Judge in Trump’s classified docs case temporarily blocks release of special counsel’s final report
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The judge in President-elect Donald Trump’s classified documents case has temporarily blocked Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, or any Department of Justice personnel from releasing the special counsel’s final report on the case.
U.S. District Cannon deferred the matter to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, but temporarily blocked the release of the report “to prevent irreparable harm arising from the circumstances as described in the current record in this emergency posture, and to permit an orderly and deliberative sequence of events.”
The move came a day after Trump’s former co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, asked Cannon — who dismissed the classified documents case in July after deeming Smith’s appointment unconstitutional — to issue an order barring Attorney General Merrick Garland from publicly releasing the report.
Attorneys for Trump, in a court filing Tuesday, asked Canon classified documents case to allow Trump to formally join his former co-defendants’ effort to block the report’s release.
“As a former and soon-to-be President, uniquely familiar with the pernicious consequences of lawfare perpetrated by Smith, his Office, and others at DOJ, President Trump should be permitted to participate in these proceedings,” Trump’s attorneys argued in Tuesday’s filing.
The filing came after the special counsel’s office, responding early Tuesday to Nauta and De Oliveira’s request for Cannon to block the report’s release, confirmed the office is “working to finalize” a report and that Attorney General Garland — who has the final say over what material from the report is made public — has still not determined what to release from the volume that relates to Smith’s classified documents investigation.
“This morning’s Notice is the most recent example of Smith’s glaring lack of respect for this Court and fundamental norms of the criminal justice system,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their filing, referring to Smith’s stated intention that his office plans to transmit the report to Attorney General Merrick Garland no later than 1 p.m. EST today.
The special counsel’s office assured Judge Cannon in their filing that Smith would not release that specific volume of the report anytime before 10 a.m. Friday and that they would submit a fuller response to Nauta and DeOliveira’s emergency motion no later than 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.
Trump’s attorneys also sent a letter to Garland demanding he remove Smith from his post and defer the decision about the report’s release to Trump’s incoming attorney general, Pam Bondi.
“No report should be prepared or released, and Smith should be removed, including for even suggesting that course of action given his obvious political motivations and desire to lawlessly undermine the transition,” wrote Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump’s defense attorneys who Trump has picked for top Justice Department posts in the incoming administration.
Smith has been winding down his cases against the president-elect due to a longstanding Department of Justice policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president — moving to dismiss Trump’s federal election interference case and dropping his appeal of the classified documents case — and is expected to submit a final report about his investigations to Garland before stepping down.
(WASHINGTON) — As world leaders mourn the death of former President Jimmy Carter and remark on his political and policy legacy, doctors are remembering his efforts to prevent disease, and his legacy in furthering global public health.
The 39th president spent five decades working to eradicate a parasitic disease, helped organize a major-drug donation program, and made advancements addressing the mental health crisis in the U.S.
Dr. Julie Jacobson, currently a managing partner of the nonprofit Bridges to Development, helped to provide funding for the Carter Center’s work in the Americas, Nigeria and Ethiopia while she worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for over a decade.
“He was hugely influential, I think particularly for the diseases that most of the world doesn’t appreciate even exist,” Jacobson told ABC News of Jimmy Carter’s work. “He was a true champion for the neglected tropical diseases, which are some of the most common infections of people who live with the least resources. And he found these diseases and then really wanted to do something about them, and used his voice, his influence, his passion, to continue to push forward where others were really not interested.”
Near-eradication of Guinea worm disease
Following his loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982, a non-profit organization that “seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health,” according to the Center’s website.
Among the organization’s many efforts, the Carter Center helped spearhead a successful international campaign with the goal of eradicating dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea worm disease, a parasitic infection caused by consuming contaminated drinking water.
Water from ponds or other stagnant bodies of water can contain tiny crustaceans commonly known as water fleas, which in turn can be infected with Guinea worm larvae, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
About one year after infecting a human host, the Guinea worm creates a blister on the skin and emerges from it, which can cause burning pain, fever and swelling, according to the CDC and the World Health Organization.
“Nobody else wanted to take it on,” Jimmy Carter told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during a 2015 interview on “Good Morning America”. “So, I decided to take it on.”
In 1986, Guinea worm disease afflicted 3.5 million people every year in 21 African and Asian countries. Disease incidence has since been reduced by 99.99%, to just 14 “provisional” human cases in 2023, according to the Carter Center.
Jacobson said that success is even more remarkable because there are no vaccines available to prevent Guinea worm disease and no drugs to treat it. Tracking Guinea worm disease, according to Jacobson, involves following possible cases for a year to determine if they are infected, checking to see if infected humans have any infected water sources near them, and monitoring the community as a whole.
“To think that you could eradicate a disease without any tools is really still just a crazy idea, but he did it with perseverance and working with people in the grassroots within communities and putting together teams of people to go and work with people in those communities and empower the communities,” Jacobson said.
The Carter Center says if efforts are successful, Guinea worm disease could become the second human disease in history to be completely eradicated, after smallpox, and the first to be done without the use of a vaccine or medicine.
Carter told ABC News during the 2015 interview that eradicating the disease entirely was his goal: “I think this is going to be a great achievement for, not for me, but for the people that have been afflicted and for the entire world to see diseases like this eradicated.”
Mass drug distribution for river blindness
The Carter Center also works to fight other preventable diseases, including the parasitic infections schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis – more commonly known as snail fever and elephantiasis, respectively – as well as trachoma, which is one of the world’s leading causes of preventable blindness. It’s also working with the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to eliminate lymphatic filariasis and malaria from the island of Hispaniola, which both countries share and which is “the last reservoir in the Caribbean for both diseases,” according to the Carter Center.
