Secret Service agent under investigation over alleged sexual misconduct in incident with Harris aide
Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally, Aug. 29, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (Win McNamee/Getty Images, FILE)
(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.
(PITTSBURGH) — Just a day away from the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz and their spouses, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, will kick off their “On the Road to Chicago” bus tour in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania. It will be the first time all four hit the trail together.
Sunday’s tour is set to launch from Pittsburgh with multiple stops in Beaver and Allegheny counties located in western Pennsylvania. The campaign hopes to “meet voters where they are in community settings.” The stops will range from canvass kick-offs to local retail stops.
The stops will be right after former President Donald Trump’s Saturday rally in Wilkes-Barre located in the northeastern region. The former president will also be stopping in York on Monday and his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, will deliver remarks in Philadelphia on the same day as well.
Harris’ campaign is looking to make inroads in the heavily conservative Beaver county where she will highlight labor unions while Trump is looking to appeal to the blue collar voters in Wilkes-Barre which is not too far from President Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton.
At his rally, Trump claimed that Harris’ economic policies would be the “death of Pennsylvania,” a state that has heavy ties in the energy and steel industries.
“We’re going to get your energy prices down by 50% the Kamala presidency will mean death for Pennsylvania energy. Remember that it’ll mean death of Pennsylvania,” said Trump.
The dueling events highlight how critical the state is in reaching the coveted 270 electoral votes needed to win November’s election. The state, which not only holds significance to Biden but for First Lady Dr. Jill Biden as well, was a regular stomping ground for the president. He made 9 stops this year before leaving the ticket. This will be both Harris’ and Trump’s 8th visit to the state this year.
Trump won Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes in 2016, but Biden was able to reclaim the state along with two other Rust Belt states, Wisconsin and Michigan, by a narrow margin of just over 1% in 2020.
The momentum Harris has seen since Biden stepped down has injected a much-needed enthusiasm into the campaign that has helped to give the candidate a bump in swing state polling. Currently Harris is polling nearly two points ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania, according to 538’s average.
The Harris-Walz campaign is betting on the heavy investments they’ve made in the state to keep their edge. The campaign has nearly 300 staffers across 36 offices in the Keystone State. On Saturday they announced a $370 million ad investment with a promise of twice of the investment in TV in Pennsylvania than made in 2020.
(WASHINGTON) — Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., on Wednesday introduced a privileged resolution on the House floor to censure Rep. Clay Higgins. R-La., over his now-deleted post on X in which he called Haitians “thugs” and called Haiti the “nastiest country in the western hemisphere.”
Higgins was apparently reacting to reports that the leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, invoked a citizen’s right to file charges against Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, over threats and disruptions the city has experienced since Trump and Vance spread unsubstantiated claims about legal immigrants there.
“Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP,” Higgins wrote. “All these thugs better get their mind right and their a– out of our country before January 20th.”
Trump claimed in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that Haitian migrants in Springfield were eating residents’ pets and animals from city parks. The city’s 15,000 Haitian immigrants — most of them who are in the country legally — have filled manufacturing, distribution and warehouse jobs but have put a strain on the city’s resources.
In the wake of Trump’s comments, the city has received more than two dozen bomb threats that have caused evacuations of schools and government buildings. The state has sent in additional state troopers and installed surveillance cameras to deal with the threats.
By its rules, the House must take up a privileged resolution within two legislative days, but that won’t happen until after the November election when the House returns from a long recess.
Horsford spoke on the House floor on Wednesday and said Higgins’ post was inciting “hate and fear.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the post after votes on Wednesday and called Higgins a friend “and a very frank and outspoken person. He’s also a very principled man.”
“He was approached on the floor by colleagues who said that was offensive,” Johnson continued. “He went to the back. I just talked to him about it. He said he went to the back and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. That’s what you want the gentleman to do. I’m sure he probably regrets some of the language he used. But you know, we move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in a statement, wrote: “The disgusting statement by Clay Higgins about the Haitian community is vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the United States House of Representatives. He must be held accountable for dishonorable conduct that is unbecoming of a Member of Congress.”
“Clay Higgins is an election-denying, conspiracy-peddling racial arsonist who is a disgrace to the People’s House. This is who they have become. Republicans are the party of Donald Trump, Mark Robinson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Clay Higgins and Project 2025. The extreme MAGA Republicans are unfit to govern,” Jeffries said.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he spoke to Higgins and urged him to take the post down.
