(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is seeking to block an infamous recording from being introduced as evidence in a defamation trial scheduled for next month.

E. Jean Carroll, the former Elle columnist who sued Trump for defamation after he denied raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s, wants to include as evidence the 2005 video of Trump bragging to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about groping women.

“I don’t even wait,” Trump is heard saying on the tape, which came to light during the 2016 presidential race. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the p—-, you can do anything.”

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said in a filing with the court late Thursday that the Access Hollywood tape shares no unique characteristics to the Carroll case.

“The conduct described on the Tape, which Defendant denies ever actually occurred, were made ten years after the purported incident took place and does not reflect the type of unique and distinctive conduct that can be ‘ear-mark[ed] … as the handiwork’ of Defendant to isolate him as the only person that could have possibly committed these acts,” Habba wrote.

“Plaintiff, in continuing her unabashed demand to admit the Tape, has made it clear that she wishes to convert this trial into a referendum on Plaintiff’s character and distract the jury from determining the merits of the controlling issues of this case,” wrote Habba.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has argued that the recording is evidence of a pattern of Trump’s behavior.

“On the tape, Trump described the precise conduct that he engaged in here with respect to Carroll,” Kaplan alleged in a filing last month. “He didn’t wait before he kissed Carroll. He didn’t wait before he grabbed her vagina. And he acted throughout the encounter as if he was entitled to do whatever he pleased with Carroll.”

The trial is scheduled to start April 25, although a pending decision in a Washington, D.C., court could halt the case if it’s determined that Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied Carroll’s rape claim.

Last November, Carroll filed a separate lawsuit against Trump alleging defamation and battery under a New York law that allows alleged adult sex assault victims to bring claims otherwise barred by the passage of time.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing both cases, has said he is still deciding whether the trials will be combined.

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(NEW YORK) — How much more U.S. aid should be sent to Ukraine is emerging as dividing point among Republican presidential hopefuls, posing a new test of the GOP grassroots’ appetite for overseas involvement and whether foreign policy is potent enough to move the needle in the race.

The debate is part of an early mêlée for support under a tent that includes a base transformed by Trump’s isolationist-tinged “America First” ideology and a swath of voters still aligned with conservative orthodoxy on projecting strength abroad. But whether the fission makes an electoral difference remains an open question given history of foreign policy failing to move enough votes to change a national election outside of wartime.

“Well, we’re gonna find out,” veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres said when asked about the impact the Ukraine debate will have on the primary. “It is a major story, but how that is going to shake out compared to domestic concerns remains to be seen.”

Former President Donald Trump first upended the bedrock of GOP foreign policy during his 2016 presidential bid, railing against “forever wars” amid mounting frustration over U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and other battlefields. With his rise within the party, many ultimately came on board with his worldview, shedding advocacy for an omnipresent military and instead focusing on fixing domestic issues plaguing blue collar Americans.

On one side of the debate are current and would-be contenders like Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who voice skepticism over a supposed “blank check” to Ukraine and the broader danger posed by Moscow. On the other side are more traditional foreign policy conservatives like former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley who have advocated for muscular support for Ukraine and warn that Russia’s military goals extend beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Trump has lambasted Biden’s policy of aiding Ukraine, warning that U.S. assistance could escalate to a broader conflict and maintaining that his method would help bring peace between Kyiv and Moscow — without actually detailing what that method is.

“If you watch and understand the moves being made by Biden on Ukraine, he is systematically, but perhaps unknowingly, pushing us into what could soon be WORLD WAR III,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

DeSantis, for his part, hasn’t called for cutting off aid as some hard-liners in Congress have, but he too has Bashed Biden’s “blank-check policy.”

“These things can escalate. And I don’t think it’s in our interest to be getting into a proxy war,” he said on Fox News last month, warning Biden should instead focus on Chinese aggression.

Still, others haven’t shed their traditional foreign policy bona fides.

“We are involved in a proxy war against the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians are fighting it,” Pence said on Fox News last month. “[L]et’s get them what they need, the tanks, let’s get them the F-16s and support them as they finish this fight.”

Others, like Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also advocated for keeping up the aid deliveries, suggesting that a defeat for Kyiv — rather than the assistance — risks letting violence spill over Ukraine’s borders.

“If we win this fight for freedom, it will send a signal to every enemy we have. If we lose this fight for freedom, Russia has said Poland and the Baltics are next, and then we’ve got a world war,” she said in February.

Some Republican operatives warn against reading too deeply into the rhetoric, noting that even hawks would favor some limits and are not that far apart from those warning of “blank checks.”

