Trump campaign ordered to stop using Isaac Hayes song at rallies after family sues
(ATLANTA) — A federal judge in Atlanta on Tuesday issued a temporary injunction ordering Donald Trump and his campaign to stop using a song co-written by the late musician Isaac Hayes at their events.
The song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” published in 1966, was played at Trump rallies and can be heard in campaign videos that were posted online, according to court documents reviewed by ABC News. The judge did not order that these videos be taken down, according to a statement from Trump representative Ronald Coleman.
“The campaign had already agreed to cease further use,” Coleman told ABC News in a statement. “We’re very gratified that the court recognized the First Amendment issues at stake and didn’t order a takedown of existing videos.”
Isaac Hayes III, Hayes’ son, said in a social media post last month that he was demanding $3 million in licensing fees from Trump and his campaign for unauthorized use of the song “Hold On, I’m Coming.” Trump and his partners played the song over 150 times without permission, court documents said.
“We won,” Isaac Hayes III posted on Instagram on Tuesday after the hearing. “@realdonaldtrump has been barred from playing @isaachayes music forever.”
The injunction stops the campaign from playing the song pending further proceedings, Coleman told ABC News, and the court would consider a motion for reconsideration based on copyright ownership if appropriate.
“The campaign has a license to play the music through an agreement with BMI and ASCAP,” the Trump campaign said in a statement emailed to ABC News in response to the ruling, referring to performance rights groups Broadcast Music Inc and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
Neither Isaac Hayes III nor attorneys for Isaac Hayes Enterprises — the company that handles licensing for Hayes’ estate — have responded to ABC News’ request for statements. Neither sides’ attorneys have responded to ABC News regarding any decision made on money allegedly owed to Isaac Hayes Enterprises.
The song was popularized by the music duo Sam & Dave in 1966 and reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the time, according to court documents. Hayes, who wrote the song with David Porter, passed away at age 65 in 2008, but his estate is the current owner of right and title to the song, the court documents noted.
After Trump and his campaign played the song in 2020 as “outro” music at one of their events, a cease-and-desist letter was sent to the Trump campaign on behalf of Isaac Hayes Enterprises, according to court documents.
The Donald J. Trump for President campaign, Republican National Committee (RNC), conservative advocacy group Turning Point, National Rifle Association (NRA), American Conservative Union and BTC were named as defendants on the complaint filed by Isaac Hayes Enterprises last month, for hosting events and uploading videos where the song was played, according to court documents.
The motion was withdrawn on Tuesday by Hayes Enterprises as to Turning Point, NRA and RNC, the court noted.
Hayes is part of a group of musicians who have called for Trump to stop playing their music at his events, which include Beyoncé, the Foo Fighters, Jack White and Celine Dion.
(WASHINGTON) — Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate faced a grilling from lawmakers about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month.
The two officials testified before a Senate panel on Tuesday about security arrangements at the site and the status of ongoing investigations into what occurred both on July 13 and in the days leading up to the shooting.
New details have emerged about the shooting, including a potential social media account owned by the shooter and questions about when the Secret Service first saw the gunman on the roof. Officials have also confirmed, after the FBI director’s ambiguous comments last week raised questions about what struck Trump, that the former president was hit by a bullet.
Rowe told lawmakers he was “ashamed” of the protection failures that day and said he visited the site of the shooting as one of his first acts as acting director.
“I went to the roof of the AGR building where the assailant fired shots and laid in a prone position to evaluate his line of sight. What I saw made me ashamed,” Rowe said in his opening statement. “As a career law enforcement officer, and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
Here are some key moments from the hearing.
Questions over timeline emerge
Rowe, who took over as the head of the Secret Service after former director Kim Cheatle’s resignation earlier this month, testified that Trump’s security detail didn’t have “any knowledge” there was an attacker on the roof with a gun prior to shots ringing out.
“It is my understanding those personnel were not aware that the assailant had a firearm until they heard gunshots,” he said. “Prior to that, they were operating with the knowledge that local law enforcement was working on issue of a suspicious individual prior to the shots being fired.”
In dramatic fashion, he also displayed pictures of where the local sniper team was supposed to be posted and showed images of his agents re-enacting the shooter’s position.
Rowe also said if they had “more information” about the 30 seconds between finding out the shooter had a gun on the roof and him opening fire, they would’ve been able to address it “more quickly.”
“It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that state local channel,” Rowe said.
Rowe said that while it was great there was a texting chain, more needs to go “over the net,” meaning, there needs to be more radio communication, which apparently there was a lack of during July 13.
Rowe was pressed on reports that 20 minutes passed between the time Secret Service snipers first spotted the gunman on a rooftop and the time shots were fired at the former president. Rowe said it was the “first” he was hearing of that and to his knowledge it was “incorrect.”
