House Oversight chair says Jill Biden, Harris should be subpoenaed over Joe Biden’s mental capacity
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(WASHINGTON) — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told reporters that former Vice President Kamala Harris and former first lady Jill Biden “should” be subpoenaed in the panel’s investigation into former President Joe Biden‘s mental capacity while in office after another top Biden official pleaded the Fifth today.
“Well, I think they should,” Comer told ABC when asked if the committee should subpoena Harris and Jill Biden. “They should have already issued statements. They should have already done public relations campaign to sit down and answer questions. They should go on FOX, they should go on CNN and answer questions.”
Comer also said the committee has scheduled a slate of depositions with former Biden officials in the GOP’s investigation of the Biden administration’s use of the presidential auto-pen. At President Donald Trump’s urging, Republicans have taken aim at Biden’s clemency actions signed during his final hours in office — wondering whether staff acted on their own accord or at the direction of the president.
“So we’re going to bring in everyone. We’re moving up the line,” Comer later added. “So we’ve started with the lower-level staffers that we think were the ones that actually put the documents in the autopen and pressed power. Now we’re moving up to the people that we think told the staffers to use the autopen. So we’ll — we’ll see where that takes us. But I think the possibility is very good that — that we’ll be asking members of the family to come in and talk.”
Anthony Bernal, a veteran aide of three Democratic presidential administrations — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — whose service culminated as assistant to the president and chief of staff to the first lady, on Wednesday invoked the Fifth Amendment twice during a closed-door deposition before the committee investigating former President Biden’s mental capacity while in office.
“Well, unfortunately, that was quick,” Comer said after the deposition. “This is the second witness that we’ve brought in via subpoena for a deposition that has pleaded the Fifth and they’ve stated they’re not going to answer questions.”
In a letter obtained by ABC News, Bernal’s lawyer told the committee he invoked the Fifth Amendment, arguing “it is entirely appropriate and justified for Mr. Bernal to invoke his rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
“The record is also clear that persons of the full range of the political spectrum, in recent and historical Congressional investigations, have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights to decline to answer questions from Congress. Any suggestion that such an invocation is itself evidence of wrongdoing would be highly irresponsible and flatly wrong, particularly from those elected to represent the people and uphold the Constitution,” the letter states.
Bernal “respectfully” declined to answer any of the committee’s questions in the deposition, according to the letter.
The committee believes Bernal may have insight into the Biden’s cognitive decline — as he was one of just four aides present at Biden’s beach home in Rehoboth, Del., last July when Biden decided to drop his bid for reelection amid overwhelming pressure from the Democratic Party following his disastrous debate performance against Trump the month before.
Last week, Biden’s former White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, also pleaded the Fifth and asserted patient-doctor confidentiality in response to questions from Republican investigators.
Another Republican present at Wednesday’s deposition, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, expressed disdain for Bernal’s testimony — calling it “crazy.”
“First thing’s first, that’s just crazy,” Donalds began. “You can’t answer a simple question about the former president’s ability to discharge duties and you worked in the White House as chief of staff to the first lady.”
Donalds corroborated Comer’s statement that Bernal pleaded the Fifth and added that he did not read his own testimony, which was read by his lawyer.
“He can say whatever he wants in his testimony, by the way his attorney read,” Donalds said. “He wouldn’t even read his own statement, his attorney read his statement for him.”
Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas said “They still look like losers” of her Republican colleagues as she left the Bernal deposition.
Amid the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard University, hundreds of grants worth millions of dollars for medical research have been canceled.
The White House has accused Harvard of allowing antisemitism to go unchecked on campus and of not ending diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
In a letter on April 11, the Trump administration argued Harvard “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment” and proposed terms including changing the school’s governance, adopting merit-based hiring, shuttering any DEI programs and allowing “audits” to ensure “viewpoint diversity.” The administration then said it was withholding $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value to the institution.
Harvard has taken steps such as renaming the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging to the Office of Community and Campus Life. Additionally, Harvard’s president said the school is committed to making changes to create a “welcoming and supportive learning environment” but argued the Trump administration’s requests go too far.
At least 350 grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF) and elsewhere been canceled at Harvard Medical School, excluding the School of Public Health and the School of Engineering, a Harvard University faculty source told ABC News.
Harvard has said the loss of research funding interrupts work on topics including tuberculosis, chemotherapy, pandemic preparedness, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. The school has also said the Trump administration’s threats have endangered its educational mission.
The Trump administration did not immediately reply to ABC News’ request for comment.
This includes research for studying biotic resistance, identifying the earliest precursors of breast cancer, breaking barriers to deliver effective drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, studying microbial evolution and researching cures for ALS.
Scientists at Harvard say the cancellations of their research grants are collateral damage in the battle with the Trump administration and worry some scientific breakthroughs will never be discovered.
