(WASHINGTON) — If the Supreme Court upends nearly 50 years of abortion rights as expected, all eyes will be on the White House and a liberal president who has vowed to fight to keep abortion access.
But what can he do, really?
In recent weeks, dozens of abortion advocacy groups, lawyers, providers and lawmakers have huddled to pitch ideas that range from from what advocates call creative to the seemingly far-fetched. The White House has met with many of these officials in recent weeks to hear them out, although it remains tight-lipped on where its legal strategy might be headed.
Could the government lease federal buildings and public lands to abortion clinics? Declare a public health emergency, and offer disaster relief money or health care grants to states anticipating an influx of patients?
What about federal travel vouchers for patients seeking health care in abortion-friendly states, or relaxed import rules for abortion pills made overseas? President Joe Biden, some argue, also could say that banning abortion pills by mail — as some states are trying to do — violates rules on interstate commerce.
“We are all thinking creatively about what administrative solutions might exist,” including increasing the availability of abortion pills, said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity who met with the White House in one of its “listening sessions.”
“But in this specific moment, what I’m looking for from this administration is leadership,” she said.
Complicating much of the issue for the Biden administration are decades-long restrictions on federal spending legislation that prohibits the executive branch from spending money on most abortion services. That prohibition is unlikely to change so long as the Senate remains narrowly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
Still, abortion rights advocates say every idea is on the table. Under Biden’s control, they argue, are powerful institutions, including the Food and Drug Administration, which has approved access to the abortion pill by mail, and Medicaid, the government’s insurance program for low-income families.
That means post-Roe, the United States will likely spend years embroiled in legal battles over abortion, as conservative states bump up against the power of the presidency.
Biden “can’t reverse the Supreme Court with an executive order,” said David Cohen, a professor of law at the Drexel Kline School of Law, who has written in favor of fighting abortion restrictions.
“But there are things that he can do, and ways that he can harness the federal government to increase access, even if some states are trying to limit it,” Cohen said.
Biden hinted as much in an interview last week with ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“I think what we’re going to have to do is that there are some executive orders I could employ, we believe. We’re looking at that right now,” Biden said.
Legal experts predict that much of Biden’s strategy will likely focus on the idea of “federal preemption” — the idea rooted in the Constitution that federal law always wins out over state laws.
For example, it’s possible that Biden might argue that states can’t lawfully restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone because the FDA has already approved its use for all Americans, Cohen said.
Under Biden, the FDA also has determined that the drug is safe enough to prescribe through a telehealth appointment and mail to the patient, even as 19 states restrict the drug to being dispensed in-person.
That decision to allow access to the abortion pill, Cohen argues, “is rooted in federal law because the agency only exists and only has the authorization to authorize a person because of federal law.”
The idea of FDA policy outweighing state restrictions is currently being tested in court. GenBioPro, the manufacturer of generic mifepristone, is challenging Mississippi’s restrictions on the drug as being at odds with federal rules, with a decision expected this summer.
Advocacy lawyers also expect that Biden is working on the idea of expanding access to mifepristone, possibly by easing import restrictions on overseas providers. The drug is widely available in states that don’t restrict abortion, although international organizations like Aid Access have been mailing the drug to any U.S. resident even if a state prohibits it and despite objections by the FDA.
Another focus by Biden could be on Medicaid, the largest insurance payer of pregnancy-related services.
While federal money can’t be used for most abortion services, Medicaid — which the federal government jointly operates with states — is required to pay for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and if a physician certifies the pregnancy would put the patient’s life at risk.
Compliance among states with these rules has been uneven historically, and several conservative legislatures are pursuing laws with stricter exceptions. In Oklahoma, for example, the law only allows abortion in cases of rape and incest if it’s reported to the police, and to save the life of a mother “in a medical emergency.”
It’s possible Biden could take steps to enforce Medicaid’s exceptions as federal law, making it easier for patients to get reimbursed, several advocacy groups predict.
John Yoo, a former top legal adviser to the Bush administration, said he thinks the most consequential step Biden could probably take is leveraging his power over Medicaid and Medicare, as well as the federal health care exchanges governed by the Affordable Care Act. For example, Biden could require that insurers cover abortion services, at least in states where it’s legal.
“I don’t think those (steps) could pre-empt state laws that make it criminal to carry out abortion, but would provide federal support once (a person) could get to a state where abortion was legal,” said Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkley.
Still, Yoo said he thinks Congress would have to lift its restrictions on federal spending on abortion — a provision known as the Hyde amendment — to make that happen.
Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups say what matters most is that Biden is as aggressive as possible.
In a letter to the president, more than two dozen Democrats, including Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, called on Biden to invoke his “unique power to marshal the resources of the entire federal government to respond.”
URGE’s Inez McGuire said even symbolic statements by the president can make a difference.
Declaring that abortion access is a human right is an opportunity for the administration “to let young people know (and) communities of color know … that our struggle to fight for abortion access is seen and understood by this administration,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — In late April, after a year and a half of former President Donald Trump and his associates pushing false claims of election fraud, a few hundred attendees gathered at a golf resort in Williamsburg, Virginia, for an “Election Integrity Summit” organized by Trump allies who were at the forefront of his effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Inside a ballroom at the Kingsmill Resort, Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in the former president’s efforts to hold onto power, took the microphone and urged summit attendees to recruit and create election “task forces” in their communities ahead of the upcoming midterms to avoid a repeat of the last presidential election.
“Imagine if we had had local task forces in these counties? What if we had citizens like you in 2020, overseeing this?” Mitchell said at the private summit, which ABC News attended by purchasing a ticket.
“We could have stopped it,” Mitchell told the crowd. “That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing here tonight.”
‘Task forces’ around the country
The Virginia event is one of the latest in a blitz of summits being held in swing states across the country, led by Mitchell and organized by the “Election Integrity Network,” a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing nonprofit organization that is spearheaded by Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who is a senior partner, and Mitchell, who serves as a senior fellow.
The series of summits comes after Trump, who continues to spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, made donations amounting to $1 million from his political action committee’s war chest to CPI — one of his largest donations in the current election cycle. Despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud, many Republican voters say they agree with Trump’s assertions that the election was “stolen” and “rigged” — with 71% of Republicans agreeing with the former president’s claims that he was the rightful winner, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Meadows, amid the Jan. 6 House committee’s ongoing investigation into the Capitol insurrection, has emerged as a key figure who at times acted as a mediator for Trump as he worked to overturn Biden’s win leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Mitchell made headlines when she was one of the pro-Trump lawyers on the phone call in which the former president demanded of Georgia election officials that they “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s win, which sparked an ongoing investigation.
Now, months out from the 2022 midterms and with an eye on the 2024 presidential election, the group led by Meadows and Mitchell is working to put in place so-called “election integrity task forces” around the country. Their multi-day summits feature recruiting and training sessions for poll watchers and election officers, as well as panels hosted by Mitchell and others speaking on topics ranging from “The Left’s Plans to Corrupt the 2022 Election” to “Voting Systems and Machines” and “Building the Election Integrity Infrastructure.”
So far this year the group has held half a dozen summits in swing states including Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the group’s website. In June the group will host summits in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Tickets start at $30, and influential conservative groups including Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots Action have already participated in previous summits.
Meadows himself was announced to appear as the keynote speaker for summits in Georgia and Arizona, and was listed to speak on “What Happened in 2020 and What We Must Do to Protect Future Elections in Arizona,” according to a schedule posted by the group online. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at a Florida summit hosted by CPI earlier this year, according to social media posts.
Neither Meadows nor Mitchell responded to a request for comment from ABC News. Officials with Trump’s Save America PAC also did not respond to a request for comment.
Inside the summit
The Virginia summit attended by ABC News in late April began with a two-hour “Poll Watcher & Election Officer Training Workshop” led by Clara Belle Wheeler from the conservative group Virginia Fair Elections.
“It takes an army,” Wheeler told the group gathered for the first session of the summit, urging attendees to become poll watchers or election officers ahead of the midterms, and then walking attendees through the process of how to register to volunteer.
Wheeler pointed to the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, won by Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, as a proof of concept heading into 2022.
“We made such an impact in the 2021 election that every major news outlet across the country talked about the army of poll watchers in Virginia,” Wheeler said.
