(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump slammed the judge in his criminal hush money case Tuesday, a day after the judge refused to dismiss Trump’s conviction on the grounds of presidential immunity.
New York Judge Juan Merchan on Monday rejected Trump’s request to vacate the verdict in the case based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision.
Trump had sought to dismiss his criminal indictment and vacate the jury verdict on the grounds that prosecutors, during the trial earlier this year, introduced evidence relating to Trump’s official acts as president that was inadmissible based on the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling that Trump is entitled to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.
“Acting Justice Juan Merchan has completely disrespected the United States Supreme Court, and its Historic Decision on Immunity,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Tuesday, calling Merchan’s ruling, without evidence, “completely illegal.”
Merchan, in his ruling, determined that the evidence in the case related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
The judge “wrote an opinion that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it,” Trump wrote in his post.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Luigi Mangione is seen inside the police station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Dec. 9, 2024/Obtained by ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione has been indicted in New York for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the grand jury has upgraded charges to first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Mangione, 26, is also charged with: two counts of second-degree murder, one of which is charged as killing as an act of terrorism; two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree; four counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree; one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree; and one count of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree.
The slaying in the heart of Midtown Manhattan was “intended to evoke terror,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference.
Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson outside a hotel on Dec. 4 as the CEO headed to an investors conference.
“This type of premeditated, targeted gun violence cannot and will not be tolerated,” Bragg said in a statement Tuesday.
In Pennsylvania, where Mangione remains in custody, he faces charges including allegedly possessing an untraceable ghost gun.
He is expected to waive extradition from Pennsylvania during his next court appearance on Thursday, sources said.
Mangione has hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo as his lawyer in New York. She was a 25-year veteran of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and its second in command for eight years.
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9 after nearly one week on the run.
When Mangione was apprehended, he had a 9 mm handgun with a 3D-printed receiver, a homemade silencer, two ammunition magazines and live cartridges, prosecutors said.
Thompson’s murder ignited online anger at the health insurance industry. Many people online have celebrated the suspect and some have donated to a defense fund for Mangione.
“There is no heroism in what Mangione did. This was a senseless act of violence,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at Tuesday’s news conference.
“Any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice,” she said.
“Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing,” President-elect Donald Trump said at a news conference Monday.
“It’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him,” Trump said.
“It seems that there’s a certain appetite for him. I don’t get it,” Trump added.
Sources said writings police seized from Mangione suggest he was fixated on UnitedHealthcare for months and gradually developed a plan to kill the CEO.
Among the writings recovered from Mangione was a passage that allegedly said, “What do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” according to law enforcement officials.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(MADISON, Wis.) — The 15-year-old girl alleged to have shot seven victims, two fatally, in an attack on Monday at a Wisconsin Christian school marks the rare occurrence of a female school shooter, according to data from the FBI and U.S. Secret Service.
Police identified the suspect in the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison as Natalie Rupnow, a student at the school who went by the name Samantha.
After allegedly killing a teacher and a classmate, and leaving five others injured, including two students in critical condition, Rupnow died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police.
“It’s a very sad but a rare thing to have a female school shooter,” said Don Mihalek, a retired senior special agent for the Secret Service and an ABC News contributor. “Historically, and the studies show, that typically it’s a white male student or former student that ends up committing these acts of violence in schools.”
The U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) studied 41 incidents of targeted school violence incidents between 2008 and 2017, including those where no one was injured, and found that 83% of the suspects were male and 17% were female.
Another study by the FBI found that of the 49 shooters involved in 48 active shooting incidents in the United States in 2023, 98% were male.
Among the perpetrators who committed school shootings in 2023 was 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who killed three students and three staff members at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, where authorities said she was once a student. Hale owned seven firearms, including three used in the shooting at the private school, according to police. Officials said that Hale was being treated for an unspecified emotional disorder. Hale was killed on the scene by two officers.
A police spokesperson told ABC News that Hale was assigned female at birth and pointed to a social media account linked to Hale that included the use of the pronouns he/him.
An FBI review of 345 suspects involved in 333 active shooting incidents between 2000 and 2019, including 62 that occurred in educational environments, 332 were male and 13 were female.
The Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks all shootings in the United States, found that of the 805 school shooting incidents since 2012, 157 involved female “participants.”
