(WASHINGTON) — Handwritten notes from former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, released Friday by the House Oversight Committee, appear to show that former President Trump tried to pressure the Department of Justice to declare there was significant fraud tainting the 2020 presidential election.
The documents were obtained by the committee as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The notes are from a December 27, 2020, phone call between Trump and then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen.
According to Donoghue’s notes, Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department had no power to reverse the outcome of the election.
“Understand that the DOJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way,” said Rosen, according to the notes.
“Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump replied, per the notes.
At another point in the call, the notes showed Rosen and Donoghue trying to convince Trump that his allegations of voter fraud were false.
“Sir we have done dozens of investig., hundreds of interviews, major allegations are not supported by evid. developed,” Donoghue told Trump, per the notes. “We are doing our job. Much of the info you’re getting is false.”
Trump however would not be swayed.
“‘We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election,” he said, according to the notes.
“These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency,” House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said in a statement. “The Committee has begun scheduling interviews with key witnesses to investigate the full extent of the former President’s corruption, and I will exercise every tool at my disposal to ensure all witness testimony is secured without delay.”
The release of the notes comes days after the Justice Department determined that six former Trump Justice Department officials, including Rosen and Donoghue, can participate in Congress’ investigation.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has determined the Treasury Department must hand over former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The opinion, posted Friday, says that while the committee “cannot compel the Executive Branch to disclose [tax information] without satisfying the constitutional requirement that the information could serve a legitimate legislative purpose,” the Ways and Means Committee in this instance ‘”invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information.”
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal first requested six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns in April of 2019, in addition to tax returns for eight of Trump’s businesses, under a 97-year-old law that requires the Treasury secretary to “furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to the chairman of the tax-writing panel by request.
In explaining the “legislative purpose” of the request, which Neal would need to prove under law in order to secure the returns, Neal said the committee had been “considering legislative proposals and conducting oversight related to our Federal tax laws, including … the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the Federal tax laws against a President.”
As both a candidate and during his presidency, Trump vigorously resisted making his tax returns public, and his Justice Department backed him in his legal fight against the Ways and Means Committee, determining Neal’s reasoning didn’t amount to a legitimate legislative purpose.
After President Joe Biden took office and the Justice Department assumed new leadership, Rep. Neal renewed his request, resulting in Friday’s legal opinion reversing the Trump DOJ’s stance.
It’s not immediately clear when the Treasury Department would actually hand over Trump’s tax returns. A recent filing in the case states that Trump would need to be given 72 hours’ notice before his returns are transmitted to the Hill, giving him an opportunity to potentially appeal the decision.
If the committee is provided Trump’s tax returns, Neal would be able to designate lawmakers and committee staff to review them in a private setting — but it would still be a felony to release them publicly. However, the panel could potentially vote to enter the returns into the public record, according to the committee’s rules.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted to news of the Justice Department’s decision in a statement Friday, applauding the administration for delivering “a victory for the rule of law.”
“Access to former President Trump’s tax returns is a matter of national security,” Pelosi said. “The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president.”
In February, eight years of Trump’s tax returns were handed over to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office following a years-long court battle that escalated all the way to the Supreme Court.
While the returns could be used as evidence in Vance’s ongoing criminal investigation of Trump and his company, their public release is restricted by grand jury secrecy rules.
(WASHINGTON) — Legislation introduced Thursday by a bipartisan group of women senators would honor Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor by requiring statues of them in the U.S. Capitol or on Capitol grounds.
The bill was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and has 17 co-sponsors. Members of the Democratic Women Caucus and Bipartisan Women’s Caucus also introduced a similar bill in the House on Thursday.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor were trailblazers long before reaching the Supreme Court, opening doors for women at a time when so many insisted on keeping them shut,” Klobuchar said. “The Capitol is our most recognizable symbol of Democracy, a place where people from across our country have their voices represented and heard. It is only fitting that we honor their remarkable lives and service to our country by establishing statues in the Capitol.”
O’Connor and Ginsburg were the first and second women, respectively, to serve on the Supreme Court. O’Connor, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan in 1981, served until she retired in January 2006. Ginsburg was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993 and served until her death last year after suffering from metastatic pancreatic cancer. They served on the court together for 12 years.
“Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg will always be known as dedicated public servants, fierce champions for equality, and accomplished Americans who broke countless barriers in the field of law,” Collins said. “Statues in the nation’s capital honoring the first two women to serve on the highest court in the land will serve as fitting tributes to their invaluable contributions to our country.”
The Capitol currently has 252 sculptures of men and 14 of women. The most recent statue of a woman is of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, erected in 2013.
If passed, the legislation would require that the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library consider selecting an artist from an underrepresented background to create the statues.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is stepping up efforts to get shots in people’s arms, including calling on states, territories and local governments to do more to incentivize vaccination by offering $100 to those who get vaccinated and reimbursing small- and medium-sized businesses for offering their employees paid leave to get their family members vaccinated.
He also announced that every federal government employee and onsite contractor will be asked to “attest to their vaccination status,” and will require anyone not fully vaccinated to wear a mask at work regardless of where they live, social distance and get tested once or twice a week. Employees can also face restrictions on official travel.
Biden was also directing the Department of Defense to look into how and when they will add COVID-19 vaccination to the list of required vaccinations for members of the military, according to a fact sheet that was released to reporters.
Ahead of the president’s announcement, some groups representing large numbers of federal workers — including law enforcement and postal workers — raised some early objections.
“As an association representing those men and women charged with protecting the Constitutional rights of all Americans, including the right to privacy and choice, we are concerned by any move that would mandate the COVID-19 vaccine among federal employees,” Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said in a statement.
The statement also asked that the administration work collaboratively with the association and other federal employee groups to incentivize workers to be vaccinated.
Chad Hooper, the executive director of the Professional Managers Association — formed in 1981 by IRS managers — implored all of its members, their staff and eligible Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible, but highlighted that any mandate imposed on the entire workforce would be the first of its kind.
“Consistent with vaccines for other illnesses, such as measles or influenza, PMA believes that agency leadership should have the discretion to determine whether any, some, or all of their staff must be vaccinated against COVID-19,” Hooper said in a statement.
“At this time, no COVID-19 vaccine has received full approval from the FDA, and this may be contributing to vaccine hesitancy across our country. We must ask the administration to craft any such mandate with care and consideration of our members’ individual contraindications as well as their closely held personal and religious beliefs,” the statement continued.
Pfizer, Moderna and the Johnson and Johnson vaccines were granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), but the FDA is facing pressure to issue full authorization of the vaccines, which could open the door to mandates in schools, and the military.
“The FDA recognizes that vaccines are key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic and is working as quickly as possible to review applications for full approval,” FDA spokesperson Alison Hunt said in a statement.
ABC News’ Jordyn Phelps and Lauren King contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate swiftly passed the $2.1B emergency security supplemental bill Thursday with a rare unanimous vote in the Senate and only 11 House members voting against it.
The bill now heads to the president for his signature.
The move staves off critical funding cuts that both the U.S. Capitol Police and National Guard were expected to enact following weeks of congressional inaction. Both forces were crushed by the emergency needs in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, each relying on Congress to reimburse them in the months after the attack.
The bill provides $521 million to reimburse the National Guard for the cost of deployment to Capitol Hill and roughly $70 million to the Capitol Police to cover expenses incurred in response to the attack, according to the bill’s summary.
An additional $300 million will be used to bolster safeguards for the Capitol complex, including funds for window and door upgrades and the installation of new security cameras.
But some Republican lawmakers argued that after spending trillions to battle the pandemic, it would be irresponsible to spend billions more without enacting spending cuts to cover the expenses.
The emergency supplemental bill also has $1.125 billion to cover the Afghanistan Special Immigrant Visa program — a little less than what the White House requested — to provide asylum to allies there who aided the U.S. mission and now face retribution from a resurgent Taliban.
The bill makes specific changes to the visa program, including increasing the number of authorized visas by 8,000 and lowering an employment eligibility requirement from two years to one.
Sen Mike Braun, R-Ind., said, “We need to protect our National Guard — and we will. And we need to protect our allies who kept our troops safe, and we will. Emergencies arise and the biggest threat to dealing with them in my opinion is fiscal irresponsibility in D.C. We could have easily paid for the major parts of this legislation with offsets within the DOD.”
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration on Thursday announced a new strategic framework aimed at reducing and managing conditions in Central America that have caused unprecedented levels of migration in recent years.