Following the training session, attendees were moved into a ballroom to watch the 42-minute film from Citizens United president and close Trump ally David Bossie called “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” which claims that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg swung the 2020 election through the $419 million he donated to support voter turnout and education efforts. Attendees gave the screening a standing ovation, after which Citizens United’s JT Mastranadi took questions from the crowd.
Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, a bipartisan public policy institute, warned that the efforts by CPI to recruit poll workers and election officers could be dangerous given the rhetoric used and the emphasis placed on false claims about the last election.
“It’s not healthy to recruit folks to either be poll workers or poll watchers with such an extreme hostile level of suspicion towards both election workers and their fellow citizens and their fellow voters,” Ramachandran told ABC News. “Especially because there is no reason to think that there was something that needed to be stopped in 2020. That’s a lie that the election was rigged. So telling people that becoming a poll worker or poll watcher is a way to stop something that that didn’t even happen in the past is just not a healthy way to bring people into the process.”
Ramachandran said that while it’s good that people are engaged in the process and have an interest in how elections are run, “it’s not good to, without context, without understanding, have a bunch of people who’ve been fed a diet of lies for the last year and a half about elections, have them go out and do this sort of [work] without context.”
Mitchell moderated multiple panels during the Virginia summit, including one titled, “The Left’s Plans to Corrupt the 2022 Election with Our Tax Dollars and How to Protect the Vulnerable Votes from Leftwing Vote Manipulators.”
According to a schedule obtained by ABC News, the Virginia summit also included panels featuring Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin and former Trump adviser Mike Roman, who pushed unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud after the 2020 election.
‘Control the local apparatus’
Beyond its own marketing, the summit series has received broad promotion from pro-Trump channels, including extensive promotion on Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon’s popular “War Room” podcast.
Bannon featured multiple guests from the summits, including Mitchell, in the lead-up to the Virginia summit, which he encouraged viewers to attend.
During a “War Room” appearance days before the Virginia event, Mitchell described the program as “arming people to fight back against the radical left,” saying her goal was to “keep them from stealing it ever again.”
“Are these active workshops where they actually understand how to take over and grab hold of and control the local apparatus in their local elections?” Bannon asked Mitchell.
“Absolutely,” Mitchell said. “That’s absolutely what we’re doing.”
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — After nearly two hours on Monday, Chairman Bennie Thompson gaveled out the House Jan. 6 committee’s second hearing this month to publicly unveil the findings of an 11-month-long investigation which found, the committee said, that former President Donald Trump was at the center of a “multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election.”
Monday’s hearing used firsthand accounts from Trump’s inner circle — including his daughter, son-in-law, former campaign manager and former attorney general — to focus on how he pushed the “big lie” of a stolen 2020 race to millions of supporters even though almost all of his advisers — except, most notably, Rudy Giuliani — told him that he had lost to Joe Biden.
The committee said Trump went on to fundraise $250 million off of his baseless claim, which committee members cast as key in compelling people to storm the Capitol in the deadly insurrection last year.
“We will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election and, as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy — an attack on the American people by trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy,” Thompson said at Monday’s hearing. “And in doing so, lit the fuse that led to horrific violence on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, sent by Donald Trump to stop the transfer of power.”
In live and taped testimony, both former Trump administration officials and GOP state election officials recounted telling his White House and his campaign that there was no widespread fraud — but to no avail.
“[Trump] betrayed the trust of the American people. He ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and the country. And he tried to remain in office after the people had voted him out and the courts upheld the will of the people,” Thompson said in his opening statement.
This was the hearing’s central theme: Trump knew his extraordinary efforts to undercut the 2020 election had no merit, but he kept pushing well beyond the limits of normal challenges to the results. Trump, for his part, continues to call the investigation politically motivated and says he did nothing wrong.
Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, outlined on Monday how Trump was urged by some aides not to declare victory on election night and was informed that “many more” Democratic voters would vote by mail, meaning their votes would be coming in more slowly and the results were not yet final — but Trump “rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani,” Cheney said.
Here are some other key takeaways from the hearing.
Trump’s inner circle repeatedly told him claims were false
Using taped testimony from at least 10 individuals, the committee showed how Trump’s closest advisers repeatedly told their boss in the weeks after the election that there was no evidence of widespread fraud, illustrating — according to the committee’s presentation — how Trump knew the truth but ignored it.
At the top of the hearing, the committee played a video compilation of witnesses describing the scene at the White House on election night in 2020 after Fox News called Arizona for Biden — including interviews with Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien (who had to unexpectedly back out of testifying live on Monday after his wife went into labor), as well as Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Ivanka Trump told the committee in previously taped video that she didn’t have a “firm view” of what her dad should have said the night of the election, while his campaign spokesman Jason Miller told investigators that a “definitely intoxicated” Giuliani was pushing for Trump to declare victory. (Giuliani has repeatedly dismissed claims that he has a drinking problem or that alcohol adversely affects his behavior.)
“Effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying we won it,” Miller said in taped testimony of what happened on election night, “and essentially that anyone who didn’t agree to that was being weak.”
Asked during his own pre-recorded testimony if he ever shared his view of Giuliani with the president, and what he told Trump, Kushner recalled telling him, “Basically, not the approach I would take if I were you.”
Asked how Trump reacted, Kushner recalled the president saying, “I have confidence in Rudy.”
In other notable testimony, Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann reiterated that the Trump-backed conspiracy about Dominion voting machines in the weeks after the election was not persuasive. “I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations,” he said after Cheney characterized the allegations as “far-flung conspiracies with deceased Venezuelan communists allegedly pulling the strings.”
But Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr offered some of the most striking testimony on Monday, appearing to revel in the chance to tell his side in taped testimony — though publicly he has walked a fine line: broadly supporting the president while calling out his specific election fraud claims as false.
Barr offers his view of Trump’s thinking
According to video excerpts of Barr’s testimony to the committee that were played Monday, he described a meeting with Trump in late November where he told Trump the president’s allegations of election wrongdoing weren’t holding up. Barr spoke bluntly to House investigators, calling Trump’s statements “bogus and silly,” “idiotic,” “disturbing” and “complete nonsense,” among other characterizations in his testimony.
“I said,” Barr recalled, “the Department [of Justice] doesn’t take sides in elections, and the department is not an extension of your legal team. And our role is to investigate fraud, and we’ll look at something if it’s specific, credible and could’ve affected the outcome of the election. And we’re doing that, and they’re just not meritorious. They’re not panning out.” (As Barr noted, he told DOJ attorneys in the days after the 2020 election to probe possible fraud — an unusual move that Biden’s team at the time argued was meant to undercut his victory.)
After his late-November 2020 meeting, Barr said, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told him that Trump “was becoming more realistic” and Kushner said, ‘We’re working on this.” But Trump did not back down.
The committee then played video of Barr recalling a December meeting with Trump, with Barr recalling that “the president was as mad as I’ve ever seen him, and he was trying to control himself.”
“Trump said, ‘You didn’t have to say this, you must’ve said this because you hate Trump,'” Barr remembered, going on to say he was concerned for Trump’s state of mind.
“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” Barr said he was thinking. “There was never an indication in interest in what the actual facts were.”
Barr also mentioned — and laughed at — the movie “2,000 Mules,” a conspiracy-laden film by conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza that Trump has encouraged supporters to watch.
“I felt that before the election, it was possible to talk sense to the president. And while you sometimes had to engage in, you know, a big wrestling match with him, that it was possible to keep things on track. But I felt that after the election he didn’t seem to be listening,” Barr told the committee. “And I didn’t think it was — you know — that I was inclined not to stay around if he wasn’t listening to advice from me or the Cabinet secretaries.”
Committee establishes ‘Team Normal’ versus Team Rudy
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., helping guide Monday’s hearing for the committee, outlined two competing camps in the Trump team in the days and weeks following the 2020 presidential race.
Lofgren said one side was helmed by Stepien, who was then Trump’s campaign manager, and the other was organized around Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, longtime Trump confidant and one of his personal attorneys.
In his pre-taped testimony, Stepien told the committee that Trump’s growing unhappiness after Election Day “paved the way” for Giuliani, attorney Sidney Powell and others to become more influential. Giuliani and Powell took the lead in spreading false claims about fraud and litigating the issue in court.
“We called them my team and Rudy’s team,” Stepien said. “I didn’t mind being categorized as ‘Team Normal’ as reporters started to do at that point in time.”