The National Center for Education Statistics also found that 94% of the active shooters in education settings between 2000 and 2022 were male.
Madison police investigators have not yet suggested a motive for Monday’s school shooting nor have they said whether the victims were specifically targeted.
The suspect’s parents are cooperating with the investigation, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told ABC News.
Students in kindergarten through 12th grade attend the Christian school. Police said the shooting was contained to “a classroom in a study hall full of students from multiple grade levels.”
Police have also yet to say where the suspect got her hands on the handgun used in the shooting.
“In almost all of these situations, the students that have access to weapons have generally accessed them from parents, family,” Mihalek said.
Mihalek said one of the few female active shooters in recent years that he could recall was Portia Odufuwa, then 37, who opened fire inside Dallas’ Love Field Airport in 2022 before she was shot and wounded by police. No one else was injured in the shooting and Odufuwa was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2023 on charges of aggravated assault.
Other female active shooters include Jennifer San Marco, a former U.S. Postal employee who in January 2006 shot and killed six people at a mail processing and distribution center near Santa Barbara, California, after killing her neighbor, according to police. San Marco died from suicide.
In 2015, Tashfeen Malik, 29, and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, who had both pledged support for ISIS, fatally shot 14 people at a December 2015 holiday party in San Bernardino, California. Malik and Farook were killed in a shootout with police.
Mihalek said investigators are likely combing through the social media footprint of the suspect in the Wisconsin school shooting as they search for a motive.
“I think there’s a lot of stuff on social media that is creating these mental health crises within kids, especially girls,” Mihalek said. “Now, instead of finding your self-worth in good grades, doing well on a sports team, playing a musical instrument well, teachers and parents telling you ‘good job,’ it’s how many likes, how many people are viewing your feed.”
Mihalek said that a lot of girls have been the victims of online bullying.
“It’s tearing apart a kid’s fabric and a lot of them don’t know how to handle it because they’re not really capable at these young ages to understand how to handle a bullying incident like that,” Mihalek said. “In all schools, the key is homing in on behaviors and the pathways to violence. The critical behaviors that put kids on a pathway to violence are social stressors and grievances. If you’re being cyberbullied and told you’re no good online by multiple people, that can easily become a grievance.”
ABC News’ Jack Date and Briana Stewart contributed to this report.
After 15 years, the Karate Kid franchise is returning with Karate Kid: Legends, the trailer for which debuted Tuesday, starring Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio and Ben Wang.
The new film from Sony Pictures, which comes out May 30, focuses on the life of Li Fong, a boy who moves to New York City after a family tragedy and is forced to learn karate to avoid troubling situations, according to the film’s description.The film also stars Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Shaunette Renée Wilson and Ming-Na Wen.
The trailer introduces Macchio as Daniel LaRusso, the original Karate Kid, all grown up, meeting Jackie Chan, who reprises his role as Mr. Han, a kung fu instructor.
“Li is to me what you meant to Sensei Miyagi,” Mr. Han tells Daniel, referring to Wang’s character and setting up the new trainer and pupil dynamic by referencing Daniel’s past under the tutelage of his old instructor, Mr. Miyagi (played by Pat Morita).
Action shots show Li training alongside Daniel and Mr. Han, as well as fighting on the streets of New York City.
The trailer concludes with glimpses of a rooftop karate tournament, where Li appears locked in on his opponent.
The film is directed by Jonathan Entwistle and written by Rob Lieber, with Macchio and Jenny Hinkey as executive producers. Karen Rosenfelt produced the film.
The massively popular Karate Kid franchise debuted in 1984, telling the story of Daniel, played by a young Macchio, learning karate under Mr. Miyagi. Macchio last appeared in The Karate Kid Part III in 1989, while Chan last appeared in 2010’s The Karate Kid.
Katherine Faulders, Aaron Katersky and Peter Charalambous, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Donald Trump’s lawyers are urging the New York judge in his criminal hush money case to throw out his conviction based on unsworn allegations of “grave juror misconduct” that prosecutors have described as vague and “seemingly inaccurate.”
While Trump’s lawyers argued the claims illustrate “the manifest unfairness of these proceedings,” Judge Juan Merchan criticized Trump’s lawyers for making claims consisting “entirely of unsworn allegations” and for opposing a hearing that would allow the allegations to be vetted.
“Allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated. However, this Court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture,” wrote Merchan, largely rejecting the claims unless Trump’s attorneys provide sworn statements or consent to a hearing on the matter.
Trump’s claims were included in court filings unsealed on Monday, but the specific allegations were redacted.
Defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove — who Trump last month nominated to top positions in the Department of Justice — claimed to have uncovered evidence of juror misconduct that calls into question what they call the “dubious validity of the highly suspect verdicts rendered by the jury.”
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Judge Merchan has yet to sentence Trump, who has been seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity following his reelection last month.
Trump’s lawyers, citing presidential immunity and other ongoing litigation, told Merchan they oppose a hearing examining their claims of juror misconduct, and instead asked the judge to weigh the claims as he considers Trump’s pending motion to throw out the case.
“This behavior is completely unacceptable, and it demonstrates without question that the verdicts in this case are as unreliable as DA Bragg’s promise to protect Manhattanites from violent crime,” the defense lawyers said, referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case.
Prosecutors argued in a filing that the jury misconduct claims are vague and untested, and that Trump’s lawyers declined to include a sworn declaration. They wrote that the alleged source of the claims directly told Trump’s lawyers that their summary of the allegations “contains inaccuracies and does not contain additional information that I never shared,” and that they declined to sign a sworn affidavit.
“Defendant cannot short-circuit this process by insisting that this Court treat his unsworn and seemingly inaccurate allegations of jury misconduct as true,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors alleged that Trump’s lawyers are avoiding the proper mechanism to evaluate the claims by inserting them into the public domain while “opposing any endeavor to properly evaluate them.”
“Defendant does not want to participate in a hearing designed to evaluate these claims. He wants instead to use these unsworn, untested claims by his attorneys to undermine public confidence in the verdict,” their filing said.
Judge Merchan largely sided with prosecutors, declining to consider the claims unless Trump’s lawyers specifically move to vacate the verdict due to allegations of juror misconduct based on sworn allegations or evaluated through a hearing, which they so far have not done. Merchan still allowed both sides to docket their filings with significant redactions.
“This Court finds that to allow the public filing of the letter without redactions and without the benefit of a hearing, would only serve to undermine the integrity of these proceedings while simultaneously placing the safety of the jurors at grave risk,” Merchan wrote.
The exchange comes as the Merchan, on Monday, rejected Trump’s request to vacate the verdict in the case based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision.
Trump had sought to dismiss his criminal indictment and vacate the jury verdict on the grounds that prosecutors, during the trial earlier this year, introduced evidence relating to Trump’s official acts as president that was inadmissible based on the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling that Trump is entitled to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.
Merchan ruled that the evidence in the case related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
(MADISON, Wis.) — Officials are trying to determine why a 15-year-old girl allegedly opened fire at her school, Abundant Life Christian School, on Monday morning, killing a fellow student and teacher in a heinous crime that shocked the community of Madison, Wisconsin.
The motive appears to be a combination of factors, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a news conference Tuesday.
Police are talking to students to determine if bullying was one of the factors, he said.
“Everyone was targeted in this incident and everyone was put in equal danger,” Barnes said.
The suspect, Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. Officers did not fire their weapons.
Two students were hospitalized in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, police said, while another three students and a teacher suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The suspect’s parents are cooperating with the investigation, Barnes told ABC News on Tuesday.
“They were cooperative. Despite this tragedy, they still lost a child. They still lost a member of their family,” Barnes said. “It is certain that they have probably more questions than anyone because they knew her. They lived with her and so we wanted to get an account from them of what kind of child she was.”
Her father is being questioned by investigators, Barnes said. He said he didn’t know whether the mother had been questioned, noting that she’s been out of town.
Students in kindergarten through 12th grade attend the Christian school. Police said the shooting was in a classroom during a study hall “full of students from multiple grade levels.”
“I was in the hallway, and I was changing from my shoes to my boots to go to lunch because I have recess after, but then I heard the shooting and screams,” a girl in second-grade told Chicago ABC station WLS.
A second grade teacher called 911 at 10:57 a.m., Barnes said.
