(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice is expanding its criminal probe into the events of Jan. 6 to include preparations for the rally that preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol, as well as the financing for the event, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Over the past two months, grand jury subpoenas have been sent to those who assisted in the organizing and planning of former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally on the Ellipse near the White House, the sources said.
The news of the expanding probe was first reported by the Washington Post.
The subpoenas to individuals with knowledge of the event are expansive, the sources said. Prosecutors are seeking multiple records and documents related to the rally, including text messages and emails, as well as potential communications with other individuals regarding the logistics of the event.
Officials with the Department of Justice declined to comment to ABC News.
The subpoenas are not indicative of wrongdoing, and one source said some subpoenas were sent with the clear indication that the request was for witness testimony and cooperation.
“In circumstances like those of Jan. 6, a full accounting does not suddenly materialize. To ensure that all those criminally responsible are held accountable, we must collect the evidence,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a speech on Jan. 5, one year after the Capitol attack.
“We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money. But most important, we follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next,” Garland said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security is expected to move forward this week with lifting Title 42 restrictions — the Trump-era order giving the government authority to expel migrants at the southern border under a public health emergency — two government officials told ABC News Wednesday.
Democrats and immigrant advocates have strongly opposed the policy, citing concerns over the limits it places on migrants seeking asylum and other forms of humanitarian relief.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he has been “deeply disappointed” in the Biden administration for not ending the Title 42 rapid expulsion protocols and he specifically referenced the risks posed to Ukrainian families.
“This is not who we are as a country,” Schumer said earlier this month. “Continuing this Trump-era policy defies common sense and common decency. Now’s the time to stop the madness. President Biden must fulfill his promise to fully restore our refugee laws, bring order to the border and stop the use of Title 42 to justify these deportations.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are responsible for issuing the order, which was made in the name of public health under the Trump administration at the beginning of the global coronavirus pandemic. The agency is continuing its review and has yet to issue a formal decision, the CDC told ABC News in a statement.
“We are finalizing our current assessment and will release more information later this week,” the CDC said in a statement.
A court battle in which the administration faced a deadline to reimpose categorical expulsions of unaccompanied migrant minors or to ask an appellate court to intervene resulted in the administration rescinding the Title 42 policy for unaccompanied children once again earlier this month.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC News the administration is at fault for not more expansively implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols, a tool first used by President Donald Trump to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their claims to process in the U.S.
“Reports the president will rescind Title 42 after refusing to properly implement MPP is setting the stage for hundreds of thousands more illegal encounters and the continued flow of deadly drugs that will poison our communities, as well as opening the door to further human trafficking and misery,” McCaul said.
While the Biden administration has announced billions in funding for more than two dozen projects to expand and modernize U.S. border crossings, it’s not clear those funds will be enough to sufficiently expand the processing capacity of Customs and Border Protection facilities.
The primary goal is to improve commerce and trade with new security and sustainability features so federal facilities catch up to the expansion of trade in recent years, administration officials said in announcing the funding plan last month. The $3.4 billion investment comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Delays and long lines at land ports of entry are common, especially at the nation’s highest trafficked regions, like San Diego. On the southern border alone, delays have cost 88,000 jobs and roughly $3 billion in economic output, according to a 2016 study of cross-border trade.
“Those inefficiencies translate into a weaker economy, fewer jobs and we can do better,” U.S. General Services Administrator Robin Carnahan told reporters at an event announcing the border funding. “A lot of these land ports are beyond their useful life and their capacity in many ways and these upgrades that we’re talking about today are long overdue.”
The repeal date for Title 42 is slated for May 23, according to several reports.
That timeline would put immense pressure on the U.S. Border Patrol to enact a plan that will allow for the safe processing of migrants taken into custody.
“If in fact they do get rid of it on May 23 they’re barely giving us a month and a half to get prepared,” Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told ABC News Wednesday. “There’s just no way to get an operation of that magnitude in place in that short of a period of time without there being complete chaos. It’s impossible.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is facing a time crunch as investigators scramble to piece together former President Donald Trump’s words and actions on Jan. 6, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., acknowledged Tuesday.
“We’re playing ‘beat the clock’ here against Trump’s inner coterie, which thinks they can impede our investigation,” Raskin told reporters.
The committee, which hopes to begin public hearings in May, is trying to wrap up dozens of witness interviews in the coming weeks.
