2 officers who defended Capitol on Jan. 6 sue to stop Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund
President Donald Trumps supporters gather outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. on January 06, 2021. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol in 2021 during the Jan. 6 attack are suing to stop the creation of President Donald Trump’s $1.7 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” calling it the “most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.”
Former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges alleged that the compensation fund, which was announced by the Justice Department on Monday, would not only encourage those who committed violence in the name of President Trump but that it would directly finance their operations.
“To prevent the public financing of paramilitary organizations in the United States, and to protect Plaintiffs from further violence, the fund must be dissolved,” the lawsuit said.
The fund, which was part of a settlement agreement in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, was established by the Trump administration to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration.
The officers alleged that the creation of the fund is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act — and runs afoul of a prohibition in the Fourteenth Amendment barring the government from funding insurrections.
“No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law,” the lawsuit said.
Filed in D.C. federal court, the lawsuit asked a judge to block the creation and funding of the compensation fund. The settlement agreement that initiated the fund gave the acting attorney general 30 days to create the entity and appoint five commissioners to run it.
Dunn and Hodges are some of the most high-profile members of law enforcement who defended the Capitol that day. Hodges was pinned against a door frame, attacked, and crushed by rioters. Dunn was inside the Capitol and directly engaged the rioters. He ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2024 and is currently running for Maryland’s 5th Congressional District.
Glacier National Park, Montana. (Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont.) — A man who went missing while hiking in Glacier National Park in Montana has been found dead from a suspected bear attack, according to the National Park Service.
Search and rescue crews located the body of the missing hiker around noon Wednesday, approximately 50 feet off the Mt. Brown Trail in a densely wooded area, according to park officials.
“His injuries are consistent with those sustained by a bear encounter,” the National Park Service said in a press release Thursday.
The victim’s name and age have not been released. Park officials said they are withholding his identity until 72 hours after next-of-kin notification.
A 33-year-old hiker from Florida had been reported missing in Glacier National Park earlier this week, with rangers focusing the search effort in the Mt. Brown and Snyder areas, according to park officials. The man was last heard from Sunday night and was reported missing the following day, park officials said.
The investigation into the suspected bear attack remains ongoing. Sections of the trail where the incident occurred have been temporarily closed.
“Wildlife and law enforcement personnel are currently assessing the area for bear activity and any ongoing public safety concerns,” the National Park Service said.
The last bear attack in Glacier National Park was in August 2025, when a 34-year-old woman was injured by a brown-colored bear at Lake Janet.
The last fatal incident was nearly 30 years ago, when a man was killed by a grizzly bear in the Two Medicine Valley in 1998.
Earlier this week, two hikers were injured in a bear attack at Yellowstone National Park, near the Old Faithful area in Wyoming.
Park officials believe a female grizzly bear with two or three young cubs were involved in Monday’s encounter, the National Park Service said in an update Thursday. The injured male hikers, ages 15 and 28, were airlifted out of the park.
Temporary trail, backcountry campsite, and fishing closures remain in effect following the incident.
Andi Burns, 19, was pulled from freezing water after her truck crashed and first responders rescued her just in time. (ABC News)
(BATAVIA TOWNSHIP, Ohio) — A 19-year-old who crashed and became trapped upside down in a river in Batavia Township, Ohio, was pulled from her sinking pickup in a dramatic rescue captured on body camera footage.
The footage from the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office obtained by ABC News showed first responders on Feb. 22 working to safely rescue Andi Burns as rising, freezing water filled the truck and a dispatcher stayed on the line to keep her calm.
Burns was driving home from work on State Route 222 when she lost control of her vehicle on black ice, hit a tree and plunged off a steep embankment into the Little Miami River, according to a copy of the accident report from the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Deputies and firefighters arrived on the scene to find the truck overturned in the river, according to the sheriff’s office.
According to Clermont County officials, Burns was wearing an Apple Watch that automatically called 911 using its crash detection feature.
“Please God please,” Burns was heard saying on the 911 call, telling dispatch that her head was “barely up” from the water.
In an interview with ABC News recalling the incident, Burns said she was “terrified.”
“It was completely black out, pitch black,” she said. “I didn’t think that anybody could hear me or knew what happened — I just was starting to freak out.”
Rescuers jumped into the water and shouted for tools to shatter a window and pop the door as they fought to reach her, according to the body camera footage.
“Grab my hand, grab both my hands,” one of the firefighters could be heard telling Burns in the footage.