Stepien added that he didn’t think what was happening after the election was “honest or professional,” so he stepped away. Herschmann, the former Trump White House lawyer, described the arguments being made by the Giuliani camp as “nuts.”
Stepien and Jason Miller, another top campaign adviser, both testified that Giuliani was the one pressuring Trump to claim victory on election night, when the vote tally was nowhere near complete.
Miller claimed Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” when he made that suggestion.
$250 million fundraised off fraudulent claims of fraud
The committee also outlined, according to their investigation, how little of the $250 million raised by Trump for his court battles after the 2020 race actually went to his post-election defense, with Lofgren calling the “big lie” a “big rip-off.”
“The Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn’t use the money for that,” Lofgren said in her opening statement.
A senior investigative counsel to the committee, Amanda Wick, said in a video played at the end of Monday’s hearing that the committee found the “Official Election Defense Trump” to which Trump repeatedly asked people to contribute money did not, in fact, exist. The committee played excerpts of testimony from two Trump campaign officials appearing to confirm this.
Wick said the campaign sent millions of emails asking supporters to donate, sometimes as many as 25 emails per day.
“As the select committee has demonstrated, the Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false yet they continued to barrage small-dollar donors with emails,” Wick said.
When asked if it was “fair” to say the fund was another “marketing tactic,” former Trump campaign digital director Gary Colby said “yes.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars went into Save America, Trump’s political action committee formed after the 2020 election. The group has given money to Mark Meadows’s charitable foundation, the American First Policy institute, Trump hotel properties and more, according to the Jan. 6 committee.
Cheney previews next hearing
The panel will publicly reconvene on Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET to hold its third televised hearing this month.
While the committee focused Monday on Trump’s actions on Election Day and immediately after, Cheney said the coming days would pan out to his broader planning for Jan. 6.
That will include Trump’s plan to “corrupt” the Department of Justice,” she said, as well as his conversations with attorney John Eastman “to pressure the vice president, state legislatures, state officials and others to overturn the election.”
Cheney then aired a clip teasing a conversation that Herschmann, the White House lawyer at the time, said he had with Eastman.
“I said to him, ‘Are you out of your f—— mind? I said I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition,” Herschmann said in the video.
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As the House Jan. 6 committee’s latest hearings ramp up, they overlap with a set of primary races on Tuesday featuring a slate of Donald Trump-endorsed candidates who support the same “big lie” about the 2020 election that investigators say fueled last year’s insurrection at the Capitol.
The first primary held during the much-watched investigation into last year’s pro-Trump rioting will feature races for Senate, House and gubernatorial seats in Nevada, South Carolina, North Dakota and Maine. Texas will hold a special election for its 34th Congressional District seat.
Many of the races in Nevada include candidates that support the former president’s evidence-free claims that the 2020 election was stolen, while two House candidates in South Carolina who were critical of Trump’s role in Jan. 6 or supportive of his impeachment afterward are now up for competitive races against targeted, Trump-endorsed opponents.
The leading candidate in the Nevada GOP Senate primary is the state’s former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a fervent supporter of Trump. In 2020, he chaired Trump’s reelection campaign in the state and supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Laxalt hails from a political dynasty. His grandfather Paul Laxalt served as a senator for Nevada and his father, Pete Domenici, was New Mexico’s longest-serving senator.
Some of the issues Laxalt is running on include stronger southern border policies, protecting the Second Amendment and changing how elections are conducted — echoing many other conservatives running at the local level who, like Trump, baselessly claim that there is widespread election fraud that needs to be addressed.
Laxalt has not only secured an endorsement from Trump but from other 2024 presidential hopefuls, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
But Laxalt still faces some competition in the primary as Sam Brown, a veteran and businessman, has been rising in the polls. In addition, there is frustration with voters in the silver state who believe Laxalt is too close to the Republican establishment.
While serving in Afghanistan as an Army infantry lieutenant, Brown was wounded by a roadside bomb attack and was sent to Texas to recover from his severe burn injuries.
If Brown does pull off a win on Tuesday, it would be a political upset.
Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto does not face any serious challengers in her primary, but it’s the general election that will test the support she has within Nevada as voters grow frustrated with the first-termer over economic challenges in a tourist-driven state hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent fallout, including rising inflation.
Meanwhile, in the primary races for the House, although it’s expected that all three of Nevada’s incumbent Democrats will survive, the general election may give them all cause for worry. Their seats have been rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report.
Most in danger is Rep. Dina Titus, who said she got “f—–” by the state legislature on how they drew her district.
As for Nevada’s gubernatorial race, all eyes will be on the GOP primary, where Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo is leading the very crowded field. Lombardo — who has plenty of name recognition around the state’s most populated area, Las Vegas — has received an endorsement from Trump.
Nevada’s governor race later this year could potentially be a referendum on incumbent Democrat Steve Sisolak, who has had a somewhat difficult first term. Sisolak had to navigate the onset of COVID, which caused Nevada’s tourism-based economy to suffer.
Meanwhile, the GOP primary for secretary of state is drawing attention to Jim Marchant, the leading GOP candidate in the race who has falsely claimed that Trump won the 2020 election. Marchant’s candidacy is an example of a national trend involving supporters of the “big lie” who are running for offices like secretary of state in order to influence how elections are conducted.
If Marchant wins his primary, he will most likely face off against Cisco Aguilar in November.
On Tuesday in South Carolina, incumbent Republican Reps. Nancy Mace and Tim Rice are the two main objects of Trump’s rage after having denounced him in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.
They’re now up against Trump-endorsed opponents for races the former president has called “two of the most critical primary elections in the country.”
Mace, the freshman congresswoman who just days into her term condemned Trump’s claims about his election being stolen, is being challenged by cybersecurity analyst and former state Rep. Katie Arrington, whom Trump called a “true Republican.”
“I am trying to communicate to my colleagues in Congress that rhetoric has real consequences.” Mace said on ABC News Live on Jan. 6, 2021.
“And in fact, when I came up for this weekend with my children for my swearing in, I actually put them on the first plane home on Monday morning because I was worried about what might happen today because of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing,” she said then.
Mace, running in the state’s 1st District seat, is endorsed by former Trump ambassador and two-term South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Tuesday’s primary may put Haley — a rumored 2024 presidential hopeful — to the test against Trump.
A third candidate on the ballot, Lynz Piper-Loomis, makes a runoff in this race more possible if no candidate receives 50% of the vote.
In South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District, state Rep. Russell Fry has earned the endorsement of Trump against five term Rep. Rice, who has consistently defended his post-Jan. 6 impeachment vote and condemnation of Trump’s role in the insurrection.
Rice’s break with Trump is notable as his district has displayed staunch support for the former president: It voted for Trump by a 19-point margin in 2020.
The special election for Texas’ 34th District seat has been a study in the kinds of races national Democrats and Republicans may deem as winnable — all in a contest to serve just six months in an area carved up by redistricting anyway.
Voters there will head to the polls for a third time this election season to cast a ballot for a short-term representative; this race is separate from the one being decided in November’s general election contest.
The messy electoral timeline was caused by former Rep. Filemon Vela’s decision to resign in March in order to work in the private sector after the Democratic lawmaker already announced he would not seek reelection the year before.
The situation creates a sped-up political calendar for candidates already in the running, while also offering Republicans the opportunity to flex their growing popularity in the heavily Latino area. Meanwhile, national GOP groups appear to be going all-in on the possibility of upending Democrats’ head start ahead of the general election and are pouring money into the race.
National Democrats have largely steered clear of the special election, while Republicans have poured money into the race — just last month spending more than $1 million.
“A Democrat will represent TX-34 in January,” Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement to the Texas Tribune. “If Republicans spend money on a seat that is out of their reach in November, great.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee holds another public hearing Monday — this time focused on the “big lie” pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies — that the committee says fueled those who attacked the Capitol.
The main witness scheduled was Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, but the committee said Monday morning the hearing would be postponed due to a family emergency.
This is how the hearing is unfolding. All times Eastern:
Jun 13, 12:58 pm
Hearing gavels out
After about two hours, Chairman Bennie Thompson gaveled out the House select committee’s second hearing this month meant to unveil their findings from an 11-month long investigation that found Trump at the center of a “multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election.”
Monday’s hearing used video testimony from Trump’s inner circle to focus on how he and his campaign pushed the “big lie” to millions of supporters after the election, and even fundraised millions off the claim, despite knowing he lost.