The strategy resembles much of what the administration has already proposed and focuses on reducing poverty, combating corruption and addressing violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The administration previously dedicated $4 billion in financial support to the region, later saying that substantial portions of the money would not go to Northern Triangle governments and instead would be distributed among nonprofits and aid organizations.
Specifically, the five-point plan aims to address economic instability, establish anti-corruption measures with the involvement of U.S. officials, prioritize human rights and labor rights, counter and prevent gang violence and other organized crime while also targeting gender-based violence.
“We’re not seeking to end migration,” a senior administration official told reporters. “It’s part of the fabric of this region, we have so many familial cultural ties to Central America. But we’re seeking to change the ways in which people migrate, provide an alternative to the criminal smuggling, smuggling and trafficking rings, and to give people access to opportunity and protection through safe legal channels, safe legal pathways.”
The strategy is being led by Vice President Kamala Harris who was tasked by Biden earlier this year with addressing the root causes of migration. In announcing the new framework, Harris said the United Nations and Mexico, among others, have committed support.
The administration is also looking to countries like Canada and Costa Rica, one official said, in an effort to provide more options for asylum and refuge.
The announcement comes as Biden continues to try to unwind the immigration enforcement policies of his predecessor, including recently making it easier for migrants to seek humanitarian relief. The Department of Justice announced this week the reversal of another Trump-era policy that immigrant advocates, student organizations and law professors said was part of the prior administration’s limiting of humanitarian protections.
Attorney General Merrick Garland formally rescinded a decision from his predecessor, Attorney General William Barr, which required the Board of Immigration appeals to completely re-decide immigration petitions and asylum cases even if a defendant had made progress in establishing their case. The Barr decision, now reversed, was also expected to exacerbate the growing backlog of cases in immigration court.
A group of more than 350 law firms, professors and advocacy organizations called on the Biden administration earlier this year to repeal a series of decisions made under the Trump administration which limited avenues for migrants to receive a grant of asylum. Monday’s announcement was the final decision to be reversed in that series.
The Biden administration had already reversed a decision from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions that domestic violence and gang violence were not grounds for asylum claims.
The new strategy from Harris also places an emphasis on making humanitarian relief opportunities available in the home countries of would-be migrants. It’s an essential component of reducing the migratory traffic at the U.S. southern border, which has become flooded with asylum-seeking children and families in recent months.
(WASHINGTON) —The Biden administration on Thursday called on Congress to extend a federal freeze on evictions set to expire on Saturday, arguing its hands are tied by the Supreme Court.
The new statement comes as the country grapples with a COVID-19 surge fueled by the highly contagious delta variant.
The moratorium, essentially a nationwide ban on evictions, was put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last September. In June, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the eviction ban to continue through the end of July but signaled in its ruling that it would block any further extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.”
Amid public outcry, House Democratic leadership was looking to possibly take legislative action by the end of the week, before legislators leave for a six-week recess, to extend the freeze until the end of December, ABC News was told. Senate Democrats were also preparing legislation to extend the moratorium for the same duration, according to a Democratic aide.
“Given the recent spread of the Delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday.
“Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available. In June, when CDC extended the eviction moratorium until July 31st, the Supreme Court’s ruling stated that ‘clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31,'” she added, citing Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the court rejected a request from two associations of relators in Alabama and Georgia and group of property management companies seeking an emergency injunction against the CDC, which imposed the moratorium.
The Biden administration had previously said it would not extend the moratorium beyond July, so the Court allowed the moratorium to remain in place, though Justice Kavanaugh made clear that he and the other conservative justices believe the CDC exceeded its authority.
“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Psaki continued, “the President calls on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.”
In the meantime, Biden has asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Agriculture and Department of Veterans Affairs to each extend their respective eviction bans through the end of September, which Psaki said “will provide continued protection for households living in federally-insured, single-family properties.”
“The President has also asked these and other departments to do everything in their power so that owners and operators of federally-assisted and financed rental housing seek Emergency Rental Assistance to make themselves whole while keeping families in secure and safe housing — before moving toward eviction,” she added.
Psaki described the federal eviction moratorium as a “critical backstop to prevent hard-pressed renters and their families who lost jobs or income due to the COVID-19 pandemic from being evicted for nonpayment of rent.”
“This moratorium prevented hundreds of thousands of Americans from experiencing the heartbreak, homelessness, and health risks that too often emanate from evictions — particularly during a pandemic,” she said.
