Secret Service agent under investigation over alleged sexual misconduct in incident with Harris aide
(WASHINGTON) — A Secret Service agent is under investigation for an alleged sexual misconduct incident with an aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, her office said Wednesday.
The agency confirmed to ABC News that there was a probe but did not provide details of the investigation.
“The Secret Service holds its personnel to the highest standards. The employee has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation,” a spokesperson for the Secret Service told ABC News.
A spokesperson for the vice president’s office also didn’t disclose further details of the incident.
“We have zero tolerance for sexual misconduct. Senior OVP officials were alerted by the USSS about an incident involving an agent and informed that USSS initiated an investigation. The Office of the Vice President will not be releasing further information,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — When Americans imprisoned in Russia returned to U.S. soil late Thursday, standing right there to greet them was the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.
The vice president, along with President Joe Biden, who ended his own campaign and handed her the party baton, greeted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, among others on the Joint Base Andrews tarmac even before they embraced their families.
The late-night scene underscored the diplomatic victory the White House had just scored — and how it was putting Harris front and center as her nascent campaign launches, trying to enhance her credibility on the world stage against Donald Trump’s attacks that she would be treated as a “play toy.”
“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances,” Harris said Thursday night — a statement that could be read both as praise of Biden and a knock on the former president’s foreign policy, which is skeptical of working with allies.
In a May Truth Social post, Trump claimed Gershkovich “will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me but not for anyone else.”
The prisoner exchange, which also freed Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a legal permanent U.S. resident, was the product of months of intense diplomacy that gained true traction in the last couple of weeks and involved several different countries, including Germany and Slovenia.
But the breakthrough came amid a turbulent presidential race between Trump and Harris, who has been blitzing the campaign trail since Biden bowed out of the contest.
Besides swiftly greeting the freed prisoners and speaking Thursday night, administration officials were also quick to highlight her role in the historic deal, considered one of the biggest swaps to take place since the Cold War and significant enough to break through an incessant news cycle surrounding the election.
“Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made the return of unjustly detained American hostages an absolute priority, and in this particular case, Vice President Harris actually had an opportunity to engage with Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz earlier this year at an opportune and timely moment at the Munich Security Conference where she talked about this issue with him,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at the White House Thursday, referring to Harris’ interaction with Germany’s leader.
“I’ve sat in the Oval Office more times than I can count over the course of the past years providing briefings and updates on this and getting peppered with questions by both the president and the vice president thinking through the strategy, iterating the approach, which she was a participant in very much, a core member of the team that helped make this happen,” he added.
Trump, for his part, downplayed the exchange soon after news broke.
“So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I’m sure the answer is NO)?” Trump posted on his social media platform.
The White House has insisted no cash was exchanged nor was there any sanctions relief for Russia.
Still, the Harris-Trump race is expected to carry on, largely unaffected by the exchange, historic as it is.
Trump is a defined entity, spending decades in the limelight and four years in the White House, after which he has retained a stubborn and iron grip on the GOP.
Harris, while she is still defining herself as a presidential candidate, appears largely set to introduce herself as a prosecutor going after a convicted felon with a focus on policies emphasizing “freedom.”
She did tie herself to the administration’s record on released prisoners before news broke Thursday, saying in Houston that, “As vice president, it has been my honor to work alongside our president, Joe Biden, to bring home more than 70 Americans in the last three and a half years.”
The broad contours of the race are still expected to remain the same, strategists in both parties said.
“No, I don’t think so,” one former Trump campaign official who remains in touch with his current team said when asked if there was any electoral fallout from the swap. “I don’t think it moves the needle diplomatically.”
“I’d be shocked if bit did,” one Democratic strategist said when asked the same question. “This isn’t the Iran hostage situation that riveted people for 444 days and created Nightline and other alternative time news offerings.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Tuesday unanimously passed a House bill that would require an equal standard of U.S. Secret Service protection to be applied to presidents and all major party candidates.
The bill, which cleared the House last Friday, a week after the second apparent assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, will now head to President Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., brought the bill forward for unanimous approval on Tuesday afternoon.
