(WASHINGTON) — A rare U.S. military ground raid in northwestern Syria has captured a top ISIS leader, according to the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.
A U.S. defense official said there were no injuries to U.S. military personnel or aircraft involved in the raid.
“Coalition forces detained a senior Daesh leader during an operation in Syria June 16,” Operation Inherent Resolve said in a statement. “The detained individual was assessed to be an experienced bomb maker and facilitator who became one of the group’s top leaders in Syria.”
“The mission was meticulously planned to minimize the risk of collateral damage, particularly any potential harm to civilians,” it said. “There were no civilians harmed during the operation nor any damage to Coalition aircraft or assets.”
U.S. military ground operations in northwestern Syria have targeted top ISIS leaders, most notably Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who killed himself during an October, 2019 raid near the border with Turkey that was carried out by the elite Delta Force.
His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, detonated himself with an explosion during a similar raid in February this year.
“Coalition forces will continue to hunt the remnants of Daesh wherever they hide to ensure their enduring defeat,” Operation Inherent Resolve added.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi said Wednesday she was “very disappointed” in President Joe Biden’s plan to meet with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the U.S. has determined ordered the operation that killed Khashoggi in 2018.
“Mr. Biden, you’ll soon visit Saudi Arabia as president, where you’ll meet with Jamal’s heartless executer (sic), dishonoring yourself and Jamal by meeting MBS,” said Hatice Cengiz in a video message posted by Democracy for the Arab World Now, a nonprofit Khashoggi founded in 2018.
Cengiz asked Biden to press for more answers in the death of her fiance when he meets with Mohammed during a visit to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, next month.
“If you have to put oil over the principles, and expediency over values,” she says, “can you at least ask, ‘Where is Jamal’s body? Doesn’t he deserve a proper burial? And what happened to his killers?” she implored.
As a candidate, Biden once pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over its human rights abuses. Soon after he took office last year, his administration released a U.S. intelligence report that assessed Mohammed had ordered the operation that resulted in Khashoggi’s murder in Istanbul. Khashoggi was a Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News that she could not say whether Biden would specifically ask the questions raised by Cengiz but said the president was a “straight shooter.”
“I cannot read out right now or lay out what the agenda is going to be, or what the conversations are going to be,” she said. “But I can assure you, I can assure you that when it comes to human rights, this is something that is a priority for this president.”
She said “just hearing” Cengiz’s comments was “devastating.”
“Clearly, our hearts go out to her and her pain that she’s currently going through,” Jean-Pierre said.
Cengiz’s comments come in the wake of the White House’s announcement that Biden will visit Saudi Arabia in July.
The anticipated trip has drawn ire for the potential message a diplomatic trip could send to a country accused of involvement in the murder of Khashoggi, as well as numerous human rights violations.
But the president is also struggling to reign in sky-high inflation and gas prices, a political liability.
Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer, chairs the Gulf Cooperation Council grouping of oil-producing Arab nations. Saudi Arabia and the Biden administration have both said energy security will be part of discussions during Biden’s visit.
Cengiz also made a personal appeal to Biden.
“President Biden, I know you have experienced the unimaginable pain of losing a loved one,” she said.
Cengiz also tweeted Wednesday that she was “very disappointed” to hear about Biden’s Saudi Arabia travel plans. “A US resident was murdered for defending democracy and human rights in the country and now Biden is legitimizing this action,” she wrote.
Cengiz recently criticized professional golfers who joined LIV Golf, the Saudi Arabian-backed competition that’s drawn some of the biggest names in golf to the league.
“If they still carry on and play as if everything is normal, then they should be banned from playing in the world’s major tournaments,” she said in an email, according to reporting by USA TODAY Sports.
The White House has said Biden plans to discuss “a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues,” in Saudi Arabia including the Saudi truce with Yemen, and “deterring threats from Iran.”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker on Wednesday acknowledged he has a 10-year-old boy, about whom he hasn’t spoken publicly.
