Judge denies Jan. 6 defendant’s bid to delay case after Trump victory
ABC/Michael Le Brecht II
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory is already beginning to elicit requests from his supporters charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol for delays in their cases due to the potential they could be pardoned after Trump’s inauguration.
Attorneys for Christopher Carnell, a 21-year-old defendant from North Carolina who was found guilty earlier this year of felony and misdemeanor charges over his participation in the Capitol assault, requested Wednesday morning that D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell delay a status hearing in his case scheduled for later this week, citing Trump’s past promises to pardon his supporters.
“Throughout his campaign, President-elect Trump made multiple clemency promises to the January 6 defendants, particularly to those who were nonviolent participants,” their filing said. “Mr. Carnell, who was an 18 year old nonviolent entrant into the Capitol on January 6, is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”
Judge Howell denied Carnell’s request to delay his status hearing in an order on Wednesday.
The filing had stated that Carnell’s attorneys reached out to Trump’s office to get further information “regarding the timing and expected scope of clemency actions relevant to his case.”
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,500 people across the country in the last four years over their roles in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, part of what the Justice Department has described as one of the largest criminal investigations in its history.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office has continued to arrest individuals on a near-daily basis, many of whom have been charged with carrying out violent assaults on police protecting the building.
In addition to Trump’s promises to pardon many of those who participated in the attack, it’s widely expected the ongoing criminal investigation will be shuttered once Trump takes office.
(COLUMBUS, OH) — A transgender bathroom ban has been sent to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk after passing through the state legislature.
The bill would require students in the state’s K-12 schools, as well as colleges and universities, to use the restroom or facility that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. The bill notes that it is not intended to prevent schools from building single-occupancy facilities and does not ban someone of the opposite gender from entering to help another person.
The Republican-backed bill passed 60-31 in the House and passed on party lines in the Senate, 24-7.
Supporters say their concerns lie in student’s privacy and protection.
“It protects our children and grandchildren in private spaces where they are most vulnerable. It is us using our legislative authority to ensure schools are, in fact, safe environments. After all, bathrooms, showers, changing rooms should all be safe places for our students,” said Republican state Sen. Jerry C. Cirino ahead of the bill’s passage.
Critics of the bill say that the bill is creating unfounded concerns about transgender students and may instead put trans students in danger of discrimination or violence.
“I am in disbelief that this is a top priority on our first session back from recess,” said Senate Democratic Leader Nickie J. Antonio in an online statement “There are so many other issues we should be working on. There should be no exception to liberty and justice for all, yet here we are telling our children that there are people who are less than. This bill is not about bathrooms. It’s about demonizing those who are different, and our children are watching and listening to the fearmongering.”
Several medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, have opposed policies preventing transgender individuals from accessing restrooms consistent with their gender identity.
DeWine, a Republican, has gone against state Republican legislators on transgender issues before. He vetoed a transgender youth care ban bill, which would have restricted gender-affirming puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgeries.
“These are gut-wrenching decisions that should be made by the parents and should be informed by teams of doctors who are advising them,” said DeWine, adding that he did not find any families or hospitals who were seeking or allowing surgeries for youth. “These are parents who have watched the child suffer sometimes for years and have real concerns that their child may not survive.”
DeWine’s office declined ABC News’ request for comment on the bill. He told reporters this past summer that he has to look at “specific language” in the legislation.
“I’m for people, kids, to be able to go to the bathroom with the gender assignment so that they have that protection, but I’ll have to look at the specific language,” DeWine told reporters .
(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans on Monday released the results of a sweeping three-year investigation they say is the most detailed public accounting yet of the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of allies, some so desperate they clung to U.S. planes as the last military aircraft departed Kabul in 2021.
The report by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul — which relied on interviews with 18 top officials and 20,000 pages of documents — blames the White House, its National Security Council and the State Department for being slow to listen to military generals who warned the security situation would deteriorate quickly once U.S. troops began to depart.
The investigation did not, however, find evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris played any role in the planning or execution of the evacuation, although she expressed public support for President Joe Biden’s decision at the time.
Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have suggested Harris is culpable, noting past comments by the vice president that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden decided to leave Afghanistan.
“Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” Trump told National Guard members and their families in Detroit last month on the anniversary of the 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the evacuation, which killed 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghans.
The Biden administration pushed back on the findings by Republicans, calling it a partisan effort that sought to cherry-pick facts ahead of an election.
The Republican probe also is being released ahead of the first political debate between Harris and Trump, which ABC News is hosting on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. Trump and GOP loyalists are expected to hammer the Democratic administration for failing to prepare for a Taliban takeover once U.S. troops began to depart.
“The chaos and devastation that took place in August of 2021 has forever damaged U.S. credibility in the eyes of our allies, while emboldening our adversaries like China, Russia and Iran,” said McCaul, R-Texas. “Yet, not a single person was fired and, to this day, no one was ever held accountable by President Biden or Vice President Harris.”
Last week, McCaul issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s testimony on the withdrawal, threatening to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t testify on Sept. 19. In a written statement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller noted that Blinken has already testified on Afghanistan and the State Department provided the 20,000 pages of documents the committee was relying on to inform its investigation.
“Though the secretary is currently unavailable to testify on dates proposed by the committee, the State Department has proposed reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing,” Miller said. “It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena.”
On the investigation, Miller accused Republicans of politicizing the war and “presenting inaccurate narratives.”
“The State Department remains immensely proud of its workforce who put themselves forward in the waning days of our presence in Afghanistan to evacuate both Americans and the brave Afghans who stood by our sides for more than two decades,” he said.