In one explosive clip, Trump Attorney General Bill Barr described his thinking on Trump in the weeks after the election, saying, “Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with – he’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.’”
Jun 13, 12:56 pm
Cheney previews hearings to come
Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in her closing statement, previewed what Americans can expect to learn in the hearings to come, saying Monday’s hearing was “very narrowly focused,” but in the coming days, the committee will move on to Trump’s “broader planning for January 6.”
“Let me leave you today with one clip to preview what you will see in one of our hearings to come,” Cheney said. “This is the testimony of White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. John Eastman called Mr. Herschmann the day after January 6, and here is how that conversation went.”
“I said to him, are you out of your [expletive] mind? Right?” Herschmann recalled. “I said I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: ‘Orderly transition.'”
Jun 13, 12:52 pm
Philadelphia election official details threats against him, family after Trump tweet
Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia, recounted to the committee receiving threats for pushing back on Trump’s false election claims in Pennsylvania.
Trump called out Schmidt by name in a Twitter post on Nov. 11, 2020, stating Schmidt was a “Republican in name only” who refused to “look at a mountain of corruption and dishonesty.”
Schmidt said he received general threats before Trump’s tweet, but after the post the threats became “much more graphic” and were targeted not only at him but also members of his family.
The committee showed messages Schmidt and his family received, including one that read: “Heads on spikes. Treasonous Schmidts.”
Jun 13, 12:41 pm
Election officials in key states debunk Trump’s fraud claims
After the second panel of witnesses was sworn in, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., started questioning Byung “Bjay” Pak, who served as U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia during the Trump administration and was appointed by Trump.
Pak said Attorney General Bill Barr “asked me to find out what I could” about claims of voter fraud in Georgia raised by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in a public hearing, but said both he and his successor were “unable to find any evidence of fraud which affected the outcome of the election.”
Lofgren then questioned Al Schmidt, the former GOP city commissioner who supervised the 2020 election in Philadelphia, about investigating claims about thousands of dead people voting in Philadelphia.
“Not only was there no evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania — there was not even evidence of eight,” Schmidt said.
Jun 13, 12:27 pm
Hearing gavels in for second panel of GOP witnesses
Chairman Bennie Thompson gaveled the hearing back in shortly after 12:15 p.m. for the second panel of witnesses.
The three witnesses are Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state, Ben Ginsberg, a veteran GOP election lawyer, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia and Trump appointee.
Jun 13, 12:25 pm
New witness confirmed for Wednesday’s hearing
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., confirmed publicly that Rich Donoghue, a former acting Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department, will testify in person before the committee. ABC News has previously reported he was in talks to testify.
Donoghue will appear in Wednesday’s hearing that will focus on Trump’s “pressure” campaign against the Justice Department to investigate fraud, as vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney announced in last week’s hearing.
Chairman Bennie Thompson called a 10-minute recess for the committee’s Monday hearing shortly after noon.
Jun 13, 12:07 pm
Barr recalls being concerned Trump had become ‘detached from reality’
The committee played a video of Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr recalling his December meeting with Trump after he told a media outlet that there was no evidence of election fraud.
“The president was as mad as I’ve ever seen him, and he was trying to control himself,” Barr recalled. Trump said, “‘You didn’t have to say this, you must’ve said this because you hate Trump.'”
“I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality,” Barr said, adding, “There was never any indication in interest in what the actual facts were.”
“I felt that before the election, it was possible to talk sense to the president. And while you sometimes had to engage in, you know, a big wrestling match with him, that it was possible to keep things on track. But I was — felt that after the election he didn’t seem to be listening,” Barr recalled. “And I didn’t think it was—you know, that I was inclined not to stay around if he wasn’t listening to advice from me or the Cabinet secretaries.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D- Calif., teed up several clips of then-Attorney General Bill Barr describing his meeting with Trump in late November about election fraud, noting how “even after [Barr] told him his claims of election fraud were false, President Trump continued to promote these false claims.”
“I said,” Barr recalled, “the department doesn’t take sides in elections, and the department is not an extension of your legal team. And our role is to investigate fraud, and we’ll look at something if it’s specific, credible, and could’ve affected the outcome of the election. And we’re doing that, and it’s just not — they’re just not meritorious. They’re not panning out.”
After that meeting, Barr said Meadows told him Trump “was becoming more realistic,” and Kushner said “we’re working on this.”
Jun 13, 11:56 am
‘Team Normal’ vs. Rudy Giuliani
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D- Calif., said Trump became “frustrated” when briefed on his slim chances to win the election and began to shake up his campaign’s legal team.
Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien said Trump’s unhappiness “paved the way” for Rudy Giuliani to become more influential in the post-election strategy to spread false claims of widespread fraud.
“There were two groups,” Stepien said. “We called them my team and Rudy’s team. I didn’t mind being categorized as ‘Team Normal’ as reporters started to do at that point in time.”
Trump’s White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee he thought the arguments being made by Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others were “nuts.”
Jun 13, 11:43 am
Former Fox News political editor explains ‘red mirage’
Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending his decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden, explained the “red mirage” phenomenon to the committee: how a GOP lead on same-day voting was expected to shrink as Democrat-leaning absentee and mail-in votes were counted.
“Basically, in every election, Republicans win Election Day, and Democrats win the early vote,” he explained. “So, every election, certainly in a national election, you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it is not really a lead.”
Stepien, in videotaped testimony, recalled briefing the president on the “red mirage” phenomenon, adding, “I always told the president of the truth.”
“I told him it was going to be a process,” he said. “We will have to wait and see how this turns out. Just like I did in 2016, I did the same thing in 2020.”
Stepien also recalled a meeting with Trump and attended by House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy in the summer of 2020, where they tried to persuade Trump to encourage supporters to vote by mail, but, “The president’s mind was made up,” Stepien said.
Jun 13, 11:31 am
Ivanka Trump, key witnesses describe election night atmosphere
Chairman Bennie Thompson played a video compilation of witnesses describing the scene at the White House on election night after Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden, using testimony from Trump’s daughter Ivanka, campaign manager Bill Stepien, and attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Ivanka Trump told the committee in her videotaped deposition she didn’t have a “firm view” of what Trump should have said the night of the election.
Stepien told the committee he recalled Rudy Guiliani “was looking to talk to the president” and said that Trump “disagreed” with the assessment that he should not declare victory right then.
Jason Miller, a Trump campaign spokesman, told investigators that “the mayor was definitely intoxicated” and recalled that he was pushing for Trump to declare victory.
“Effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying we won it,” Miller said, “and essentially that anyone who didn’t agree to that was being weak.”
Vice chair Liz Cheney, hitting on that point, added, “President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani.”
Jun 13, 11:28 am
Trump advisers warned him not to declare victory on election night
“It was far too early to be making any calls like that,” Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien told the committee in his video deposition. “Ballots were still being counted, ballots were still going to be counted for days.”
Ivanka Trump also told the committee that it was becoming clear the race would not be called that night.
“To the best of my memory, I was saying that we should not go with declare victory until we had a better sense of the numbers,” former top Trump aide Jason Miller said in his videotaped interview.
Stepien and Miller said it was former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani who pressured Trump to claim victory. Miller alleged that Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” at the time.
The committee then aired a snippet of Trump’s speech on election night, in which he told the crowd: “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this.”
Jun 13, 11:21 am
‘Big lie was also a big ripoff:’ Lawmaker previews fundraising efforts
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said the committee will demonstrate that Trump and his closest advisers knew his claims of election fraud were false, but continued to peddle them anyway, and even fundraised off those claims which “rioters later used to justify attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.”
“We will also show that the Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told the donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn’t use the money for that,” she said.
“‘The big lie’ was also a big ripoff,” Lofgren added, going on to use video of Trump to argue that he “laid the groundwork for these false claims well in advance of the election.”
Jun 13, 11:11 am
Cheney lays out ‘three points’ to establish Trump aware he lost
Using video testimony, vice chair Liz Cheney said the committee will show how Trump and his campaign knew the election was lost but continued to espouse the “big lie,” laying out three points to focus on.
“First, you will hear firsthand testimony that the president’s campaign advisers urged him to await the counting of votes and not to declare victory on election night. The president understood, even before the election, that many more Biden voters had voted by mail because President Trump ignored the advice of his campaign experts and told his supporters only to vote in person,” she said, attempting to illustrate Trump was aware.