The revelation that Walker has a younger son was first reported Tuesday by The Daily Beast and confirmed by Walker’s campaign.
The issue of Walker’s involvement as a parent has brought renewed focus to the fact that Walker has repeatedly talked about the importance of being an active father and, in particular, has said, “the fatherless home is a major, major problem” for Black people. It is, however, unclear what role Walker has played in the life of his 10-year-old son.
He also has an older son, Christian, with his first wife.
A court order obtained by ABC News shows Walker admitted in 2013 to being the younger boy’s father after the boy’s mother filed a paternity petition that April.
In a statement on Wednesday, Walker’s campaign manager, Scott Paradise, pushed back on the idea that the boy was being hidden.
“Herschel had a child years ago when he wasn’t married. He’s supported the child and continues to do so. He’s proud of his children,” Paradise said. “To suggest that Herschel is ‘hiding’ the child because he hasn’t used him in his political campaign is offensive and absurd.”
Paradise pointed to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s court fight with his ex-wife over their child custody arrangement. (Walker hopes to unseat Warnock in November.)
A spokeswoman for Warnock, Meredith Brasher, told ABC News he is a “devoted father who is proud to continue to co-parent his two children as he works for the people of Georgia.”
Walker, a businessman and college football legend in Georgia who easily won the Republican nomination in the state’s primary in May, has previously faced scrutiny about his personal life. That includes allegations of violent behavior and his diagnosis with dissociative identity disorder, or D.I.D., a complex mental health condition characterized by some severe and potentially debilitating symptoms.
Walker has denied some of the past allegations of domestic violence, physical threats and stalking; others he claimed not to remember.
His campaign previously referred ABC News to his 2008 memoir, which detailed his D.I.D. diagnosis, and a 2008 interview he did with ABC News in which he discussed its effects on his first marriage.
ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman, Pete Madden, Rick Klein, Stephanie Lorenzo and Brittany Shepherd contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The California man arrested last week near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home has been indicted on a charge of attempted assassination.
The federal grand jury on Wednesday formally accused 26-year-old Nicholas Roske, of Simi Valley, of attempting to kill Kavanaugh.
According to the indictment, prosecutors will also seek to have Roske forfeit various property if convicted, including the firearms and other equipment that authorities said he carried on him at the time of his arrest on June 8.
Roske was previously charged, via criminal complaint, with attempted murder for allegedly making threats against Kavanaugh and showing up armed to Kavanaugh’s Maryland home.
He was angry over the recent mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, according to an affidavit from an FBI agent submitted last week in support of the criminal complaint.
Roske arrived to Kavanaugh’s home early on June 8 wearing black clothes and carrying a backpack, according to the affidavit. A Glock 17 pistol, two magazines, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, screwdriver, nail punch, crowbar, pistol light and duct tape were inside his bag, according to the affidavit.
He was arrested “without incident” after allegedly calling authorities to tell them he was suicidal and wanted to kill Kavanaugh, police have said.
According to the affidavit against him, “Roske stated that he’d been thinking about how to give his life a purpose and decided he would kill the Supreme Court Justice after finding the Justice’s Montgomery County address on the internet.”
During an appearance in U.S. District Court later on June 8, Roske told Judge Timothy Sullivan that he thought he had a “reasonable understanding” of the attempted murder charge, though he told the court he wasn’t thinking clearly and was on doctor-prescribed medication.
When asked if he could continue, he said, “I have a clear enough understanding” of the court proceedings.
Roske agreed to remain in custody until a preliminary hearing that was scheduled for June 22. However, he will likely face a formal arraignment now that prosecutors have secured a new indictment.
He remains in custody in Maryland. An attorney for him did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, Congress on Tuesday approved a bill increasing security for Supreme Court justices’ families amid new threats to the high court — which has also seen renewed protests by advocates ahead of major opinions on polarizing issues including gun rights and abortion access.
(WASHINGTON) — New photos obtained exclusively by ABC News show former Vice President Mike Pence and his family in hiding after rioters broke into the Capitol and he was evacuated from the Senate floor.
