigenous Yup-ik Alaskan and former member of the Alaska House of Representatives. As a state lawmaker, she chaired the bipartisan Bush Caucus of rural politicians. In addition, she served in the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission before leaving for her congressional campaign.

On the trail, she prioritized climate change, responsible resource development and infrastructure for airports, ferries, highways and energy grids.

Peltola will only serve the remainder of Young’s term, which ends in January. She is on the ballot again in November — along with Palin and Begich — to try and win a full two-year term.

In a statement Wednesday, Palin repeated her criticism of ranked-choice voting, saying it “was sold as the way to make elections better reflect the will of the people” but that it has the “opposite” effect.

She said that “though we’re disappointed in this outcome, Alaskans know I’m the last one who’ll ever retreat. Instead, I’m going to reload. With optimism that Alaskans learn from this voting system mistake and correct it in the next election, let’s work even harder to send an America First conservative to Washington in November.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to the Justice Department in the dispute over Trump’s request for a “special master” to review materials the FBI seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Trump’s lawyers have argued to a federal judge in Florida that the review is needed to deal with matters they argue could be covered by executive privilege.

Late Tuesday, the Justice Department, ahead of a court hearing Thursday, laid out in extraordinary detail DOJ’s efforts to obtain highly classified records they allege were improperly stored at Mar-a-Lago since Trump’s departure from the White House, and the resistance — which they describe outright as obstructive conduct, that they were met with by Trump’s representatives in their efforts to have them handed over.

Judge Aileen Cannon has indicated she was leaning toward granting a request from Trump’s legal team to appoint a special master to intervene in the ongoing review of documents.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.