Judge in Trump’s election interference case grants extension sought by special counsel
(WASHINGTON) — The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference case on Friday granted an extension requested by special counsel Jack Smith’s office.
Smith on Thursday requested a delay in responding to a scheduling order from U.S District Judge Tanya Chutkan, citing issues related to the Supreme Court’s recent decision granting presidents immunity from prosecution for certain acts taken while in office.
Smith’s office said Thursday it continues “to assess the new precedent set forth last month” by the Supreme Court in tandem with “other Department of Justice components.”
A status report on the case that was initially due Friday is now officially moved to Aug. 30. A status conference that had been scheduled for Aug. 16 will now be Sept. 5.
Judge Chutkan resumed control of the case last Friday following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling.
Trump last August pleaded not guilty to charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election by enlisting a slate of so-called “fake electors,” using the Justice Department to conduct “sham election crime investigations,” trying to enlist the vice president to “alter the election results,” and promoting false claims of a stolen election as the Jan. 6 riot raged — all in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A landmark bill to ban some dyes in food served at California public schools, aimed at protecting children’s health, is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk to be signed into law after passing the state legislature on Thursday.
Assembly Bill 2316, also known as the California School Food Safety Act, would prohibit six potentially harmful food dye chemicals from being provided in the state’s public schools. It was approved by the California Assembly on Thursday after passing the state Senate earlier in the week.
“California has a responsibility to protect our students from chemicals that harm children and that can interfere with their ability to learn,” Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who introduced the legislation back in February, said in a statement Thursday, adding, “This bill will empower schools to better protect the health and well-being of our kids and encourage manufacturers to stop using these harmful additives.”
Gabriel was previously successful in his efforts to ban potentially harmful food and drink additives in products sold throughout the state through the passage of the California Food Safety Act last year. The legislation bans potassium bromate, propylparaben, brominated vegetable oil and Red 3 from food that is manufactured, delivered and sold in the Golden State.
Newsom signed the bill into law last October, making California the first state in the U.S. to ban the additives.
Under the newly passed California School Food Safety Act, Red Dye No. 40, Yellow Dye No. 5, Yellow Dye No. 6, Blue Dye No. 1, Blue Dye No. 2 and Green Dye No. 3 will be banned from food served to students in public schools during regular hours.
The bipartisan bill was supported by the Environmental Working Group and Consumer Reports.
Studies suggest that consumption of the six dyes and colorants banned under A.B. 2316 may be linked to hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children, as the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment outlined in a 2021 report.
While there are still thousands of chemicals allowed for use in our country’s commercial food system, many of those that have been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration have not been reevaluated for decades. Red 40, for example, was last evaluated for health risks in 1971.
Reports from the American Academy of Pediatrics align with this push to reassess the safety of artificial food coloring.
“Over the last several decades, studies have raised concerns regarding the effect of [artificial food colorings] on child behavior and their role in exacerbating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms,” doctors write. “Further work is needed to better understand the implications of AFC exposure and resolve the uncertainties across the scientific evidence. The available literature should be interpreted with caution because of the absence of information about the ingredients for a number of reasons, including patent protection.”
Dr. Stephanie Widmer, an ABC News medical contributor, board-certified emergency medicine physician and toxicologist, told “Good Morning America” previously, while discussing California’s earlier harmful chemical ban, “These chemicals are all kind of in different foods and all exert different effects and different concerns.”
“Some of them are associated with neurological problems, some are reproductive problems, some have been linked to cancer,” Widmer said at the time. “It really depends on the substance.”
(NEW YORK) — Something seemed off from the moment Beaver County SWAT sniper Gregory Nicol spotted a man skulking around the outskirts of the site where former President Donald Trump was about to take the stage on July 13.
From his second-floor post inside the AGR complex at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, Nicol noticed the young man in a gray T-shirt, lurking.
“He was looking up and down the building … It just seemed out of place,” Nicol, assistant leader of the Beaver County SWAT team, told ABC News in an interview that airs Monday on Good Morning America, “It just didn’t seem right.”