“I will say that receiving a grant from the NIH is very challenging,” David Sinclair, a professor in the department of genetics at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News. “It takes years of work and a lot of effort. You have to go through peer review, and it can take years to get this money, and when you get it — I’ve literally dropped to my knees with gratitude of receiving one of these grants. These are a big deal, and they literally are our lifeblood, and to just have that terminated is devastating.”
‘What do I say to her’?
Sinclair was inspired to find a cure for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a debilitating neurological disorder, after his partner’s mother was diagnosed with it.
“We’ve watched her descend from an active, healthy lady in her 70s to now, where she’s on a breathing machine and being saved by a tube,” he said. “And our house is an ICU unit with nurses 24/7 and for us, it’s a race against time.”
Sinclair said within the last month, his lab had a breakthrough using artificial intelligence to find both synthetic and naturally occurring molecules that may reverse the aging process and treat ALS.
Sinclair received word on May 15 that two grants of his were being terminated. One was an NIH grant awarded to Sinclair’s lab on a project to reverse the aging process and the second was a career award given to a postdoctoral researcher in his lab on the ALS project.
The career award grant was paying for the salaries of the researcher and two people working under her. Now all three are effectively without salaries unless another form of funding can be found.
Sinclair said in the interview that he had not told his partner’s mother that the ALS grant has been canceled.
“I just feel so concerned for the patients who, like my partner’s mother, are counting on us scientists to find treatments and cures for what ails them,” he said. “And what do I say to Serena’s mom? I haven’t talked to her yet. What do I say? That the research that looked so promising is now terminated? That her life is counting on us, and she’s just one of millions of people in this country who are counting on the research at Harvard Medical School to make the breakthroughs that will literally save their lives.”
Similarly, on a search for stopping debilitating diseases, Joan Brugge, director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard Medical School, was studying how to identify the earliest precursors of breast cancer with a goal of designing treatments to prevent them from becoming cancerous.
The work was supported by an approximately seven-year grant from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute totaling at about $600,000. The grant was in its sixth year with 1.5 more years left.
Another canceled grant was a fellowship for a postdoctoral researcher in Brugge’s lab. These grants support costs such as training, tuition and fees and child care, according to the NIH.
“These kinds of things are going to affect our ability to make progress in the way we want,” Brugge told ABC News. “This is not right. Why should Americans be deprived of potential benefits from this research?”
Claims of antisemitism
Steven Shuken, a postdoctoral researcher at the Gygi Labs at Harvard Medical School, was studying what the barriers are in developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
He said drugs don’t penetrate the blood-brain barrier very well, resulting in failures to receive FDA approval to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
“They seem to have some effectiveness at some dose, but once you get up to the high dose that you need to see the effect, there are these terrible side effects that come up,” he told ABC News.
In order to improve future drugs’ efficacy and reduce side effects enough to make them safe and effective for Alzheimer’s patients, Shuken teamed up with Boston Children’s Hospital to see if they could leverage the chorid plexis, a section of the blood-cerebral spinal fluid barrier as a pathway without side effects.
Shuken had been awarded a K99/R00 grant, which is for postdoctoral scientists completing research that will eventually lead to a tenure-track or equivalent faculty position.
The K99 portion supports one to two years of postdoctoral research training and the R00 portion supports up to three years “contingent on the scientist securing an independent, tenure track faculty position,” according to the NIH.
Two weeks ago, he received news that the K99 grant – which was awarded last year for two years – was terminated and there is no policy that supports activating an R00 on a K99 that’s been terminated, effectively terminating the R00 as well.
Shuken said no reason was given for the grant terminations, but he said he did see the letter sent to Harvard from the NIH citing semitism.
Trump and other members of his administration have accused the university of fostering antisemitism on its campus, specifically related to pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a letter in March.
The administration’s joint task force, made up of the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration, is conducting a review of Harvard, saying it is part of an effort to remove alleged antisemitic conduct and harassment.
Last year, a federal judge in Boston ruled that Harvard “failed its Jewish students” and must face a lawsuit over antisemitism on campus. Some Jewish students had claimed Harvard had been indifferent to their fears of walking through the campus and facing alleged harassment from pro-Palestinian protesters.
However, some Jewish students and faculty members, such as Shuken, said he has not experienced antisemitism during his time at Harvard. He said if there is antisemitism occurring on the main campus, he’s not sure why retaliatory grant cuts are affecting the university’s medical school.
“I will note that I work at the Harvard Medical School quad, which is a half-hour shuttle ride away from the main campus,” he said. “So even if there is antisemitism on the main campus, which — as far as I can tell — is dramatically exaggerated in certain news outlets, if it’s happening over there, it’s not happening where I work.”
