Lawyers for two ex-officers accused in Tyre Nichols’ death rest their cases in federal trial

(WASHINGTON) — One day after moving to dismiss both his cases against President-elect Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith is continuing to defend the validity of his own appointment as he appeals the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump’s co-defendants.

In a filing Tuesday, Smith urged a federal appeals court to reverse U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to toss the classified documents case based on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.

Smith moved to drop Trump from the case Monday due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that bars the prosecution of a sitting president, as he continues his appeal of the case’s dismissal with Trump’s two co-defendants, his longtime valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year 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, along with Nauta and De Oliveira, also pleaded not guilty to allegedly attempting to delete related surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Judge Cannon dismissed the case against all three defendants this past July on the grounds that Smith’s appointment as special counsel overseeing the case was unconstitutional because he was not appointed by the president or confirmed by Congress.

Smith, in Tuesday’s filing, urged the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse Cannon’s “flawed” conclusion so he can continue the case against Nauta and De Oliveira.

“The Supreme Court held more than 50 years ago that Congress vested the Attorney General with the power to appoint special prosecutors like the Special Counsel, and the text, context, and history of the four statutes the Supreme Court identified, as well as the long history of special-counsel appointments, confirm that Nixon was correct,” the filing said.

In a statement Monday, John Irving, a lawyer for De Oliveira, said, ““The Special Counsel’s decision to proceed in this case even after dismissing it against President Trump is an unsurprising tribute to the poor judgment that led to the indictment against Mr. De Oliveira in the first place. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If they prefer a slow acquittal, that’s fine with us.”

This is likely to be Smith’s last filing against Trump as a defendant, though Trump’s inclusion in the brief is a technicality. While Smith moved on Monday to drop Trump from the case, the court hasn’t yet dismissed the appeal for the president-elect.

“The government has moved to dismiss this appeal as to Donald Trump. If granted, defendant Trump will not appear in the caption in future filings in this case,” Smith wrote in a footnote of Tuesday’s filing.

Smith’s other case against Trump, involving the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was dismissed Monday at Smith’s request, due to the Justice Department’s presidential immunity policy.

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(NEW YORK) — Public health officials are continuing to monitor an outbreak of avian influenza, also known as bird flu, as it spreads across the U.S.

The strain, known as H5N1, sickened several mammals this year before infecting dozens of Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There is no evidence of person-to-person transmission of bird flu, and the risk to the general public is low, the CDC said.

But public health experts have also said it’s important to be alert during the respiratory virus season and to be aware of risks that could come from exposure to infected animals and from drinking raw milk.

Here’s the latest information on the outbreak in the United States:

What is the status of the bird flu outbreak?
Avian influenza, or bird flu, is an infectious viral disease that primarily spreads among birds and is caused by infection with Avian Influenza A viruses.

These viruses typically spread among wild aquatic birds but can infect domestic poultry and other bird and animal species, according to the CDC. In the U.S., the virus infected dairy cows.

“What’s made this year’s outbreak interesting is the association with dairy cows, which is not an association that’s been seen before,” Michael Ben-Aderet, an infectious disease physician and associate director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, told ABC News.

“H5N1 has been known for many, many years. It’s not a new strain of bird flu, but we haven’t seen it cross over into dairy cows and have this association with dairy cows and dairy workers,” he continued.

As of Thursday, 58 human cases have been confirmed in seven states, according to CDC data. California has the highest number of cases with 32.

Almost all confirmed cases have had direct contact with infected cattle or infected livestock.

So far, all bird flu cases in the U.S. have been mild, and patients have all recovered after receiving antiviral medication.

“There has been another strain in Canada that caused really severe disease in a teenager who ended up in critical condition in the hospital,” Dr. Meghan Davis, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News. “So yes, these [strains] are highly related, but not quite the same.”

What are the risks associated with raw milk?
In April reports emerged of bird flu fragments found in samples of pasteurized milk.

However, the fragments are inactive remnants of the virus; they cannot cause infection because the commercial milk supply undergoes pasteurization.

