Jimmy Carter’s state funeral to be held Jan. 9 at Washington National Cathedral
Benjamin E. “Gene” Forte/CNP/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The funeral for former President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100, will be held on Jan. 9 at Washington National Cathedral.
Carter, the son of a peanut farmer who was elected the nation’s 39th president, passed away surrounded by family at his home in Plains, Georgia, just months after he became the longest-lived former chief executive in U.S. history.
President Joe Biden, who praised Carter as a “man of principle, faith, and humility,” has also marked Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning for the former Democratic president.
Biden said in March 2023 that Carter had asked him to deliver his eulogy. Their relationship spans decades, back to when Biden endorsed Carter for the presidency during Biden’s first term as a senator in 1976.
In remarks on Sunday evening, Biden spoke about Carter’s support for him and his family after his son Beau died of cancer. Carter was later diagnosed with metastatic melanoma.
“I think that what Jimmy Carter is an example of is just simple decency, simple decency,” Biden said as he reflected on that time in his life. “And I think that’s what the rest of the world looks to America for.”
Washington National Cathedral, situated just miles north of the White House, has been the site of several state funerals for former presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush.
Carter is expected to be buried in Georgia next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, who died last year at the age of 96. Carter, who had been in hospice care, made a rare public appearance to attend his wife’s memorial service.
The couple previously spoke about being laid to rest together at their family residence, near the edge of a pond on the property where they fished together.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — If Congress fails to pass the continuing resolution to fund the government by Saturday, millions of federal workers could head into the holidays without paychecks. They could be furloughed or be asked to work without pay.
That includes some members of the military, and other critical government workers, such as TSA agents and air traffic controllers, just as the holiday travel craze begins.
Some contractors with the federal government are not guaranteed back pay, like federal employees, which could have devastating consequences for workers living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Despite the efforts to avert the shutdown, plans are still being made in case a deal is not made before Saturday’s deadline. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has already been in touch with agencies about their plans in case of a government shutdown, an OMB official told ABC News. The official said the initial communication with agencies about their shutdown plans happened last Friday.
That communication is part of OMB’s procedure, which is required by law, stating that one week prior to appropriations bills expiring, the office must “communicate with agency senior officials to remind agencies of their responsibilities to review and update orderly shutdown plans” and “share a draft communication template to notify employees of the status of appropriations.”
The procedure also states that the White House office must continue communicating with agencies ahead of any anticipated shutdown. The policy states that about two business days before the expected lapse in funding, “agencies should notify employees of the status of funding.”
Lawmakers in Congress continue to negotiate a deal that would keep the government funded. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told ABC News on Wednesday that lawmakers had a “productive” late-night meeting in the House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.
“We are going to continue to work through the night to the morning to get an agreement we can bring to the floor,” Scalise said, adding that he hoped the House could “get it resolved” on Thursday.
Johnson’s original plan called for extending government spending at current levels until March and added other provisions like relief for disaster victims and farmers and a pay raise for members of Congress. That plan is in jeopardy as President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have pushed for Republicans not to accept that deal.
Trump has pushed Republicans to deal with the debt limit before he takes office, saying if they don’t, “he’ll have to ‘fight ’til the end’ with Democrats.”
In a joint statement Wednesday afternoon, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance called on Congress to “pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.”
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Sarah Kolinovsky and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s final report lays out in no uncertain terms federal prosecutors’ position that Donald Trump — who is set to be inaugurated president in less than a week — would have been convicted on multiple felonies for his alleged efforts to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 election, had voters not decided to send him back to the White House in the 2024 election.
That was one of the primary conclusions included in Smith’s final report on his election interference investigation, which the Justice Department released early Tuesday morning after a federal judge, late Monday night, cleared the way for the report’s release.
The report lays out the probe that resulted in Trump being charged in 2023 with four felony counts of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The case, as well as Smith’s classified documents case against Trump, was dropped following Trump’s reelection in November due to a longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” the report said. “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
After conducting interviews with 250 witnesses voluntarily, calling 55 people to testify before the grand jury, executing dozens of subpoenas and search warrants, and sifting through a terabyte of publicly accessible data, Smith’s team concluded they could convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed multiple federal crimes when he attempted to overturn the election, the report said.
“The throughline of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit — knowingly false claims of election fraud — and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process,” the report said.
For the first time, the report shed light on the internal deliberations of the prosecutors who sought to prove that Trump “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort” while navigating the uncharted legal territory of charging a former president.
While prosecutors considered charging Trump with violating the Insurrection Act, Smith wrote that he opted against the approach because of the “litigation risk that would be presented by employing this long-dormant statute.” According to the report, prosecutors worried that Trump’s actions did not amount to an insurrection because he was already in power — rather than challenging a sitting government — when the riot took place. Smith also noted that his office did not obtain “direct evidence” of Trump’s “intent to cause the full scope of the violence that occurred on January 6.”
Smith also noted that the case against Trump presented unique challenges, including Trump’s “ability and willingness” to use social media to target witnesses, courts, and prosecutors with “threats and harassment.” Like any other case involving a conspiracy, prosecutors also expressed concerns about convincing witnesses to cooperate while the defendant still exerted influence and command over his alleged co-conspirators.
“That dynamic was amplified in this case given Mr. Trump’s political and financial status, and the prospect of his future election to the presidency,” the report said.
Despite those concerns, Smith’s report laid out how prosecutors planned to rebut Trump’s expected arguments to secure a conviction, laying out a play-by-play for how a trial would have proceeded had Trump lost the election.
