Harris in debate takes aim at Trump’s rallies, saying attendees leave early
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris took aim at former President Donald Trump’s political rallies, calling into question both the content and the atmosphere. She said attendees often leave early “out of exhaustion and boredom.”
Harris during Tuesday night’s presidential debate said she was inviting voters to attend one of the former president’s rallies “because it’s a really interesting thing to watch.”
Trump during those rallies speaks about fictional characters, including Hannibal Lecter, and also about how “windmills cause cancer,” Harris said.
“And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you,” Harris said. “You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams and your, your desires.”
She added, “And I’ll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.”
Trump and his team have often made a point of mentioning the size of his audiences, including the amount of people who attended his 2017 inauguration. Former President Barack Obama said at the Democratic National Convention last month that Trump had a “weird obsession with crowd sizes.”
Trump on Tuesday night returned in his next answer to the discussion Harris had started about the crowds at his rallies. He said attendees “don’t leave my rallies.”
“She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go,” Trump said. “And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that.”
Trump said attendees go to his rallies because “they like what I say.”
As Trump spoke, Harris placed her hand under her chin.
“We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” Trump said. “That’s because people want to take their country back.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Secret Service faced an array of challenges — and made some potentially dangerous mistakes — while trying to protect the president, vice president and vice president-elect on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob supporting then-President Donald Trump violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News, offers an official and detailed account of how Kamala Harris, then the incoming vice president, ended up within feet of a “viable” pipe bomb planted in the bushes right outside the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters that day.
“The pipe bomb had been placed near the building the night before, but … [a]dvance security sweeps by the Secret Service at the DNC building did not include the outside area where a pipe bomb had been placed,” says the report from inspector general Joseph Cuffari, which was shared with members of Congress on Thursday.
The report describes how two Secret Service canine teams assigned to sweep the building were “surprised” to learn the morning of Jan. 6 that more assets weren’t being provided to help with the sweep — but the report also notes that Secret Service policies and procedures at the time required fewer assets for protectees who had been elected to an office but not yet sworn in.
“[Harris], traveling in an armored vehicle with her motorcade, entered the DNC building via a ramp within 20 feet of the pipe bomb,” the report said.
According to the report, the pipe bomb was found an hour and 40 minutes after Harris arrived at the DNC building. The report suggests it took the Secret Service ten minutes to evacuate her, saying that she spent a total of about one hour and 50 minutes inside the building.
The Secret Service has since updated its policies to include more assets for “‘elect’ protectees,” according to the report, which is heavily redacted.
Federal authorities are still trying to determine who planted that pipe bomb and a similar device at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters nearby. The FBI is offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Security camera video released by the FBI showed the suspect walking on a street in the area.
“Although these bombs did not detonate, it is important to remember the suspect walked along residential and commercial areas in Capitol Hill just blocks from the U.S. Capitol with viable pipe bombs that could have seriously injured or killed innocent bystanders,” the FBI said in a statement seeking the public’s help earlier this year. “Moreover, the suspect may still pose a danger to the public or themselves.”
The report’s long-awaited release comes as the Secret Service is still reeling from its failure to prevent a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man from nearly assassinating Trump less than three weeks ago.
Testifying to Congress earlier this week, the acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald Rowe, called that “a failure on multiple levels,” saying communication issues and other challenges helped prevent authorities from realizing how much of a threat the man posed, and then hampered their response.
Cuffari’s report describes how in 2021, communication challenges and missed signs of potential violence impacted the Secret Service’s planning and response to the events of Jan. 6.
As described in the report, the Secret Service was focused on three main locations that day: the Ellipse in Washington, where they were protecting Trump at his “Save America” rally; the U.S. Capitol, where then-vice president Mike Pence was presiding over the certification of the 2020 election results; and the DNC building, where Harris was visiting.
Like many other law enforcement agencies, the Secret Service “anticipated that the planned Ellipse rally would be like previous pro-Trump rallies” in Washington, which saw “some violence” limited to clashes between opposing protesters, the report said.
But once the rally got underway, according to the report, “the Secret Service encountered indicators of potential for violence within the crowd,” including people trying to enter the secure area with ballistic vests and gas masks.
By the conclusion of the rally, the Secret Service alone had confiscated 269 blades, 242 bottles of pepper spray and 94 other prohibited items, the report says.
At 2:13 p.m., a little more than an hour after Trump finished his speech at the rally, rioters breached the Capitol building.
“Due to communication challenges and limited contingency planning, [Pence and his] Secret Service protective detail only narrowly avoided rioters,” the report says of the rioters, some of whom directed threats at the then-vice president.
The section of the report discussing that episode includes substantial redactions, though it does say that agents reported “not receiving communications from various entities,” and also mentions “manpower challenges that day.”
“The events of January 6 were unprecedented, and the issues we identified during our review present an opportunity for the Secret Service to be better prepared in the future,” says the report, which makes several recommendations to improve Secret Service agility.
The Secret Service says it is already implementing many of the recommendations.
The report also offers a little more information about two controversial issues stemming from Jan. 6, including Trump’s alleged demands to go to the Capitol after his speech as the situation at the Capitol was escalating.
In June 2022, during dramatic public testimony before the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified she had been told by then-White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato that Trump was so adamant about going to the Capitol that he grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential limousine and lunged toward the Secret Service detail when his demands were denied.
According to the inspector general’s report, Ornato told Cuffari’s investigators in writing — after refusing an in-person interview — that he does “not recall being made aware of any [such] details,” nor does he “recall speaking with anyone about it.”
Trump’s detail lead, who was seated in front of the then-president, said he could not recall how the president responded when he was told he couldn’t go to the Capitol — but the limousine driver told investigators that Trump was angry about it, according to the report.
