Politics

(NEW YORK) — As abortion returns to the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket, majorities of Americans support maintaining Roe v. Wade, oppose states making it harder for abortion clinics to operate and see abortion primarily as a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not lawmakers.

Americans — 60-27% — say the high court should uphold Roe in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, including majorities of men and women, young adults and seniors, college graduates and those without degrees and whites and racial and ethnic minorities alike. It’s 62% among Catholics and steady across urban, suburban and rural residents.

See PDF for full results, charts and tables.

A majority supports retaining Roe, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion, even in the 26 states where, according to the Guttmacher Institute, abortion bans or severe restrictions are anticipated if the ruling was overturned.

Roe v. Wade aside, the survey finds that 58% of Americans oppose state laws that make it harder for abortion clinics to operate vs. 36% who support them. Strong opposition far outstrips strong support, 45% vs. 26%.

The Texas law that empowers private citizens to sue those providing or assisting with abortions is even more unpopular: Two-thirds of Americans say the Supreme Court should reject it, including nearly a third of those who otherwise support additional state restrictions.

On a more personal level, 75% say the decision whether or not a woman can have an abortion should be left to her and her doctor, not regulated by law. It’s a sentiment held by majorities across the political spectrum, including by bare majorities of Republicans and conservatives and half of evangelical white Protestants.

What’s Next For Roe

While Roe v. Wade has faced challenges before, analysts suggest that it faces the strongest possibility in recent years of being overturned, citing the court’s hearing this term of a case challenging abortion restrictions in a Mississippi law.

While prospects for Roe in the high court have waxed and waned, public support for the ruling has been largely steady. Sixty percent support upholding it in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, which is consistent with 62% among registered voters last fall and 59 to 65% in results to a separate question asked from 2005 to 2010.

Support for retaining Roe runs especially high among liberals (87%), Democrats (82%), people with post-graduate degrees (73%), those under 30 and Black Americans (both 71%). It’s also 71% among women under 40 – compared with 54% among men that age. (Among all women, 64% support Roe; among all men, 56%.)

Opposition is more muted, reaching majorities in only a few groups, and mostly by smaller margins than in groups that back the ruling. Preference for Roe to be overturned peaks at 70% among people identifying themselves as strong conservatives, but drops to 38% among those who are somewhat conservative. It’s supported, by contrast, by nearly all strong liberals and 79% of those who are somewhat liberal.

In another leading opposition group, 58% of evangelical white Protestants support overturning Roe, while 30% favor upholding it.

In the 26 states where bans or severe restrictions on abortion are considered likely if Roe were overturned, 54% support upholding it.

State Laws

Like other abortion-related legal issues, views on state restrictions making it harder for abortion clinics to operate are highly partisan. Eighty-three percent of Democrats oppose these laws, with 71% strongly opposed, while Republicans support them by nearly 2-1, 62-32%. Independents fall closer to Democrats, with 61% opposed to such restrictions.

Even less popular than state restrictions in general is the Texas law, with the public saying by 65-29% that it should be rejected by the Supreme Court. This law gets majority backing only from evangelical white Protestants (60%), conservatives (56%) and Republicans (55%). Just 7% of liberals, 8% of Democrats, 16% of moderates and 26% of independents agree.

The Texas law was the subject of an expedited hearing in the Supreme Court earlier this month, with a ruling expected soon to determine whether the state can be sued by those challenging the statute. The court hears the Mississippi case Dec. 1.

Woman/Doctor

The most lopsided result in this survey comes in response to a question that poses the issue outside the legal context, asking if the decision whether or not a woman can have an abortion should be left to the woman and her doctor – preferred by 75% – or regulated by law, selected by 20%.

Among groups, 81% of women say the decision should be left to the woman and her doctor, compared with 69% of men. That reaches 86% among women under 40 as well as a similar 78% of older women. It’s higher still among Black people, 91%, compared with about seven in 10 whites and Hispanics alike.

Support for leaving the decision to the woman and her doctor ranges from 70% to 80% across age groups, encompasses three-quarters of Americans regardless of their education and income levels and crosses other customary attitudinal lines as well; for example, it’s 71 to 76% in rural, suburban and urban areas alike.

As noted, even narrow majorities of Republicans (53%) and conservatives (52%) say the decision should be between a woman and her doctor and evangelical white Protestants divide on the question, 49-47%.