If the former president argued that he acted in good faith when he claimed there was election fraud, prosecutors would present “strong proof” that Trump himself knew his claims of fraud were false. The report noted that Trump repeatedly noted in private how he lost the election, including berating Vice President Mike Pence for being “too honest” to challenge the results, telling his family “you still have to fight like hell” even if he lost the election, and remarking to a staffer, “Can you believe I lost to this f’ing guy?” after seeing Biden on television.
“This was not a case in which Mr. Trump merely misstated a fact or two in a handful of isolated instances. On a repeated basis, he and co-conspirators used specific and knowingly false claims of election fraud,” the report said.
If Trump argued he was following the advice of his lawyers, prosecutors planned to present evidence showing that his lawyers were acting as accomplices to the crime, preventing Trump from legally being able to employ the argument.
And if Trump argued that he was just using his First Amendment right when he challenged the election, prosecutors planned to highlight that Trump employed his statements to commit other crimes, including using false statements to defeat a government function, obstruct an official proceeding, and injure the right to vote.
“The Office was cognizant of Mr. Trump’s free speech rights during the investigation and would not have brought a prosecution if the evidence indicated he had engaged in mere political exaggeration or rough-and-tumble politics,” the report said. “The conduct of Mr. Trump and co-conspirators, however, went well beyond speaking their minds or contesting the election results through our legal system.”
In the report, Smith also detailed multiple interviews with various so-called “fake electors” who he said sought to cast votes for Trump — and admitted they would not have done so “had they known the true extent of co-conspirators’ plans.”
Smith told how investigators obtained Signal messages where “Co-Conspirator 4” — previously identified by ABC News as former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark — sent a message to Rep. Scott Perry saying he had received a highly classified briefing on foreign interference in the 2020 election that “yielded nothing” to support allegations of a stolen election.
“Bottom line is there is nothing helpful to P,” Clark’s message said, according to the report.
The report cites the handwritten notes of former Vice President Mike Pence that the special counsel obtained, about which Smith wrote, “In repeated conversations, day after day, Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Pence to use his ministerial position as President of the Senate to change the election outcome, often by citing false claims of election fraud as justification; he even falsely told Mr. Pence that the ‘Justice Department [was] finding major infractions.'”
Regarding the House select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the report said that probe only “comprised a small part of the Office’s investigative record, and any facts on which the Office relied to make a prosecution decision were developed or verified through independent interviews and other investigative steps.”
Volume One of Smith’s final report was released to the public early Tuesday after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, following a weeklong court battle, ruled Monday that the Justice Department could release it.
Trump’s former co-defendants in his classified documents case, longtime aide Walt Nauta and staffer Carlos De Oliveira, had sought to block the release of both the classified documents volume and the Jan. 6 volume, but Cannon — who last year dismissed the classified documents case — allowed the public release of the Jan. 6 volume after determining that its contents have no bearing on the evidence or charges related Nauta and De Oliveira in their ongoing case.
After conferring with Smith, Garland determined that he would not publicly release Volume Two pertaining to the classified documents investigation because Nauta and De Oliveira’s cases were technically still on appeal.
In the classified documents case, Trump pleaded not guilty in 2023 to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information. The former president, along with Nauta and De Oliveira, pleaded not guilty in a superseding indictment to allegedly attempting to delete surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Smith resigned as special prosecutor on Friday after wrapping up the cases and submitting his report to Garland.
(WASHINGTON) — A day after the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied an effort to block the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his two investigations into Donald Trump, the president-elect’s former co-defendants are trying to keep U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland from releasing the report to members of Congress.
Attorneys for Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira on Friday asked U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon, who earlier this week temporarily blocked the report’s release while the matter was considered by the Eleventh Circuit, to extend her three-day restraining order prohibiting the report’s release so she can hold a hearing about Garland’s proposed plan to release the portion of the report covering Smith’s classified documents investigation to the ranking members and chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary committees.
If successful, the move could result in a further delay of the report’s release, potentially past Trump’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20.
“Once the Report is disclosed to Congress, this Court will effectively lose its ability to control the flow of information related to privileged and confidential matters in a criminal proceeding,” wrote attorneys for Nauta, a longtime Trump aide, and De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago employee. That makes delaying the issuance of the Final Report until this matter is resolved essential, as there will be no way to put the proverbial cat back into the bag after the Final Report is shared with Congress, and no way to control congressional speech regarding the pending criminal case.”
It’s unclear if Judge Cannon has the jurisdiction to extend her restraining order after the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling left Cannon’s temporary order the only impediment stopping the report’s release. The Justice Department earlier Friday notified Judge Cannon of their intent to appeal her injunction in an effort to nullify the three-day restriction. Garland has stated his intent to make Volume Two of the report, pertaining to Trump’s classified documents case, available to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for closed-door review as soon as he is permitted to do so, and to make Volume One of the report, regarding Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, available to the public.
Lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira have asked Cannon, who last year dismissed the classified documents case, to hold a hearing about whether Garland should be blocked from releasing the report while the government is still appealing the dismissal of the case against Nauta and De Oliveira.
“”This Court presides over the criminal matter and is best suited to resolve the questions presented by Defendants’ request for injunctive relief,” the attorneys wrote.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June 2023 to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back. Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira also pleaded not guilty in a superseding indictment to allegedly attempting to delete surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Friday’s filing comes amid escalating tensions between Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice. On Thursday, Trump’s co-defendants suggested that the DOJ violated Cannon’s order by submitting a letter to Congress about Smith completing his investigation. Smith, in turn, filed a notice claiming the defense assertion is unfounded.
“There is nothing about the government’s email to counsel for President-elect Trump, the government’s submission to the Eleventh Circuit, nor the Attorney General’s letter to Congress that violates this Court’s Order,” Smith wrote.