Harris, Obama and Hillary Clinton set to hold Los Angeles fundraisers for the vice president this month

(WASHNIGTON) — Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney is firing back at Donald Trump after the former president darkly suggested Cheney be put in the line of fire as he criticized her as a “war hawk.”

“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death,” Cheney posted Friday on X. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

Trump attacked Cheney at an event with Tucker Carlson in battleground Arizona on Thursday night.

“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said of the former Wyoming congresswoman as he went after her and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?” Trump said. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Trump continued, “You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send a — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.'”

The Harris campaign called Trump saying “nine barrels” a reference to a traditional nine-gun “firing squad.”

Cheney, a Republican but a vocal critic of Trump over his behavior after the 2020 election and on Jan. 6, 2021, has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

While campaigning alongside Harris, Cheney cast Trump as a danger to democracy and the Constitution.

“We see it on a daily basis, somebody who was willing to use violence in order to attempt to seize power, to stay in power, someone who represents unrecoverable catastrophe, frankly, in my view, and we have to do everything possible to ensure that he’s not reelected,” Cheney told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” earlier this fall after publicly backing Harris.

Trump’s remarks against Cheney are the latest in a string of increasingly dark and violent campaign rhetoric.

The former president doubled down on his “enemy from within” language after he previously suggested Democrats are more of a threat to the U.S. than top foreign adversaries such as China and Russia when it comes to the 2024 election.

“We do have an enemy from within,” he told Carlson on Thursday. “We have some very bad people, and those people are also very dangerous. They would like to take down our country. They’d like to have our country be a nice communist country or a fascist in any way they can. And we have to be careful of that.”

Harris campaign senior adviser Ian Sams responded to Trump’s comments during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, during which he called the former president “all-consumed by his grievances.”

“I mean, think about the contrast between these two candidates,” Sams said. “You have Donald Trump who is talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad, and you have Vice President Harris talking about sending one to her Cabinet. This is the difference in this race.”

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s spokesperson, claimed on Friday Trump’s words were being taken out of context.

“President Trump was CLEARLY explaining that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves,” Leavitt wrote on X.

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim, Kelsey Walsh and Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.

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(TEMPE, Ariz.) — The campaign office shared by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic Party in Tempe, Arizona, was damaged by gunfire for the third time in less than a month on Sunday, police told ABC News on Wednesday.

The Tempe Police Department provided new details in its investigation, including a picture of the suspect’s vehicle it says is possibly a 2008-2013 silver Toyota Highlander, and announced that Silent Witness was offering up to a $1,000 reward “for any information that leads to the arrest or indictment of the suspect(s) involved in this crime.”

The shooting occurred between midnight and 1 a.m., around the same time the previous two incidents occurred, police said. No one was injured in any of the three shootings.

Harris is scheduled to travel to Arizona on Thursday for a rally and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was in the state on Wednesday.

After the second shooting on Sept. 23, police said they were taking “additional measures… to ensure the safety of staff and others in the area.” A motive for the shooting has not been determined as the investigation continues, according to police.

The office was shot at on Sept. 16 in an incident police said appeared to involve a BB or pellet gun. Police said that shooting caused “criminal damage.”

Law enforcement around the country is under heightened alert over an increase in political violence threats.

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(WASHINGTON) — Amid escalating rhetoric from former President Donald Trump threatening to prosecute his enemies should he win the 2024 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered remarks to the Justice Department workforce on Thursday urging they continue to adhere to longstanding principles intended to protect DOJ from improper politicization.

“Our norms are a promise that we will fiercely protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations,” Garland said.

Garland added, “Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this Department to be used as a political weapon. And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.”

The remarks come as Garland has sought to refute allegations from Trump and his allies of weaponization of the department through its prosecution of individuals involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s dueling prosecutions of Trump himself for his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Those close to Garland have disputed those accusations as baseless — pointing in part to DOJ’s prosecution and conviction of Democrats like disgraced New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez on corruption charges as well as the separate Special Counsel prosecutions of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Trump and his allies, in turn, have ramped up in recent months their promises to use the Justice Department as a tool of retribution against his political enemies — with Trump in a Truth Social post over the weekend threatening “long term prison sentences” for “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” he baselessly accused of being involved in “cheating” in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

Garland forcefully rebuked what he describes as a “dangerous — and outrageous” spike in threats targeting DOJ employees under his tenure.

“Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work,” Garland said. “These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.”

Garland used his remarks specifically to point to steps taken during his tenure he says have been aimed at isolating the department from allegations of politicization, such as re-implementing policies intended to limit contacts with the White House.

Those policies, however, were complicated by the Supreme Court’s July ruling that effectively granted Trump immunity in his federal election subversion case over his alleged efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the election. The court’s conservative majority determined that Trump and other presidents should be shielded from any criminal liability for contacts with the DOJ, that they said clearly fall within the chief executive’s core powers.

As a result, Special Counsel Smith returned a superseding indictment two weeks ago against Trump that stripped out any mentions of the alleged DOJ plot.

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