Multiple senior Trump administration officials, including senior adviser Jared Kushner and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, are expected to appear virtually before the committee this week. Another senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Chris Hodgson, was spotted at the panel’s offices for an in-person deposition Wednesday.
“We’re going to do everything we can to get everyone’s cooperation that we can,” Raskin said.
That ticking clock is having an effect on how far investigators are willing to go to secure the testimony of witnesses and obtain documents.
Given the committee’s hearing schedule and self-imposed deadline to issue a final report in the fall, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that discussions with Vice President Pence and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will result in interviews with congressional investigators.
The panel is also grappling with the fallout from reports that investigators have obtained text messages from conservative activist Ginni Thomas — the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas — pressing then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to attempt to overturn the election results.
Committee members have discussed whether to invite her to testify publicly, but have not publicly shared how they want to proceed.
They are also working to fill “quite a few gaps” in White House telephone logs obtained by the committee and first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Tuesday.
Official records of Trump’s switchboard phone calls include a more than 7-hour gap in activity during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, during which time multiple phone conversations Trump is reported to have had with GOP lawmakers may have been made using the cellphones of key aides.
Schiff said the committee is working to determine what Trump was doing during that time.
While Schiff declined to get into specifics, the committee has repeatedly subpoenaed the cellphone records of Trump aides and allies, and has issued blanket preservation requests to telecommunications, social media and email companies and platforms.
“We have multiple sources of information, both in terms of gathering records, as well as witnesses who have come to appear before the committee who have described the president’s actions that day,” Schiff said. “We are putting together as complete a picture as we can, and not relying on any one source of information.”
While some committee members and staffers believe the panel should be taking more aggressive steps in trying to enforce subpoenas, any potential legal disputes might not be resolved before the end of the year, when Republicans may take control of the chamber.
On Monday, the panel recommended the full House hold two Trump White House officials, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, in contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas for records and testimony. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Wednesday that the House is planning to vote on the matter next week.
Trump ally Steve Bannon was indicted for defying the committee’s subpoena last November after the full House voted to hold him in contempt. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial isn’t set to begin until May at the earliest.
Meadows was also held in contempt by the House in December, but the former chief of staff has yet to face charges from the Justice Department — leading some lawmakers to criticize the DOJ for its failure to take action.
The committee has made clear in court filings that it believes Trump broke the law in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. And while a federal judge wrote this week that it was “more likely than not” that Trump committed felonies in the course of his actions, the Justice Department appears to be no closer to charging — or even considering charging — the former president with a crime.
“Attorney General Garland: Do your job, so we can do ours,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said in a committee meeting Monday.
“We would, as a committee, like every entity around with some authority to move,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, R-Miss., told reporters Tuesday. “But obviously that’s out of our bailiwick.”
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Over the last 24 hours, the Pentagon has seen “less than 20%” of the Russian troops that had been around Kyiv moving northward as they “reposition” into Belarus so they can be re-equipped for possible action in eastern Ukraine, the Pentagon’s top spokesman said Wednesday.
Also, The White House said Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his top advisers about military developments in Russia, a development that the Pentagon labeled as “disconcerting.”
“We have seen over the last 24 hours the repositioning of a small percentage of the troops and the battalion tactical groups that Russia had arrayed against Kyiv,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Wednesday. “Probably in the neighborhood of 20% of what they had, they are beginning to reposition some of those troops.”
Specifically, Kirby said the Russian troops near the Hostomel airport north of the city have been seen moving north towards Belarus. The airport had been the scene of heavy fighting from the opening hours of Russia’s invasion.
Separately, a senior U.S. defense official said some Russian troops had also been seen moving out of the Chernobyl nuclear facility. However, it remained unclear if they would all be leaving.
Some of those troops are being moved into Belarus, said Kirby, who added that none of the units have been seen returning to their home bases.
“If the Russians are serious about de-escalating, because that’s their claim here, then they should send them home, but they’re not doing that, at least not yet,” Kirby said. “That’s not what we’re seeing.”
Kirby said he was intentionally using the term reposition instead of a withdrawal to describe the movement of Russian forces “because the way it’s being spun by the Ministry of Defense is that they’re that they’re pulling back and they’re trying to de-escalate and depressurize the situation and we just don’t believe we haven’t seen any evidence of that.”
