Mayorkas says federal authorities are addressing New Jersey drone sightings
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(NEW YORK) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the federal government is taking action to address the aerial drones that have prompted concern among New Jersey residents.
“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” he told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on Sunday. “I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead. Via Flickr
(WASHINGTON) — Moments before a convicted Jan. 6 rioter was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday, he sought a full pardon by claiming that Donald Trump’s victory on Election Day vindicated his actions.
Zachary Alam told the court that he wanted a new classification of pardon, which he called a “full pardon of patriotism,” for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. That would come with monetary compensation, expungement of the charges from his criminal record and the assurance that he would never again be charged for his crimes.
Alam seemed to characterize anything less as a “second-class pardon” and implied that he would not accept it.
Although Alam did not deny his actions during the riot on the Capitol, stating, “I will 100% admit my actions were not lawful on January 6,” he also justified them by saying he was doing the right thing to protect democracy.
“True patriots do the right thing in spite of everything else,“ he claimed, adding that his fellow rioters had “fought, cried, bled and died for what is right.”
“Trump wasn’t lying,” Alam said in court, emphasizing that the American people voted for him “four years later.”
Judge Dabney Friedrich described Alam’s actions as a “full-throated” attack on the Constitution and “not the acts of a patriot.”
She called Alam one of the “most violent and aggressive” rioters that day, noting that Capitol Police officers also described him as the loudest among them.
At his trial, law enforcement officials recalled him repeatedly telling them, “I’m going to f— you up.”
Lawyers for the Justice Department, meanwhile, noted that Alam stood out on Jan. 6 “because of his actions.”
Those included knocking out the glass door of the Speaker’s Lobby and pushing up against three Capitol Police officers who were trying to keep the mob from entering the floor of the House of Representatives.
He scaled four floors of the Capitol, kicked doors and threw a velvet rope over a balcony in an attempt to hit officers below.
In the courtroom, the Justice Department asserted, “There are consequences to taking law into your own hands.”
Leaving the Capitol after Ashli Babbitt was shot, Alam shouted to fellow rioters that they “need guns.”
He then fled and tried to conceal his identity.
He was arrested about a month later.
Alam also claimed in court that the Justice Department coerced defendants into taking plea deals — an argument the judge dismissed on Thursday.
He asked if the insurgence on Jan. 6 had truly threatened democracy, observing in court that the American people had reelected Trump just 48 hours prior.
“Sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing,” he said.
Alam’s attorney Steven Metcalf argued that his client should serve five years in prison, including the nearly four years he had already served, along with time in a halfway house.
Metcalf noted that his client had no friends and had been in and out of solitary confinement, both for his behavior and concerns about his safety.
The attorney said in court that some people are not going to change their beliefs, but conceded that Alam “can’t choose to take things in his own hands.”
He emphasized the need for rehabilitation to help people like his client.
Alam’s attorney depicted him as a defendant who lacked a support system. At the time of the Jan. 6 riot, he was living inside a storage unit and was not close with his family, according to Metcalf. His parents never appeared in court.
He asserted that Capitol Police officers were not traumatized by Alam specifically, arguing that they were not physically hurt by him or his direct actions.
The judge challenged Metcalf’s argument, emphasizing that the Capitol Police officers stationed in the Speaker’s Lobby were the “last stand” between rioters and lawmakers.
She said Alam’s actions contributed to the trauma that those officers faced on Jan 6.
Alam said that he was willing to undergo rehabilitation, but the judge — citing his lack of remorse — instead sentenced him to over eight years in prison and three years of supervised release.
ABC News’ T. Michelle Murphy contributed to this report.
(LINCOLN, NE) — Dan Osborn, a former union president and Navy veteran who ran an unusually competitive U.S. Senate campaign in deep-red Nebraska as an independent, is launching a new political action committee meant to help working class candidates like himself run for office.
“At least the idea is to help other people like me, who are teachers, nurses, plumbers, carpenters, bus drivers, to be able to run for office in their particular counties, states, areas, and we can help them accomplish that,” Osborn told ABC News in an interview by phone on Monday.
“You know, we’ve created something pretty special here in Nebraska. And I just want to continue that.”
The organization, the Working Class Heroes Fund, is a new hybrid political action committee (PAC) that will support working-class candidates and mobilize working class voters, according to an announcement and a PAC spokesperson. The group will also advocate for labor unions, including supporting strike funds, which help union workers cover expenses if they go on strike.
Osborn hopes the PAC’s work will help bring more workers’ perspectives to government, about how “people don’t want handouts from their government… they just want to know when you go and you put in your time, you put in your eight hours work for eight hours pay, that your paycheck matters, right?” Osborn said. “And going to be able to afford your mortgage and your cars and hopefully set aside money for college and some Christmases.”
The PAC is a new organization and not a conversion of Osborn’s campaign committee, according to a spokesperson. It will vet and consider which working-class candidates to support on a case-by-case basis, and will support candidates across political parties.
Could supporting candidates across party lines lead to pushback? Osborn, who eschewed party labels or support during his Senate bid, feels that doesn’t matter.
“I’ve never really understood why, if you’re a part of a party, that you have to have a specific set of beliefs, and you have to reject the other set of beliefs, and vice versa,” he said.
Osborn had campaigned explicitly on his labor bonafides, including his work as a steamfitter and mechanic, as well as his insistence that he’d be a truly independent voice in the Senate.
On Election Day, Osborn lost to Fischer by 8 percentage points — not as thin of a margin as some polls had predicted, but well ahead of the margin between President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris; Harris lost statewide to Trump by 21 points. (Harris did lead Trump in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, netting her one Electoral College vote.)
Asked if he was surprised by the margin between him and Fischer, Osborn said, “Yes, I was, actually — and it sucked. I suppose if I had to describe it in one word, it sucked.