Firefighter and EMT Tommy Jetter, who’s in his first year on the job, told ABC News that “the way that the car went in and flipped upside down altogether, that’s a very, very dangerous car accident wreck.”
He credited Burns for “being able to stay awake and find that air pocket and for her staying calm is very impressive.”
With the cab of the truck nearly filled with water and her head just inches from the water, crews were able to free Burns and pull her to safety, according to the footage.
“We got her!” the rescue team was heard shouting in the body cam footage.
Burns did not sustain any serious injuries and was able to walk away from the scene with just bruises, the accident report says.
“Surviving that car accident of one being in the water is very, very, very lucky, very fortunate, God was definitely on her side for that,” Jetter said.
Burns told ABC News she plans to become an EMT in Clermont County.
President Donald Trump listens during a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following their meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on December 28, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The White House’s new policy for preserving presidential records risks allowing the Trump administration to “unlawfully destroy important records,” a group of Senate Democrats warned in a letter to the White House Counsel on Wednesday.
Thirteen Senate Democrats are seeking assurances from the White House that it would continue to preserve presidential records, saying they had grown “deeply concerned” with recent steps the Trump administration had taken to loosen rules dictating document retention.
The Democrats’ missive comes after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) wrote an opinion this month that deemed the Presidential Records Act — a Watergate-era law that changed the legal ownership of presidential records from private to public — to be unconstitutional and “untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose.”
One day after the opinion was issued, White House Counsel David Warrington issued new guidance for White House staffers to adopt new document retention policies based on the DOJ’s new determination about the legality of the Presidential Records Act.
“The 1978 law is a significant departure from historical practice. For 200 years the presidency existed without the legislative branch invading the rights of the executive branch,” Warrington said in a memo that was later included in a court filing.
Led by Sen. Adam Schiff of California, the Democrats wrote to White House Counsel David Warrington that they feared “the President and his staff” will use the OLC option to “unlawfully destroy important records covered by the [Presidential Records Act].”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the Democrats’ letter reflects “a fundamental misunderstanding of the Administration’s policy.”
“The new White House records retention policy makes it clear that important records will be preserved,” Jackson added.
The senators, in their letter, alluded to what they characterized as President Donald Trump’s “unlawful personal retention and mismanagement of classified documents” in requesting a briefing from White House officials on their “records management procedures” at some point before the end of his term. Trump was indicted after his first term for allegedly storing classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructing investigators, though the case was dismissed over U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s concerns about the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith.
Drafted in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Presidential Records Act was passed in 1978 to ensure the preservation of presidential records. Every president since Ronald Reagan has been subject to the law, which places the National Archives and Records Administration in control of the official records — such as emails, phone records, and other documentary material created by the president and his staff in the course of their duties — once the president leaves office.
Under the PRA, which is overseen by Congress, former presidents have up to 12 years after leaving office to turn over all their presidential records.
During President Trump’s current term, his administration has moved to unwind record retention protocols. Earlier this month, Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser wrote an opinion that would upend the established process for ensuring the public ownership of presidential records, arguing that “the PRA exceeds the oversight power [of Congress] because it serves no identifiable and valid legislative purpose.”
With three years left in Trump’s second term, his Department of Justice now says the president “need not further comply” with the law governing the handover of his presidential records once he leaves office.
The day after the publication of the Justice Department’s opinion, Warrington issued new guidance for the Executive Office of the President regarding the preserve of records going forward. While the memo said that staff could use policies developed under the PRA, Warrington said the new policy would cover the retention of both classified and unclassified material going forward.
In their letter to Warrington on Wednesday, the senators asserted that administration “does not have the authority to override Supreme Court rulings or unilaterally overturn laws passed by Congress.”
Within a week of the OLC opinion and new White House guidance, the country’s largest group of a historians and a watchdog organization brought a lawsuit seeking to force the Trump administration to comply with the PRA.
“The Executive Branch has nullified the determinations of the other two branches of government so that the President may claim these official government records to be his own,” the lawsuit said.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have defended the policy in court filings, arguing the PRA is an “unconstitutional and ahistorical imposition on presidential autonomy.”
As part of the lawsuit, the Trump administration released the new White House guidance on document retention. The Director of Archival Operations at the National Archives, meanwhile, said that the agency continues to “preserve all Presidential records in its custody” and plans to continue processing requests to access those records.
