Salman Rushdie stabbing suspect now faces federal terrorism charges
(NEW YORK) — The man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie on stage at a speaking event in upstate New York in 2022 now faces federal terrorism charges, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was indicted by a grand jury on three counts, including attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and providing material support to terrorists. The indictment alleges that he “knowingly did attempt to provide material support and resources” to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and “had engaged, and was engaging, in terrorism.”
Matar was also charged with an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries for the attack against Rushdie on Aug. 12, 2022, at the Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York. The indictment alleges that he “did knowingly attempt to kill, and did knowingly maim, commit an assault resulting in serious bodily injury, and assault with a dangerous weapon.”
The grand jury was empaneled in July 2023 though the charges weren’t filed until July 17, according to the indictment.
Matar has not yet entered a plea on the federal charges, according to online court records. ABC News has reached out to his attorney for comment.
Matar has pleaded not guilty to two state charges — second-degree attempted murder and assault — in connection with the attack.
The new charges come after Matar rejected a plea deal earlier this month that involved the state and not-yet-filed federal charges.
The deal required a guilty plea to the top state count of second-degree attempted murder for a sentence of 20 years — down from a maximum of 25 years for the charge, the Chautauqua County District Attorney’s Office said.
Under the deal, state and federal prosecutors agreed to the 20-year sentence “with the understanding that Mr. Matar would also plea to a charge in federal court and receive an additional 10-20 years in a federal facility,” the Chautauqua County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to ABC News at the time.
The federal sentence would have run consecutive to his state sentence, for 30 to 40 years of total incarceration plus lifetime supervision upon release, the office said.
The defense had made a counteroffer that proposed a 15-year sentence for the second-degree attempted murder charge, which was rejected by the state, his public defender, Nathaniel Barone II, told ABC News.
“At that point, it was determined that he was not going to accept the state’s offer,” Barone said at the time.
Matar, who was 24 years old at the time of the attack, remains in custody at the Chautauqua County Jail.
The trial in the state case was pushed back last week from September to October. Both men are expected to testify.
Rushdie is now blind in his right eye from the attack, which he recounted in a new book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
(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.
(WINDER, Ga.) — Four people were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday morning, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Another nine victims were taken to hospitals with injuries, the GBI said.
The suspect is alive and in custody, the GBI said. The suspect is a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Senior Sergio Caldera, 17, said he was in chemistry class when he heard gunshots.
“My teacher goes and opens the door to see what’s going on. Another teacher comes running in and tells her to close the door because there’s an active shooter,” Caldera told ABC News.
He said his teacher locked the door and the students ran to the back of the room. Caldera said they heard screams from outside as they “huddled up.”
At some point, Caldera said someone pounded on his classroom door and shouted “open up!” multiple times. When the knocking stopped, Caldera said he heard more gunshots and screams.
He said his class later evacuated to the football field.
Kyson Stancion said he was in class when he heard gunshots and “heard police scream, telling somebody, ‘There’s a shooting going on, get down, get back in the classroom.'”
“I was scared because I’ve never been in a school shooting,” he told ABC News.
“Everybody was crying. My teacher tried to keep everybody safe,” he added.
Apalachee High School was “cleared for dismissal” and all other Barrow County Schools were placed on a “soft lockdown,” the Barrow County School District said.
“The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office says this is for the safety of everyone right now. Please do not visit your child’s school at this time. We cannot release students during a lockdown,” the school district said in a statement. “We will let you know as soon as [the sheriff’s office] says it is all clear for dismissal.”
Winder is about 45 miles outside of Atlanta.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were briefed on the shooting, according to the White House.
“Jill and I are mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short due to more senseless gun violence and thinking of all of the survivors whose lives are forever changed,” Biden said in a statement. “Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
The president highlighted his work to combat gun violence, including signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law and launching the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. But he stressed that more must be done.
“After decades of inaction, Republicans in Congress must finally say ‘enough is enough’ and work with Democrats to pass common-sense gun safety legislation,” Biden said. “We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks, and end immunity for gun manufacturers. These measures will not bring those who were tragically killed today back, but it will help prevent more tragic gun violence from ripping more families apart.”
Harris said at a campaign event in New Hampshire, “Our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families.”
“This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies,” she said. “We have to end this epidemic of gun violence.”
“This is one of the many issues that’s at stake in this election,” Harris said.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he is “heartbroken.”
“This is a day every parent dreads, and Georgians everywhere will hug their children tighter this evening because of this painful event,” he said in a statement. “We continue to work closely with local, state, and federal partners to make any and all resources available to help this community on this incredibly difficult day and in the days to come.”
In Atlanta, authorities will “bolster patrols” around schools on Wednesday “out of an abundance of caution,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement.
“My prayers are with the high school students, staff and families affected by the senseless act of violence,” Dickens said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The hottest weather of the season is spreading across the eastern half of the U.S. — with cities in the Northeast in the bull’s-eye on Wednesday — after baking the Midwest with extreme temperatures early in the week.
Chicago’s actual temperature hit 99 degrees on Tuesday, breaking the city’s daily record of 97 degrees. The heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity — soared to a scorching 115 degrees in Chicago on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, heat advisories are in effect from St. Louis, Missouri, to New York City. An excessive heat warning was issued in Philadelphia, where the heat index could hit 105 degrees.
The heat index is forecast to rise Wednesday to 106 degrees in Baltimore, Maryland; 103 in Washington, D.C.; and 97 in New York City.
The final tennis major of the year, the U.S. Open, which is underway in New York City, is operating under an “extreme weather policy,” with stadium roofs partially closed and extended breaks for players.
More than a dozen cities could shatter their record high temperatures, including Washington, D.C., if it reaches 100 degrees.
The extreme temperatures will end in the Northeast on Thursday, but will linger in the Ohio Valley and Tennessee Valley through Friday.
On Thursday, the heat index is forecast to climb to 104 degrees in Nashville, Tennessee, and Columbia, South Carolina; 102 degrees in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Louisville, Kentucky; and 105 degrees in Greenville, Mississippi.
Record highs are possible Thursday in cities including Nashville and Louisville.
There are hundreds of deaths each year in the U.S. due to excessive heat, according to CDC WONDER, an online database, and scientists caution that the actual number of heat-related deaths is likely higher.
Last year marked the most heat-related deaths in the U.S. on record, according to JAMA, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association.