Instead, Kirby said the U.S. assesses that the Russians are “going to refit these troops, resupply them, and then probably employ them elsewhere in Ukraine.”
A senior U.S. defense official said U.S. intelligence believes that Russia may intend to shift some of these troops towards the fight in the Donbas region, which would be in line with public statements from Russian officials that they want to make that region a priority of their operations.
Even as some of the Russian troops around Kyiv move away, Kirby and the rest have established defensive positions. Kirby noted that Russian forces continue to launch missiles and artillery at the city and surrounding suburbs.
Kirby said that without getting into intelligence, the Pentagon concurred with comments in news reports attributed to a U.S. official that Putin is not being fully advised of Russia’s performance on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“We would concur with the conclusion that Mr. Putin has not been fully informed by his Ministry of Defense at every turn over the last month,” Kirby said Wednesday.
Kirby described that assessment as “disconcerting” and “an issue of concern.”
“The fact that he may not have all the context, that he may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing in Ukraine, that’s a little discomforting, to be honest with you,” Kirby said.
“If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring? Certainly one that respects Ukrainian sovereignty,” he added.
“The other thing is you don’t know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news,” Kirby said. ‘
(WASHINGTON) — The federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, over his tax affairs has intensified in recent weeks, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
An increasing number of witnesses have appeared before a grand jury impaneled in Wilmington, Delaware, in recent months, the sources said, and have been asked about payments Hunter Biden received while serving on the board of directors of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma, in addition to other questions about how Biden paid off tax obligations in recent years.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Delaware, which has been leading the investigation, is expected to hear from more witnesses in the coming weeks, sources told ABC News.
Sources say that prosecutors have not made a decision yet on whether criminal charges against Biden are warranted, and that there is debate about whether Biden’s admitted past drug abuse could serve to undermine a criminal case over his financial decision-making.
A spokesperson for the DA’s office declined to comment to ABC News, as did a spokesperson for the Justice Department.
Chris Clark, an attorney for Hunter Biden, did not respond to a request for comment. The developments in the probe were first reported by The New York Times.
Hunter Biden confirmed the existence of the investigation in December 2020, shortly after his father won the presidency. Since taking office, President Biden has repeatedly pledged to uphold the independence of the Justice Department and not interfere in its work. The tax probe is being led by U.S. Attorney Dan Weiss, a Trump appointee who remained on the job after Biden was sworn in.
In a statement released through the Biden-Harris transition team in December 2020, Hunter Biden said that he and his attorney had learned of the investigation just days earlier, and that he was confident that he had handled his tax affairs “legally and appropriately.”
ABC News has previously reported that the investigation began in 2018 — more than a year before Biden announced his presidential run. Investigators paused their work ahead of the election and waited until after votes were cast to notify Hunter Biden’s legal team of the probe, a source told ABC News at the time.
Ahead of the 2020 election, political foes of then-candidate Joe Biden — including then-President Donald Trump — focused on Hunter Biden’s work as a board member for Burisma as well as a series of ill-fated investment endeavors in China. Trump and his allies sought unsuccessfully to characterize Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings over the past decade as evidence of Biden family corruption.
While government watchdogs have broadly taken issue with the ethical implications of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, the federal probe marks the first possible legal threat tied to his overseas work.
Sources told ABC News that prosecutors in Delaware are investigating the tax implications of Hunter Biden’s work in both China and Ukraine, among other business endeavors.
(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) — Oklahoma and Arizona became the latest states to impose transgender sports bans Wednesday.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law banning transgender women and girls from competing on women and girls sports teams in state public K-12 schools and higher education institutions.
“When it comes to sports and athletics, girls should compete against girls. Boys should compete against boys. And let’s be very clear: that’s all this bill says,” the Republican governor said Wednesday at the bill signing, despite the bill’s exclusion of trans girls.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill that will ban trans girls from playing sports aligning with their gender identity in all public schools and any private schools that compete against them. Ducey also signed a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
There has been “no direct or consistent research” that shows that trans people have an advantage over cisgender peers in athletics, according to a Sports Medicine journal review of several research studies on potential advantages.
Supporters of the bill disagree.
“This legislation simply ensures that the girls and young women who have dedicated themselves to their sport do not miss out on hard earned opportunities, including their titles, standings and scholarships due to unfair competition,” Ducey said in a statement on the bill.