Abbate also testified about the timeline, saying approximately 25 minutes prior to the shooting, the Secret Service command post was notified of a suspicious person.
Abbate recently discovered video footage from a local business that shows the shooter getting onto the roof of the building at 6:06 p.m., and he was spotted by local law enforcement at 6:08 p.m. At approximately 6:11 p.m., Abbate said, a local police officer who was “lifted to the roof by another officer, saw the shooter and radioed that he was armed with a ‘long gun.’ Within approximately the next 30 second, the shots were fired.”
Drone system was down, Rowe says it could’ve prevented shooting
The acting Secret Service director said that if cellular capability was better on July 13, they could’ve launched a counter drone system sooner and potentially stopped the attack.
It is “something that has cost me a lot of sleep because of the eventual outcome of the assailant,” Rowe said.
Rowe said he grappled with circumstances that could have allowed drones to spot the gunman before he opened fire.
“That what if we … geo-located him because that counter UAS platform had been up? It is something that I have struggled with to understand,” he continued. “I have no explanation for, it is something that I feel as though we could have perhaps found him. We could have maybe stopped him. Maybe on that particular day, he would have decided this isn’t the day to do it, because law enforcement just found me flying my drone.”
The countering drone system was down for about two hours and went back online at 5 p.m., Rowe testified.
The gunman flew his own drone near the site hours before the shooting.
Shooter’s motive still unknown, social media account discovered
The FBI deputy director said in his opening statement that the investigation remains focused on motive, identifying any potential co-conspirators and building out the timeline of the shooter’s actions.
“Thus far, though absolutely nothing has been ruled out, the investigation has not identified a motive nor any co-conspirators or others with advanced knowledge,” Abbate said.
Abbate also told Congress that they recently discovered a social media account from 2019 to 2020 that appeared to belong to the shooter, but Abbate couched it as preliminary.
“There were over 700 comments posted from this account,” Abbate said. “Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature,” he said.
Rowe pressed on accountability in heated exchange
Rowe told lawmakers he is taking “immediate steps” to avoid repeating failures at the Trump rally including expanding the use of unmanned aerial systems to check unprotected areas, improving site communications with local partners and increasing the number of security details to address a heightened security environment.
Rowe also said he heard the calls for “accountability” and noted the Secret Service is reviewing the actions and decision-making of personnel leading up to the rally.
“If this investigation reveals Secret Service employees violated agency protocols, those employees will be held accountable to our disciplinary process,” he said.
Senators on both sides of the aisle said there needs to be “individual accountability” for who was responsible for what during the shooting.
A particularly heated exchange ensued between Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and Rowe over why certain individuals had not been relieved of duty, with both men raising their voices. In the exchange, Rowe said Hawley was focused on one person rather than a whole investigative failure.
“Is it not prima facie that somebody has failed? The former president was shot,” Hawley pressed.
Rowe responded: “Sir, this could have been our Texas School Book Depository. I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days.” Rowe was referencing the building that Lee Harvey Oswald was in during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“Then just fire somebody!” Hawley exclaimed.
“I will tell you, senator, that I will not rush to judgment, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity and not rush to judgment and put people unfairly prosecuted,” Rowe responded.
‘No doubt’ Trump was hit by bullet
Sen. John Kennedy pressed Abbate on what struck President Trump.
“Is there any doubt in your mind or in the collective mind of the FBI that President Trump was shot in the ear by a bullet fired by the assassin?” Kennedy asked.
“Senator, there is absolutely no doubt in the FBI’s mind whether former President Trump was hit with the with a bullet and wounded in the ear. No doubt. There never has been,” Abbate said.
Last week, the FBI released a statement also emphasizing that what struck Trump was a “bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.”
Abbate reiterated Tuesday that it was a bullet “100%.”
ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have extensive records when it comes to criminal justice policy – records that are sometimes completely opposed to one another, and at other times are aligned.
As Trump – who has a criminal record of his own, having been convicted on 34 felony counts – prepares to face off in the general election against Harris, who is a former prosecutor, district attorney and attorney general, their past actions on criminal justice have come into the spotlight.
Here’s a look at some of the candidates’ policy records on crime, the death penalty, policing, and prison reform:
Recidivism
In 2005, as the district attorney for San Francisco, Harris launched “Back on Track,” a reentry initiative aimed at reducing recidivism among young, low-level, first-time felony drug-trafficking defendants.
Candidates between the ages of 18 and 30 who first complete six weeks of community service and then plead guilty to their charges are eligible to participate in the program, during which their sentencing is deferred until they complete a 12 to 18-month supervised “individualized personal responsibility plan” that includes “concrete achievements in employment, education, parenting, and child support,” among other mandates. The program reported that fewer than 10% of the program graduates reoffended after being released, compared to a 53% recidivism rate for California drug offenders within two years of release from incarceration.