Nicol noticed an unattended bike and backpack. And he saw the man looking up and around, then pulling a rangefinder from his pocket. There was no apparent reason to have a distance-gauging device at a political rally featuring the man who, in a few days, would accept his party’s presidential nomination. The sharpshooter snapped pictures of the suspicious-looking man and the bike, then flagged it to fellow snipers from his team assigned to the event and called it into the command group.
Nicol would be the first officer to issue a warning about 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Within an hour, Crooks would open fire from the roof of that very building, less than 200 yards from the rally’s stage, wounding Trump on live TV, killing one person in the crowd, and critically injuring two more.
The sniper and his fellow Beaver County SWAT officers were assigned to Trump’s Butler campaign rally, and tasked with supporting the Secret Service and other law enforcement in the mission to keep the event and Secret Service protectee, safe.
They have not spoken publicly until now.
‘Something that we’ll always carry with us’
In their first public comments since the assassination attempt, the Beaver County SWAT team and their supervisors spoke with ABC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Aaron Katersky, marking the first time any of the key law enforcement personnel who were on site July 13 have offered firsthand accounts of what occurred.
The violent episode has already led to the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. And, in the wake of the assassination attempt, a series of law enforcement, internal, and congressional probes have been announced — with communications and coordination a key focus of investigators’ attention.
“This one is something that we’ll always carry with us,” assistant Beaver County SWAT leader Mike Priolo told ABC News.
Long before Crooks would fire his AR-style rifle that Saturday evening, Crooks’ presence wasn’t the only thing that didn’t seem quite right to the local SWAT team.
Team members said that the day of the rally, they had no contact with the agents on Trump’s Secret Service detail.
“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” said Jason Woods, team leader for Beaver County’s Emergency Services Unit and SWAT sniper section.
“So I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened. We had no communication,” Woods said. “Not until after the shooting.”
By then, he said, “it was too late.”
The Secret Service, whose on-site team was supplemented as usual by local, county and state law-enforcement agencies, was ultimately responsible for security at the event, but none of the concerns apparently reached members of Trump’s detail.
Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi declined to respond directly to the comments Woods and his colleagues made to ABC News. He said the agency “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again. That includes complete cooperation with Congress, the FBI and other relevant investigations.”
To the men and woman of Beaver County SWAT, what happened is clear: There was a lack of planning and communication that caused a catastrophic failure in the protection of Donald Trump. They said they saw the problem coming, and they tried to alert the people in charge and sound the alarm.
With the presidential campaign in full gear and Trump now saying he wants to return for another rally outside Pittsburgh, it is critical to know what went wrong at the last one — so it doesn’t happen again.
“I have to imagine that they’re going to make some very serious adjustments — namely, probably, hold it inside where you have a lot more control over who’s coming in,” said Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible, who oversees the county SWAT unit. “If we’re asked for assistance, we will provide it.”
‘An away game’
By mid-morning on July 13, the Beaver County team of snipers and spotters was in position — hours before Trump was set to take the stage that evening at the sprawling grounds that’s studded by a complex of warehouses.
Once they were positioned at the security perimeter — outside the metal detectors — Woods said he immediately wondered whether they had been put in the most effective spot.
“I think the better location would have been inside looking out, and that’s actually where the Secret Service snipers end up getting placed,” Woods said. “For us to effectively do our job, I don’t know if that was the best location.”
But it was “an away game,” Woods said, meaning his team was not in charge. So they deferred to the Secret Service agents whose job it was to determine the security plan and keep Trump safe.
“I knew the Secret Service knew where we were supposed to be, and that’s where we were placed,” Woods said.
“Our instructions, marching orders were given to us from Butler County EMS unit, their command. With, historically speaking, approval from the Secret Service,” Priolo said.
This was not the team’s first time participating in a Secret Service operation.
“We as a team would assume that that would be a robust type thing, that they would have constant communication. And it very well might have been — we’re just not aware of it,” said Beaver County Chief Detective Patrick Young, the commander of emergency services.