“It’s, ‘sure, we don’t want the Russians to encroach. We think what they did was wrong. This aggression was wrong. But we have to have limits on what we do, what we can do, and we sure don’t want to send American troops to Eastern Europe.’ I think that’s kind of the plurality position,” said GOP strategist Brendan Steinhauser.

However, with several candidates struggling to come up with domestic policy differences with Trump, even tonal disagreements on Ukraine could be one of very few chances for differentiation among the candidates.

“I think it’s smart for Trump to also focus on issues like foreign policy and trade where he creates the most contrast with the rest of the field,” said one longtime Trump aide close to his 2024 team.

“You’re not going to differentiate yourself from the field by opposing critical race theory or sex changes or hormones for minors,” the person said.

Those conflicting stances could pose an even greater contrast should one side of the war gain the upper hand or even win outright.

“If the Ukrainians have some success, it will tamper down some of the worries and concerns and criticisms. People will want to be on the side of the winner. I think if it goes really poorly, and … the Russians make gains, I think you’ll see Republicans pick up their critique and say, ‘we need to get to a negotiated settlement,'” Steinhauser said.

Whether those differentiations ultimately will matter electorally remains an open question.

Foreign policy’s traditional failure to impact elections has become almost a cliché in politics. And even as the war in Ukraine emerges as a potentially history-altering struggle and one of the lone differentiators in the mushrooming primary field, strategists are forecasting that the fighting won’t be top of mind when voters decide who to send to the general election next year.

That’s already playing out in early endorsements, with both Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a hawk, and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, a skeptic of Biden’s broad support for Kyiv, both endorsing Trump.

“I’m as engaged as I think just anybody is, but I can tell you this, the decision I make on who to support for president or senator or whatever is in no way going to be affected by their position on Ukraine,” said Allegheny Country, Pa., GOP Chair and Marine veteran Sam DeMarco.

“I think it will be a differentiator. Whether it is used as the differentiator, I don’t know. To me, the more important differentiators in some ways are just the strategic questions about who can actually win the election,” Republican strategist Scott Jennings added.

Conversations with several attendees of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) back up those assessments.

Conference goers, who in recent years have largely fallen in line behind Trump, almost unanimously insisted on limits on aid to Ukraine in interviews with ABC News.

“I think we’ve given them quite enough, I really do,” said Sandy Bellucci, a surgical coordinator from northern New Jersey supporting Trump.

Still, “I think there’s other issues higher on the list,” she said when asked how a candidate’s Ukraine policy could impact votes. “I think what we have to worry about here is more important to people than what’s going on somewhere else.”

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(NEW YORK) — Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was interviewed by U.S. Secret Service agents in 2017 as part of an ATM fraud investigation that targeted a friend of his, sources familiar with the case told ABC News.

According to the sources, the case began when police in Seattle spotted an individual removing a device from a bank ATM known as a card skimmer, which is used to secretly steal users’ ATM card information.

That individual, Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha, had been living in a Seattle hotel where authorities subsequently found multiple card-skimming devices, sources said.

The shipping address on the packaging for some of those items was the same address where Santos lived in Florida, the sources said.

It’s not known whether Santos was ever pursued as a target of the investigation, but Secret Service agents based in Orlando, Florida ended up interviewing him as part of the case, the sources said, confirming a development first reported by CBS News.

Trelha was ultimately convicted and sentenced on charges related to ATM-skimming and turned over to immigration authorities for deportation to Brazil — but not before Santos appeared in a Seattle courtroom on his friend’s behalf.

According to Politico, which first obtained audio of the hearing, Santos told the judge that he worked for Goldman Sachs in New York.

“I am an aspiring politician and I work for Goldman Sachs,” Santos said, according to the audio recording.

“You work for Goldman Sachs in New York?” the judge asked.

“Yup,” Santos responded.

As ABC News has previously reported, Santos did not work for the firm, as he later conceded in an interview with the New York Post. Instead, he claimed that a firm where he did work had partnerships with Goldman Sachs.

On Friday, Santos that he will comply “100%” with a House Ethics Committee investigation into numerous allegations against the freshman Republican. He did not address the ATM probe.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday awarded the Medal of Honor to a Black Army Special Forces hero from the Vietnam War who has waited close to 60 years to receive the nation’s top award for valor after the Army said the paperwork couldn’t be found.

Then a 26-year-old captain, Paris Davis, now 83, led a company tearing through a larger enemy force, pushing the attack despite being shot, absorbing shrapnel and another bullet to get wounded comrades to safety, refusing to join them on the evacuation helicopter, choosing rather to stay and continue destroying the remaining adversaries.

At a White House ceremony, Biden called Davis “an incredible man.”