Methodology

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Nov. 7-10, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions in the full sample are 27-26-37%, Democrats-Republicans-independents.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.

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(WASHINGTON) — In the aftermath of the 2020 election, some of Donald Trump’s closest allies embarked on an unprecedented effort to get the Department of Defense to chase down outlandish voter fraud conspiracy theories in hopes of helping Trump retain power, ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl writes in his new book.

In Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, scheduled to be released today, Karl reports that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump attorney Sidney Powell tried to enlist a Pentagon official to help overturn the election.

According to the book, Flynn — who had just received an unconditional pardon from President Trump after pleading guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI during the Russia probe — made a frantic phone call to a senior Trump intelligence official named Ezra Cohen (sometimes referred to as Ezra Cohen-Watnick), who previously worked under Flynn at both the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Council.

“Where are you?” Flynn asked the DoD official, who said he was traveling in the Middle East.

“Flynn told him to cut his trip short and get back to the United States immediately because there were big things about to happen,” according to the book. Karl writes that Flynn told Cohen, “We need you,” and told the DoD official that “there was going to be an epic showdown over the election results.”

Flynn, according to the book, urged Cohen that “he needed to get orders signed, that ballots needed to be seized, and that extraordinary measures needed to be taken to stop Democrats from stealing the election.”

“As Flynn ranted about the election fight, [Cohen] felt his old boss sounded manic,” Karl writes in the book. “He didn’t sound like the same guy he had worked for.”

“Sir, the election is over,” Cohen told Flynn, according to the book. “It’s time to move on.”

Flynn, according to Karl, fired back: “You’re a quitter! This is not over! Don’t be a quitter!”

Karl writes that after a heated few minutes, Flynn hung up the phone — and that was the last time the two men talked.

“Betrayal” also reports that Sydney Powell, Flynn’s former lawyer who was then advising President Trump, called Cohen shortly after the Flynn conversation and tried to enlist his help with one the most far-fetched claims about the election, involving then-CIA Director Gina Haspel.

“Gina Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany,” Powell told Cohen, pushing a false conspiracy theory that had been gaining steam among QAnon followers, according to the book. “You need to launch a special operations mission to get her,” Powell said.

Powell, according to the book, was pushing the outlandish claim that Haspel had been injured while on a secret CIA operation to seize an election-related computer server that belonged to a company named Scytl — none of which was true.

“The server, Powell claimed, contained evidence that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of votes had been switched using rigged voting machines. Powell believed Haspel had embarked on this secret mission to get the server and destroy the evidence — in other words, the CIA director was part of the conspiracy,” Karl writes.

Powell wanted the Defense Department to send a special operations team over to Germany immediately: “They needed to get the server and force Haspel to confess,” Karl writes.

Cohen thought Powell sounded out of her mind, according to the book, and he quickly reported the call to the acting defense secretary.

A CIA spokesperson subsequently debunked the claim, telling news outlets that “I’m happy to tell you that Director Haspel is alive and well and at the office.”

Neither Powell nor Flynn responded to repeated requests for comment.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s political ally Steve Bannon on Monday surrendered to the FBI on charges of criminal contempt of Congress stemming from his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Bannon on Friday was charged with two counts of contempt for failure to comply with a committee subpoena to produce any records and testify about what he knew about the assault.

He was expected to be arraigned on the charges later Monday.

His attorney has claimed in repeated letters to the committee that Bannon’s communications with Trump were privileged.

The indictment sets off what will likely be a contentious legal battle with significant ramifications for the Jan. 6 committee as it seeks to compel other witnesses to testify about the events leading up to the attempted insurrection, including any communications they may have had with Trump.

“Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland after the department charged Bannon on Friday.

He added the “charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

Executive privilege, according to the Cornell Legal Institute, “is the power of the President and other officials in the executive branch to withhold certain forms of confidential communication from the courts and the legislative branch. When executive privilege is invoked in litigation, the court should weigh its applicability by balancing competing interests.”

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has also been in the committee’s crosshairs after he defied the committee’s subpoena last week to testify about what his version of events were on Jan. 6 — citing similar executive privilege claims.