“Second, pay attention to what Donald Trump and his legal team said repeatedly about Dominion voting machines,” Cheney said, calling them “Far-flung conspiracies with deceased Venezuelan communists allegedly pulling the strings,” which even Trump Attorney General Bill Barr and White House lawyer Eric Herschmann didn’t believe.
“And third, as Mike Pence’s staff started to get a sense for what Donald Trump had planned for January 6, they called the campaign experts to give them a briefing on election fraud and all the other election claims,” she said. “On January 2nd, the general counsel of the Trump campaign, Matthew Morgan — this is a campaign’s chief lawyer — summarized what the campaign had concluded weeks earlier, that none of the arguments about fraud or anything else could actually change the outcome of the election.”
Jun 13, 11:04 am
Trump White House lawyer debunks conspiracy about Dominion voting machines
Committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., shared deposition testimony from former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann on the former president’s claims that Dominion voting machines were compromised.
“I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations,” Herschmann told the committee.
Cheney claimed that Herschmann’s view was shared by many in the Trump team that the committee interviewed.
Dominion has filed several defamation lawsuits against those who spread baseless claims that their voting machines “stole” votes.
Jun 13, 10:57 am
Chairman outlines how Trump ‘knew he lost’
Chairman Bennie Thompson said Monday’s hearing would use evidence to show how Trump lost the election but “ignored the will of the voters” and “lied to his supporters” in an effort to remain in office.
“This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election, and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy — an attack on the American people by trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy,” Thompson said.
“And in doing so lit the fuse that lead to horrific violence of January 6, when a mob of his supporters storm the capital sent by Donald Trump to stop the transfer of power,” Thompson added. “Today, my colleague from California, Ms. Lofgren, and our witnesses will detail the select committee’s findings on these matters.”
Jun 13, 10:48 am
Hearing underway after short delay
After a 45-minute delay, the House select committee has kicked off its second public hearing this month.
The committee today will focus on Trump’s push of the “big lie” despite knowing he lost the election to Joe Biden. Last week, committee members began laying out their case against the former president, placing him in the center of what it described as an “attempted coup.”
Jun 13, 10:46 am
Stepien’s attorney gives glimpse into deposition testimony
Bill Stepien’s attorney Kevin Marino confirmed to reporters that Stepien planned to appear before the committee this morning but then learned his wife went into labor. Marino said it’s his understanding that video testimony of Stepien from a previously taped deposition will be aired during the hearing.
Marino called Stepien “one of the finest political consultants in the country.”
“You’re going to hear that he followed the numbers, followed the data, and advised the president as to what he saw,” Marino said.
Jun 13, 10:27 am
Former Fox News editor explains decision to testify in blog post
Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night, has written a blog post for The Dispatch, a right-leaning politics website, explaining why he agreed to testify before the Jan. 6 committee.
“I’m still not entirely sure what I will say or what may happen, and don’t want to close any doors or create any expectations. I had a pretty good perch for the 2020 election and was part of the best decision desk in the news business on election night,” he said. “I’m still so proud of the work we did — we beat the competition and stuck the landing. All I can do is tell the truth about my work and hope for the best.”
Jun 13, 10:22 am
Wife of key witness went into labor Monday morning
Former Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien told the House select committee that his wife went into labor this morning, according to two sources briefed on the matter, explaining the family emergency that caused him to cancel his live appearance before the committee.
Stepien previously sat for a taped deposition before the committee, and vice chair Liz Cheney told reporters to expect video excerpts of that deposition played Monday.
Jun 13, 10:20 am
Cheney promises ‘important and effective’ hearings despite losing key witness
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., vice chair of the committee, told reporters to prepare for a substantial hearing despite Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien having to drop out from testifying live at the last minute due to a family emergency.
“We’re going to have a very important and effective set of hearings. As you know, Mr. Stepien has appeared previously, and so we’ll be able to provide the American people with a lot of interesting new and important information that Mr. Stephens provided to us previously,” Cheney said.
She also confirmed the committee will show video of Stepien’s interview.
Jun 13, 9:48 am
Hearing to focus on Trump pushing ‘big lie’
In previewing Monday’s hearing, which will be guided in part by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., House select committee aides said members would focus on how Trump and his campaign pushed the ‘big lie’ to millions of supporters after the election, despite knowing he lost.
The questioning of live witnesses, along with clips of interviews the committee videotaped with other key witnesses, will show how Trump was told he had lost the election and lacked evidence of widespread voter fraud but continued to claim the election was stolen from him, aides told reporters on Sunday night.
The committee hearing will show “how litigation to challenge elections usually works,” and argue that Trump had an “obligation” to “abide by the rule of law” when his dozens of lawsuits failed in courts across the country, they said.
Jun 13, 9:40 am
Live witnesses slated for Monday
Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer testify live on Monday, citing a family emergency, but the committee will still hear from several live witnesses.
Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night, is scheduled to testify this morning.
A second panel of witnesses includes Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state; veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously told Senate investigators he resigned in January 2021 after learning Trump sought to fire him over not doing more to amplify his false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.
Jun 13, 9:21 am
Hearing delayed
The House select committee has delayed its 10 a.m. start time Monday, citing a family emergency for witness Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, who will no longer testify.
“Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning. His counsel will appear and make a statement on the record,” the committee said in a statement. “The hearing will convene approximately 30 to 45 minutes after the previously announced 10:00am start time.”
Stepien had been subpoenaed to testify on Monday.
The committee said his counsel will appear and make a statement on the record.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee holds another public hearing Monday — this time focused on the “big lie” pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies — that the committee says fueled those who attacked the Capitol.
The main witness scheduled was Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, but the committee said Monday morning the hearing would be postponed due to a family emergency.
This is how the hearing is unfolding. All times Eastern:
Jun 13, 12:58 pm
Hearing gavels out
After about two hours, Chairman Bennie Thompson gaveled out the House select committee’s second hearing this month meant to unveil their findings from an 11-month long investigation that found Trump at the center of a “multistep conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election.”
Monday’s hearing used video testimony from Trump’s inner circle to focus on how he and his campaign pushed the “big lie” to millions of supporters after the election, and even fundraised millions off the claim, despite knowing he lost.
In one explosive clip, Trump Attorney General Bill Barr described his thinking on Trump in the weeks after the election, saying, “Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with – he’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.’”
Jun 13, 12:56 pm
Cheney previews hearings to come
Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in her closing statement, previewed what Americans can expect to learn in the hearings to come, saying Monday’s hearing was “very narrowly focused,” but in the coming days, the committee will move on to Trump’s “broader planning for January 6.”
“Let me leave you today with one clip to preview what you will see in one of our hearings to come,” Cheney said. “This is the testimony of White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. John Eastman called Mr. Herschmann the day after January 6, and here is how that conversation went.”
“I said to him, are you out of your [expletive] mind? Right?” Herschmann recalled. “I said I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: ‘Orderly transition.'”
Jun 13, 12:52 pm
Philadelphia election official details threats against him, family after Trump tweet
Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia, recounted to the committee receiving threats for pushing back on Trump’s false election claims in Pennsylvania.
Trump called out Schmidt by name in a Twitter post on Nov. 11, 2020, stating Schmidt was a “Republican in name only” who refused to “look at a mountain of corruption and dishonesty.”
Schmidt said he received general threats before Trump’s tweet, but after the post the threats became “much more graphic” and were targeted not only at him but also members of his family.
The committee showed messages Schmidt and his family received, including one that read: “Heads on spikes. Treasonous Schmidts.”
Jun 13, 12:41 pm
Election officials in key states debunk Trump’s fraud claims
After the second panel of witnesses was sworn in, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., started questioning Byung “Bjay” Pak, who served as U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia during the Trump administration and was appointed by Trump.
Pak said Attorney General Bill Barr “asked me to find out what I could” about claims of voter fraud in Georgia raised by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in a public hearing, but said both he and his successor were “unable to find any evidence of fraud which affected the outcome of the election.”
Lofgren then questioned Al Schmidt, the former GOP city commissioner who supervised the 2020 election in Philadelphia, about investigating claims about thousands of dead people voting in Philadelphia.
“Not only was there no evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania — there was not even evidence of eight,” Schmidt said.