In the report, Cuffari also discusses efforts by his office — and “multiple committees of Congress” — to obtain phone communications, emails, and text messages from the Secret Service — but that their efforts were allegedly hampered because the Secret Service had “wiped all phones when it updated software in [the weeks after Jan. 6, and] did not have backup files.”
In total, Cuffari’s investigators ended up receiving one short text message sent by a single Secret Service official that day, according to the report.
The Secret Service disputed Cuffari’s implication that the phones were “wiped” with nefarious intent, saying the software update that left so many communications unattainable had been planned long before Jan. 6.
“It is reassuring that the [inspector general] report does not state anywhere that any Secret Service text messages were inappropriately deleted,” the Secret Service told Cuffari’s office in a letter responding to the report’s conclusions.
After Jan. 6, members of Congress pressed the Department of Homeland Security for a broad range of records, including communications from within the Secret Service. The Secret Service text messages were never provided, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., recently said, “We could have had a better and more thorough report had we had access to all those records.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump voted early in the Florida Republican primary on Wednesday, casting his ballot at a polling location near his home in Palm Beach. But Trump’s participation in early voting offers a stark contrast to some of his previous criticisms of the practice.
Walking out of the polling site on Wednesday, Trump called it a “great honor to vote” and praised the “fantastic job” done by the poll workers.
However, he has repeatedly flip-flopped in his messaging to supporters, sometimes encouraging them to vote early or by mail — while at other times making false and misleading claims about the security of the process.
“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,” Trump falsely claimed in February at a campaign rally in Michigan. “Get that through your head. It has to be.”
In March, Trump again falsely claimed that “anytime the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating,” which he said during an interview with the far-right British politician Nigel Farage.
That rhetoric was central to Trump’s attempt to undermine the results of the 2020 election false claims pushed by him and his supporters that electoral fraud stole victory from him in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that year.
No widespread vote-by-mail fraud has ever been found despite the claims.
A Washington Post analysis of data collected in three vote-by-mail states from 2016 and 2018 showed that instances of double voting and people voting on behalf of deceased people made up just 0.0025% of the more than 14.6 million ballots cast. That amounts to 372 possible instances of fraud, far from what would be required to swing a national election.
With polls predicting neck-and-neck races in crucial battleground states, Trump and his allies have sought to retool their message around early and absentee voting in recent months while still trying to hold on to the hard line Trump drew against those practices in 2020.
“President Trump has been very clear in his remarks and rally speeches throughout this campaign cycle that Americans should vote early if their states allow,” Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to ABC News.
“[Elections] used to be one day, now it’s, you know, two months,” Trump said, complaining about early voting at a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June. But then, during the same speech, he urged his supporters to vote early if they wanted.
“Do it early. Do it. Just do it. You’ve got to vote. And watch your vote, guard your vote, and follow your vote,” he said.
Republican National Committee Co-Chair Mark Whatley, who was hand-picked by Trump following the ouster of former party chair Ronna McDaniel, has advocated for creating a “national early-vote program” that will target and encourage voters to get to the ballot box.
“Voters can vote early. They can vote on Election Day. They can vote by mail. Do I care how they vote? No, I do not,” Whatley said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June. “I care that they vote.”
Asked about Trump’s comments against mail-in voting, Whatley claimed the Republican Party is investing a significant amount of resources “protecting the vote” to ensure “election integrity” so voters can trust the system.
“We are spending a very significant amount of our time protecting the vote. We are building the Protect the Vote campaign around it,” Whatley said, referring to the latest iteration of the Republican Party’s get-out-the-vote effort.
At campaign rallies in recent weeks, the former president’s campaign has also promoted mail-in and early voting, putting up signs encouraging supporters to request mail-in ballots or pledge to vote early in person.
Trump echoed that message during a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, last month while still falsely alluding to the idea that the 2020 election was stolen.
“If you want to save America, get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know, and vote,” Trump said in the state, which will kick off early voting for the general election on Sept. 16 — the first in the country. “Vote early, vote absentee, vote on Election Day. I don’t care when you vote, but whatever you do, you have to vote and make sure your ballot counts.”
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies released findings that Iranian hackers have continued efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election, with “stolen” information from former President Donald Trump’s campaign being sent to individuals associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign before he left the race.
“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” U.S. intelligence agencies said in a statement Wednesday.
“There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied,” investigators said.
Additionally, the FBI found that the Iranian government has “continued their efforts” to send “stolen” campaign materials to media organizations.
In June, Iran launched a phishing campaign against the then Biden campaign and Trump campaign — with the Trump campaign operation getting internal campaign materials.
In mid-August, U.S. intelligence agencies — the FBI, CISA and ODNI — warned of this effort, and as of now, the effort still exists, according to the agencies.
“This malicious cyber activity is the latest example of Iran’s multi-pronged approach, as noted in the joint August statement, to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process,” investigators said.
“As the lead for threat response, the FBI has been tracking this activity, has been in contact with the victims, and will continue to investigate and gather information in order to pursue and disrupt the threat actors responsible. Foreign actors are increasing their election influence activities as we approach November,” investigators said.
On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign released a statement, calling for more information from the Biden-Harris administration about the intelligence agencies’ findings.
“Kamala and Biden must come clean on whether they used the hacked material given to them by the Iranians to hurt President Trump. What did they know and when did they know it?” Karoline Leavitt, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary, said in a statement.
Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement, “We have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation.”
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein added. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
Intelligence agencies have assessed Russia, China and Iran as the biggest peddlers of influence operations in 2024.
In a statement Wednesday, Iran’s Mission to the United Nations called the intelligence agencies’ findings “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not engage in the internal uproars or electoral controversies of the United States,” the statement said.