ABC News is publishing the images for the first time on the eve of the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearing Thursday focused on former President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Pence.
In one, Pence can be seen with members of his family – second lady Karen Pence, his brother, Rep. Greg Pence and his daughter – in the vice president’s ceremonial office just steps from the Senate floor.
Taken just minutes after the mob had breached the Capitol and as Pence and his family were evacuated from chamber by his Secret Service detail, the photo shows Karen Pence hurriedly closing the curtains in the room, as her daughter looks on with fear.
According to a source who was in the room, the second lady could see rioters outside the Capitol, so she closed the curtains, worried that the attackers would see her and her family.
The photo was taken after the mob had already breached the Capitol, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
The photos were taken by the former vice president’s official photographer, Myles Cullen, who was with Pence throughout the day and night of Jan. 6.
While they were previously described in “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” they have never before been made public.
Minutes later, Pence and his family were rushed downstairs to a loading dock beneath the Capitol complex.
In another White House photo obtained exclusively by ABC News, you can see Pence after he returned to the Capitol with his daughter — working on the speech he would give when the joint session of Congress reconvened to certify the election of Joe Biden.
The White House
As seen in another photo, Pence returned to the House chamber later that night, to preside as Congress successfully certified Biden’s victory.
“Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift efforts of U.S. Capitol Police, federal, state and local law enforcement, the violence was quelled. The Capitol is secured, and the people’s work continues,” Pence later said in his remarks from the Senate dais.
(WASHINGTON) — A father and son who were among the first of the rioters to enter the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, learned their fate Wednesday afternoon after a bench trial this week on federal charges they tried to block Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Kevin and Hunter Seefried, of Delaware, were both found guilty of five counts: obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting; entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a Capitol building or grounds; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
They will be sentenced in September.
On the most serious count, obstructing an official proceeding, they face a maximum of 20 years’ in prison.
They chose to have a bench trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.
While prosecutors said Kevin and Hunter wanted to break into the Capitol during the joint session of Congress along with the larger pro-Trump mob, their defense attorneys argued the two were not there to disrupt the electoral process.
Kevin carried with him a large Confederate battle flag — which prosecutors called a “symbol of violent opposition” — that he brought from his Delaware home as he breached the complex.
He was captured in photographs that later circulated widely and helped lead to his arrest after, authorities have said, his son talked to someone at work about being at the Capitol.
Prosecutors said Hunter was one of the first people to illegally enter the Capitol after a pro-Trump rally near the White House earlier that day. He was seen in viral videos breaking a window with his hand to enter the building. Hunter faces three additional charges of destruction of government property.
Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman — lauded by many for his efforts to keep the rioters away from Vice President Mike Pence and the evacuating members of Congress — was a key witness at the Seefrieds’ trial, having encountered both of them in the Capitol.
Goodman testified in court on Monday, describing the clashes between the mob and police as like “something out of medieval times” and saying that after he ran into Kevin Seefried inside the Capitol, the latter tried to hit him with the end of his flagpole three or four times.
Kevin was “very angry, screaming,” Goodman testified.
Hunter “was just disobeying commands,” Goodman said.
While Goodman was at the Capitol during the riot, he was hit with bear spray and had objects thrown at him by the crowd, including an apple that struck him in his head, he said.
Goodman, who served during the Iraq War, said: “I’ve never seen something like that before.”
He said that he retreated to a makeshift triage to rinse his face but that the spray “had a pretty bad effect on me.” He threw up several times before heading back outside the Capitol to continue assisting colleagues against the mob.
Later, he returned inside and came face-to-face with Kevin, who was carrying his battle flag. Goodman said that Kevin repeatedly tried to strike him with the end of the flagpole and that he could hear people scream, “Where are they counting the votes?” and, “Where are the members at?”
Goodman called on rioters to “get back” and “get out” as they came closer to him and he felt confined, he testified. He said Kevin told him, “We’re thousands, you’re just one,” adding, “We’re ready for war.”