Jun 13, 12:27 pm
Hearing gavels in for second panel of GOP witnesses
Chairman Bennie Thompson gaveled the hearing back in shortly after 12:15 p.m. for the second panel of witnesses.
The three witnesses are Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state, Ben Ginsberg, a veteran GOP election lawyer, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia and Trump appointee.
Jun 13, 12:25 pm
New witness confirmed for Wednesday’s hearing
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., confirmed publicly that Rich Donoghue, a former acting Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department, will testify in person before the committee. ABC News has previously reported he was in talks to testify.
Donoghue will appear in Wednesday’s hearing that will focus on Trump’s “pressure” campaign against the Justice Department to investigate fraud, as vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney announced in last week’s hearing.
Chairman Bennie Thompson called a 10-minute recess for the committee’s Monday hearing shortly after noon.
Jun 13, 12:07 pm
Barr recalls being concerned Trump had become ‘detached from reality’
The committee played a video of Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr recalling his December meeting with Trump after he told a media outlet that there was no evidence of election fraud.
“The president was as mad as I’ve ever seen him, and he was trying to control himself,” Barr recalled. Trump said, “‘You didn’t have to say this, you must’ve said this because you hate Trump.'”
“I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he’s become detached from reality,” Barr said, adding, “There was never any indication in interest in what the actual facts were.”
“I felt that before the election, it was possible to talk sense to the president. And while you sometimes had to engage in, you know, a big wrestling match with him, that it was possible to keep things on track. But I was — felt that after the election he didn’t seem to be listening,” Barr recalled. “And I didn’t think it was—you know, that I was inclined not to stay around if he wasn’t listening to advice from me or the Cabinet secretaries.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D- Calif., teed up several clips of then-Attorney General Bill Barr describing his meeting with Trump in late November about election fraud, noting how “even after [Barr] told him his claims of election fraud were false, President Trump continued to promote these false claims.”
“I said,” Barr recalled, “the department doesn’t take sides in elections, and the department is not an extension of your legal team. And our role is to investigate fraud, and we’ll look at something if it’s specific, credible, and could’ve affected the outcome of the election. And we’re doing that, and it’s just not — they’re just not meritorious. They’re not panning out.”
After that meeting, Barr said Meadows told him Trump “was becoming more realistic,” and Kushner said “we’re working on this.”
Jun 13, 11:56 am
‘Team Normal’ vs. Rudy Giuliani
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D- Calif., said Trump became “frustrated” when briefed on his slim chances to win the election and began to shake up his campaign’s legal team.
Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien said Trump’s unhappiness “paved the way” for Rudy Giuliani to become more influential in the post-election strategy to spread false claims of widespread fraud.
“There were two groups,” Stepien said. “We called them my team and Rudy’s team. I didn’t mind being categorized as ‘Team Normal’ as reporters started to do at that point in time.”
Trump’s White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the committee he thought the arguments being made by Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others were “nuts.”
Jun 13, 11:43 am
Former Fox News political editor explains ‘red mirage’
Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending his decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden, explained the “red mirage” phenomenon to the committee: how a GOP lead on same-day voting was expected to shrink as Democrat-leaning absentee and mail-in votes were counted.
“Basically, in every election, Republicans win Election Day, and Democrats win the early vote,” he explained. “So, every election, certainly in a national election, you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it is not really a lead.”
Stepien, in videotaped testimony, recalled briefing the president on the “red mirage” phenomenon, adding, “I always told the president of the truth.”
“I told him it was going to be a process,” he said. “We will have to wait and see how this turns out. Just like I did in 2016, I did the same thing in 2020.”
Stepien also recalled a meeting with Trump and attended by House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy in the summer of 2020, where they tried to persuade Trump to encourage supporters to vote by mail, but, “The president’s mind was made up,” Stepien said.
Jun 13, 11:31 am
Ivanka Trump, key witnesses describe election night atmosphere
Chairman Bennie Thompson played a video compilation of witnesses describing the scene at the White House on election night after Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden, using testimony from Trump’s daughter Ivanka, campaign manager Bill Stepien, and attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Ivanka Trump told the committee in her videotaped deposition she didn’t have a “firm view” of what Trump should have said the night of the election.
Stepien told the committee he recalled Rudy Guiliani “was looking to talk to the president” and said that Trump “disagreed” with the assessment that he should not declare victory right then.
Jason Miller, a Trump campaign spokesman, told investigators that “the mayor was definitely intoxicated” and recalled that he was pushing for Trump to declare victory.
“Effectively, Mayor Giuliani was saying we won it,” Miller said, “and essentially that anyone who didn’t agree to that was being weak.”
Vice chair Liz Cheney, hitting on that point, added, “President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani.”
Jun 13, 11:28 am
Trump advisers warned him not to declare victory on election night
“It was far too early to be making any calls like that,” Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien told the committee in his video deposition. “Ballots were still being counted, ballots were still going to be counted for days.”
Ivanka Trump also told the committee that it was becoming clear the race would not be called that night.
“To the best of my memory, I was saying that we should not go with declare victory until we had a better sense of the numbers,” former top Trump aide Jason Miller said in his videotaped interview.
Stepien and Miller said it was former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani who pressured Trump to claim victory. Miller alleged that Giuliani was “definitely intoxicated” at the time.
The committee then aired a snippet of Trump’s speech on election night, in which he told the crowd: “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this.”
Jun 13, 11:21 am
‘Big lie was also a big ripoff:’ Lawmaker previews fundraising efforts
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said the committee will demonstrate that Trump and his closest advisers knew his claims of election fraud were false, but continued to peddle them anyway, and even fundraised off those claims which “rioters later used to justify attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.”
“We will also show that the Trump campaign used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told the donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn’t use the money for that,” she said.
“‘The big lie’ was also a big ripoff,” Lofgren added, going on to use video of Trump to argue that he “laid the groundwork for these false claims well in advance of the election.”
Jun 13, 11:11 am
Cheney lays out ‘three points’ to establish Trump aware he lost
Using video testimony, vice chair Liz Cheney said the committee will show how Trump and his campaign knew the election was lost but continued to espouse the “big lie,” laying out three points to focus on.
“First, you will hear firsthand testimony that the president’s campaign advisers urged him to await the counting of votes and not to declare victory on election night. The president understood, even before the election, that many more Biden voters had voted by mail because President Trump ignored the advice of his campaign experts and told his supporters only to vote in person,” she said, attempting to illustrate Trump was aware.
“Second, pay attention to what Donald Trump and his legal team said repeatedly about Dominion voting machines,” Cheney said, calling them “Far-flung conspiracies with deceased Venezuelan communists allegedly pulling the strings,” which even Trump Attorney General Bill Barr and White House lawyer Eric Herschmann didn’t believe.
“And third, as Mike Pence’s staff started to get a sense for what Donald Trump had planned for January 6, they called the campaign experts to give them a briefing on election fraud and all the other election claims,” she said. “On January 2nd, the general counsel of the Trump campaign, Matthew Morgan — this is a campaign’s chief lawyer — summarized what the campaign had concluded weeks earlier, that none of the arguments about fraud or anything else could actually change the outcome of the election.”
Jun 13, 11:04 am
Trump White House lawyer debunks conspiracy about Dominion voting machines
Committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., shared deposition testimony from former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann on the former president’s claims that Dominion voting machines were compromised.
“I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations,” Herschmann told the committee.
Cheney claimed that Herschmann’s view was shared by many in the Trump team that the committee interviewed.
Dominion has filed several defamation lawsuits against those who spread baseless claims that their voting machines “stole” votes.
Jun 13, 10:57 am
Chairman outlines how Trump ‘knew he lost’
Chairman Bennie Thompson said Monday’s hearing would use evidence to show how Trump lost the election but “ignored the will of the voters” and “lied to his supporters” in an effort to remain in office.
“This morning, we will tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election and knew he lost an election, and as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy — an attack on the American people by trying to rob you of your voice in our democracy,” Thompson said.
“And in doing so lit the fuse that lead to horrific violence of January 6, when a mob of his supporters storm the capital sent by Donald Trump to stop the transfer of power,” Thompson added. “Today, my colleague from California, Ms. Lofgren, and our witnesses will detail the select committee’s findings on these matters.”
Jun 13, 10:48 am
Hearing underway after short delay
After a 45-minute delay, the House select committee has kicked off its second public hearing this month.
