Following Hunter Biden pardon, prosecutors push back against criticism of case
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(LOS ANGELES) — Less than 24 hours after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden and criticized his prosecution as a “miscarriage of justice,” prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’ office defended the integrity of their work in a court filing and fiercely rebutted the president’s allegation that their charges were motivated by politics.
“In total, eleven different [federal] judges appointed by six different presidents, including his father, considered and rejected the defendant’s claims, including his claims for selective and vindictive prosecution,” wrote prosecutor Leo Wise in a ten-page filing Monday.
President Biden on Sunday issued a blanket pardoned to his son, who earlier this year was convicted earlier on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax-related charges, and was due to be sentenced in both cases later this month.
In Monday’s filing, prosecutors urged the federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax case in California not to dismiss his indictment, and instead close the docket — which would allow the record to continue to exist.
“The government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred,” Wise wrote. “It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive.”
Mark Osler, an expert in presidential pardons at the University of St. Thomas, said Weiss’ overture raises “a technical issue — either way, the case goes away — but an important one.”
“[Prosecutors] want the indictment to remain on the record,” he told ABC News.
Without directly addressing President Biden’s criticism of the case as selective and unfair, the filing highlighted how Hunter Biden’s lawyers made “every conceivable argument” to dismiss the case and failed to provide evidence that prosecution was vindictive.
“The court similarly found his vindictive prosecution claims unmoored from any evidence or even a coherent theory as to vindictiveness,” the filing said. “And there was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case. The defendant made similar baseless accusations in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Those claims were also rejected.”
(TALLAHASSEE, FL) — Florida officials are urging residents to evacuate now as Hurricane Milton intensifies and sets its sights on the state’s west coast.
Hours before the storm strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents to take evacuation orders seriously.
“Time is going to start running out very, very soon,” he said at a news conference.
“Please, if you’re in the Tampa Bay area, you need to evacuate,” Kevin Guthrie, executive director of Florida Emergency Management, urged at the news conference. “Drowning deaths due to storm surge are 100% preventable if you leave.”
More than 50 counties along Florida’s west coast are now under state of emergency orders and several are under evacuation orders, including Charlotte, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas and Sarasota. All evacuation orders are listed on Florida’s Division of Emergency Management website.
The storm is is expected to weaken, but will still be a major Category 3 hurricane by the time it makes landfall in Florida late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.
“If you live in a storm surge evacuation zone and you’re asked to leave by your local officials, please do that,” Michael Brennan, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center, told ABC News Live on Sunday. “You don’t have to drive hundreds of miles to get to a safe place, often just tens of miles to get inland, out of that evacuation zone, to a shelter, a friend or loved one’s home.”
Brennan also urged Floridians to prepare a disaster kit with several days’ worth of nonperishable food, water, medicine and batteries.
Ahead of landfall on Monday, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state to allow federal assistance to begin supplementing local efforts.
Flooding is expected, and storm surge is a significant threat.
A record-breaking storm surge of 8 to 12 feet is expected in the Tampa Bay area, as Floridians continue cleaning up from the 6 to 8 feet of storm surge that was just brought on by Hurricane Helene.
As Milton churns closer, Tampa International Airport said it would suspend operations Tuesday at 9 a.m. and remain closed “until it can assess any damage after the storm,” airport officials said. St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport also said it would close Tuesday, and remain shuttered on Wednesday and Thursday.
The University of Florida said it would be canceling classes Wednesday and Thursday, but plan to reopen Friday morning.
Everoak Farms volunteers harvest sugar cane that could be salvaged after heavy winds and water from Hurricane Milton wrecked and flooded crops on the Orlando, Florida, farm. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ) — Florida’s agricultural fields — including the state’s iconic orange groves and berry farms — are routinely damaged by strong storms that roll through the state.
Some of the Sunshine State’s most important farms are now recovering from two of the 2024 season’s most powerful hurricanes, which struck one after the other.