The Biden administration has faced mounting pressure from some Democratic lawmakers to address the looming deadline amid growing concerns that vaccinated people can spread the delta variant to others — evidence of which has prompted the CDC to advise vaccinated Americans to wear face masks indoors in areas with high or substantial levels of COVID-19 transmission.
“I urge the Biden Administration to extend the CDC’s eviction moratorium. It is reckless not to extend the deadline when rental assistance funds have not gone out fast enough to protect people. Eviction filings have already spiked in anticipation of the moratorium being lifted,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted on July 23.
When asked during Tuesday’s press briefing if the Biden administration was discussing an extension of the nationwide eviction ban, Psaki had little to add.
“I don’t have anything to preview for you at this point in time,” she said. “But certainly, we will be watching this closely,” she added, citing “ongoing discussions about how we can continue to help renters.”
ABC News’ Mariam Khan and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) —The Senate swiftly passed the $2.1B emergency security supplemental bill Thursday in a rare unanimous vote.
The bill now heads to the House for expected passage this week. Then it heads to the president for his signature.
The move staves off critical funding cuts that both the U.S. Capitol Police and National Guard were expected to enact following weeks of congressional inaction. Both forces were crushed by the emergency needs in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, each relying on Congress to reimburse them in the months after the attack.
But some Republican lawmakers argued that after spending trillions to battle the pandemic, it would be irresponsible to spend billions more without enacting spending cuts to cover the expenses.
The emergency supplemental bill also has $1.125 billion to cover the Afghanistan Special Immigrant Visa program — a little less than what the White House requested — to provide asylum to allies there who aided the U.S. mission and now face retribution from a resurgent Taliban.
Sen Mike Braun, R-Ind., said, “We need to protect our National Guard — and we will. And we need to protect our allies who kept our troops safe, and we will. Emergencies arise and the biggest threat to dealing with them in my opinion is fiscal irresponsibility in D.C. We could have easily paid for the major parts of this legislation with offsets within the DOD.”
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers could set the groundwork for more private sector organizations to follow along. But it also is likely to trigger an avalanche of lawsuits from those who say required vaccinations infringe on the civil liberties of Americans.
President Joe Biden is expected to announce on Thursday a plan requiring all federal workers to be vaccinated or comply with “stringent COVID-19 protocols like mandatory mask wearing — even in communities not with high or substantial spread — and regular testing.”
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that employers can require their employees to be vaccinated with exceptions being granted for religious and medical reasons.
Federal law does not bar organizations from mandating coronavirus vaccines even as the publicly available vaccines have yet to receive full authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, according to a Justice Department memo.
But some legal scholars say that full approval from the FDA would give companies increased legal cover from employees who refuse to comply with a vaccine mandate.
“There are many companies that are worried about pushback litigation and are waiting for full FDA approval,” said Larry Gostin, a professor of global health law at the Georgetown University Law Center and director of the World Health Organization Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights.
Full FDA vaccine approval is expected in September, according to a federal official. Normally, full approval takes up to a year following the submission of all required data.
Gostin added that employers also have the right to terminate employees who do not comply with their company’s vaccine mandate.
“A worker doesn’t have a legal or ethical entitlement to go unvaccinated or unmasked in a crowded workplace,” he said. “They can make decisions for their own health and well-being, but they can’t pose risk to others. Somebody who is unvaccinated and isn’t tested and unmasked poses a very substantial risk of transferring a very dangerous, if not deadly, disease.”
Similar to the legal arguments over state mask mandates, the debate surrounding vaccine mandates is an issue widely expected to end up in court.
“America is a very litigious society and there will be lawsuits,” said Gostin. “But employers and particularly hospitals are on very firm legal grounding and will win those lawsuits.”
While the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers could inspire similar moves from large employers to local governments, some states are taking offensive measures.
Several states including Arkansas, Tennessee, Utah, and Montana have already passed legislation banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.
And with return to school quickly approaching for millions of U.S. students, some legislatures have even sought to prohibit required COVID-19 vaccines for school attendance.
The Federal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association, which consists of FBI agents and U.S. Marshalls, however, sees the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal employees as an attack on civil liberties.
“Forcing people to undertake a medical procedure is not the American way and is a clear civil rights violation no matter how proponents may seek to justify it,” said Larry Cosme, the association’s president, in a statement.