The committee today will focus on Trump’s push of the “big lie” despite knowing he lost the election to Joe Biden. Last week, committee members began laying out their case against the former president, placing him in the center of what it described as an “attempted coup.”
Jun 13, 10:46 am
Stepien’s attorney gives glimpse into deposition testimony
Bill Stepien’s attorney Kevin Marino confirmed to reporters that Stepien planned to appear before the committee this morning but then learned his wife went into labor. Marino said it’s his understanding that video testimony of Stepien from a previously taped deposition will be aired during the hearing.
Marino called Stepien “one of the finest political consultants in the country.”
“You’re going to hear that he followed the numbers, followed the data, and advised the president as to what he saw,” Marino said.
Jun 13, 10:27 am
Former Fox News editor explains decision to testify in blog post
Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night, has written a blog post for The Dispatch, a right-leaning politics website, explaining why he agreed to testify before the Jan. 6 committee.
“I’m still not entirely sure what I will say or what may happen, and don’t want to close any doors or create any expectations. I had a pretty good perch for the 2020 election and was part of the best decision desk in the news business on election night,” he said. “I’m still so proud of the work we did — we beat the competition and stuck the landing. All I can do is tell the truth about my work and hope for the best.”
Jun 13, 10:22 am
Wife of key witness went into labor Monday morning
Former Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien told the House select committee that his wife went into labor this morning, according to two sources briefed on the matter, explaining the family emergency that caused him to cancel his live appearance before the committee.
Stepien previously sat for a taped deposition before the committee, and vice chair Liz Cheney told reporters to expect video excerpts of that deposition played Monday.
Jun 13, 10:20 am
Cheney promises ‘important and effective’ hearings despite losing key witness
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., vice chair of the committee, told reporters to prepare for a substantial hearing despite Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien having to drop out from testifying live at the last minute due to a family emergency.
“We’re going to have a very important and effective set of hearings. As you know, Mr. Stepien has appeared previously, and so we’ll be able to provide the American people with a lot of interesting new and important information that Mr. Stephens provided to us previously,” Cheney said.
She also confirmed the committee will show video of Stepien’s interview.
Jun 13, 9:48 am
Hearing to focus on Trump pushing ‘big lie’
In previewing Monday’s hearing, which will be guided in part by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., House select committee aides said members would focus on how Trump and his campaign pushed the ‘big lie’ to millions of supporters after the election, despite knowing he lost.
The questioning of live witnesses, along with clips of interviews the committee videotaped with other key witnesses, will show how Trump was told he had lost the election and lacked evidence of widespread voter fraud but continued to claim the election was stolen from him, aides told reporters on Sunday night.
The committee hearing will show “how litigation to challenge elections usually works,” and argue that Trump had an “obligation” to “abide by the rule of law” when his dozens of lawsuits failed in courts across the country, they said.
Jun 13, 9:40 am
Live witnesses slated for Monday
Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer testify live on Monday, citing a family emergency, but the committee will still hear from several live witnesses.
Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night, is scheduled to testify this morning.
A second panel of witnesses includes Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state; veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously told Senate investigators he resigned in January 2021 after learning Trump sought to fire him over not doing more to amplify his false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.
Jun 13, 9:21 am
Hearing delayed
The House select committee has delayed its 10 a.m. start time Monday, citing a family emergency for witness Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, who will no longer testify.
“Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning. His counsel will appear and make a statement on the record,” the committee said in a statement. “The hearing will convene approximately 30 to 45 minutes after the previously announced 10:00am start time.”
Stepien had been subpoenaed to testify on Monday.
The committee said his counsel will appear and make a statement on the record.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee holds another public hearing Monday — this time focused on the “big lie” pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies — that the committee says fueled those who attacked the Capitol.
The main witness scheduled was Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, but the committee said Monday morning the hearing would be postponed due to a family emergency.
This is how the hearing is unfolding:
Please check back for updates. All times Eastern:
Jun 13, 9:48 am
Hearing to focus on Trump pushing ‘big lie’
In previewing Monday’s hearing, which will be guided in part by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., House select committee aides said members would focus on how Trump and his campaign pushed the ‘big lie’ to millions of supporters after the election, despite knowing he lost.
The questioning of live witnesses, along with clips of interviews the committee videotaped with other key witnesses, will show how Trump was told he had lost the election and lacked evidence of widespread voter fraud but continued to claim the election was stolen from him, aides told reporters on Sunday night.
The committee hearing will show “how litigation to challenge elections usually works,” and argue that Trump had an “obligation” to “abide by the rule of law” when his dozens of lawsuits failed in courts across the country, they said.
Jun 13, 9:40 am
Live witnesses slated for Monday
Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien will no longer testify live on Monday, citing a family emergency, but the committee will still hear from several live witnesses.
Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night, is scheduled to testify this morning.
A second panel of witnesses includes Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state; veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously told Senate investigators he resigned in January 2021 after learning Trump sought to fire him over not doing more to amplify his false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.
Jun 13, 9:21 am
Hearing delayed
The House select committee has delayed its 10 a.m. start time Monday, citing a family emergency for witness Bill Stepien, former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, who will no longer testify.
“Due to a family emergency, Mr. William Stepien is unable to testify before the Select Committee this morning. His counsel will appear and make a statement on the record,” the committee said in a statement. “The hearing will convene approximately 30 to 45 minutes after the previously announced 10:00am start time.”
Stepien had been subpoenaed to testify on Monday.
The committee said his counsel will appear and make a statement on the record.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien will testify before the House Jan. 6 select committee on Monday, in a hearing that will focus on Trump’s decision to declare victory against Joe Biden on election night and knowledge that he was spreading lies of widespread election fraud.
Stepien will appear before the committee on a panel with Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night — a move that infuriated the former president.
A political consultant now advising Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed primary challenger to Jan. 6 committee leader Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, Stepien will testify before the committee under subpoena Monday, his attorney confirmed to ABC News.
A second panel of witnesses in the roughly two-hour hearing will include Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state; veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously told Senate investigators he resigned in January 2021 after learning Trump sought to fire him over not doing more to amplify his false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed after the Capitol riot, Stirewalt, who was fired from Fox News on Jan. 19, 2021, wrote that after the Arizona call, he “became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed.”
On a briefing call with reporters Sunday evening, select committee aides said Monday’s hearing will explore Trump and his campaign’s actions in the days and weeks after election night, and the decision to push “the Big Lie to millions of supporters” and fundraise off claims that rioters later used to justify attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The questioning of live witnesses, along with clips of interviews the committee videotaped with other key witnesses, will show how Trump was told he had lost the election and lacked evidence of widespread voter fraud as he continued to claim the election was stolen from him, aides said.
“I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew, because he was surrounded by lawyers, including the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, telling him in no uncertain terms, in terms that Donald Trump could understand, this is B.S.,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, said Sunday on CNN.
The committee hearing, which will be guided in part by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, will show “how litigation to challenge elections usually works,” and argue that Trump had an “obligation” to “abide by the rule of law” when his dozens of lawsuits failed in courts across the country.
Nearly 20 million people watched the committee’s prime-time hearing last Thursday, the first of seven planned for this month.
Using never-before-seen video of the Capitol assault and testimony from Barr and Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, the committee laid out the broad findings of its inquiry, placing Trump at the center of an “attempted coup” last year.
Hearings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday will explore Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to investigate and spread false claims of widespread election fraud, and force Vice President Mike Pence to block the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Jan. 6 committee announced Monday morning that due to a family emergency, its key witness Bill Stepien — Trump’s 2020 campaign manager — is unable to testify as planned. The committee said his counsel will appear and make a statement on the record.
It also said the hearing will convene approximately 30 to 45 minutes after the previously announced 10:00 a.m. start time.
Stepien was scheduled to testify in a hearing that will focus on Trump’s decision to declare victory against Joe Biden on election night and knowledge that he was spreading lies of widespread election fraud.
He was to appear before the committee on a panel with Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News political editor who was fired after defending the network’s early projection that Trump had lost Arizona on election night — a move that infuriated the former president.
A political consultant now advising Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed primary challenger to Jan. 6 committee leader Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, Stepien was to testify before the committee under subpoena Monday, his attorney confirmed to ABC News.
