2024 election updates: Trump heads to Pennsylvania with boost in new Sun Belt poll

(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Friday he is launching an investigation into what he says is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s “extensive engagement with China.”

The probe into Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate is a sign of what the House Republican majority will focus its attention on regarding the new Democratic presidential ticket in the months leading up to Election Day.

Walz was a former public school teacher and served in the Army National Guard before being elected to Congress in 2005 and later becoming Minnesota’s governor.

Comer, in his announcement on Friday, cited recent articles from the New York Post and Newsweek examining ties between Walz and China — including comments he made about visiting the nation 30 times, some of which were teaching trips, and a 2016 interview where he said he didn’t “fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship.”

“The CCP has sought to destroy the United States through coordinated influence and infiltration campaigns that target every aspect of American life, including our own elected officials,” Comer wrote.

“Walz’s connections to China raise questions about possible CCP [Chinese Communist Party] influence in his decision-making as governor — and should he be elected, as vice president,” he said.

A Walz spokesman shot back.

“Throughout his career, Governor Walz has stood up to the CCP, fought for human rights rights and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first. Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators, and sending American jobs to China. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will ensure we win the competition with China, and will always stand up for our values and interests in the face of China’s threats,” said Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz.

Comer sent a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray requesting documents and information no later than Aug. 30.

A spokeswoman for Democrats on the Oversight committee also criticized Comer, calling his action “nothing more than a political stunt.”

“For the umpteenth time, Chairman Comer shows the American people that his only real priority in Congress is doing Donald Trump’s bidding. Rather than tackling issues that matter to Americans—like protecting our children from the epidemic of gun violence, holding the perpetrators of the climate crisis accountable, or even investigating Donald Trump for his own record of selling out the White House to foreign autocrats and turning the presidency into a corrupt money-making enterprise — Chairman Comer is doing his part to ensure that the 118th Congress will go down as the least productive in history,” the spokesperson said.

Previously, Comer took the reins of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The probe stalled as lawmakers failed to substantiate their allegations that Biden used his office to participate in and profit from his family’s foreign business dealings — which Biden adamantly denied.

As a congressman, Walz served on Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which was responsible for monitoring whether acts of the People’s Republic of China violated human rights.

Walz, in the 2016 interview that’s been a focus of recent news coverage, said the commission came to be after the U.S. normalized trade relations with China to “try to keep a focus that we’ll trade with China but they have to play by the rules both from an environmental, fair trade but also human rights perspective.”

The FBI did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment on Comer’s request.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., on Monday pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, telling reporters outside the courthouse the guilty plea was the “right thing to do.”

“This plea is not just an admission of guilt,” Santos told the media. “It’s an acknowledgment that I need to be held accountable like any other American that breaks the law.”

In court, Santos, wearing gray slacks and a black sports coat, told the judge he was “committed to making amends and learning from this experience.”

He is due to be sentenced on Feb. 7.

Santos pleaded guilty to claiming relatives had made contributions to his campaign when, in fact, they had not. Santos conceded he was trying to meet the fundraising threshold to qualify for financial help from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Santos also stipulated that he committed other fraud, including charging donor credit cards without authorization and convincing donors to give money by falsely stating the money would be used for TV ads. He also stipulated he stole public money by applying for and receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic to which he was not entitled.

Santos conceded in a statement to the court his actions “betrayed” his constituents and others.

In addition to potential prison time, Santos must pay restitution of nearly $374,000 and forfeiture of more than $200,000.

Santos faces a sentence of 75-87 months, including a mandatory minimum two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft.

Fighting back tears outside the courthouse after his plea, Santos said he was “flooded with deep regret” for his conduct. He vowed to accept responsibility for his actions while apologizing to his former constituents for allowing “ambition to cloud [his] judgment.”

“It is clear to me now that I allowed ambition to cloud my judgment, leading me to make decisions that were unethical,” Santos said. “Pleading guilty is a step I never imagined I would take, but it is a necessary one, because it is the right thing to do.”

Santos acknowledged he failed his constituents and said he hoped to be a part of “restoring the integrity” he diminished through his lies.