On Sept. 27, Hurricane Helene became the strongest hurricane to strike Florida’s Big Bend. Less than two weeks later, on Oct. 10, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key. After both Category 4 storms brought life-threatening storm surge to the Gulf Coast, they turned toward the heart of the state, destroying farmland with strong winds and heavy rains, experts told ABC News.
While the state is no stranger to hurricanes, its agriculture industry is threatened every time a strong hurricane rolls in, Angela Lindsay, associate professor and disaster specialist at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), told ABC News.
Florida’s groves were heavily impacted by the recent hurricanes, which tore through regions with some of the most productive citrus acreage in the state, Matt Joyner, executive vice president and CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s largest citrus trade association, told ABC News.
Hurricane-force winds caused defoliation — or the leaves to fall off — damaged limbs and branches and even downed entire trees, snapping them at the roots, Lindsay said. While oranges are not yet ready for harvest, they are currently near maturity and heavier, making it easier for high winds to pull the fruit from their branches, Joyner said.
“We know that we have a lot of fruit on the ground for this year’s crop,” Joyner said.
At Showcase of Citrus, an orange grove in Clermont, Florida, near Orlando, the gusts from Milton bent some trees at a 45-degree angle, owner John Arnold told ABC News.
Floods often kill the citrus groves, especially young orange trees planted in low-lying areas, Arnold said, adding that several of his young orange trees were lost to flooding.
Mitigation is difficult, the farmers said. Complicating matters even further is the uncertainty of the forecast up until just a few days before landfall, making it difficult to tend to hundreds and thousands of acres in a short amount of time, Michael Hill, co-founder and CEO of H&A Farms in Mount Dora, Florida, told ABC News.
Citrus trees can be staked in order to provide support from the hurricane-force winds, Lindsay said. Some farmers have tried wrapping the trees in tarp-like material, but that technique is not commonly used, Lindsay added.
“I’ve seen storms that tipped over entire groves of mature trees,” Arnold said.
There’s not much that can be done to protect crops in the ground, said Hill, who grows strawberries and blueberries — two of the most vulnerable crops in the state, after citrus, experts say.
A tree fell on Hill’s home in Eustis, Florida, but once the storm passed, all he cared about was the state of his fields.
“That’s the least of my worries,” he said of the downed tree.
About 60% of the plastic mulch the strawberries were planted in on Hill’s farm were torn up by Milton, he said. Hill and his workers are attempting to re-lay the plastic while keeping the plants alive in a cooler.
For the dairy industry, the cows still need to be milked, but the stressed cows likely produce much less, Jeb Smith, president of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation, told ABC News.
“It may be a month before they’re able to get back to where production should be,” Smith said.
Structural damage often includes buildings and fences that require re-building, Smith said. Showcase of Citrus sustained some damage to its screen buildings for growing grapefruit, Arnold said. A barn at H&A Farm was destroyed by Milton’s hurricane-force winds, and the entire facility lost power for days, Hill said.
Once the storm rolls through, farmers try to save whatever fruit fell to the ground and attempt to stake damaged trees in an attempt to support what’s remaining, Lindsay said.
Milton was the fourth named storm to hit many of the farms in Central Florida in 14 months, following Hurricane Irma in September 2023 and Debby in early September 2024, Smith said.
“It leads to more impact, when you have blow after blow,” Smith said.
In 2022, Florida’s agriculture industry generated $182.6 billion in revenue and supported more than 2.5 million jobs, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services. While citrus is Florida’s signature crop, the state is an important producer of many other agricultural products. Florida is the second-largest producer of all oranges, strawberries, sweet corn and non-Valencia oranges in the country. More than 40 vegetables are grown commercially in the state, which ranks in the top three on production value of tomato, bell pepper, snap bean, squash, cabbage and cucumber, according to the University of Florida.
Sugarcane, timber, cattle and dairy are also major commodities for the state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Other storms in the recent past have been just as devastating, the experts said.
Farmers were in disbelief over the amount of fruit that had been blown to the ground after Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Ian in 2022, Lindsay said. The citrus industry saw a 1,000% loss as a result of Ian, Smith said.
