(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump says he has agreed to an offer from ABC News to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10.
Trump said so during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Thursday.
“I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight,” he said.
Harris also confirmed her participation in the debate and told reporters Thursday evening that she’s looking forward to the matchup.
“Well, I’m glad that he finally agreed to a debate on Sept. 10. I’m looking forward to it and I hope he shows up,” she told reporters on a tarmac in Detroit.
Trump previously said he had been willing to go toe-to-toe with President Joe Biden and agreed to ABC’s first invitation issued in May.
However, after Biden dropped out of the race last month and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Trump had implied he would not debate Harris on ABC.
Harris has accused Trump of “running scared” and trying to back out of the debate.
(WASHINGTON) — The act of certifying the presidential election results will now be given the highest security designation the federal government makes available, the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday.
Jan. 6, 2025, will now be designated a National Special Security Event (NSSE) by the Department of Homeland Security — on par with events like the Democratic and Republican national conventions. This designation allows for “significant resources from the federal government, as well as from state and local partners, to be utilized in a comprehensive security plan,” according to the agency.
“National Special Security Events are events of the highest national significance,” Eric Ranaghan, the special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division, said in a statement. “The U.S. Secret Service, in collaboration with our federal, state, and local partners are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants.”
An NSSE is designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security and is led by the Secret Service.
Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser made a request for the designation, according to the agency.
Jan. 6 is a formality, but the last time Congress attempted to certify the results of the presidential election, a group of supporters of former President Donald Trump breached the Capitol in an attempt to stop it.
The results of Jan. 6 resulted in hundreds of prosecutions by the Justice Department and criminal charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing.
(WASHINGTON) — The special counsel’s new indictment charging former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election made changes large and small to accommodate the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity.
An indictment that once offered vivid details of Trump’s effort to enlist federal officials in his scheme to overturn the election removed any mention of the Department of Justice. Detailed accounts of how advisers corrected Trump about his claims of election fraud are gone along with Trump’s statements to his inner circle as rioters stormed the Capitol.
Prosecutors also made minor changes, such as describing Trump as “a candidate for President of the United States” rather than “the forty-fifth President of the United States” in the indictment’s opening lines. Trump’s official statements from within the White House were subtly removed, while other examples were framed as unofficial or “in his capacity as a candidate for office.”
“The Defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interest as a candidate in being named the winner of the election,” the new indictment said.
Special Counsel Jack Smith presented evidence to a new grand jury, which returned an indictment charging Trump with the same four criminal offenses he originally faced.
The indictment removes details about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, including refusing to call off rioters.
The superseding indictment removes once-damning allegations about Trump’s refusal to act as rioters stormed the Capitol and his overall behavior as described by advisers.
According to the original indictment, Trump refused to approve a message directing rioters to leave the Capitol despite the urging of senior officials, including the White House counsel and his chief of staff.
Later that day, Trump allegedly resisted former House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s plea to call off rioters.
“The Defendant told the Minority Leader that the crowd at the Capitol was more upset about the election than the Minority Leader was,” the indictment said.
According to the original indictment, Trump also remarked to advisers in the Oval Office that “this is what happens when they try to steal an election. These people are angry. These people are really angry about it. This is what happens.”
On the evening of Jan. 6, Trump also rejected the request of his White House Counsel to withdraw any objections to the certification of the election, the indictment said.
The superseding indictment appears to have streamlined its account of Trump’s behavior while omitting the statements once included in the original indictment.
“He spent much of the afternoon reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the television in the dining room showed live events at the Capitol,” the superseding indictment said.
The indictment removes allegations about Trump’s use of the Department of Justice.
Compared to the original indictment, Tuesday’s superseding indictment removed five pages of allegations detailing how Trump allegedly used the Department of Justice to further his claims of election fraud.
Prosecutors originally alleged that Trump attempted to use the Department of Justice to further false claims of election fraud in key states to give Trump’s “lies the backing of the federal government.”
When DOJ officials rebutted Trump’s claims that the Justice Department could alter the outcome of the election, Trump allegedly responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” the original indictment said.
The indictment originally detailed how Trump allegedly worked with co-conspirator four — identified by ABC News as former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark — to have the Department of Justice send a letter to key states falsely claiming that the Justice Department “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.” Trump allegedly planned to make Clark his acting attorney general in the final days of his presidency but was stopped when warned that such a move would result in mass resignations.
Once a core pillar of the case against Trump, all mentions of the Justice Department have been removed from the new indictment.
The indictment attempts to salvage key evidence.
The new indictment appears to make minor changes to salvage key evidence, including Trump’s call to Georgia officials about finding votes and Vice President Mike Pence’s notes.
The new indictment still describes Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump said he wanted “to find 11,780 votes” but added context to Meadows’ role in the call.
“On January 2, four days before Congress’s certification proceeding, the Defendant, his Chief of Staff – who sometimes handled private and Campaign-related logistics for the Defendant – and private attorneys involved in the lawsuit against Georgia’s Secretary of State called the Secretary of State,” the superseding indictment said.
The indictment still mentions Vice President Pence’s contemporaneous notes of a key meeting with Trump about the proposed plan to reject legitimate electors on Jan. 6.
“Did you hear that? Even your own counsel is not saying I have that authority,” Pence told Trump.
The new indictment only makes slight changes to the section referencing the notes, cutting a line that the “White House Counsel previously had pushed back on the Defendant’s false claims of election fraud.”
The new indictment also removes mention of a Dec. 29 phone call between Pence and Trump — memorialized in Pence’s notes — when the former president claimed the “Justice Dept [was] finding major infractions.”
The indictment overtly frames some of Trump’s statements as unofficial.