“The good news is that pasteurization inactivates [the virus], and so, when you do that test to look at fragments of the virus, although we find it in milk, the pasteurization process ensures that live virus is not transmitted,” Albert Ko, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, told ABC News.

However, the Food and Drug Administration has previously warned of the possible dangers associated with drinking raw, unpasteurized milk due to elevated risks of foodborne illness.

On Tuesday, all of Raw Farm’s raw whole milk and cream products that were still on store shelves in California were being voluntarily recalled by the company, following multiple detections of bird flu virus in its milk and dairy supply within the past week, according to public health officials.

The CDC said it considers exposure to raw milk without personal protective equipment a “high-risk exposure event.”

“Raw milk consumers need to be aware that even handling the product itself could be a kind of exposure,” Davis said. “So, if you’re pouring it, you spill a little milk, get that on your hands, touch your eyes. You could get the same kind of exposure as someone who works in a dairy farm.”

Are we at risk of a bird flu pandemic?
Experts said the U.S. is currently not experiencing a bird flu pandemic, nor is the country presently at risk of a bird flu pandemic.

However, they said with each new human case, it offers a chance for the virus to mutate, theoretically enabling human-to-human transmission to occur at a point in the future.

“I think the warning sign is just, because there’s so much transmission in birds and there’s transmission now in our cattle, particularly we really are concerned about the possibility that there may be a mutation that enables person to person or human-to-human transmission,” Ko said.

Ben-Aderet said there is also concern as the U.S. heads into the winter respiratory virus season that the seasonal flu — which has the ability to exchange parts of its genome with other influenza viruses — could do the same with bird flu.

Health officials are taking proactive measures to prevent such a situation from occurring.

The World Health Organization announced in July that it has launched an initiative to help accelerate the development of a human bird flu vaccine using messenger RNA technology.

In October, federal health officials announced they are providing $72 million to vaccine manufacturers to help ensure available non-mRNA bird flu vaccines are ready-to-use, if needed.

There are currently no recommendations for anyone in the U.S. to be vaccinated against bird flu.

ABC News’ Youri Bendjaoud contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday declined to say if he’s been in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin since he left the White House but said it would have been smart if he had.

“Well, I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing,” Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait at the Chicago Economic Club. “If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Trump’s interactions with Putin have been the source of speculation since journalist Bob Woodward’s book reported that the two have communicated multiple times since Trump left the presidency in early 2021.

Throughout his presidency, Trump praised Putin, including saying he believed Russian intelligence over the U.S. intelligence community with regard to Moscow’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

Trump last week flatly denied during an interview with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that the two leaders had recently been in touch.

“So, you haven’t spoken to him since you left the White House? Karl asked Trump. “No, I have not. That’s false.”

Despite repeatedly touting his close relationship with Putin in the Tuesday interview, Trump insisted he was tough on him, again saying he terminated the Nord Stream II pipeline.

“I said I don’t comment on those things,” Trump said when Micklethwait repeatedly followed up.

Trump also insisted that the 2020 election ended with a peaceful transition of power despite the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a pro-Trump mob on the U.S. Capitol.

“People were angry,” Trump said of the reaction to the election results before noting that he traveled home to Florida the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

“And it was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol and a lot of strange things happened there. A lot of strange things with people being waved into the Capitol by police, with people screaming, ‘Go in,'” Trump said.

Looking forward to a possible second Trump administration, the former president defended his plans to slap significant tariffs on many imports, which critics have said will amount to a sales tax on American consumers.

Micklethwait opened up the conversation with a critique from multiple economists — a concern that his proposals for tax cuts would raise the national debt by trillions. Trump reiterated his claim that a major growth from his proposals would make up for the cuts, saying the auto industry and other factories will come back to the United States.

“We’re all about growth. We’re going to bring companies back to our country,” Trump said. “And we’re going to bring the companies back. We’re going to lower taxes still further for companies that are going to make their product in the USA.”

Trump claimed that he’s not going to allow foreign companies to sell a single car in the United States, throwing out self-admittedly random numbers for tariffs like “100%, 200% or 2,000%.”

“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said.

That would take “many years,” Micklethwait said.

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