ACLU of Oklahoma Executive Director Tamya Cox-Touré slammed the bill, saying that the state was harming a small and vulnerable population “while overlooking the real issues with gender equality in sports when it comes to funding, resources, pay equity, and more.”
“Promoting baseless fears about trans athletes does nothing to address those real problems,” Cox-Touré continued in a statement. “Ultimately, SB2 violates the United States Constitution and federal civil rights law, puts Oklahoma at risk of losing federal funding, and harms transgender youth, all to solve a problem that does not exist.”
Several major athletic organizations, including NCAA, the Olympics and the governing bodies for U.S. national sports leagues, allow transgender women to compete against cisgender women.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that trans youth often report feeling isolated and excluded in academic environments. That discrimination puts them at increased risk for poor mental health, suicide, substance abuse, violence and other health risks.
Welcoming school environments that prohibit bullying and harassment in schools have been linked to positive outcomes for these students, according to research in The American Journal of Public Health.
“This legislation offers a solution to a problem that simply does not exist in Oklahoma, but the harm it will cause transgender and nonbinary youth is very real,” said Casey Pick, a senior fellow at the LGBTQ suicide awareness organization The Trevor Project.
The Oklahoma law, called the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” will go into effect immediately.
Oklahoma and Arizona joined several other states in banning trans students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity. Among those instituting bans are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
Just days before Stitt signed the bill, Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed a similar bill and sent an impassioned letter against it to state legislators. The Republican-controlled legislature later voted to override his veto.
He stated that only four trans students are playing sports in Utah, with only one athlete in girls’ sports, and they are not unfairly dominating.
Cox said the high rates of mental health challenges transgender youth face due to discrimination influenced his decision to veto.
“Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day,” Cox said.
He added, “Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, also vetoed a transgender sports bill and is now facing attempts from the legislature to override his decision.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden received his second booster shot following his scheduled remarks Wednesday about the state of the country’s COVID response, according to the White House.
Biden’s speech promoted the launch of COVID.gov, a new website the White House is billing as a “one-stop shop” to help Americans get better access to vaccines, tests, treatments and masks — as well as area-specific updates on COVID-19 spread.
The website leads users to locations where they can get vaccines, boosters and masks, and it connects people with another White House website to order free at-home rapid tests.
The president also highlighted that the “Test to Treat” initiative he announced at the State of the Union has already expanded to over 2,000 sites nationwide and now through COVID.gov’s new “Test to Treat Locator,” Americans can readily find pharmacies and community health centers to get tested for COVID-19 and receive treatments if needed.
Notably, many of the COVID response efforts available on COVID.gov are the same things the White House says are in jeopardy of running out in the coming weeks and months if more funding is not approved.
Administration officials for weeks have been ringing alarm bells about the critical need for more COVID funding, warning of the severe consequences for Americans.
Biden on Wednesday sent what a White House official called an “urgent, direct message to Congress” to act swiftly to secure funding for the administration’s COVID response.
Last week, the fund to cover testing and treatment for uninsured Americans ran out of money, leaving people to pay as much as $125 out of pocket if they get PCR testing at labs like Quest Diagnostics, one of the biggest in the country.
The funding to cover the cost of administering vaccines for uninsured people will run out next week.
At the same time, monoclonal antibody treatment supplies distributed to states each week has been cut by 35%. And the U.S. supply could run out entirely by May if funding isn’t secured.
The government says it has enough tests to get to the summer, but if there’s another surge, the country will again be caught flat-footed like it was during the omicron wave.
“You could see, again, a gap in access to at-home testing,” Andrea Palm, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, told reporters last week.
The White House has said without additional funding, “the results are dire” — one official told ABC News earlier this month, “Simply put, failing to take action now will have severe consequences for the American people.”
The White House has asked for $22.5 billion in immediate aid to keep COVID-19 programs afloat. Congress whittled that request down to $15 billion before cutting it from a spending bill entirely in early March. Since then, the White House has urged Democrats and Republicans on the Hill to come to an agreement, but negotiations remain at a stalemate.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will receive his second booster shot following his scheduled remarks Wednesday about the state of the country’s COVID response, according to the White House.
Biden is expected in his speech to promote the launch of COVID.gov, a new website the White House is billing as a “one-stop shop” to help Americans get better access to vaccines, tests, treatments and masks — as well as area-specific updates on COVID-19 spread.
The website leads users to locations where they can get vaccines, boosters and masks, and it connects people with another White House website to order free at-home rapid tests.
