More than 700 flights nationwide canceled Saturday
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(NEW YORK) — More than 700 flights nationwide have been canceled Saturday as the Federal Aviation Administration continues limiting flight capacity at 40 major U.S. airports amid the government shutdown.
As of 6 a.m. ET on Saturday, 754 flights have already been canceled nationwide and the total could eclipse Friday’s toll of 1,024 cancellations.
However, despite more than 1,000 flights being canceled on Friday, major delays at airports across the country continue to persist due to staffing issues in air traffic controller towers and centers.
If the government shutdown continues, more air travel reductions could be on the way, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an interview on ABC News Live on Friday.
“My hope is that this government shutdown will end soon and we can get back in the business of letting Americans travel,” Duffy said in the interview.
It is possible the Department of Transportation may ask airlines to cancel more than 10% of their flights if controllers keep calling out in higher numbers, Duffy told ABC News.
Duffy said the FAA has asked private jets to avoid flying at the 40 airports impacted by the flight reductions, though they are currently not prohibited from flying there. He said private jet companies have been cooperative and are choosing alternate airports to help alleviate the pressure at those airports.
The cancellations are the latest — and perhaps biggest — disruption to air travel since the government shutdown began more than a month ago.
The FAA decided not to cut any international flights as it would be a violation of international agreements with the countries, according to Duffy.
“We have international agreements that we abide by, and because of those international agreements, I’m not going to impact those international flights. And because if I do, what will happen is we have other countries that are waiting to have a breach of those contracts from the US so they can cut down American flights, and then that would have a very long lasting impact on our ability to to to send travelers from the U.S. to those partners that have the agreements,” Duffy said.
(WASHINGTON) — William H. Webster, a longtime U.S. public servant who served as the head of both the FBI and the CIA in a career spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s, has died. He was 101.
The FBI confirmed his death in a statement Friday.
Webster, who was the only person to have led both agencies, “was a dedicated public servant who spent over 60 years in service to our country, including in the U.S. Navy, as a federal judge, director of the CIA, and his term as our Director from 1978-1987,” the FBI statement said.
A statement from Webster’s family said, “We are proud of the extraordinary man we had our lives who spent a lifetime fighting to protect his country and its precious rule of law.”
A memorial service for Webster will take place in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18, the family said.
As FBI director, Webster served under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
He then served as CIA director from 1987 to 1991 under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush.
“As the only individual to have led both the FBI and the CIA, Judge Webster’s unwavering integrity and dedication to public service set a standard for leadership in federal law enforcement,” the FBI Agents Association said in a statement.
Webster was born on March 6, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts and earned his law degree at Washington University Law School in St. Louis.
He served as a U.S. Navy lieutenant in both World War II and the Korean War. A practicing attorney in St. Louis from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, Webster went on to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.
In the 1970s, he was appointed as a U.S. District Court judge and then a U.S. Court of Appeals judge before taking the FBI director post.
He is survived by his second wife, Lynda Clugston Webster, three children, 7 grandchildren and spouses and 12 great grandchildren.
(NEW YORK) — After President Donald Trump complained about having to deal with a stopped escalator during his visit to the United Nations, White House officials are demanding an investigation.
As first lady Melania Trump and the president stepped onto the escalator ahead of his speech on Tuesday morning, it stopped moving, prompting both of them to stop in their tracks.
The first couple then proceeded to walk up the escalator.
The U.N. has said that there appears to have been no foul play.
But that explanation hasn’t satisfied White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who vowed to get to the bottom of Tuesday’s incident.
“If someone at the UN intentionally stopped the escalator as the President and First Lady were stepping on, they need to be fired and investigated immediately,” she said in an X post.
Leavitt repeated her warnings on Fox News Tuesday night, but didn’t provide any evidence that what happened what deliberate.
“I know that we have people, including United States Secret Service, who are looking into this to try to get to the bottom of it,” she said.
At the start of the president’s address, his teleprompter also malfunctioned, which he complained about at the time and then again later in the day.
“The teleprompter was broken and the escalator came to a sudden halt as we were riding up to the podium, but both of those events probably made the speech more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It is always an honor to speak at the United Nations, even if, their equipment is somewhat faulty,” Trump posted on his social media platform.
The United Nations issued a statement about the incident, saying that the escalator stopping might have been triggered by a safety feature as a videographer was standing backward on the escalator, ahead of the president, while trying to film him.
“The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above,” the U.N. statement said.
“Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor. A subsequent investigation, including a readout of the machine’s central processing unit, indicated that the escalator had stopped after a built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the escalator,” the U.N. statement continued. “The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”
The U.N. has not immediately provided details about the teleprompter malfunction.
The White House has no additional comment on Wednesday.
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Washington DC, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Thursday on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, just days after President Donald Trump issued a public demand for his Justice Department to act “now” to bring prosecutions against Comey and other political foes.
Comey has been summoned to appear for arraignment on Oct. 9.
“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice. I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial, and keep the faith,” Comey said in a brief video posted to his Instagram account.
The former FBI director has been charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of an investigative proceeding before Congress, related to his congressional testimony regarding the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Court records show the government’s initial indictment sheet, from which a grand jury declined to charge him for an additional count of making a false statement to Congress.
“No one is above the law,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi posted to social media following the indictment. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”
A statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said that if convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison. “Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties,” the statement said.
Following the indictment, Comey’s son-in-law Troy Edwards, Jr. resigned from his post in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he was a national security prosecutor, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
The charges follow Trump’s ousting of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who according to sources had expressed doubts internally about bringing cases against Comey, as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James, after Trump appointed him to lead the office.
Trump then immediately moved to install Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and his former defense attorney, to lead the office, despite her having no prior prosecutorial experience.
Earlier this week, federal prosecutors in Virginia informed Halligan that they could not establish probable cause to charge Comey, ABC News first reported. Despite the lack of clear evidence and ethical concerns about bringing a case without clear probable cause, Halligan sought an indictment from the grand jury, sources said.
“Jim Comey denies the charges filed today in their entirety. We look forward to vindicating him in the courtroom,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald as counsel for Comey.
In a series of social media posts over the weekend, Trump said Halligan was being appointed to the office to “get things moving,” after attacking Siebert for his resistance to bring what Trump described as a “GREAT CASE.”
“Pam Bondi is doing a GREAT job as Attorney General of the United States. She is very careful, very smart, loves our Country, but needs a tough prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, like my recommendation, Lindsey Halligan, to get things moving,” Trump said.
The charges against Comey are the most dramatic escalation yet in what critics have described as a campaign of retribution by Trump to use the powers of the federal government to enact revenge against those he believes have wronged him.
Comey, who was fired by Trump during Trump’s first term over the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia, has been a vocal critic of what he says are Trump’s efforts to politicize the justice system.
That argument is now likely to be central to Comey’s defense in his criminal case, which could prove to be a highly consequential test for both the Justice Department and the federal judiciary.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia began investigating Comey in early August following Trump’s renewed call for prosecutions related to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, sources told ABC News.
The investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia — which is being carried out concurrently in the Western District of Virginia and Eastern District of Pennsylvania — directly stemmed from FBI Director Kash Patel’s discovery of sensitive documents at the FBI headquarters related to the Russia probe, sources said.
They said the documents prompted investigators to examine whether Comey’s testimony to Congress in September 2020, regarding Russian interference, could support charges of perjury or obstruction.
Prosecutors specifically examined Comey’s testimony about Hillary Clinton’s alleged involvement linking Trump to Russia and whether Comey authorized leaks of anonymous information to the media.