A second panel of witnesses in the roughly two-hour hearing will include Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia who repeatedly debunked claims of fraud in the state; veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, and Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Pak previously told Senate investigators he resigned in January 2021 after learning Trump sought to fire him over not doing more to amplify his false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed after the Capitol riot, Stirewalt, who was fired from Fox News on Jan. 19, 2021, wrote that after the Arizona call, he “became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed.”
On a briefing call with reporters Sunday evening, select committee aides said Monday’s hearing will explore Trump and his campaign’s actions in the days and weeks after election night, and the decision to push “the Big Lie to millions of supporters” and fundraise off claims that rioters later used to justify attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The questioning of live witnesses, along with clips of interviews the committee videotaped with other key witnesses, will show how Trump was told he had lost the election and lacked evidence of widespread voter fraud as he continued to claim the election was stolen from him, aides said.
“I think we can prove to any reasonable, open-minded person that Donald Trump absolutely knew, because he was surrounded by lawyers, including the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, telling him in no uncertain terms, in terms that Donald Trump could understand, this is B.S.,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, said Sunday on CNN.
The committee hearing, which will be guided in part by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, will show “how litigation to challenge elections usually works,” and argue that Trump had an “obligation” to “abide by the rule of law” when his dozens of lawsuits failed in courts across the country.
Nearly 20 million people watched the committee’s prime-time hearing last Thursday, the first of seven planned for this month.
Using never-before-seen video of the Capitol assault and testimony from Barr and Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, the committee laid out the broad findings of its inquiry, placing Trump at the center of an “attempted coup” last year.
Hearings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday will explore Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to investigate and spread false claims of widespread election fraud, and force Vice President Mike Pence to block the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.
(WASHINGTON) — A bipartisan group of senators on Sunday announced an agreement had been reached — though in principle only — on new legislation meant to address the country’s ongoing gun violence, including the recent Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting.
The deal, in the works for weeks, has the support of at least 10 Republicans in the Senate, which is the number needed to avoid a filibuster.
If passed, the proposal would be the first major gun law to make it through Congress in years.
Among other things, the agreement would provide funding for mental health (including behavioral health centers) and incentives for the creation of so-called “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people who are a danger to themselves or others; increase money for school safety; and strengthen the federal background check system as it relates to convicted domestic violence abusers or those with restraining orders.
Potential gun owners under 21 would also be subject to “an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement,” the bipartisan group said Sunday.
Twenty senators released a statement confirming the deal, saying in part: “Today, we are announcing a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country. Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities.”
The 20 lawmakers — double the initial bipartisan group who restarted negotiations late last month — are Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Chris Coons of Delaware, John Cornyn of Texas, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Angus King of Maine, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
The carefully calibrated changes in the deal — mixing some modest gun restrictions with a focus on schools and social services — reflect the evenly divided Senate, requiring any law to attract at least 10 Republican votes.
Notably, the new proposal does not address major Democratic priorities such as restricting access to assault-style weapons to people under 21 — a ban that President Joe Biden had backed in a recent primetime address to the nation but which was taken off the table among the Senate negotiators. This comes despite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately expressing a willingness to support such a move, sources told ABC News.
Conservatives have long resisted gun reform, arguing in part that the laws are ineffective and that they trespass the guarantees of the Second Amendment.
But the rising tide of gun violence — like the mass shootings in Uvalde and in Buffalo, New York, before that and in Boulder, Colorado, before that; and many more — had increased the urgency of some kind of proposal, lawmakers involved have said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said Sunday he supported the new agreement, calling it “a good first step,” and would be scheduling a vote on it as soon as the legislative text was complete.
“We must move swiftly to advance this legislation because if a single life can be saved it is worth the effort,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week she would take up a Senate bill “if it’s life-saving and can make a difference and they have bipartisan support for it, then we would welcome it even though it won’t be everything that we want.”
A more specific timeline remained unclear and previous such deals show it could be weeks before a draft law is ready, as was the case with the infrastructure package passed last year.
A GOP aide involved in the negotiations stressed that the agreement was not on all of the details, which will be critical for Republicans, particularly the firearms-related provisions. One or more of these provisions could be dropped, the aide said.
Sen. McConnell on Sunday signaled his tentative support for the talks as well.
“The principles they announced today show the value of dialogue and cooperation,” he said in a statement. “I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference for our country.”
In a pair of statements, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged that the deal did not align with their own goals but that they believed it would still be a meaningful deterrent to future violence.
“It does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction,” Biden said, lauding the “tireless work” of the Senate group. “Each day that passes, more children are killed in this country: the sooner it comes to my desk, the sooner I can sign it, and the sooner we can use these measures to save lives,” he said.
Gun control advocates and anti-gun violence groups likewise backed the announced framework while arguing there was more still to do.
“In a less broken society, we would be able to require background checks every single time someone wants to buy a gun, and we would ban assault rifles outright. But if even one life is saved or one attempted mass shooting is prevented because of these regulations, we believe that it is worth fighting for,” March for Our Lives co-founder David Hogg, who was a student at the Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in 2018, said in a statement.
Former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt 11 years ago that killed six others, on Sunday wrote on social media that she believed the deal was necessary if incomplete.
“If carefully drafted and passed into law, this framework would be a lifesaving step forward,” she wrote.
Pelosi echoed that last week, telling reporters that in her view “it’s about guns. And it’s about other things, too, but we cannot avoid the fact that it’s about guns: their availability, at what age [people can possess them].”
The Senate has repeatedly tried and failed to agree on major gun legislation, with talks periodically restarted in the wake of various shootings. The Democratic House separately took up its own gun control measures in the wake of the Uvalde killings, though the Senate has shown little interest in those proposals.
With the shadow of polarization looming over the latest negotiations, Republican Sen. Cornyn and Democratic Sen. Murphy — the latter perhaps the chamber’s most outspoken supporter of gun control — reconvened a group seeking some kind of deal.
The lawmakers met remotely and in person, talking via phone and text, including during a brief recess. Biden, having taken a more direct role in previous negotiations important to his administration, this time said he would remain on the sidelines.
“It’s inconceivable to me that we have not passed significant federal legislation trying to address the tragedy of gun violence in this nation,” Murphy told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in late May. “The pace of everyday gun violence has dramatically escalated over the past two years.”
“My hope is that this time is different,” Murphy said then. “I get it. Every single time, after one of these mass shootings, there’s talks in Washington and they never succeed. But there are more Republicans interested in talking about finding a path forward this time than I have ever seen since Sandy Hook.”
Specifics still taking shape
With those involved in the deal saying specifics are still being hashed out, some of the senators involved have previously addressed how they would like to see certain provisions implemented — and they have been open about where disagreements remain, including with funding.
Regarding the possible expanded use of juvenile records in background checks, Sen. Tillis said last week: “The biggest problem you have right now with people 18 — really under 21 — is you don’t have a lot of information that goes back to their juvenile records. So, I think the talk is less about raising the age and more about making sure you have all the information you need to make a decision.”
Tillis was one of four in a core group of negotiators — along with Cornyn, Murphy and Sinema — aiming to strike the right balance on a new law.
Negotiators have been assessing how to allow background check access to juvenile records that contain felony or other dangerous offenses. But this has proved one of the most difficult areas in the talks, according to two senators familiar with the matter.
Tillis said last week the group was looking at different “engagement models” in states; some already upload juvenile records into a system that would be accessed by a background check. But Tillis said his group was “trying to inventory and figure out” which records to sweep into the federal system. “It’s not like we’re going to take a huge swath of all juvenile records,” he said. “What we’re trying to do -– the only part of the juvenile record we’re interested in are offenses that map to disqualifying convictions as an adult.”
Tillis said that in some instances, though, there might be “underlying circumstances, like two kids fighting at a football game” that would have to be separated out as not meriting a flag in a background check.
Someone 18 to 21 who might want to purchase an assault rifle would have a the right to adjudicate any disagreement with any background check failure as anyone would in the current system, according to Tillis.
Overall funding in the bill could also prove problematic, as members have appeared at odds over whether the billions required to implement the proposed policies would come from new federal funding or taken back from already-allocated funds, such as any leftover from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan.
Cassidy has said he would insist that any new funding be paid for with spending cuts.
But Blumenthal, who has been leading negotiations on the program to incentivize states to develop “red flag” laws, previously said that “there is, in my view, very little justification for requiring an offset dollar for dollar. What we’re dealing with here is a national crisis that has to be addressed right away with new money, not taking it away from other law enforcement.”