Prosecutors appear to have added phrases throughout the indictment to frame Trump’s statements as unofficial ones made as a candidate for office rather than official statements as president.
The indictment notably describes Trump’s statements at the Ellipse rally on Jan. 6 as a “campaign speech.”
Old Indictment: On January 6, the Defendant publicly repeated the knowingly false claim that 36,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona.
New Indictment: In his Campaign speech on January 6, the Defendant publicly repeated the knowingly false claim that 36,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona.
In two instances in the new indictment, prosecutors framed Trump’s actions as conduct made “in his capacity as a candidate for office.”
The indictment offers fewer details about officials correcting Trump on claims of voter fraud.
The original indictment previously went to lengths to detail how Trump’s closest advisers — including the vice president, members of the Department of Justice, the director of National Intelligence, and several White House attorneys — directly told the then-president that his claims of voter fraud were false.
The superseding indictment removes mention of federal officials notifying Trump that his claims were false, briefly mentioning Vice President Pence as Trump’s “own running mate.”
“The Defendant was on notice that his claims were untrue,” the new indictment said. “He was told so by those most invested in his re-election, including his own running mate and his campaign staff.”
The indictment originally detailed three instances in December 2020 when officials, including the acting attorney general and chief of staff, told Trump that his claims of fraud in Georgia — including at the Cobb County Civic Center and State Farm Arena — were false. The new indictment omits those details.
The indictment omits some of Trump’s statements from behind White House podiums or referencing the White House.
The superseding indictment surgically removes statements Trump made from within the White House behind official podiums.
In two instances from within the White House, Trump made remarks falsely alleging voter fraud in Michigan.
“In Detroit, there were hours of unexplained delay in delivering many of the votes for counting. The final batch did not arrive until four in the morning and—even though the polls closed at eight o’clock,” Trump said in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on November 5, 2020.
Unlike other instances in the indictment in which prosecutors clarified were made in Trump’s capacity as a candidate for office, Trump’s remarks made within the White House were struck from the indictment.
The indictment also removed mention of a January 5, 2021, Tweet when Trump told supporters heading to Washington, “We hear you (and love you) from the Oval Office.”
Reacting to the indictment, Trump issued a statement saying, “Smith, has brought a ridiculous new Indictment against me, which has all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY.”
He also called it “an attempt to INTERFERE WITH THE ELECTION.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, shared Trump’s sentiment, telling ABC News, “It looks like Jack Smith doing more of what he does, which is filing these absurd lawsuits in an effort to influence the election.”
(WASHINGTON) — At least 38 members of Congress signed a letter sent Monday to the president of the Heritage Foundation requesting he meet with lawmakers to discuss Project 2025 and release the undisclosed fourth pillar of the project called the “180-Day Playbook.”
“Our offices are increasingly hearing from constituents worried about the impact of Project 2025 on the future of our nation,” read the letter obtained exclusively by ABC News.
“A growing number of Americans are concerned that Project 2025, which you describe as ‘a second American revolution,’ poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy, reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, our economy, environment, public health and more,” it said.
Project 2025, a 922-page playbook of controversial policy proposals intended to guide the next conservative administration, has continued to garner attention as the presidential election campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump heat up.
It includes plans to expand presidential power, eliminate the Department of Education and Department of Homeland Security, privatizing other federal agencies, taking the abortion pill mifepristone off the market, restricting insurance coverage mandates, cutting federal funding for clean energy research, restricting welfare programs and more.
This letter comes as Democrats try to paint Project 2025 as a warning of what is to come under a second Trump term. However, Trump has tried to distance himself from the policy proposals.
“They are extreme, seriously extreme,” said Trump in a July 20 rally. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”
While Trump has said that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, dozens of the former president’s current and former advisers and appointees have authored or have been connected to the project, including former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and former Acting Secretary of Defense and Special Assistant Christopher Miller.
Project 2025 officials previously told ABC News that it does “not speak for any candidate or campaign.”
However, Trump’s official campaign plan called Agenda47 aligns with several proposals in Project 2025.
Its unpublished so-called fourth pillar, the “180-Day Playbook,” is described on the Project 2025 website as “a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”
“Project 2025’s policy book is nothing new,” the Project 2025 website reads. “Mandate for Leadership has been published regularly since the 1980s. In it, respected conservative authors espouse conservative policy ideas for incoming administrations to consider. Progressive organizations do the same thing.”
The letter cites concerns over potential executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures that could be implemented under the “180-Day Playbook,” which is not published on the project’s website.
The letter to the Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, predicts that the playbook contains the “most radical, extreme and dangerous parts of Project 2025.”
It continued, “If we are wrong about that – if your secret ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025 is actually a defensible, responsible and constitutional action plan for the first days of a second Trump presidency — then we hope you will publish it, without edits or redaction. Allow the American people to see it and scrutinize it.”
ABC News has reached out to the Heritage Foundation for comment concerning the controversy and the letter from members of Congress.
“We believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your ‘open book’ promise by disclosing the ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025, and we hope you’ll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long,” the letter reads.
The letter campaign was led by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Congressman Jared Huffman, D-Calif., who founded a congressional task force aimed at putting an end to the hopes laid out in Project 2025.
The letter was also signed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Cori Bush, D-Mo., and others. No Republican lawmakers signed the letter.
It asks Roberts to respond to the request for a meeting, in which no official congressional power is being used to compel his presence, by Friday, Aug. 16.
The Heritage Project and Project 2025 saw a leadership change in July when Project 2025’s director Paul Dans stepped down amid intense scrutiny of the conservative blueprint.
Roberts said at the time that the move was based on the timeline for the drafting of the project, which concluded after the two party conventions.