In 2018, after Hurricane Michael struck the panhandle, researchers and officials couldn’t even get to some of the fields — many of which contain row crops of tomatoes and cotton — to assess the damage because of the damaged roadways, Lindsay said.
“We were using drones to look at them,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot there.”
Hurricane Ian in 2022 led to an estimated $7.9 billion in agricultural losses and impacted nearly 5 million acres, a report by the university found. Hurricane Irma in 2018 caused about $1.3 billion in losses, impacting about 1.9 million acres, according to an IFAS report.
Milton resulted in losses between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, in addition to the estimated $1.5 billion in damage caused by Idalia, Debby and Helene in the 13 months prior, according to a preliminary assessment by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services released Thursday.
Every named storm in recent memory that has passed through central Florida has caused damage to Arnold’s farmland, he said.
“Just as we replant trees and rehabilitate groves and look to recover and move into better seasons, we’re getting hit with these storms,” Joyner said. “It’s really been difficult for growers to kind of regain their footing and move forward.”
In addition to crop insurance, there are several programs in place for farmers, including loan and recovery programs by the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Lindsay said. The data collected by IFAS is sent to federal officials, who then determine the amount of aid to be distributed to farmers.
Once the damage is assessed, farmers then must make long-term decisions on how to move forward, Smith said.
“Some of these producers will have impacts years down the road,” Smith said, adding that the adverse impacts on the citrus industry can even last for decades.
Hurricanes are just one of the hazards Florida farmers face regularly. The last few years have been tough on the industry, with citrus farmers experiencing widespread greening, a disease that impacts citrus trees, Arnold said.
Combined with freezes, market prices, other diseases, labor challenges and inflation, farmers in the state have left many farms struggling to keep afloat, Hill said.
“When you see Florida strawberries in your stores this year, know that it came from a farmer that chose not to give up,” Hill said.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris said her heart is “full of resolve” after losing the presidential election to former President Donald Trump.
“My heart is full today — full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country and full of resolve,” Harris said Wednesday at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But … the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up,” Harris said.
Harris said she told Trump on the phone Wednesday that she’ll help with a peaceful transfer of power, which got a cheer from the crowd at Howard.
“We must accept the results of this election,” the vice president said.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” Harris said, alluding to Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his loss of the 2020 election.
Harris stressed, “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”
“The fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people — a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation — the ideals that reflect America at our best,” she said.
Harris vowed that she’ll “never give up the fight for a future … where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body.”
“We will never give up the fight to protect our schools and our streets from gun violence,” she continued. “And America, we will never give up the fight for our democracy, for the rule of law, for equal justice, and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms that must be respected and upheld.”
She said that fight will continue “in the voting booth, in the courts, and in the public square.”
“And we will also wage it in quieter ways, in how we live our lives, by treating one another with kindness and respect, by looking in the face of a stranger and seeing a neighbor,” she said. “By always using our strength to lift people up, to fight for the dignity that all people deserve.”
To her young supporters watching, the vice president said, “It is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s gonna be OK.”
“Sometimes the fight takes a while. … The important thing is don’t ever give up,” she said.
“This is not a time to throw up our hands, this is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together,” she said.
Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff waved to the crowd after her remarks as Harris’ running mate, an emotional Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, looked on.
Harris’ family, Walz’s family, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Harris’ campaign staff were also in attendance.
Harris’ defeat came as Trump won the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin overnight. Trump won another swing state, Michigan, on Wednesday.
Trump’s victory underscores just how deep voters’ frustrations were surrounding inflation and immigration, Republicans’ two top issues this election cycle as polls consistently showed Americans’ unhappiness with how President Joe Biden handled them. Trump’s return to the White House also suggests that Democrats were not motivated enough by the prospect of electing the first female president and that its base’s fury over the Supreme Court’s revocation of constitutional abortion protections has waned since 2022.
Biden plans to address the nation on Thursday.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Will McDuffie and Tal Axelrod contributed to this report.