The idea of employer vaccine mandates is something that many public health experts increasingly agree on. A large number of companies are still allowing employees back to the office based entirely on voluntary employee disclosure of vaccination status as opposed to requiring actual proof of vaccination.
“An honor system can work in a situation where you don’t have an epidemic,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. “We need to realize that we are in an emergency, and we have to do everything possible to ensure that the vast majority of people get vaccinated.”
Google, Apple and Facebook all postponed their return to office plans for mid-October as the delta variant continues to drive a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations nationwide.
Google’s decision to require staff in their offices to be vaccinated comes after similar announcements impacting government workers in New York and California to curb the spread of the delta variant.
“The timing for these vaccine mandates is right and it’s actually a bit long overdue,” said El-Sadr.
(WASHINGTON) — The National Basketball Social Justice Coalition is fighting to end racial and social inequality.
The group, which is composed of players, owners and staffers, has advocated for policy changes regarding criminal justice, policing and justice reform, by reaching out to lawmakers in Congress and state and local legislatures.
The Social Justice Coalition was formed in 2020, after the deaths of Jacob Blake and George Floyd.
In May 2021, the group, which represents the NBA community, publicly endorsed the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act. Since then, a source told ABC News, members of the NBA have held multiple bipartisan meetings with lawmakers to push the bill.
The 15-member group exclusively told ABC News they are now publicly supporting the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law Act, or EQUAL Act, a bill that seeks to eliminate the federal differences in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.
In a joint statement shared with ABC News, the NBA Social Justice Coalition wrote, “The EQUAL Act is a significant step towards more humane sentencing policies. On behalf of the NBA community, we urge our legislators to continue moving this bill towards passage as quickly as possible and present it to President Biden for signature into law this summer.”
James Cadogan, the coalition’s executive director, told ABC News the EQUAL Act “gives people currently incarcerated for federal crack offenses a mechanism for re-sentencing.”
“For 35 years, this legal disparity, with no basis in pharmacology, has only served to incarcerate unjustly,” Cadogan said. “And Black and brown communities across the country disproportionately continue to bear the human cost.”
Cadogan noted that the vast majority of people who’ve borne the brunt of that sentencing disparity are Black, because more Black people are incarcerated over crack cases than white people over powder cocaine cases.
“The proportions are different, but they were using the same substance and committing the same offense, so to have a sentencing disparity is something that should offend anybody in social justice,” Cadogan said. “And to see now a bill that will rectify that, that is a big step for racial justice, knowing how many Black and brown families have suffered because of that disparate sentencing.”
This isn’t the first time the NBA has taken action on social justice issues; greats like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Oscar Robertson have famously fought for civil rights and economic justice.
“Social justice is part of the fabric of the NBA, but we haven’t had for the NBA community an institutionalized way of advancing that in the policy space,” Cadogan told ABC News.
Earlier this summer, Karl Anthony Towns, from the Minneapolis Timberwolves, Steve Ballmer, the chair of the Los Angeles Clippers, and Caron Butler, assistant coach of the Miami Heat, held a virtual roundtable with Sen. Tim Scott and congresswoman Karen Bass on the topic of policing reform. The conversation was streamed online with the hope of generating more dialog around the issue.
Bass and Scott have been in negotiations for months to craft a bipartisan police reform bill called the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act.
Cadogan told ABC News that by having athletes join forces with members of Congress, a new population of listeners, who may have not been fully engaged in politics previously, joined the conversation about the pending legislation. For viewers, it wasn’t “just about what’s wrong” with the bill, Cadogan said, “but how we fix it.”
“That’s part of what’s most important about our model and our advocacy approaches: We’re not just talking about the things that we see that we want to fix, we’re trying to put our really distinct platform behind the solutions in a legislative and policy framework that will make sense for us in our community that will help sustain change,” Cadogan said. “Things don’t change unless laws, policies change.”
Next on the agenda for the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition is the issue of voting rights. Last year, the NBA opened up 23 league facilities to help increase voting participation by using them as both polling locations and voter registration locations. Now, it is focusing on local legislatures.
“If people can’t vote, then people don’t have a voice in our democracy, and that’s unacceptable,” Cadogan said.
He said the NBA community is committed to helping bring about some of the changes that Americans have been demanding for so long. “There’s a lot on the horizon and we’re going to be pretty active,” he added. “Stay tuned.”