“Mr. Meadows, Mr. Bannon, and others who go down this path won’t prevail in stopping the Select Committee’s effort getting answers for the American people about January 6th, making legislative recommendations to help protect our democracy, and helping ensure nothing like that day ever happens again,” Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said in a statement.

Meadow’s lawyer, George J. Terwilliger III said he was “surprised and disappointed” that the Biden Justice Department rejected the former chief of staff’s claims of executive privilege, in a Washington Post op-ed over the weekend.

“Under Supreme Court precedent, President Donald Trump also has a voice to be heard on claims of executive privilege arising from his tenure, and he has instructed Meadows to maintain the privilege. My client thus finds himself caught between two rocks (Congress and the Biden administration) and a hard place (instructions from the president he served.),” Terwilliger wrote.

“Moreover, [Meadows] knows from experience how critical it is for senior aides to be able to communicate freely with the president — and how dangerous a precedent he would set for presidents of both parties were he to appear and answer questions without limitation,” he wrote.

Terwilliger also called negotiations with the committee “fruitless” and suggested the parties “take a deep breath and reconsider ending the tradition of accommodation between the executive and Congress.”

He suggested Meadows deliver written answers to questions.

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(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of his stirring plea at the just-completed Glasgow Climate Conference for “every nation to do its part” to solve the climate crisis, President Joe Biden’s administration is preparing this week to hold an auction for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico over impassioned objections from environmental organizations.

“It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, a lawyer for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “Holding this lease sale will only lead to more harmful oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast.”

The auction, set for Wednesday, will grant oil companies the opportunity to bid on nearly 80 million acres of lucrative federal waters, which would produce an estimated 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years.

The winning bidder will have the right to build platform rigs up to 231 miles from shore and drill for oil at underwater depths of up to 11,000 feet. Environmental groups say the distance from shore and depth of drilling increases the likelihood of a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which caused 4 million barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf.

Brettny Hardy, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit group Earthjustice, said the development of those waters would amount to a “huge climate bomb” that would “compromise our future and move our climate action in the exact wrong direction.”

Biden promised to end new drilling on federal lands during his presidential campaign, and issued an executive order pausing the lease sales during his first week in office, pending a review of their environmental impact.

In June, however, a federal judge ordered the resumption of those lease sales, siding with 13 states that sued the administration for overstepping its authority.

The administration has appealed the judge’s ruling, but agreed to go forward with the leases while the matter works its way through the courts.

A spokesperson for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is tasked with coordinating the auction, said the administration is just adhering to the court’s orders.

“[The administration] is complying with a U.S. District Court’s injunction regarding [the auction] while the government appeals the decision,” said spokesperson John Filostrat. “The Biden Harris Administration is continuing its comprehensive review of the deficiencies associated with its offshore and onshore oil and gas leasing programs.”

The Interior Department said in August that, while it would adhere to the court’s ruling, it will also “continue to exercise the authority and discretion provided under the law to conduct leasing in a manner that takes into account the program’s many deficiencies.”

But environmental advocates argue that the Biden administration has not exhausted its legal “authority and discretion” — and in fact has several options at its disposal to delay or cancel the bidding.

“The administration has more than sufficient authority to choose not to hold the lease sale and to cancel it,” Monsell said.

The Justice Department could file an emergency injunction to pause the lease pending its appeal, according to Hardy, or make the case in court that the environmental effects of the sale could conflict with other federal laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act.

Monsell and Hardy are leading a coalition of environmental groups in suing the administration to prevent the auction from moving forward, with the goal of winning an injunction before the leases come into effect, which the government said would be on Jan. 1.

In a press release announcing their lawsuit, the environmental groups accused the Biden administration of “folding to the oil industry,” which has promoted the auction as “welcome news for the American worker and our national security.”

“As global energy prices rise, continued Gulf of Mexico leasing can help avert inflationary risks and proactively ensure affordable energy for all walks of life, especially low-income communities,” said Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore energy trade group.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House has responded to allegations that the administration is buckling to pressure from the oil industry.

In Glasgow, Biden promised a return of American leadership on climate change issues, pledging to halve greenhouse emissions by 2050.

“We’ll demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table, but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” he said.

Environmental groups said Biden’s words ring hollow as long as these oil leases move forward.