“You know, I really thought that the people in Nebraska saw the value in electing a working-class person,” he said, but a late influx of money into the race supporting his opponent made a difference. “Does it hurt a little bit? Sure, but again, I think we created something here.”
His family is “not taking [the loss] as good as I am,” Osborn said later with a chuckle. “Everybody goes back to school and we go back — I’m going back to work tomorrow, and my wife, she was working the whole entire time to help pay for the endeavor. But, you know, we were all hoping for different results, and we didn’t see it.”
Osborn said he was not surprised by the larger margin between Trump and Harris, given Nebraska’s deep Republican lean.
One of the trickier dynamics in the race was that as Osborn tried to maintain an independent image, some national Democrats or Democratic groups indicated that if he was elected to the Senate, he would caucus with Democrats. (Throughout his campaign, Osborn emphasized he would not plan to caucus with either party.)
Did that hurt his campaign? Osborn thinks it made a difference.
“I can’t consult with those people. I don’t even know who they are. They’re making money off of my name, which is completely ridiculous,” he said, adding that he wants independent expenditures out of politics more generally.
His own organization, however, is allowed to make independent expenditures, as a hybrid PAC. Asked about that, Osborn acknowledged the irony but said the PAC will support candidates who support campaign finance reform and want an end to how money influences politics.
“The independent expenditure is part of the problem, and I would love nothing more than our elected officials to get rid of my PAC because it shouldn’t exist. You know what I mean? None of this should exist.”
Even as he launches the PAC, however, Osborn said he is also heading back to work as a steamfitter.
“The debt collectors do not care that I ran the closest Senate race in the country, unfortunately,” he told ABC News. (Pre-Election Day polling had found the race among the closest Senate races in the country, although the final results have been closer in other Senate races, such as in Michigan and Pennsylvania.) “So I got to pay my bills. So yes, I’m going back to work.”
Would he run again for public office? Osborn said he wouldn’t rule it out: “I’m open to everything that’s going to be on the table.”
“In my neighborhood, there’s a position open: the dogcatcher’s open,” he added, “So I should probably start there,” he said, although he immediately clarified, “That’s a joke.”
-ABC News’ Brittany Shepherd, Will McDuffie, Isabella Murray, and Kate Walter contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the House Administration’s subcommittee on Oversight, in a new report suggests former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney should be investigated for alleged criminal witness tampering, claiming she played an “integral role” shaping key witness testimony before the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
President-elect Donald Trump posted early Wednesday morning on his social media platform that “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.”
Earlier this month, Trump, speaking about Jan. 6 committee members, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that, “for what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
The House GOP report released Tuesday marks not only the latest effort by House Republicans to discredit the Jan. 6 committee, but also a possible preview of its oversight efforts in the next session of Congress beginning in January.
Cheney’s name appears in the report more than 120 times, excluding the table of contents, going line-by-line to blast her participation as vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee.
“Without authority and against House Rules — the role of ranking member, Congress itself must right its former wrongs and declare this appointment of Representative Cheney invalid now,” the report states.
The report alleges that as Cheney participated in the investigation, she colluded with Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide, about her testimony describing then-President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The report contends that Cheney not only “backchannelled” with Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House aide and a host of ABC’s “The View,” to get Hutchinson to change her narrative but also communicated with her “directly for days.” After that, the report alleges that Cheney also convinced Hutchinson to fire her attorney, Stefan Passantino.
“According to text messages, that appear to be from the encrypted messaging app “Signal,” between Hutchinson and Farah Griffin obtained by the Subcommittee, Cheney agreed to communicate with Hutchinson through Farah Griffin,” the subcommittee said.
“It is unusual — and potentially unethical — for a Member of Congress conducting an investigation to contact a witness if the Member knows that the individual is represented by legal counsel,” the report states. “This appears to be precisely what Representative Cheney did at this time, and within a matter of days of these secret conversations, Hutchinson would go on to recant her previous testimony and introduce her most outlandish claims.”
“What other information was communicated during these phone calls may never be known, but what is known is that Representative Cheney consciously attempted to minimize her contact with Hutchinson in her book, and the most likely reason to try to bury that information would be if Representative Cheney knew that it was improper and unethical to communicate with Hutchinson without her counsel present,” the report states.
“It must be emphasized that Representative Cheney would likely have known her communications without the knowledge of Hutchinson’s attorney were illicit and unethical at that time,” the report said. Farah Griffin indicated as much … in her … message to Hutchinson … when she wrote that Representative Cheney’s “one concern” was that as long as Hutchinson was represented by counsel, “she [Cheney] can’t really ethically talk to you [Hutchinson] without him [Passantino].”
Despite Representative Cheney’s initial hesitation, the Subcommittee uncovered evidence of frequent, direct conversations between Hutchinson and Representative Cheney without Passantino’s knowledge, and also through their intermediary Farah Griffin.”Cheney responded in a statement stressing the testimony “was painstakingly” presented in thousands of pages of transcripts, made public along with a “highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800-page report.”
“Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weigh of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did,” Cheney wrote. “Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”
Cheney also did not back off her role and the committee’s findings.
“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who [he] really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave,” she noted. “The January 6th Committee’s hearings and report featured scores of Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration.”
Farah Griffin also disputed the GOP report’s conclusions.
“This report is full of inaccuracies and innuendo,” she said in a statement. “The report wrongly states – and without any evidence – that I acted as an intermediary between Cassidy Hutchinson and Liz Cheney for “a month.” That is not true, and these messages demonstrate the full extent of my involvement. Further, these messages weren’t ‘obtained’ by the Committee – they were requested by the Committee and voluntarily handed over to the Committee. I believe in Congressional oversight, whether it be the January 6th investigation or this inquiry.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Jan. 6.