Goodman told the court that he feared for his safety, especially after noticing a teardrop on tattoo on Kevin’s face, which Goodman felt was synonymous with someone who had previously committed murder.
“I was just outnumbered,” he testified.
The defense worked to undercut Goodman’s testimony, arguing that he may have “innocently misremembered” and that he was focusing on more violent rioters.
Neither of the Seefrieds is accused of assaulting police.
The prosecution, however, said that Goodman was no novice to chaotic environments and the Seefrieds had corroborated his testimony during FBI interviews days after Jan. 6, when Kevin admitted that he motioned toward Goodman with his flag.
(WASHINGTON) — The federal government will be instructing states on ways to expand access to health care and suicide prevention resources for LGBTQ people and will be releasing school policy samples that work to better include such students, among other steps in support of the community including a campaign against conversion therapy, senior administration officials said Wednesday.
President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Wednesday directing the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Education to take such measures as part of what his administration said was a broader push, during Pride Month, “to stand up to the bullies targeting” the LGBTQ community.
The White House singled out hundreds of new bills, nationwide, that would impose restrictions on LGBTQ people or issues, such as a law in Florida outlawing discussion of gender and sexuality in certain classrooms and various state bans — either proposed or already passed into law — on transgender children being able to receive certain medical treatments.
“President Biden is addressing these harmful, hateful, and discriminatory attacks head-on – not only by speaking up for America’s families, but taking action,” the White House said in a statement.
The new executive order will urge additional policy guidance, increase administrative protections and make the federal government available as a partner to states; it will also raise public awareness around what the administration said were ongoing challenges faced by LGBTQ people, like the prevalence of conversion therapy that seeks to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
“Children who are exposed to so-called ‘conversion therapy’ face higher rates of attempted suicide and trauma,” the White House said. “[M]any people in the United States and around the world are still subjected to this practice.”
A new HHS initiative will work to reduce youth exposure to conversion therapy by clarifying that programs receiving federal funds cannot engage in the practice, as directed by the president’s order.
Spotlighting the practice’s harms is another component of the initiative, and HHS will offer guidance to health care providers through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The order also seeks to address some of the barriers before LGBTQ children and families.
The White House said that while LGBTQ parents are “7 times more likely to adopt a child,” the foster care system makes it challenging for them to adopt children.
“President Biden is charging HHS with strengthening non-discrimination protections,” according to the White House.
Another HHS initiative will work to ensure that children receive foster care placements in environments supportive of their sexual orientation, the administration said.
The president will announce his executive order at a White House Pride Month celebration in the East Room on Wednesday afternoon. He will be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, as well as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The White House’s focus on LGBTQ issues — specifically those affecting children — comes weeks after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a controversial ban on discussion of “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms or in older grades if it is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”
Critics denounced the law as an overly broad “Don’t Say Gay” ban; DeSantis and its supporters said it prevented children from being exposed to what they called inappropriate content.
ABC News reports similar legislation is working its way through legislatures or already enacted into law in Alabama and Ohio.
ABC News’ Armando Garcia contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As former President Donald Trump’s presidential legacy is tested in Washington this week, with the Jan. 6 hearings dominating Capitol Hill, his political power — and the sway of his election denying — saw a renewed test in the midterm primaries in a handful of states.
Voters took the polls in South Carolina, Nevada, Maine, North Dakota and Texas’ 34 Congressional District Tuesday night, delivering historic turnout numbers and allowing voters to give Republicans who defied the former president a second chance at keeping their jobs, and some Democrats to lose theirs.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Tuesday’s races:
Trump finally lands incumbent ouster
While Trump’s had some success in backing candidates in open races, he’s had major difficulty in knocking off their perch incumbent members of his party who have challenged him in some way, putting aside the score of Trump-scorned Republicans who have decided to not seek re-election.
But finally, on Tuesday, Trump was able to handedly bump one of the most vocal off that list, Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, rendering him out of a job come November.