“It has been the proudest achievement of my life to represent you, and I believe I did so to the best of my abilities, but you also trusted me to represent you with honor and to uphold the values that are essential to our democracy, and in that regard, I failed you,” Santos said.

While Santos vowed to accept full responsibility for his conduct, his lawyers flagged in the final moments of his plea hearing this afternoon that the former congressman may not be able to pay over $200,000 in restitution.

Santos is required to pay the restitution 30 days before his sentencing on Feb. 7 and could face additional sanctions if he fails to pay in time.

“At this time, he does not have the money,” defense attorney Andrew Mancilla told federal judge Joanna Seybert.

Defense attorney Joseph Murray insisted that Santos would make his “best effort” to make the money over the next five months.

“We will see how it goes, but I see substantial problems if he can’t comply,” Seybert said before accepting Santos’ plea. “That sounds like we just have to hope.”

Santos, 36, was charged in May 2023 with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making materially false statements to the House of Representatives following months of news reports about lies the Republican congressman told in his past.

In October 2023, the then-congressman faced 10 more charges in the Eastern District of New York, including wire fraud, making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission and aggravated identity theft.

He had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges and his trial had been scheduled to start in September.

In July, a judge denied Santos’ motion to dismiss certain fraud charges, ruling he failed to meet the legal standards.

Two of Santos’ associates, his former campaign finance chief Nancy Marks and fundraiser Sam Miele, have already pleaded guilty to charges.

Santos survived an expulsion vote on Nov. 1, 2023, in the wake of the superseding indictment.

His support among Republicans wavered after the release of a damning report from the House Ethics Committee two weeks after surviving the expulsion vote.

“George Santos cannot be trusted,” declared the 56-page report. “At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles.”

Santos allegedly reported fictitious loans to get wealthy donors to make contributions, according to the ethics report, used his connections to obtain yet more donations, including to make “purported ‘repayments’ of those fictitious loans,” and diverted campaign money for his own use.

Santos’ expenses ranged from spending $2,280 in Atlantic City, where he allegedly liked to play roulette with his husband; $2,900 spent on Botox; approximately $10,000 spent at high-end Ferragamo and Hermes stores; and about $3,330 at a rental property, according to the report.

Exactly one month after surviving the first expulsion vote, Santos became just the sixth member of Congress to ever be expelled on Dec. 1, 2023.

He had, until that point, represented New York’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of Queens and Nassau counties, since January 2020.

Santos ended a long-shot comeback bid to represent New York’s 1st Congressional District in April.

Following court this afternoon, United States Attorney Breon Peace described Santos’ crimes as a “fraud of unprecedented proportions.”

“Today, … or what may seem like the first time since he started his campaign for Congress, Mr. Santos told the truth about his criminal escapes,” Peace said about today’s plea.

-ABC News’ Leah Sarnoff contributed to this story.

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(CHICAGO) — As the economy tops lists of voter concerns ahead of the 2024 election, some speakers at the Democratic National Convention have sought to emphasize how much the economy has improved under President Joe Biden.

When Biden took office in early 2021, the U.S. was in the midst of the “worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Tuesday. Back then, the economy was “reeling,” said former President Barack Obama later in the night.

The claims contrast with Republican depictions of the downturn in 2020 and the ensuing recovery. Former President Donald Trump has faulted COVID-19 for derailing the nation’s economy, while saying the U.S. had recovered in some areas by the time Biden took office.

“Nobody’s ever seen an economy [like ours] pre-COVID, and then we handed over a stock market that was substantially higher than just prior to COVID,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention last month.

An accurate picture of recent economic performance defies the narratives put forward by both parties, economists told ABC News.

The economy had already emerged from the pandemic-induced recession and begun to recover by the time Biden took office, experts said. However, the U.S. remained well below pre-pandemic levels in some key measures of economic health, including employment. Biden faced the difficult task of revitalizing the economy and getting Americans back to work, they added.

“There are kudos to be given to all the different sides,” Frederick Floss, an economics professor at Buffalo State University, told ABC News. “It’s very complex.”