The president will also highlight that the “Test to Treat” initiative he announced at the State of the Union has already expanded to over 2,000 sites nationwide and now through COVID.gov’s new “Test to Treat Locator,” Americans can readily find pharmacies and community health centers to get tested for COVID-19 and receive treatments if needed.
Notably, many of the COVID response efforts available on COVID.gov are the same things the White House says are in jeopardy of running out in the coming weeks and months if more funding is not approved.
Administration officials for weeks have been ringing alarm bells about the critical need for more COVID funding, warning of the severe consequences for Americans.
Biden on Wednesday will send what a White House official called an “urgent, direct message to Congress” to act swiftly to secure funding for the administration’s COVID response.
Last week, the fund to cover testing and treatment for uninsured Americans ran out of money, leaving people to pay as much as $125 out of pocket if they get PCR testing at labs like Quest Diagnostics, one of the biggest in the country.
The funding to cover the cost of administering vaccines for uninsured people will run out next week.
At the same time, monoclonal antibody treatment supplies distributed to states each week has been cut by 35%. And the U.S. supply could run out entirely by May if funding isn’t secured.
The government says it has enough tests to get to the summer, but if there’s another surge, the country will again be caught flat-footed like it was during the omicron wave.
“You could see, again, a gap in access to at-home testing,” Andrea Palm, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, told reporters last week.
The White House has said without additional funding, “the results are dire” — one official told ABC News earlier this month, “Simply put, failing to take action now will have severe consequences for the American people.”
The White House has asked for $22.5 billion in immediate aid to keep COVID-19 programs afloat. Congress whittled that request down to $15 billion before cutting it from a spending bill entirely in early March. Since then, the White House has urged Democrats and Republicans on the Hill to come to an agreement, but negotiations remain at a stalemate.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has pledged to support Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, giving President Joe Biden at least one Republican vote for his nominee.
While Democrats have the votes to confirm Biden’s high court nominee on their own, with Collin’s vote, the White House meets its goal of securing at least some Republican support and shoring up the court’s credibility.
The New York Times first reported the development.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security is bracing for as many as 18,000 migrants per day at the southern border if Title 42 is revoked, according to senior DHS officials who briefed reporters on Tuesday.
The DHS official said they have “no idea” when Title 42, the controversial Trump administration policy that deports single adults under the auspices of a public health emergency, will be lifted.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently conducting a review of Title 42, which must be completed by March 30. An announcement on whether it will be renewed is expected soon thereafter.
Officials said they have run through three scenarios and the highest level of migrants coming across the border per day was 18,000. They stressed it is only a prediction and they are prepared for anything. DHS has also established a joint information center with officials from across the federal government.
“I think it’s unclear what the impact of Title 42 potentially lifting in the coming days, weeks or months would be on migratory flows, but we need to be prepared for considering a potential contingency, which is that the lifting of Title 42 could increase flows and so that is definitely part of this planning process,” one senior DHS official said.
ABC News obtained a strategic plan outlining the steps DHS will take in “response to irregular migration patterns.”
The 16-page document specifically says the lifting of Title 42 will likely “cause a significant increase along all United States borders — primarily along the Southwest border.”
“The DHS Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) produced projections for post-Title 42 Southwest Border encounters describing low, medium, high, or very high encounter scenarios,” the document says. “These scenarios underpin planning assumptions that generate requirements which in turn drive operational execution. Based on these projections the SBCC is currently planning for 6,000, 12,000 (high) and 18,000 (very high) encounters per day.”
In the event of large migration numbers along the border, Customs and Border Protection is prepared to more than double their air and bus transportation capabilities and beef up CBP agents at surge points.
The agency is looking at ways to make the situation more tenable if an influx of migrants does come, such as establishing an online preregistration system and sending more CBP officers to the border.
The department is setting up temporary facilities in anticipation of high migrant levels.
There was an average of 5,892 apprehensions along the southwest border each day in February, according to CBP data, an increase from 2021 when there were an average of 4,753 per day for the calendar year.
“We are now seeing 40% of our monthly encounters coming from countries that are not Mexico, or the Northern Triangle countries of Central America. That is frankly unprecedented and something that is concerning not just to us, but to the government of Mexico and other countries in the region,” one senior official told reporters, noting that they are seeing an influx of Nicaraguan, Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.