Rice was one of the ten Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment, a “conservative vote” he told ABC News’ Jon Karl that he would make again in a heartbeat, even if it cost him his job. And lost his job he did, to MAGA-world challenger Russell Fry, who was quick to paint Rice as a traitor to his party. The demographic makeup of Rice’s district, toward the northern border of the state where voters trend far more conservative, may have also contributed to the massive backlash against Rice, pushing folks toward Fry’s direction.
Now, with newly-won swagger, Trump will undoubtedly charge on to defeat another impeachment-vote member of his party, and perhaps his biggest enemy yet, in Wyoming: Rep. Liz Cheney. The question remains: can lightning — and political luck — strike twice?
Nancy Mace’s tightrope walk pays off in Trump proxy war
Totally flipped dynamics greeted South Carolina’s 1st District, where Trump was wholly unsuccessful in booting a challenger in Rep. Nancy Mace, who carried her primary win by at least 10 points. Mace defeated cybersecurity expert Katie Arrington, who beat Rep. Mark Sanford in his primary in 2018 but ultimately lost the race to Rep. Joe Cunningham, who historically flipped the district Democrat during the slate of “blue wave races.”
Arrington bet that voters in the low country would see Mace as something of a flip-flop, first condemning Trump hard after the Capitol insurrection and eventually softening her attacks. But that bet didn’t pay off, partly thanks to a bench of heavy hitter South Carolina endorsements for Mace, including former Gov. Nikki Haley and Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.
Another interesting dynamic in Mace’s race is the endorsement cold war of sorts. The proxy battle between potential 2024 candidates — Haley and Trump — falls squarely in Haley’s camp, the beginning of a nice set up for a highly gossiped about bid for the White House. So far, a good record for Haley, who said in the past she’d bow out of consideration if Trump decides to run. But if Haley notches a few other primary wins, who knows? There may be a spot for her against Trump after all.
Trump seems to be trying to save face a little, saying on Truth Social Tuesday night that Arrington was a “long shot” and Mace will “easily” be able to defeat a Democratic opponent come November.
Big Lie gets big win in Nevada senate race
Voters in Nevada seem to not be scared of a little election denial. Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt’s open-armed embrace of conspiracy surrounding the 2020 presidential election helped him notch a win in the state’s GOP Senate Primary. Laxalt, who hails from a state political dynasty, bested political outsider Sam Brown who tried and failed to paint Laxalt as cozy with party insiders.
Still, a roster of Republican stars, nearly all of whom are rumored to join the crowded contest for president in 2024, backed Laxalt’s bid, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Laxalt’s former roommate, funnily enough), Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Tom Cotton, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
He’ll see if that flock of support will be enough to kick Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto out of office. She sails to the general election contest with no serious challengers and now must answer not just to Laxalt but to voters increasingly frustrated with the concurrent fallout of the pandemic, inflation and other economic woes that hit the tourist-driven state.
(WASHINGTON) — A series of photos taken on election night 2020 inside the Trump White House captures the tension as Donald Trump’s family and his top aides track election returns and see Trump’s early lead fade away.
The photos, taken by a White House photographer and published exclusively in the book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, are a visual representation of the testimony of senior Trump advisers who told the House Jan. 6 committee that they did not believe Trump should declare victory on election night.
The photos show Trump’s family and campaign team camped out in the Map Room of the White House.
The room, located in the basement of the White House residence, is where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tracked the movement of Allied Forces during World War II.
It’s called the Map Room because some of the maps used by FDR are framed and on the walls.
For election night, however, Trump’s political team transformed the room in to a campaign war room, installing large-screen televisions and placing them over FDR’s maps.
The photos capture the apparently pained expressions on the faces of Trump’s inner circle.
According to a source who is shown in at least one of the photos, they were taken as the campaign’s analysts, who had been more confident early in the evening, became concerned Trump could lose.
The photos feature some of Trump’s most prominent advisers, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior strategist Jason Miller, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Also present are several Trump family members, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Lara Trump.