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the economy performed robustly by some important measures. In February 2020, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5%, matching its lowest level in more than 50 years. Inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased at a solid annualized clip of 2.1% over the final three months of 2019.

The onset of the pandemic — as well as ensuing shutdowns across much of the U.S. — plunged the economy into a recession. On March 12, 2020, the S&P 500 plummeted nearly 10%, registering its worst single-day performance in more than three decades. The following month, the unemployment rate skyrocketed to almost 15%.

In March 2020, Trump signed into law a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package, including direct payments of $1,200 and expanded unemployment insurance, among other measures. Months later, in December, Trump enacted a second $900 billion round of government support.

Over the period, much of the economy reopened and business activity returned to something resembling normal.

In turn, economic growth soared over the second half of 2020. The unemployment rate fell to 6.7% by the end of the year, nearly double pre-pandemic levels but well below the peak reached right after the outbreak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 ended the year at record highs.

The COVID-induced recession lasted two months in the spring of 2020, the shortest U.S. recession ever recorded, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit organization that serves as the recognized authority on economic downturns.

Economists disagreed over the extent to which Trump deserves credit for the initial recovery, saying it resulted from a mix of federal support that he had enacted as well as the withdrawal of restrictions imposed by state and local governments.

“It was a very short-lived recession,” Matias Vernengo, a professor of economics at Bucknell University, told ABC News. “That obviously happened under the Trump administration.

Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, added: “It’s faster than we’ve ever seen in any previous crisis but no other recession has had that form where we locked everybody up. It’s much easier to get it back when demand is still there.”

Despite its improvement over the latter part of 2020, the economy remained far from healthy when Biden took office, especially on the all-important issue of employment, economists said.

The U.S. lost 21.9 million jobs in March and April of 2020, U.S. government data showed. At the outset of the following year, the economy still stood about 10 million jobs short. In addition, pandemic-induced bottlenecks continued to snarl supply chains, restricting economic output worldwide.

“A fair statement is that the economy at the end of 2020 had recovered substantially but there were still millions of job losses that the economy hadn’t recovered from,” Dennis Hoffman, an economist at Arizona State University, told ABC News.

Rothstein, of the University of California, Berkeley, said the economy remained in peril at the outset of the Biden administration in early 2021.”I think calling it an economic crisis is totally fair,” Rothstein said.

Still, Rothstein added: “We did some right things in 2020 and we did some right things after 2020.”

In March 2021, Biden signed a $1.9 billion economic stimulus package of his own, including another round of $1,400 direct payments as well as an expansion of the child tax credit. The following year, Biden enacted the $891 billion Inflation Reduction Act and the $280 billion CHIPS and Sciences Act.

Over the course of the Biden administration, the labor market expanded at a rapid pace while economic growth quickened. By 2022, the economy had recovered all of the jobs lost during the pandemic. In January 2023, the unemployment rate fell even lower than where it stood pre-pandemic.

Economists who spoke with ABC News credited Biden-backed government stimulus for the reemergence of U.S. economic strength, but they differed over whether the spending had contributed to a severe bout of inflation experienced during that period.

“We were able to recover as an economy and job creation has been pretty remarkable,” said Hoffman, of Arizona State University. “That became a very successful program — it also brought inflation.”

Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, estimated that Biden’s American Rescue Plan added between 1 percentage point and 4 percentage points to the inflation rate in 2021, Roll Call reported. Michael Strain, of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, estimated that the legislation added 3 percentage points to inflation.

Vernengo, of Bucknell University, disagreed, attributing the bout of inflation to an imbalance of supply and demand that arose in the aftermath of the pandemic. “Inflation has more or less vanished,” Vernengo said, saying the moderation of prices indicates that the problem owed primarily to a temporary economic shock.

Price increases have cooled significantly from a peak of more than 9%, but inflation remains nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%.

Vernengo, of Bucknell University, said both major parties have offered up misleading accounts of the 2020 economic downturn and the recovery that took hold afterward. “The story is somewhere in the middle,” Vernengo said.

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