Police initially said on Monday it was a second grade student called 911; on Tuesday, Barnes amended that to a teacher.
In the wake of Monday’s shooting, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are urging elected officials to combat gun violence.
Biden in a statement called the shooting “shocking and unconscionable,” and he mentioned his administration’s efforts to combat the gun violence epidemic in the U.S., including the implementation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
Biden asked Congress to pass “commonsense” gun safety laws, including universal background checks, a national red flag law, and a ban on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“It is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence,” Biden said, adding, “We cannot continue to accept it as normal.”
“It’s another school shooting, another community being torn about and torn apart by gun violence,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in remarks Tuesday. “And of course, our nation mourns for those who were killed, and we pray for the recovery of those who are injured and for the entire community.”
Harris, who played a role in the Biden administration’s efforts to combat gun violence, stressed, “We as a nation must renew our commitment to end the horror of gun violence, both mass shootings and everyday gun violence that touches so many communities in our nation.”
“We must end it, and we must be committed to have the courage to know that solutions are in hand, but we need elected leaders to have the courage to step up and do the right thing,” she said.
ABC News’ Briana Stewart and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — A fellow tech executive was found guilty in a San Francisco courtroom on Tuesday for the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
Prosecutors said Nima Momeni stabbed Lee three times with a kitchen knife after driving him to a secluded area in April 2023.
Defense attorneys for Momeni previously said he acted in self defense in response to an attempted assault by an intoxicated Lee. Momeni had pleaded not guilty.
Lee, a former executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, was killed in the early morning hours on April 4, 2023, in the San Francisco neighborhood of Rincon Hill, according to police.
At about 2 a.m., camera footage showed Lee and Momeni leaving Lee’s hotel and getting into Momeni’s car, a BMW Z4, prosecutors said in a court filing.
Video shows the BMW drive to a secluded and dark area where the two men got out of the car. Momeni “moved toward” Lee and the BMW drove away from the scene at high speed, according to the court document.
Prosecutors have alleged that Momeni killed Lee over the alleged sexual assault of Momeni’s sister by an acquaintance of Lee.
Paula Canny, the defense attorney for Momeni, said at a hearing in May that Lee’s death arose from a mix of self-defense and accidental harm.
“There was no premeditation,” Canny said.
On the witness stand last month, Momeni said Lee had attacked him in a fit of anger touched off by a joke. Momeni had teased Lee, saying that he would rather spend his last night in town with his family than going to a strip club, where the two were possibly headed, Momeni recounted.
In the scuffle that ensued, Momeni did not realize that Lee had been fatally injured, said Momeni, the owner of an Emeryville, California-based company called Expand IT.
(WASHINGTON) — House Democratic veteran Rep. Gerry Connolly fended off a challenge from progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday, putting the Virginia Democrat in line to become the House Oversight Committee’s top-ranked Democrat in the new Congress.
Connolly has served on the Oversight Committee since 2009 and has led Democrats on the subcommittee on government operations since 2013. He announced on Nov. 7 that he was diagnosed with esophagus cancer, opening the door for a challenge from Ocasio-Cortez.
Despite those health challenges, Connolly won by a vote of 131-84, according to multiple Democratic sources — cementing his role in one of the most high-profile positions in Washington to combat the incoming Trump administration and a unified Republican majority in Congress.
Ocasio-Cortez has served on the Oversight Committee since her first term in 2019 when she took Capitol Hill by storm as a leader of the so-called Squad. Despite the defeat today, she is still poised to take on a prominent role on the panel in the 119th Congress.
Connolly said he is ready to take on the Trump administration.
“He [Trump] may feel more emboldened, but that may also make him more reckless,” Connolly said. “There is a law on this land and we’re going to make sure it’s enforced.”
“Our strategy is going to be to tell the truth and if that hurts then we know we’ve made our mark,” he said.
Connolly said he was able to defeat AOC because, “I think my colleagues were measuring their votes by who’s got experience, who’s seasoned, who can be trusted, who’s capable on it, who’s got a record of productivity. And I think that prevailed.”
Connolly won an initial recommendation Monday evening from the House Democratic Steering Committee to lead Democrats on the panel in the next Congress over AOC by a vote count of 34-27.
In defiance of that recommendation, Ocasio-Cortez asked the full caucus to vote on the contest.