Michael Baym was also affected by the grant terminations at Harvard. He said there is a disconnect between the political battle raging between the Trump administration and Harvard and the grants awarded to the medical school that were cut as a result.
“Our lab studies bacteria. None of the content of this research is related to a contemporary political or is part of a contemporary political battle,” he told ABC News. “There’s no sense in it. It’s bacteria; how can bacteria be antisemitic?”
Harvard has said it is resolved in its commitment to combatting antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.
Grants are not gifts to Harvard
Baym’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School studies the biology of how bacteria become resistant to biotics and what things keep them from gaining resistance. The World Health Organization has called microbial resistance one of the world’s top public health and development threats.
Earlier this month, Baym learned that five grants to his laboratory and researchers in his lab were being terminated. This included an NIH five-year flexible award to support all basic research in the lab and two NSF grants, one to help study bacteriophages that kill biotic-resistant bacteria, and the other to help study the basic biology of the vectors of biotic resistance.
Additionally, an NIH graduate student grant for a project looking for new bacteriophages was terminated as well as two NIH postdoctoral fellowships that were on the same grant. The total cost of the grants canceled was $4.35 million.
Baym said what he thinks many people don’t understand is that the grants are not monetary gifts from the government to a rich, private university. They are contracts awarded by panel of impartial experts directly to researchers and to projects. In this case, the researchers happen to conduct their work at Harvard.
“That’s what’s being cut,” he said “These grants, this is not a gift to build a dorm. This is a research contract that’s being terminated, right.”
Michael Desai, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard, who was also subject to grant terminations, agreed, saying the grants don’t support operations of the university and Harvard’s endowment, valued at $53.2 billion, cannot cover all the costs of grants that were terminated.
“There’s all kinds of specific purposes that donors have designated for their money to be spent on,” he told ABC News. “The other thing is that Harvard already spends roughly 5% of the endowment every year. The way to think about it is a retirement account … and it’s supposed to last for hundreds of years, rather than dozens.”
“If they spend more than they already are, then it will, over the course of 10 to 20 years, just be gone, and the university would have to shut down,” Desai added.
Fear of losing scientists to other countries
At the time of the terminations, Desai’s work was focused on microbial evolution and population genetics, which looks at how microbial populations — microorganisms — adapt to new conditions.
Desai had three grants terminated on May 15, two from the NIH and one from the NSF.
The NIH grants totaled about $300,000 to $350,000 per year in direct costs plus a little under $200,000 per year in indirect costs, and the NSF grant was about $100,000 per year in direct costs and another $69,000 in indirect costs, Desai said.
Desai said he wasn’t surprised the grants were terminated due to news that the Trump administration was planning on freezing grant money, but he expressed concern for the younger scientists whose research and salaries were being supported on these grants.
“There’s a battle, as we all know, between Harvard and the Trump administration,” he said. “It centers around things that have absolutely nothing to do with science. There’s broad support for the kind of science we and many other people at Harvard are doing. I don’t think it’s an intended target, but it’s certainly getting caught up in the battle.”
Desai emphasized the broader impact grant freezing could on have U.S. scientific dominance, highlighting the potential for young American scientists to go aboard or international scientists to not come to the U.S.
“Over the past 15 years that I’ve been at Harvard, I can’t think about how many hundreds of emails I’ve gotten from the smartest people in China and India and Europe and all over the world asking if they could come work with me or my colleagues across the country and basically bring all of their talents to essentially work for us, to work for trying to increase the United States’ technological dominance in the world,” he said.
Desai went on, “I kind of worry that 10 years from now, our smartest students are going to be writing professors in research institutes in China hoping that they can go do science to make China stronger. The bottom line is if we don’t invest in this stuff, other people certainly will.”
(WASHINGTON) — Facing uproar from his MAGA base over the Jeffrey Epstein files, President Donald Trump has called for Attorney General Pam Bondi “to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval” related to the case.
Bondi responded on social media Thursday evening, saying, “We are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”
It’s not immediately clear from the social media postings how extensive the administration’s request to unseal the transcripts would be.
The release of any grand jury materials, which are secret, would be subject to a legal process and the approval of a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was charged before he died by suicide in 2019.
A judge would likely consider the impact of the release on victims, which courts have gone to great lengths to protect, as well as any parties who may be implicated in the case and want the information to remain secret.
Crucially, the 2019 case pertains to allegations against Epstein and his alleged sex crimes, not the broader questions posed by many of Trump’s supporters about who else, if anyone, might have been involved.
The DOJ and FBI have numerous other unclassified records in the case that they said they will not disclose, despite vowing in February to “release the remaining documents upon review and redaction to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims.”