“This isn’t just hypocritical, it’s outright deceitful,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit environmental group. “It truly calls into question whether the Biden administration’s climate agenda is nothing but broken promises.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell did something extraordinary: He decided to disinvite Donald Trump from President Joe Biden’s upcoming inauguration because he was worried Trump could use the occasion to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Karl’s book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, details how after the Capitol attack, McConnell told aides he wanted the top Congressional leaders to draft a letter telling the then-sitting president that he was not welcome to attend the inauguration.

The events eventually prompted Trump to send off what would be his final tweet before being banned by the social media platform, according to Betrayal, set to be released on Nov. 16.

“McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Karl writes in the new book. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.”

But not everyone in Republican leadership was on board with McConnell’s plan.

“Kevin McCarthy opposed the idea, arguing it would be an important message of unity to have Trump attend the ceremony as Biden took the oath of office,” according to the book. “But McConnell was determined to disinvite Trump regardless of whether McCarthy would sign the letter.”

McCarthy, Karl writes, would alert the White House about McConnell’s plan to disinvite Trump. And before the letter could be drafted, “Trump sent out a tweet saying he wouldn’t be attending.”

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20,” Trump wrote on Jan. 8.

“Trump apparently wanted people to think it was his decision alone to become the first outgoing president after an election to fail to attend an inauguration since Andrew Johnson skipped the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869,” Karl writes.

Following an initial suspension following the Capitol attack, Twitter had briefly reinstated Trump’s account on Jan. 7, during which time Trump reverted back to complaining about the election, writing, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

But his tweet about not attending the inauguration would be his last.

Following that tweet, the social media company responded by issuing a “permanent suspension” of Trump’s account, determining that in the context of the Capitol attack, Trump’s tweets violated its glorification of violence policy.

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(WASHINGTON) — Debra Ward — a military wife and mother — assumed her husband’s more than 25 years of service would provide a safety net whenever their child became sick.

The couple’s only son, 22-year-old Joel, was diagnosed diabetes over a a decade ago and has already suffered from three life-threatening hypoglycemic shocks while in college.

So when renewing her son’s insurance card, it came as a surprise that he would only be eligible for the plan’s benefits until he was 23, not 26 like most other dependents in the U.S. After that, she would need to start paying more than $450 in monthly premiums to remain insured under TRICARE, the civilian care component of the Military Health System.

“I didn’t believe it at first, with my husband being in active duty and all,” Ward said. “Looking at the premiums they were asking for, I thought surely something had been messed up.”

While dependents under civilian insurance plans are eligible to remain under their parents’ coverage at no additional cost or requirements until the age of 26 as dictated by the Affordable Care Act, the same protocols do not apply to children of military families using TRICARE.

Instead, dependents like Ward’s son receive coverage until they turn 21 (or 23 if enrolled full-time at a university), at which point they can either find employment that offers independent coverage or pay hefty premiums through a program called TRICARE Young Adult to hold on to benefits until the age of 26.

“We’re not expecting any special treatment, but it does seem like we ought to be at least getting the same treatment everybody else in the country has been receiving for the last 11 years,” Ward said.

Across the country, families like Ward’s say they are frustrated at a lack of congressional response to what many see as the unjust treatment of military members’ dependents.

Despite bipartisan concern about the young cut-off age and high premiums for young adults, Congress has yet to hold a vote on changing TRICARE’s young adult provisions.

A bill introduced last year by Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., to extend dependents’ coverage until age 26 without premiums failed to make the final version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

A similar bill introduced this year by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., also aims to eliminate premiums for dependents, but it awaits a vote in both the Senate and House.

“Our bipartisan bill allows every military child under the age of 26 to continue receiving steady coverage under their parents’ plan, enabling these young adults to finish school or start their careers without worrying about what happens if they get sick,” Tester said in a release.

There are currently about 9.6 million beneficiaries under TRICARE, according to the Military Health System. Of those, 37,000 are unmarried, adult children of military sponsors enrolled in TYA.

Eileen Huck, senior deputy director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, said that TRICARE Young Adult is simply too expensive for many dependents, often requiring them to enroll in a university even if they are not prepared for higher education.

“We run into various families and individuals who ran into unexpected costs because their children decided to delay enrolling in college,” Huck said. “And whether it’s a special needs student, or just someone for whom college isn’t the right choice, those life-changing decisions shouldn’t’ be driven by whether or not they’re worried about losing their health care coverage.”