While many of the details included in the Republican investigation have already become public through media reports and internal government reviews, among the more interesting details come from inside-the-room accounts of U.S. Embassy personnel.
At one point, according to Republicans, staff grew so panicked at the rushed evacuation that they began filling Tupperware containers with passports and visa foils to burn as Taliban forces arrived outside their building. Classified documents were eventually left behind in the scramble, according to the report, although the report doesn’t say how many or what type.
Meanwhile, the NSC was slow to establish criteria for who was eligible for evacuation, a standard the report says changed hourly. At one point, electronic visa letters known as “hall passes” were given to eligible Afghans, but the documents were so easily replicated that bootleg copies began circulating and the U.S. quickly scrapped the plan, according to the report.
The report also paints a picture of a State Department and NSC slow to understand the danger U.S. personnel were in as the Afghanistan government collapsed and the Taliban took control.
Ambassador Ross Wilson, who was brought out of retirement in the Trump administration to serve in Afghanistan and was the top American diplomat in Kabul at the time of the withdrawal, was allegedly reluctant to trigger a military-led evacuation, according to the report. Wilson has spoken publicly before that his staff worked feverishly in those final days to try to process as many travel documents as possible to help qualified people evacuate.
Biden has defended the State Department’s handling of the evacuation in the wake of the operation.
“In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave. Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport,” Biden said in 2021 in the wake of the withdrawal.
Biden and other Democrats have also defended the decision to pull out U.S. troops and shutter the embassy after 20 years in the country, saying their options were limited after Trump struck a deal with the Taliban to depart by May 1, 2021.
Trump’s agreement with the Taliban included the departure of U.S. troops and the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons so long as the Taliban promised not to collaborate with al-Qaeda or engage in “high-profile” attacks.
Wanting to bring an end to the war and concerned that Taliban fighters might target American service members if the U.S. reneged on the deal, the Biden administration stayed the course but amended the U.S. withdrawal deadline to Aug. 31, 2021.
“He could either ramp up the war against a Taliban that was at its strongest position in 20 years and put even more American troops at risk or finally end our longest war after two decades and $2 trillion spent,” said Sharon Yang, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations. “The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
Military generals in charge at the time have previously testified that their recommendation to Biden earlier that year was to maintain some 2,500 troops beyond that date regardless of what Trump had agreed to.
“At the end of 20 years, we the military helped build an army, a state, but we could not forge a nation. The enemy occupied Kabul, the overthrow of the government occurred and the military we supported for two decades faded away,” Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the withdrawal, testified last March.
“That is a strategic failure,” he said.
ABC News’ Emily Chang, Matthew Seyler and Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The family of Malcolm X, the Black resistance leader who was assassinated in 1965, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the U.S. government, they announced Friday.
Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, who represented her family at a New York City press conference, and her lawyers claim that they have uncovered new evidence that they believe will prove that the NYPD and FBI conspired to kill Malcolm X.
“We fought primarily for our mother, who was here,” Ilyasah Shabazz said of Betty Shabazz, who died in 1997, from the site of the former Audubon Ballroom, where her father was killed. “My mother was pregnant when she came here to see her husband speak; someone who she just admired totally and to witness this horrific assassination of her husband …”
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, at the age of 39. He was shot a total of 21 times by a group of men in front of his wife and daughters.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family, said that the lawsuit alleges authorities engaged in a decades-long cover-up that deprived Malcolm X and his family of justice. The suit seeks accountability for the harm caused by the alleged unlawful and unconstitutional actions of these agencies and individuals.
According to the complaint, Mustafa Hassan, a witness to Malcolm X’s killing, revealed that when he and others tried to apprehend one of the alleged shooters, it appeared to him that the NYPD officers at the scene tried to help the shooter escape.
Lawyers representing the family said that authorities never bothered to take a statement from Hassan even though it was allegedly clear that he was present during the assassination, implying that law enforcement willfully neglected to conduct a proper investigation.
Attorneys also claim to have sworn affidavits from two of Malcolm X’s former personal security guards. They were allegedly entrapped and jailed by an undercover NYPD officer a week before Malcolm X’s death to ensure the assassination was successful, according to attorneys.
The NYPD declined to comment on the allegations due to the pending litigation.
The family’s lawyers said that there were nine FBI informants in the ballroom the day Malcolm X was killed. One of the shooters was heavily connected to the FBI and received favors by authorities after the assassination, according to attorneys.
Lawyers said a New York FBI special agent sent a letter to J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, in December 1964 calling for extra surveillance of Malcolm X’s activities, since the Black resistance activist allegedly intended to have the oppression of Black Americans brought before the United Nations. About two months later, Malcolm X was assassinated.
According to The Washington Post, The FBI’s COINTELPRO, an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program, operated in secrecy for decades as investigators surveilled organizations and individuals that they deemed a threat to American interests. Targets of the program included civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and former Illinois Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton.
The FBI did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for a statement.
Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam were originally convicted in the murder of Malcolm X but later exonerated in the 1965 assassination. They received a $36 million settlement in October 2022 after lawsuits were filed on their behalf in 2021 against both the city and the state of New York.
New York City agreed to pay $26 million in settling a lawsuit filed on behalf of Aziz and also Islam, who was exonerated posthumously in the killing. Meanwhile, the state of New York also agreed to pay an additional $10 million.
“I’m grateful on behalf of my sisters,” Ilyasah Shabazz said. “To stand here with a competent, ethical group of experts, legal experts, as we seek justice for the assassination of our father.”