The event’s atmosphere, Young said, also meant a dynamic environment: Officers had to rapidly gauge whether rallygoers’ bulging back pockets held merely bottled water or booze — commonplace at a festive gathering under the blazing summer sun of Western Pennsylvania — or was a sign of something more sinister.
“Our first indication that there was going to be something different about this was the lack of patrol that we’d seen in the area,” Priolo said of the plans.
The effect of that, he said, was that the SWAT officers would have to personally handle any urgent patrol-level incident that should arise.
“The best analogy I’ve heard is — we’re a scalpel, when you’re asking us to be used as a hammer,” Priolo said. “That’s kind of what we figured out throughout the day.”
‘They must have found this guy’
When Nicol observed Crooks’ suspicious presence and called it in to local command via radio, he said he expected action to be taken — like a uniformed officer would “check it out,” according to text messages between snipers on the ground, which were obtained by ABC News.
“The first thing I did, I sent those pictures out, we had a text group between the local snipers that were on the scene. I sent those pictures out to that group and advised them of what I noticed and what I’d seen,” Nicol said. ‘There was a text back that said, ‘Call it into command.’ I then called into our to the command via radio. And they acknowledged.”
“I assumed that there would be somebody coming out to — you know, to speak with this individual or, you know, find out what’s going on,” he added.
Nicol moved through the building trying to shadow Crooks, who was outside, and keep eyes on him. But Nicole lost sight of Crooks as Nicol made his way down to the building’s first level.
By that time, Trump had taken the stage, Nicol said.
Then, as the former president began speaking, Nicole noticed rallygoers looking away from the podium, up toward the roof of the AGR building. Some were shouting that there was someone up there.
Nicol said he was almost relieved, thinking to himself, “Oh, they must have found this guy we were looking for out there, and everybody’s watching the police deal with him.”
He would soon discover that wasn’t the case.
“That’s when I heard the gunshots,” Nicol said. Crooks had opened fire on the campaign rally.
SWAT medic Michel Vasiladiotis-Nicol responded with Beaver County SWAT Det. Rich Gianvito, along with other local personnel from Butler County and the surrounding areas.
They squeezed through the fence perimeter and headed toward the building where the shots had come from.
“We then ascended that ladder to then meet up with — what — we weren’t sure again if it was a mass casualty or what we were walking into,” said Vasiladiotis-Nicol, who is sniper Gregory Nicol’s wife.
“We’re prepared for anything at that point,” Gianvito said, including a possible firefight because the team had no idea if the rooftop shooter was dead or alive, or if there could be an accomplice still unaccounted for.
On the roof, they found Crooks motionless and face down — images captured on Gianvito’s helmet camera. Crooks’ wrists had been quickly bound with white plastic ties, in case he was still alive. A long trail of blood flowed down the sloped roof.
Vasiladiotis-Nicol put her gloved fingers to the shooter’s neck. “He had absolutely no pulse,” she recalled.
In the seconds after the shooting, Trump was rushed to a local hospital, where doctors treated a wound to his ear. Later that night he flew back to his golf club in New Jersey. The first photos of him after the shooting — blood down his face, fist raised over the heads of the Secret Service agents rushing him away — have already become iconic images.
What remains are looming questions and an impatient Congress. How could this happen? Could the shooting have been prevented? Was it a failure of planning, coordination, communications — or all of the above?
“I think with some better planning perhaps, it could have been stopped,” said Bible, the Beaver County DA. “You’re protecting one of probably the more high-profile political candidates in history. So, how was a 20-year-old able to fire off several shots at him?”
(NEW YORK) — A geyser explosion in Yellowstone National Park sent dozens of visitors running Tuesday morning, officials said.
Videos taken of the event show the dramatic moment, with water and debris raining down over the park’s Biscuit Basin thermal area, about two miles from Old Faithful.
The geothermal explosion damaged the boardwalk, but did not cause any injuries, officials said.
The Biscuit Basin has been temporarily closed while geologists investigate the event.
Hydrothermal explosions are somewhat common in the area, occurring when underground water suddenly turns to steam.
Similar eruptions occurred at Biscuit Basin in 1959, 1991 and 2009.