TYA’s Select and Prime programs were created in 2011 following passage of the Affordable Care Act because military service members are exempt from the national health care reform law, requiring separate legislation to extend benefits. The difference between TYA’S two options is largely the same as PPO versus HMO programs: Those covered under TYA Prime are restricted to receiving coverage from Veterans Affairs clinicians.

The 2011 legislation, however, required that no government funding would be used to cover the cost of TYA , necessitating premiums based on commercial insurance rates and coverage.

The price for the two options of TYA has only been rising since the law went into effect. In 2021, monthly premiums for were set at $257 per month for TYA Select and $459 per month for TYA Prime, a 12.7% and 22% increase from 2020, respectively. For comparison, a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that ACA rates have only increased by a median of 1.1% in the last year.

Huck said these steep price tags stem from the nature of TYA that requires all the costs to be borne by the beneficiaries, in addition to a decreasing number of TYA participants.

“Oftentimes we have healthier young adults leaving the program for cheaper but less comprehensive marketplace plans, which means the people with conditions that need more treatments covered through TRICARE end up remaining but paying more as the pool of people participating gets smaller,” she said. “It turns into a vicious cycle.”

Many military affairs advocates like Jennifer Akin, director of research at Blue Star Families, remain optimistic that bills to address these issues will either be passed independently or included in next year’s defense budget.

“I think it’s a parity issue,” Akin said. “It’s very difficult to make the case that military children shouldn’t have access to the same health care rights that civilian children do by virtue of their parents’ service.”

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(NEW YORK) — Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” has agreed to end her defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.

The The joint stipulation said the case is “dismissed and discontinued.”

Zervos’ attorneys and attorneys for Trump filed a stipulation of discontinuance that offered no explanation for the decision.

“Today the parties have ended Zervos v. Trump,” Zervos’ attorney, Beth Wilkinson, said in a statement. “After five years, Ms. Zervos no longer wishes to litigate against the defendant and has secured the right to speak freely about her experience. Ms. Zervos stands by the allegations in her complaint and has accepted no compensation.”

Zervos had claimed Trump groped her in 2007 at a hotel in Beverly Hills, California, and then defamed her when he denied it during the campaign.

In a statement Friday that called the allegations “made up … for publicity or money,” Trump said: “It is so sad when things like this can happen, but so incredibly important to fight for the truth and justice. Only victory can restore one’s reputation!”

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said Friday the decision to end the case belonged to Zervos.

“She had no choice but to do so as the facts unearthed in this matter made it abundantly clear that our client did nothing wrong,” Habba said in a statement to ABC News. “It is a privilege to defend President Trump, who has been relentlessly attacked and viciously hounded by bad faith actors.”

Habba also said Trump did not pay Zervos.

The former president had recently been ordered to sit for a deposition before Christmas.

In a statement last month abut the deposition, Zervos’ attorney, Moira Penza, said: “We just don’t believe our client can be further prejudiced in delaying this litigation any longer. We do not believe there are any outstanding issues that would prohibit the parties from engaging in depositions.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has charged former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress over his defiance of a subpoena from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The indictment sets off what will likely be a contentious legal battle with significant ramifications for the Jan. 6 committee as it seeks to compel other witnesses to testify about the events leading up to the attempted insurrection, including any communications they may have had with former President Donald Trump.

The case also presents an extraordinary test for the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has made restoring DOJ’s independence from politicization one of the top priorities of his tenure.

In a recent appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Garland told lawmakers the department would follow “the facts and the law” in its consideration of the contempt referral voted on by the full House of Representatives last month.

Given Bannon was indicted on two counts, if he is convicted on both a judge could decide to stack the counts and he could potentially face a max sentence of two years in jail. His fine on each count could be between $100 and $1000.

While Bannon, if convicted, faces the prospect of a max sentence that could amount to up to 12 months in prison and fines of as much as $100,000 — such prosecutions are rare, and if history is any guide the legal fight could potentially drag on for years and face additional hurdles on appeal.

Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the chairman and co-chair of the House Jan. 6 select committee, issued a response to news of Bannon’s indictment Friday afternoon.

“Steve Bannon’s indictment should send a clear message to anyone who thinks they can ignore the Select Committee or try to stonewall our investigation: no one is above the law,” they sad in a joint statement. “We will not hesitate to use the tools at our disposal to get the information we need.”