The Biden-Harris administration also implemented a new Small Business Administration rule that removed loan eligibility restrictions based on a person’s criminal record.
“Making this available, reducing and eliminating that restriction is going to mean a lot in terms of second chances and the opportunity for people to excel,” Harris said of the program earlier this year.
In 2018, Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law similarly aimed at supporting recidivism reduction programs – a bill Harris voted for as a senator.
The First Step Act (FSA) called for the development of risk and needs assessment programs to reduce recidivism, and required the Bureau of Prisons to help incarcerated people access federal and state benefits, obtain identification, and more. Under the act, incarcerated people could earn time credit for participating in recidivism reduction programming and other activities, which could be applied toward early release.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice, recidivism is estimated to be 37% lower among FSA releases when compared to “similarly situated pre-FSA releases.”
Death penalty
Trump has consistently been pro-death penalty. Federal executions began under the Trump administration in 2020 for the first time in roughly 17 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
In 2020, the federal government completed 13 federal executions in the final months of the Trump presidency, according to the DPIC.
In 1989, prior to his time in office, Trump called for the return of the death penalty in a series of ads amid the case of five Black and brown boys then known as the “Central Park Five” who were convicted of assaulting and raping a woman in New York City.
Trump took out full-page ads in local newspapers within two weeks after the April 19, 1989 attack, calling to “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!” However, the ads never explicitly mentioned the five boys, who were incarcerated for years before they were exonerated after another man confessed to the crime.
Harris has been consistent in her stance against the death penalty: “My entire career I have been opposed – personally opposed – to the death penalty,” Harris said in an August 2019 debate. “And that has never changed.”
However, some have criticized Harris for decisions regarding several death penalty-related cases.
For example, Harris declined to take up the case of convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, who was sentenced to death for a quadruple homicide in California in 1983 and is currently awaiting execution. His team had asked the state for additional DNA testing that they maintained could have exonerated him.
Harris has since changed her views on Cooper’s request, later telling The New York Times “I feel awful about this.”
Additionally, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney overturned the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones in 2014, ruling that the nearly 20 years he spent waiting for execution on death row was a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and so the death penalty was unconstitutional.
As the state’s attorney general, Harris appealed the ruling, arguing that the court’s decision “is not supported by the law, and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.” Carney’s ruling was overturned on appeal the following year.
Prison policy
Under the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 rescinded an Obama-era initiative to phase out private prisons. Sessions then began distributing contracts for new privately-run detention centers.
In January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration ordered the Department of Justice not to renew contracts for privately-operated criminal detention centers. In December 2022, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ended all contracts with privately owned prisons and transferred federal inmates who had been incarcerated in them to BOP-operated prisons.
Pardons and commutations
The Trump administration commuted the sentences of more than 90 individuals and granted pardons to more than 140 people, according to the DOJ. The Biden-Harris administration has so far commuted the sentences of more than 120 individuals and granted pardons to 25 people, according to the DOJ. The plan ahead
Though the Harris campaign hasn’t yet released the vice president’s official 2024 platform, she previously has supported legalizing marijuana at the federal level, ending solitary confinement, embracing cash bail reform, ending federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, and furthering rehabilitative services for the incarcerated. She has also supported the Justice in Policing Act, which would limit “unnecessary” use of force and no-knock warrants, limit qualified immunity for police officers, and increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct.
The Trump administration’s plan, according to his official campaign website, states that he plans to increase funding to hire and retrain police officers, strengthen qualified immunity and other “protections” for police officers, increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement, and “surge federal prosecutors and the National Guard into high-crime communities.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently sought a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris, according to multiple people familiar with the outreach.
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, Kennedy’s campaign manager, told ABC News that she and Kennedy reached out to the Harris team but have yet to hear back.
The outreach was the latest in a monthslong and fruitless effort by the Kennedy campaign to speak with top Democrats, including President Joe Biden when he sat atop the Democratic ticket, Fox Kennedy told ABC.
However, the most recent attempts to meet with Harris appear to have carried extra meaning: the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Kennedy wanted to discuss the possibility of serving in Harris’ cabinet in exchange for an endorsement to help her over the finish line this fall.
Fox Kennedy did not dispute the details of the story and told ABC News, “Bobby has always been willing to meet with both parties to discuss the possibility of a unity government.”
Democrats on Wednesday all but dismissed the possibility of working out a deal with Kennedy, whose poll numbers have steadily dipped throughout the summer.
“No one has any intention of negotiating with a MAGA-funded fringe candidate who has sought out a job with Donald Trump in exchange for an endorsement,” said Lis Smith, an advisor to the Democratic National Committee.
Kennedy has met multiple times with Republican nominee Donald Trump, including an in-person meeting in Milwaukee last month where the men discussed possible roles for Kennedy in a Trump administration, as ABC News previously reported.