Picking up the story, Biden continued, “And although the men who were with him on that June day immediately nominated Captain Davis to receive the Medal of Honor, somehow the paper — the paperwork was never processed, not just once, but twice. But, you know what Captain Davis said after learning that he would finally receive the Medal of Honor? Quote, ‘America was behind me.'”

A colonel by the time he retired from the Army, Davis’ first name “Paris” is inspired by the mythological figure featured in Homer’s epic war poem “The Iliad.”

In 1965, already having served in Korea and Vietnam, Davis was told by his company commander he was destined for the treacherous Binh Dinh province.

“He said that it was overrun by the Viet Cong. He thought through my training and the way that I handled myself that I could handle being in a situation where there were more enemies than there were friends,” Davis told ABC News during an interview Thursday.

In the summer, Davis led three other Green Berets and what the Army calls “an inexperienced company of the 883rd South Vietnamese Regional Force” on an audacious raid against a North Vietnamese base.

Davis personally captured two enemy combatants.

“We caught the guards that were sleeping,” Davis said. “They gave us some information — exactly where the preponderance of the troops were.”

According to the Army, “he learned [from the captives] that a vastly larger enemy force was operating in the area.”

Not that Davis was surprised, he said.

“We knew that we were going to run into a hornet’s nest,” he recalled.

Davis took this not as a warning to withdraw, but as an opportunity to attack. On the night of June 17, he readied his men for a surprise raid, and at dawn led them through what would stretch into a grinding 19-hour battle.

“Davis was wounded leading the initial assault, but continued moving forward, personally engaging the enemy in hand-to-hand combat and killing several enemy soldiers,” the Army said in a release.

When the noncompliant enemy rallied with a counteroffensive, a bleeding Davis led a small team onward, destroying gun emplacements and earning more captives, the Army said.

He then consolidated his men to pull back and, while calling for artillery and aircraft attacks against the defenders, was hit by automatic weapons fire.

Davis was wounded again when an enemy soldier “engaged him at close range with his rifle,” the Army said. Davis tackled the enemy and “defeated” him — as the Army euphemistically puts it — with his bare hands.

Now injured several times over, Davis saw two American comrades seriously hurt, but across enemy lanes of fire.

“Davis made it to the first soldier under a hail of enemy fire and was shot once again. Despite his grievous wounds and with no regard for his own safety, Davis saved the soldier and returned him to the company’s perimeter. Davis again broke cover, braving enemy fire, to retrieve the second soldier. Crawling nearly 150 yards and wounded by enemy grenade fragments, he rescued the soldier and returned him to the company perimeter,” according to the Army.

At one point during the battle, Davis said he recalled a general observing the fight from a helicopter ordering him to leave before one of the wounded soldiers was flown out. He refused.

“He said, ‘You know you’re disobeying an order?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, I understand that. But I’m not leaving,'” Davis told ABC News.

Davis described a war of words with the senior officer.

“The general said … ‘If I was down there, I’d probably kick your ass.’ And I said, ‘You know what, general, there’s a lot of room down here.’ And that was the end of the conversation. He never landed, and never kicked his ass,” Davis said.

ABC News asked Davis what would have happened had he obeyed.

“If we had obeyed that order, there would have been soldiers that would have been just mutilated, because there [were] no other free forces available,” he said.

The Army credits Davis for having saved three men from enemy capture: Robert Brown, John Reinberg and Billy Waugh.

For his actions, he was awarded the nation’s third-highest military decoration, the Silver Star. But according to Davis, requests for his award to be upgraded to a Medal of Honor were inexplicably lost by the Army twice over the years.

Davis has speculated that his race could have played a factor.

“I wish I could say that this story of Paris’ sacrifice on that day in 1965, was fully recognized and rewarded immediately,” Biden said. “But sadly, we know they weren’t. At the time Captain Davis returned from war, the country is still battling segregation. He returned from Vietnam to experience some of his fellow soldiers crossing to the other side of the street when they saw him in America.”

Army officials said they cannot determine whether any records were lost, or under what circumstances.

“Due to lack of records, we cannot say for sure, but we are pleased that the president will soon bestow this overdue honor to Col. Paris Davis and his family,” Army spokeswoman Madison Bonzo told ABC News on Wednesday.

Davis credits a group of friends and comrades for refusing to let the Army forget his case.

Davis, his first name inspired by the ancients, alluded to Greek tragedy when explaining the resolution to his decadeslong trial.

“The soldiers that you served with, the soldiers you were in the war with, become that Greek chorus. They pick up the voice of saying ‘We aren’t gonna let this rest, we are going to keep after it until we get it done.’ And that’s the saving grace I’m so thankful for,” he said.

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