Carter and his organization also played a part in organizing a major drug-donation program to help eliminate onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, which is transmitted to human through repeated bites of infected blackflies, according to the CDC.
Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. had been implementing field studies in Africa which showed that the drug ivermectin was effective at treating river blindness in humans. The Carter Center partnered with Merck to mass-distribute ivermectin, brand name Mectizan, “as much as needed for as long as needed” in Africa and Latin America. To date, the Carter Center has assisted in distributing more than 500 million treatments of Mectizan, according to Merck.
In 1995, Carter negotiated a two-month cease-fire in Sudan to allow health care workers there to more safely help eradicate Guinea worm disease, prevent river blindness, and vaccinate children against polio.
“When we have known solutions, it is ethical to make sure they’re available to the people who need it most,” Dr. Usha Ramakrishnan, chair of the Department of Global Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told ABC News. “And that’s where we were with river blindness. There was a treatment, but improving access to medications, making it affordable, reaching the people they need was very much along the lines of the work [the Carter Center] was doing.”
Addressing mental health
Carter was also committed to tackling mental health issues. During his presidency, he created the Presidential Commission on Mental Health, which recommended a national plan to care for people with chronic mental illness.
Although it was never adopted as policy by the Reagan administration, the plan’s recommended strategies were adopted by some mental health advocacy groups to “make gains in the 1980s,” according to one study.
Carter also signed into law the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, which provided funding to community mental health centers.
After his presidency, Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter continued working to improve access to mental health.
Ramakrishnan said the Carters’ work helped to reduce some of the stigma associated with mental health.
“There continues to be a lot of stigma, but they truly got it out [in] the conversation and mainstreaming mental health as an important aspect of health and well-being,” Ramakrishnan said. “There’s still a lot of challenges, and there are many capable people that they have mentored and trained who are carrying that mantle forward.”
(SANTA CRUZ, Calif.) — A powerful storm pummeling the West Coast churned up waves as high as 60 feet, killing one man, sweeping another out to sea and prompting multiple rescues when a pier collapsed in Santa Cruz, California, authorities said.
A series of storms leading into Christmas are expected to continue to pound the West Coast on Tuesday with heavy rain, gusty winds and giant ocean waves.
On Monday, the wild weather turned deadly in Santa Cruz when a large wave hit a man, trapping him beneath debris at a beach, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office.
The death unfolded around 11:30 a.m. local time at Sunset State Beach in Santa Cruz, about 75 miles south of San Francisco. First responders managed to pull the man from the water, but he was later pronounced dead at a hospital, the sheriff’s office said. The man’s name was not immediately released.
The storm also caused the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf pier to partially collapse, according to the sheriff’s office. Three men, all members of a city crew working on the pier at the time, were thrown into the ocean, according to the sheriff’s office.
Lifeguards sprang into action and rescued two of the men, while the third worker swam to shore on his own. None of the men were seriously injured, according to Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley.
The incident lopped off a 150-foot section at the end of the pier, which was undergoing a $4 million restoration. Large chunks of the pier were left floating in the water.
Video showed one worker stranded on a piece of the pier floating in the water being rescued by a first responder on a jet ski.
The sheriff’s office also issued an evacuation order Monday afternoon for oceanfront residents along an approximately 3-mile stretch of shoreline just south of Santa Cruz, citing large swells and high tides.
The National Weather Service in the Bay Area warned that “dangerous and life-threatening beach conditions” are forecast for along the Pacific Coast through Tuesday, including rough seas and breaking waves up to 60 feet.
A separate rescue attempt occurred Monday near Monterey, where authorities believe high surf likely pulled a man into the ocean. The incident happened at Marina State Beach along the Monterey Bay around noon, according to the Marina Police Department.
“Bystanders attempted to assist the individual; however, due to extremely large waves and strong currents, their rescue efforts were unsuccessful,” police said in a statement.
Marina police officers, firefighters, U.S. Coast Guard and the California Highway Patrol launched an extensive search for the man using boats and aircraft, but were forced to suspend the rescue operation when weather conditions became too dangerous, police said. The man, who was not immediately identified, remained missing Tuesday morning.
At the time of the search, the National Weather Service estimated waves in the Santa Cruz area to be 25 to 50 feet, according to police.
High surf warnings were issued up and down the West Coast from Washington to Southern California.
The Santa Cruz Sheriff’s office said first responders also made water rescues in a harbor near Capitola, about 4 miles south of Santa Cruz.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso and Julia Jacobo contributed to this report.
(ATLANTA) — Hundreds of passengers were forced to evacuate on slides during a snowstorm after their Delta flight aborted takeoff from Atlanta due to an engine issue Friday morning, the airline said.
Delta Flight 2668 was traveling from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Minneapolis-St. Paul when it suspended takeoff shortly after 9 a.m. due to “an indication of an engine issue,” the airline said.
Passengers exited the Boeing 757-300 aircraft through emergency slides and ground transportation was used to take them back to the terminal.
Four passengers reported minor injuries in the incident, with one transported to an area hospital, the airport said. The other three were treated at the scene, the airport said. The nature of their injuries was not immediately clear.
The plane was carrying 201 passengers and seven crew members.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our people and customers, and we apologize to our customers for their experience,” Delta said in a statement. “We are working to support our customers and get them to their destinations as safely and quickly as possible.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate.
Operations at the Atlanta airport were delayed due to the incident and the “ongoing severe weather,” the airport said in a statement.
Approximately 2 inches of snow had fallen by noon in Atlanta, the most in seven years, as a massive winter storm impacts the South.
More than 2,600 flights across the country have been canceled as of midday Friday due to the storm, with Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas and Nashville seeing the biggest impacts.