DOJ fires members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team who prosecuted Trump
Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department is firing “over a dozen” officials who were part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s teams that prosecuted President Donald Trump, officials confirmed to ABC News Monday.
Acting Attorney General James McHenry transmitted letters to the officials informing them of their termination, officials said, that said given their part in the prosecutions they couldn’t be trusted in “faithfully implementing the president’s agenda.”
It’s not immediately clear the exact number of officials who were fired on Monday, but the move was largely expected after President Trump’s threats leading up to the 2024 election stating he planned to fire Smith “on day one.”
Smith resigned prior to Trump taking office and submitted his final report to former Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland released Vol. 1 of Smith’s final report detailing Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but he was blocked by District Judge Aileen Cannon from sharing with Congress the second volume of Trump’s report detailing his investigation of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after leaving his first administration.
Separately, an official confirmed to ABC News that the top career official in the Justice Department, Bradley Weinsheimer, was recently informed he was being reassigned out of his role. Weinsheimer was a longtime career public official and gained notoriety last year in exchanges with President Joe Biden’s attorneys as they sought to prevent Special Counsel Robert Hur from releasing portions of his final report that detailed Biden’s diminished capacities.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen, who on Tuesday held her newborn son during a speech on the House floor in support of a bipartisan effort to allow proxy voting for new lawmaker parents, said the decision to bring her 9-week-old was “difficult,” but illustrated the need to pass the petition.
“We have the ability in 2025 to make sure that our voices and our constituents’ voices are represented here, even when we have a medical reason for not being able to be here in person,” Pettersen, holding her son Sam, said in an interview on ABC News Live on Wednesday. “You know, this is the way things were done hundreds of years ago, I think that we can accommodate for the new workplace challenges here in Congress to make sure more women and in young families can be represented here now.”
On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers came together over proxy voting for new parents. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to tank a procedural rule that would have blocked a petition to allow new mothers and fathers to vote by proxy.
With her newborn in her arms, the Colorado Democrat on Tuesday spoke in support of a resolution that would allow new parents — both mothers and fathers — the ability to vote by proxy up to 12 weeks after the birth of a child. In her speech — during which Sam cooed, squealed and squeaked — Pettersen pleaded for bipartisan cooperation on a measure that she said addressed life events such as parenthood for lawmakers.
“It was a very difficult decision to fly across the country with Sam, and it’s just a decision that nobody should have to make,” said Pettersen, who added that returning to Washington to work after her son was born prematurely put her in an “impossible” situation where she had to both care for a vulnerable newborn and do her job.
Pettersen is only the 13th member of the House to have given birth while serving in Congress. Fellow new mom, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna — who had a child in August 2023 — introduced the petition.
The House voted to torpedo the procedural rule that would have blocked Luna’s proxy vote measure — throwing the House into disarray and paralyzing the chamber. The vote also called into question Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to control Republicans’ razor-thin majority.
House Republican leaders, including Johnson, had said they would take the unprecedented step to block Luna’s petition
After the vote, Johnson said because it failed, “we can’t have any further action on the floor this week.”
Johnson has said proxy voting is unconstitutional and is the start of a slippery slope that could lead to more and more members voting remotely.
Asked by ABC New Live Anchor Diane Macedo about her response to Johnson’s argument, Pettersen said “my message to Speaker Johnson is just let us vote.”
“If we have narrow reasons why people can have their votes represented here if they can’t be here in person, that’s something that we should be able to vote on,” she said on ABC News Live.
Pettersen had stronger words for Johnson after the rule vote, telling ABC News’ Jay O’Brien that her message to the speaker was “don’t f— with moms.”
It’s not the first time Pettersen has brought her son along to a House vote. In February, she brought her son to vote in the House budget blueprint.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller, Jay O’Brien, John Parkinson and Arthur Jones II contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Dan Bongino, the former Secret Service agent turned Fox News host and conservative podcast personality, will be the next deputy director of the FBI — a choice that is drawing criticism from Democrats as another one of President Donald Trump’s allies moves into a leadership position.
Trump named Dan Bongino, a 2020 election denier, as deputy FBI director on Sunday to serve under newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel. Bongino, who left Fox News in 2023, hosts the popular right-wing and pro-Trump podcast called “The Dan Bongino Show,” which ranks among Apple’s top 10 news podcasts.
On Monday morning, a very emotional Bongino told his show’s listeners that he was sitting at home watching TV when Trump called him to let him know he was going to appoint him as the deputy director of the FBI. Bongino told listeners that he wanted the deputy FBI director job.