An “evidence list” released in February offers a roadmap to some of these unreleased records, including visitor records to Epstein’s private island as well as wiretap records for his convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Earlier this month, the DOJ and FBI released a memo stating no further records in the case would be released, saying “much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing” and that the agencies “will not permit the release of child pornography” or sensitive details pertaining to the victims.
The agencies found no evidence that Epstein kept a “client list” of associates or that he blackmailed any prominent individuals and concluded no investigation into uncharged third party was warranted.
The brief memo put out by the DOJ and FBI stoked furor among Trump’s diehard supporters after years of prominent right-wing figures pushing accusations about Epstein and the “deep state” that’s protecting elites.
Trump’s since sought various ways to put out the political firestorm, coming to Bondi’s defense while also saying she should release what she deems “credible.”
Shifting explanation from Trump
In Trump’s call for Bondi to produce the grand jury testimony, he said it was a “SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats,” and that it “should end, right now!”
This is a shift from his previous statement of calling the Epstein files a “hoax” and those Republican supporters who are questioning his administration’s handling of it as “stupid” and “foolish.”
Trump, in a phone interview with “Just the News” on Real America’s Voice on Wednesday night, alleged without providing evidence that Democrats and former officials doctored files relating to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
The comments came when Trump was asked if he wanted one prosecutor to look into the broad subject of political prosecution.
“Well, I think it’s in the case of Epstein, they’ve already looked at it, and they are looking at it, and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible,” Trump said.
“But you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years. I can imagine what they put into files, just like they did with the others,” Trump continued. “I mean, the Steele dossier was a total fake, right? It took two years to figure that out for the people, and all of the things that you mentioned were fake.”
“So I would imagine if they were run by Chris Wray and they were run by Comey, and because it was actually even before that administration, they’ve been running these files, and so much of the things that we found were fake with me,” Trump said.
Despite Trump’s claims that Democrats “put” things in the files, many documents relating to Epstein, including those that mention Trump and several prominent Democrats, have been public for years.
No special prosecutor
And the White House on Thursday shut down the idea of appointing a special prosecutor in the Epstein case.
“The idea was floated from someone in the media to the president. The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. That’s how he feels,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the briefing.
Asked to clarify what part of the Epstein saga is a “hoax” as Trump claimed, Leavitt only continued to criticize Democrats.
“The president is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this as if they ever wanted transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, which is an asinine suggestion for any Democrat to make,” she said. “The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn’t do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes.”
Epstein was arrested in 2019 and died in prison by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges while Trump was president.
“Some of the naive Republicans fall right into line, like they always do,” the president said on “Just the News.”
Calls for transparency
Calls for transparency on Epstein came from several Republicans on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. And Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, called for the administration to “release all of the files” regarding the Epstein investigation.
Leavitt on Thursday defended the administration’s handling of the Epstein files and attempted to distance Trump from further decision-making on the case.
Leavitt said it would be up to the Justice Department and Bondi to release any other “credible” evidence.
“In terms of redactions or grand jury seals, those are questions for the Department of Justice. Those are also questions for the judges who have that information under a seal. And that would have to be requested and judge would have to approve it. That’s out of the president’s control,” she said when asked why they wouldn’t release the files, with sensitive information redacted, in order to provide more transparency.
(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) — Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who has stayed largely out of the political limelight since leaving office, is set to deliver remarks on Wednesday in San Francisco as the Trump administration celebrates its accomplishments of its first 100 days.
Harris will be speaking at the 20th anniversary celebration for Emerge, an organization that supports Democratic women running for office.
The former Democratic nominee for president has had few public appearances since departing the White House, and has limited her political activity.
But her remarks come as she is set to possibly re-enter politics in the coming months. Harris has been mulling a run in California’s gubernatorial race and will make a decision by the end of summer, two sources familiar with her plans told ABC News in March.
Some Democrats have also floated her as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, although some of her longtime supporters have told ABC News they are torn over that prospect.
Whether she runs for either office or not, Harris’ public remarks thus far have sometimes included veiled and explicit swipes at the Trump administration and the president himself.
In remarks at a women of color leaders summit in early April, she weighed in on the second Trump administration, saying “there is a sense of fear that has been taking hold in our country” but that “courage is also contagious.”
And in remarks at the NAACP Image Awards in February, Harris framed the “chapter” America is in as one that “will be written not simply by whoever occupies the oval office nor by the wealthiest among us. The American story will be written by you. Written by us. By we the people.”
Harris and her spouse Doug Emhoff have been the target of recent actions by President Donald Trump.
Trump issued a memo in March that revoked the security clearances and access to classified information of his previous presidential opponents — Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris — as well as more than a dozen former administration officials. On Tuesday, Emhoff said he had been dismissed from the board of trustees of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as the White House confirmed it had removed board members.
-ABC News’ Averi Harper, Zohreen Shah, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