The last time a criminal contempt case was brought by the Justice Department was in 1983 during the Reagan Administration against an EPA official who was eventually found not guilty by a jury at trial.

Committee members have sought Bannon’s testimony citing his comments leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, including his promotions of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ effort and the day before when he predicted on his podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” in Washington.

In its original letter to Bannon seeking his deposition, the committee also raised reports that Bannon and other allies held meetings at the Willard Hotel in Washington leading up Jan. 6, where they strategized about ways to stop or delay Congress’ certification of Biden’s election win.

An attorney for Bannon has repeatedly said his refusal to comply with the committee’s subpoena stems from an assertion of executive privilege made by Trump, though legal experts have cast doubt on the merits of that claim both due to Trump’s status a former president and the fact that Bannon was not a White House advisor at the time of the alleged communications.

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(WASHINGTON) — The long-running special investigation into how the government probed candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia brought a new indictment last week and in the process cast fresh doubt on earlier claims that a little-known Belarussian-born businessman named Sergei Millian had been an unwitting source for the “dossier” prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele.

The indictment from special counsel John Durham alleged that Igor Danchenko, the key “collector” hired by Steele to gather information for the dossier, had lied to the FBI when he suggested that he had spoken with Millian, who at the time served as president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, and had obtained information from Millian that then made its way into the dossier.

Danchenko, a Russian national living in the U.S., was arrested last week on charges that he “willfully and knowingly” made a number of false statements during interviews with the FBI, including the alleged lies about Millian, in describing how he obtained information that he later provided to Steele for inclusion in the dossier.

“Danchenko stated falsely [to the FBI] that, in or about late July 2016, he received an anonymous phone call from an individual who Danchenko believed to be … then president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce” and obtained information about Trump from that man, the indictment says, referring to Millian but not naming him. “Danchenko never received such a phone call or such information from any person he believed to be [Millian] … rather, Danchenko fabricated these facts regarding [Millian].” The indictment alleges that Danchenko “never spoke to” Millian at all.

An indictment in the investigation into how officials probed Donald Trump’s ties to Russia has raised new questions about sourcing of the Steele dossier.

It is illegal to lie to a federal agent. Danchenko’s attorney said in court his client intends to plead not guilty, releasing a statement accusing the special counsel of presenting “a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence for political gain.”

The arrest of Danchenko appeared to be an escalation of the wide-ranging probe by Durham, who was appointed by Trump Attorney General William Barr in October 2020 to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation.

The new allegations made public last week have reignited questions about the now-infamous Steele dossier and about earlier claims that Millian had been one of many sources for the content.

In March 2017, shortly after the dossier surfaced publicly, people familiar with the dossier told the FBI, and later told media outlets including ABC News, that Millian had been an unwitting source of some of the most salacious but unverified information laid out in the document, including claims that the Russian government had a video of Trump watching prostitutes urinating on a bed at a Moscow hotel, which if true could be used to blackmail the then-candidate and future American president. Trump denied that claim and called the Steele dossier “junk” and “fake.”

Millian strenuously denied being a source of any material in the dossier, including any information about a supposed tape. He went on social media to call the assertions false, and appeared on a Russian television news outlet to call the claims “a blatant lie.”

Millian said on the Russian broadcast that the people who had named him as a source were lying in an attempt “to show our president [Trump] in a bad light, using my name.” And when asked directly if he had any salacious material about Trump that is described in the dossier, Millian said he did not. “I don’t have any information and I doubt it exists,” he said.

Early in the campaign, Millian sought contact with members of Trump’s campaign, citing past work with the candidate’s real estate business marketing Trump-branded properties in Russia, according to texts and messages that later appeared in the Mueller report. He was never accused of any improper conduct.

Millian could not be reached for comment on the new allegations from the Durham investigation that support his 2017 denials.

The development comes as a series of follow-on investigations have cast doubts on several aspects of the Steele dossier.

In 2019, the inspector general for the Department of Justice released a detailed report on the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. In it, the agency watchdog describes an interview with a man later identified as Danchenko, which suggested Steele’s dossier had overstated Danchenko’s reports to him.

Danchenko told the inspector general he “felt that the tenor of Steele’s reports was far more ‘conclusive’ than was justified,” and that much of the information he had provided came from “word of mouth and hearsay,” according to the inspector general report.