The results come as Democrats undergo a post-election reckoning following Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President-elect Donald Trump — a period of soul-searching that has put a noticeable dent in House Democrats’ traditional deference to seniority for committee assignments.
Democrats so far have already opted for younger, more junior Democrats to jump the line to serve as the top party member of the Judiciary, Agriculture and Natural Resources committees, moves that amounted to significant shakeups on Capitol Hill.
The maneuvering comes as Democrats prepare for battle with the Trump administration next year, with members hopeful that younger, more energetic voices would be able to better carry the party message into what are expected to be high-profile policy fights, even if Democrats are stuck in the minority.
However, when it came to the Oversight Committee, Democrats appeared to still prioritize Connolly’s standing despite his health issues over Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive and effective communicator but someone who has emerged as a prominent boogeyman for national Republicans.
Overall, Democrats have selected five women to be ranking members on committees in the next Congress, along with several people of color, while Republicans have tapped zero women.
The Library of Congress has announced the 25 films it has selected to join the National Film Registry in 2024.
Its film selections for this year, which were announced on Tuesday, go back almost 130 years and span from the silent film era to a 2010 drama about the creation of Facebook.
Among the titles selected are Dirty Dancing, Beverly Hills Cop, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, My Own Private Idaho, Spy Kids, No Country for Old Men and The Social Network. These 25 new selections bring the total number of films in the registry to 900. They’ll either join the moving image collection items held in the Library of Congress or be preserved in coordination with copyright holders or different film archives.
The public submits nominations to be considered to join the archive. Over 6,700 submissions were made this year, and the Library of Congress chose 25 of them based on “their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage,” according to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.
Here are the 25 films selected for the 2024 National Film Registry: Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) KoKo’s Earth Control (1928) Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) Pride of the Yankees (1942) Invaders from Mars (1953) The Miracle Worker (1962) The Chelsea Girls (1966) Ganja and Hess (1973) Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Uptown Saturday Night (1974) Zora Lathan Student Films (1975-76) Up in Smoke (1978) Will (1981) Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (1982) Beverly Hills Cop (1984) Dirty Dancing (1987) Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) Powwow Highway (1989) My Own Private Idaho (1991) American Me (1992) Mi Familia (1995) Compensation (1999) Spy Kids (2001) No Country for Old Men (2007) The Social Network (2010)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged disappointment around her election loss during her remarks on Tuesday, urging voters to “stay in the fight.”
The speech marks the vice president’s most extensive comments since her concession speech following her loss to President-elect Donald Trump in November.
“Over the past several weeks, since the election, I have received tens of thousands of letters from people across our nation, many of them young leaders, Americans from every walk of life, people of every age, race, faith and political party,” Harris said in Prince George’s County, Maryland,. “These letters share a common theme. Yes, there is disappointment, but there is also resolve for the future.”
“As we then approach the end of this year, many people have come up to me telling me they feel tired … maybe even resigned … that they’re not sure whether they have the strength, much less the desire, to stay in the fight. Let me be very clear: No one can walk away. No one can walk away,” she said. “We must stay in the fight, every one of us, including the fight for an economy that works, not just for those at the very top but for working people — for all Americans. To fight to make sure everyone has a fair shot to pursue their ambitions. The fight for our ideals, including the equality among us, the freedoms to which we are entitled, the dignity that we possess and is possessed by every one of us.
“So we must stay in the fight because that is the responsibility, in my opinion, that comes with the privilege of being an American,” she added.
Harris thanked the audience of “young leaders,” including high school and college students, recent graduates and apprentices who have been active in their local communities, in her remarks at Prince George’s Community College. She was joined by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller and Sen.-elect Angela Alsobrooks, all Democrats.
“Everyone, please, get some rest over the holidays and spend time with the people you love,” she concluded. “And then I urge you … I challenge you to come back ready, ready to chart our path into the future, chin up, shoulders back and forever impatient for change … and be ready to get back to work fighting for opportunity and freedom, fighting for fairness and dignity, back to work fighting for this country we love and the future we share.”
The speech followed remarks the vice president gave Sunday with President Joe Biden at the Democratic National Committee’s holiday reception and came amid questions about Harris’ political future after she leaves office on Jan. 20.
