Explosive exchange about 9/11 happens at Secret Service hearing
Ronald Rowe, acting director of the United States Secret Service; Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and Republican Texas Congressman Pat Fallon got into a screaming match Thursday at a House panel investigating the assassination attempt against President-elect Donald Trump.
Fallon yelled about Rowe’s attendance at the 9/11 memorial. He accused Rowe of putting the President’s Secret Service detail out of position so he could sit behind him during the 9/11 remembrance ceremony.
“Congressman, what you’re not seeing is the [lack] of the detail off out of the picture’s view. And that is the day where we remember more than 3000 people that have died on 911,” Rowe said Thursday. “I actually responded to Ground Zero. I was there going through the ashes of the World Trade Center. I was there at Fresh Kills..”
Fallon yelled at Rowe, asking if he was the special agent in charge.
“I was there to show respect for members that died on 9/11,” Rowe yelled back his finger pointing at Fallon. “Do not invoke 9/11 for political purposes,” Rowe shouted.
“Oh I am not,” Fallon responded.
“You are sir,” Rowe yelled back. “And you are out of line!”
“I am an elected member of Congress, and I’m asking you a serious question,” Fallon said.
“I am a public servant who has served,” Rowe yelled back.
Fallon accused the acting director of putting the life of the vice president in jeopardy to audition for the job.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of President-elect Donald Trump whom he tapped to co-chair the Republican National Committee for the 2024 election cycle, said she intends to step down from her position.
The move comes amid mounting speculation that she could be tapped to fill an upcoming Senate vacancy in Florida, whose Sen. Marco Rubio has been nominated for secretary of state.
“The job I came to do is now complete and I intend to formally step down from the RNC at our next meeting,” Lara Trump said in a post on X.
Should Rubio be confirmed as secretary of state in Trump’s incoming administration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would need to choose a successor to serve out the rest of Rubio’s term, which expires in 2026.
“It is something I would seriously consider,” Lara Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press.
She added, “If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”
Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — In the days since President Donald Trump handed down pardons and commutations for the more than 1,500 of his supporters who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia have remained essentially silent while signing off on the hundreds of now-dismissed cases that for years crowded their court dockets.
On Wednesday, three judges with the D.C. District Court broke that silence on Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters, with one eviscerating Trump’s proclamation that stated he was righting a “national injustice” that occurred through the prosecution of the pro-Trump mob.
“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in an order Wednesday. “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity.”
She added, “That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law. Yet, this presidential pronouncement of a ‘national injustice’ is the sole justification provided in the government’s motion to dismiss the pending indictment.”
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, also made clear in a dismissal order for one Capitol defendant that Trump’s sweeping pardons “will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021.”
“What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”
Kollar-Kotelly further used her order to honor the law enforcement officers who responded to the Capitol that day, which she said “cannot be altered or ignored.”
“What role law enforcement played that day and the heroism of each officer who responded also cannot be altered or ignored,” she said.
“Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building-our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world,” she added. “For hours, those officers were aggressively confronted and violently assaulted. More than 140 officers were injured. Others tragically passed away as a result of the events of that day. But law enforcement did not falter. Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect.”
She closed her order, stating bluntly, “All of what I have described has been recorded for posterity, ensuring that what transpired on January 6, 2021 can be judged accurately in the future.”
Trump’s Monday order commuted the sentences of 14 people and offered “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” The order fulfilled a campaign promise the president repeatedly made on the campaign trail.
Howell’s statement came through her dismissal of a case against two violent Jan. 6 rioters, Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs, who admitted to throwing smoke bombs at officers trying to protect the Capitol building.
Howell refused to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” as requested by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which would leave open the possibility the prosecution could one day be resumed, though their statutes of limitations will run out by the end of this administration.
“This Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement,” Howell said. “Bluntly put, the assertion offered in the presidential pronouncement for the pending motion to dismiss is flatly wrong.”
Later Wednesday, the federal judge who oversaw Trump’s criminal case related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election joined the growing chorus of judges breaking their silence.
“No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” said Judge Tanya Chutkan, another Obama appointee, in a brief order granting the dismissal of one rioter’s criminal case. “The dismissal of this case cannot undo the ‘rampage [that] left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage.’ … And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.
“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor,” she added. “The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin gave an impassioned defense of women in combat on Tuesday following Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, arguing that the United States “should not have women in combat roles.”
“I don’t know the potential nominee, so I can’t comment on and won’t comment on anything that he said,” Austin, who was asked about the comments made by Hegseth on women in combat roles, said while in Laos to participate in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Defense Ministers Meeting. “I don’t know what his experiences are, but I can tell you about my experiences with women in the military and women in combat, and they’re pretty good.”
Austin’s comments are the strongest statement from the military since Hegseth, an Army veteran who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was tapped by Trump to lead the DOD.
The Fox News host has said his concerns are with women specifically in ground combat positions, not with pilots or those in other military roles, because he claims they have led to the military’s physical standards being lowered and changed capabilities of combat units.
“I’m OK with the idea that you maintain the standards where they are for everybody. And if there’s some … hard-charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion,” Hegseth said during a podcast appearance days before his nomination. “But that is not what’s happened. What has happened is the standards have lowered.”
Speaking on his experience in his tours, Austin said, “Every place I went, there were women doing incredible things, and they were adding value to to the overall effort, whether they were pilots, whether they were operational experts, whether they were intel experts. You know, I see things differently and I see that because of my experience, and that experience is extensive. And so, I think our women add significant value to the United States military, and we should never change that.”
“And if I had a message … to our women, I would say I would tell them that you know we need you. We have faith in you. We are appreciative of your service, and you add value to the finest and most lethal fighting force on earth,” he said.
Of the active-duty military personnel, 17.5% are women, and women make up 21.6% of the selected reserve, according to the Pentagon’s latest statistics.
“I love women service members, who contribute amazingly,” Hegseth said during the podcast appearance earlier this month. But three minutes later, he added, “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
Hegseth’s selection has drawn controversy as some service members express concerns about their futures in the military. Women began being able to be in ground combat units in 2013 after then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rescinded a ban on women in these roles. Over 2,500 women serve in previously closed ground combat jobs, ABC News previously reported.
Panetta has come out in opposition to Hegseth’s position on women in combat roles.
“Those kinds of comments come from a past era, and I think it’s important for him to take the time to really look at how our military is performing in an outstanding fashion,” Panetta told ABC News. “We’ve got the best military in the world, and the reason is because we have the best fighting men and women in the world who are part of it.”