“We all know why this legislation is needed. In a span of just 65 days … President Trump has been the target of two assassination attempts,” Scott said. “I’m proud to lead this effort in the Senate. I’m on the floor today to request the immediate passage of the Enhanced Presidential Security Act so we can send this good and necessary to President Biden’s desk so it may become law. Our action today goes beyond the simple language of this bill.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, and a Democrat, said that he did not believe the legislation would have any meaningful impact on the security posture surrounding Trump but did not object to it moving forward.
As noted, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe has stated that Trump is already receiving the highest level of U.S. Secret Service protection.
Murphy said the upcoming supplemental funding for the Secret Service set to be included in the short-term funding measure is a more meaningful approach to upping Trump’s security.
“Let’s move ahead with this bill. I don’t think it actually solves the problem. Let’s pass the additional money so they have everything they need to get the job done. And then let’s sit down and have a broader conversation about why we have seen this spike in political violence, what other ways Republicans and Democrats can come together,” Murphy said.
(TUCSON, Ariz.) — Former President Donald Trump unveiled a new economic policy on Thursday before a crowd in Tucson, Arizona, saying he would end taxing overtime pay.
“Today, I’m also announcing that as part of our additional tax cuts, we will end all taxes on overtime,” Trump said to loud cheers, “That gives people more of an incentive to work; it gives the companies a lot. It’s a lot easier to get the people.”
“The people who work overtime are among the hardest working citizens in our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them. … It’s time for the working man and woman to finally catch a break, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Trump has previously proposed ending taxes on tips and on Social Security benefits.
Trump offered no specifics on his new proposal, spending much of the speech airing his grievances about this week’s ABC News-hosted debate and again declaring he would not participate in any more, as he had earlier in the day, and attacking his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.
“So, because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate,” said Trump to cheers in Tucson. “It’s too late anyway, the voting has already begun. You got to go out and vote. We got to vote.”
He continued to also launch personal attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, mimicking her speaking style and expressions and mocking her name by saying nobody knows what her last name is.
“Now, Kamala is a very different kind of a word, nice name, very nice name,” Trump said. “You don’t know her as Harris. When you say Harris, everyone says, ‘Who the hell is that?’ right?”
Before unveiling his new economic proposal, the former president attempted to link immigration to the high cost of housing, arguing that a surge in undocumented migrants were driving up costs and creating dangerous neighborhoods.
Despite the fact that there were bomb threats reported in the town earlier Thursday and city officials vehemently and repeatedly denying the assertions, Trump again claimed that Haitian migrants were abducting animals in Springfield, Ohio – though not going as far on Thursday as to claim that they were eating them as he did in the debate and on his Truth Social platform.
In an anti-immigrant rant, Trump declared that the United States was being conquered by “foreign elements.” He ticked through stories of different cities and towns that he argued were being hurt by an influx of people crossing the border. In some instances, the former president didn’t name specific places, instead opting for general fear mongering rhetoric.
“There are hundreds and hundreds or thousands of stories. They’re coming in from all over the world, from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums and many tourists at numbers that we have never seen before. You’ve never seen these numbers before,” he said.
Despite Trump’s claims, a 2020 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed U.S.-born citizens “are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes” than undocumented immigrants.
And overall, both murder and rape rates are down 26% compared to the same time frame last year, according to the latest FBI statistics, which are released quarterly.
As with many of Trump’s economic policy rollouts, he offered little specifics over how the proposal would work and be paid for — which would likely fall on taxpayers. However, he did claim that President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan was “unfair” to people who paid off their loans.
“You know, he kept saying to these students, no more loans, no more loans, which was very unfair to the millions of people that actually paid off their loans over the years. Some of them took 20 years to pay them off, but, but that’s a dead deal.”
When it came to his affordable housing proposal, in an attempt to court suburban women, Trump highlighted his promise to protect single-family zoning, which some have argued could lead to discriminatory practices.
He also promised to protect single-family zoning, which some have argued is a form of exclusionary zoning to push minorities out of suburban communities.
“The Radical Left wants to abolish the suburbs by forcing apartment complexes and low-income housing into the suburbs right next to your beautiful house,” said Trump, who then turned to make his appeal to suburban women.
“The suburbs were safe. That’s why, when they say suburban women maybe don’t like Trump. I think they’re wrong. I think they love me. I do. I never had problems with women. I never had any problems,” he said.