“I got a call from the president, and he couldn’t have been nicer, and obviously, keep the contents of it between us, but I think you get the gist about what it was about and I kind of broke down a bit,” he said. “This is now real.”
Typically, the position of FBI’s deputy director is held by a career agent — something Bongino is not. The FBI’s deputy director is responsible for the day-to-day operations and running the agency. The position does not require Senate confirmation.
Democrats have expressed outrage at the pick of Bongino as a leader in the agency, concerned that Trump could use his allies leading the agency to go after his adversaries.
“Trump installs another loyalist who won’t say no to any immoral or unethical act,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff wrote of Bongino on X, adding that his appointment degrades law enforcement agencies and public safety.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X that “Trump has chosen grifters to lead the FBI.”
“Kash Patel sells ‘K$SH’ branded merch, vaccine reversal pills. Dan Bongino’s entire show is telling listeners the world is ending so they buy the dozens of survivalist products he sells,” Murphy wrote on X.
Bongino defended his appointment and said the job as the FBI’s deputy director is “unquestionably nonpartisan.”
“I’m going to ask you a simple question, have you seen what I did before I came here,” Bongino said on his podcast. “I’m committed to service. People play different roles in their lives: People are dads, people are soccer coaches. People are cops and military officers and military-enlisted people. People are carpenters, people are plumbers. We play different roles in our life, and each one requires a different skill set.”
Bongino joins an agency — like many others — undergoing changes under the Trump administration. In a message to the FBI workforce last week, Patel announced his intention to “reduce the footprint” of the FBI in “the National Capital Region,” including by “reallocating personnel to the field offices and Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville [Alabama].” One source told ABC News this could include as many as 1,500 agents and others from Washington being relocated.
The FBI, Bongino said, belongs to the American people and will work to restore trust in the agency. Bongino has said the FBI is “lost, broken” and “irredeemably corrupt,” when talking about the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach home in 2022.
“Every single DNA cell in my body is going to be dedicated towards keeping this homeland safe, no matter what, no matter what, that’s my job,” he said. “We’re going to reestablish faith in this institution, the good people that are doing their job, hitting the streets, developing sources. We’ll have your back. We are going to reestablish faith in this institution.”
The son of a plumber and a supermarket employee, Bongino grew up in Queens, New York, and started his career as a New York Police Department officer in the 1990s.
Bongino said in his 2013 book, “Life Inside the Bubble,” that joining law enforcement was a “dream of his” and he dedicated himself to his beat.
After leaving the NYPD, Bongino joined the Secret Service where he rose to the ranks and joined former President Barack Obama’s protection detail.
He said he was compelled to run for Congress in Maryland in 2014 after leaving the service because of “the fog of scandals in the Obama administration,” he told ABC News in 2013.
Bongino claimed that he overheard a series of secret negotiations around the Affordable Care Act during Obama’s first term, which drove him to leave the service and enter politics.
That campaign was unsuccessful, but it allowed Bongino to develop a platform to speak on conservative issues.
Bongino has been an outspoken supporter of Trump, and told Fox News in 2017 that the Trump-Russia collusion investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign was a “total scam.”
He also questioned the results of the 2020 election and claimed there were “anomalies” with the voting totals. Despite the numerous false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, there has been no evidence to back them up.
After Trump was shot during the 2024 campaign, Bongino was critical of the agency he now helps lead.
“They absolutely, resolutely, 100% failed,” he said of the Secret Service on Fox News in July. He also called for the firing of then-Deputy Director Ron Rowe in addition to the then-Director Christopher Wray.
(WASHINGTON) — United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and said the Central American nation has agreed to not only take in deported foreign nationals who committed crimes — but also jailed American citizens and permanent residents.
Rubio called the agreement “an act of extraordinary friendship,” on Monday.
“[Bukele] has agreed to accept for deportation any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal, from any nationality — be they MS-13 or Tren de Araqua — and house them in his jails,” Rubio declared. “He has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those of U.S. citizens and legal residents.”
Rubio called the deal the “most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world” and said, “no country has ever made an offer of friendship such as this.”
“We are profoundly grateful. I spoke to President Trump about this earlier today. And it’s just one more sign of what an incredible friend we have here in President Bukele and in the people of El Salvador,” Rubio said after they met for more than two-and-a-half hours.
“More details will be forthcoming” about the agreement struck between the United States and El Salvador, said Rubio, before taking an opportunity to praise Bukele’s leadership — describing his polarizing clampdown on El Salvador’s security as “difficult decisions” that had to be made.
President Trump has previously mused about sending repeated offenders abroad, even if they are lawfully in the United States. The president will now need to clear several legal hurdles, given that the Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments,” broadly considered to include exile.