Last week’s indictment alleges that Steele — whom the indictment refers to as “U.K. Person -1” — told the FBI that he understood from Danchenko that Millian was one of Danchenko’s sources.

According to the indictment, Steele told the FBI that Danchenko had “met in-person with” Millian “on two or three separate occasions” and that Danchenko had cited Millian as one of the sources of information for portions of dossier — specifically including the allegation regarding the purported salacious tape. The indictment asserts that Steele “believed Danchenko had direct contact” with Millian, and that Danchenko never corrected Steele “about that erroneous belief.”

Just weeks before Danchenko was indicted, Steele was interviewed by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos for the Hulu documentary, “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier.” In the ABC News interview, Steele said he believed his collector may have “taken fright” at having his cover blown and tried to “downplay and underestimate” his own reporting when he spoke to investigators as part of the inspector general’s probe.

Pressed by Stephanopoulos about why, if it exists, the purported salacious tape has yet to be released, Steele replied that “it hasn’t needed to be released.”

“Why not?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Because,” Steele said, “I think the Russians felt they’d got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S.”

Steele added: “I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it.”

Reached by ABC News in the hours after Danchenko’s arrest, Steele declined to comment.

Last week’s indictment by Durham says Danchenko’s alleged lies were not a trivial matter. The indictment called them “material” because the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign “relied in large part” on the Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants against former Trump adviser Carter Page, and said that “the FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained” in the dossier.

In his interview for the Hulu documentary, Steele said he had not cooperated with Durham’s probe and did not expect to be charged in connection with his work on the dossier, but said he will be “interested to see what [Durham] publishes and what he says about us and others.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows wants a court to resolve former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege before he cooperates with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

This comes after the White House notified Meadows’ attorney in a letter obtained by ABC News that President Joe Biden has no plans to assert executive privilege over testimony or documents.

“President Biden recognizes the importance of candid advice in the discharge of the President’s constitutional responsibilities and believes that, in appropriate cases, executive privilege should be asserted to protect former senior White House staff from having to testify about conversations concerning the President’s exercise of the duties of his office,” said the letter from deputy White House counsel Jonathan Su to lawyer George Terwilliger. “But in recognition of these unique and extraordinary circumstances, where Congress is investigating an effort to obstruct the lawful transfer of power under our Constitution, President Biden has already determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the public interest, and is therefore not justified, with respect to particular subjects within the purview of the Select Committee.”

Su also writes that Biden has determined he will not assert immunity to “preclude your client from testifying before the Select Committee.”

Terwilliger said in a statement to ABC News that “it now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

“Contrary to decades of consistent bipartisan opinions from the Justice Department that senior aides cannot be compelled by Congress to give testimony, this is the first President to make no effort whatsoever to protect presidential communications from being the subject of compelled testimony,” Terwilliger said. “Mr. Meadows remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

Meadows was first subpoenaed on Sept. 23 and has since been in talks with the committee through his lawyer on the extent to which he will cooperate with its probe. But sources familiar with the committee’s dealings say there has been growing frustration over the lack of progress regarding Meadows’ potential cooperation.

In a letter Thursday night, the committee threatened to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t appear for a deposition before the committee on Friday.

“Simply put, there is no valid legal basis for Mr. Meadows’s continued resistance to the Select Committee’s subpoena. As such, the Select Committee expects Mr. Meadows to produce all responsive documents and appear for deposition testimony tomorrow, November 12, 2021, at 10:00 a.m. If there are specific questions during that deposition that you believe raise legitimate privilege issues, Mr. Meadows should state them at that time on the record for the Select Committee’s consideration and possible judicial review,” the letter reads.

“The Select Committee will view Mr. Meadows’s failure to appear at the deposition, and to produce responsive documents or a privilege log indicating the specific basis for withholding any documents you believe are protected by privilege, as willful non-compliance,” it continues. “Such willful non- compliance with the subpoena would force the Select Committee to consider invoking the contempt of Congress procedures in 2 U.S.C. §§ 192, 194—which could result in a referral from the House of Representatives to the Department of Justice for criminal charges—as well as the possibility of having a civil action to enforce the subpoena brought against Mr. Meadows in his personal capacity.”

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