In videotaped testimony released Monday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Stepien said Trump was “increasingly unhappy” on election night as votes were counted and he started to lose.
Stepien, Miller and other key aides urged Trump not to declare victory that night.
“My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, it’s too early to tell, too early to call the race,” Stepien said in a clip of his interview with the committee played during Monday’s hearing.
Trump, he said, “thought I was wrong,” and would instead declare victory at the White House early the next morning on the advice of Rudy Giuliani, who Miller said was “definitely intoxicated” on election night.
Giuliani on Tuesday challenged Miller’s testimony and denied being drunk on election night at the White House.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump on Monday responded in a lengthy statement to the House’s ongoing Jan. 6 committee hearings, assailing the panel as illegitimate and their presentation as one-sided — but rather than refute their evidence, he reiterated the same baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election that are at the center of the proceedings and the group’s case that he had attempted a “coup.”
Trump’s 12-page statement, sent to reporters on Monday night, comes after the second public hearing held by the House select committee investigating last year’s deadly Capitol attack. His statement, marked by characteristic exclamations and insults, called the hearings “a smoke and mirrors show” that failed to include “all exculpatory witnesses, and anyone who so easily points out the flaws in their story.”
The statement, however, did not directly respond to the specifics laid out by the committee to the public thus far — including testimony earlier Monday from Trump’s inner circle that he knew he had lost the last presidential race and had no legitimate reason to claim widespread fraud, instead choosing to listen to Rudy Giuliani to falsely claim victory over Joe Biden.
Much of Trump’s statement, instead, went after President Biden and the Democratic majority in Congress, building on arguments Republicans are making ahead of November’s midterms. Trump said Democrats were at fault for various issues plaguing the country, and he framed the effort to investigate Jan. 6 as a way to deflect attention away from these issues.
“America is crumbling, and Democrats have no solutions. Our nation has no hope of change for the better under Democrat leadership,” Trump said. “People are desperate. Rather than solving problems, Democrats are rehashing history in hopes of changing the narrative.”
Members of the committee, which includes two Republicans, have pushed back at the characterization that their investigation is motivated by partisanship. Instead, they have said, their work uncovered the extent to which the former president worked to undercut the democratic process and remain in power.
“The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us, we, the people. And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the committee, said during the first public hearing on Thursday.
Throughout much of his Monday statement, Trump rehashed false or unfounded claims by him, his campaign and his supporters that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Biden through stolen ballots, mistaken vote counts and various other means.
Trump said the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings were a “narrative” authored by Democrats “to detract from the much larger and more important truth that the 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen.”
Numerous legal challenges by Trump and others as well as audits and investigations in the wake of the 2020 election discovered no pattern of widespread issues. Likewise, local election officials across the country — both Democrats and Republicans — said the fraud claims were without merit.
Trump used his statement to make arguments beyond the last election, targeting Biden and the Democratic Party’s perceived vulnerabilities with voters, such as rising inflation.
“Our country is in a nosedive,” Trump said. “Americans are struggling to fill their gas tanks, feed their babies, educate their children, hire employees, order supplies, protect our border from invasion, and a host of other tragedies that are 100% caused by Democrats … and the people of our country are both angry and sad.”
The Jan. 6 investigations and its hearings, Trump contended, were meant to bar him from running in the next presidential election. “This is merely an attempt to stop a man that is leading in every poll, against both Republicans and Democrats by wide margins,” he boasted, without offering evidence.
Trump has repeatedly teased but has not formally announced if he will run for president in 2024. He has played a large role in the ongoing 2022 midterm election primaries by endorsing candidates in races across the country, with mixed results.
Video depositions played at the first two hearings included witnesses who were close with Trump at the time of the election and on Jan. 6, including his daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and then-Attorney General Bill Barr.
Barr, who has stated his team found no evidence of extensive fraud, described how he felt about Trump’s increasing focus on such claims, telling investigators: “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.'”
The next open hearing by the committee is currently set for Thursday, after one scheduled for Wednesday was postponed.