“Clay and I had a conversation about it, and I said I think it’s a bad statement – you should take it down,” Donalds said. “He came back a minute or two later and said he was going to remove it.”
Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost said he believes the post breaks the House code because it came from Higgins’ House social media account.
“It’s completely disgusting,” Frost said. “And a racist and bigoted tweet and I think it shows a lot about the Republican Party – the Republican conference – that they can’t just step up say, ‘You know what? That is wrong that he shouldn’t have posted it,” but yet their best defense is that he deleted the tweet.”
Donalds and congressional sources said a group of Democratic CBC members, including Reps. Frederica Wilson and Sheila Cherfilus McCormick, discussed the tweet with Higgins on the floor.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said she was frustrated that Republicans initially blocked Horsford’s motion to censure Higgins.
“It’s despicable. It’s outrageous, and to see Republicans go along with it means that you’re known by the company you keep — they’re complicit in this,” Lee said.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., said she wants Higgins to be punished.
“It was hateful and he meant it,” she said, adding, “He needs to be censured.”
When reached by CNN about the post, Higgins told the news outlet it was “free speech.”
“It’s all true,” Higgins said. “I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want.”
He added: “It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”
(CHICAGO) — Former director of communications for Trump’s transition team, Bryan Lanza, and former Senator Heidi Heitkamp spoke with ABC News about their opinions regarding Vice President Kamala Harris and her presidential campaign.
Lanza said that Harris has not had to answer for the various policy changes she’s made over the last 4 to 6 years, which he says leaves her answers ambiguous while making her solutions seem suitable for everyone. He also stated that Harris has significantly benefited from what he calls a “sugar high” of the media pumping her up and that the Democrats have just been so relieved that it’s no longer Joe Biden on the ticket.
Heitkamp disagreed with Lanza and rebutted by saying that when Harris talks about day care, paid family leave, affordable education and affordable housing — they are each her own ideas. The former North Dakota senator also accused the Republican Party of whining when they talk about the Harris campaign as being borne of canceling a taxpayer-funded primary.
Heitkamp and Lanza debated on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
ABC NEWS: Joining us now is former senator and ABC News contributor Heidi Heitkamp and former Trump communications adviser Bryan Lanza. Thank you both so much for joining us.
Let’s start with you, Heidi. We’re talking about the momentum, really, Kamala Harris has going into the convention. What do you feel that she’s on solid ground about? And what do you think she still has work to do on?
HEITKAMP: Well, she’s going to have a lot of work to do because you can’t just build on kind of this change in the hey, I wouldn’t say sugar high, but the kind of momentum that you had. I think you already see it plateauing somewhat.
And so she’s got to come out. She’s got to energize young people, which I think she can do because young people have been pretty discouraged. They look at a ticket between Joe Biden and President Trump and they go, ‘you know, they don’t look like me. They don’t know my problems.’ They see her and they really see someone I think that they’re interested in learning more about. And if she can energize young people, suburban women, I think she’s on the way to victory. But that’s, that’s not a given.
ABC NEWS: And Bryan, same question to you. What do you think is working and where do you think that she has work to do still when it comes to convincing maybe some of those Nikki Haley supporters or independents who might still be on the fence?
LANZA: Well, thank you for having me. And, you know, clearly where it’s working is not answering any questions. She doesn’t have to answer the various policy changes that she’s made over the last 4 to 6 years and not have an answer that sort of makes her ambiguous and makes her solution for everybody. But you saw on Friday when she rolled out, you know, some of her economic policies and she talked about, you know, price controls.
You know, that sort of drew some criticism from some very liberal newspapers and even drew some criticism from Nancy Pelosi, who said she’d like Kamala Harris to govern from the center.
So I think she’s benefited a lot from, I’ll call it, a sugar high of the media sort of pumping up Kamala Harris. And the Democrats just been so relieved that it’s not Joe Biden on the ticket anymore. But as with all sugar highs, they all crash. And we’re starting to see the crash now as she talks more and more about policy, which she can’t defend because she’s been a part of this administration that has been, has stood by during record inflation, record illegal immigration, two wars and possibly a third.
I mean, the world is on fire and it was under their watch.
ABC NEWS: Heidi, I just want to put his response right to you. Heard him there. He says sugar high comes first and then, and then you crash.
HEITKAMP: Yeah, I don’t believe that. I think that when you look at what she’s been able to accomplish so far, I think they thought the steam was going to go out of this momentum a lot earlier. And it hasn’t. And I think, you know, I’m going to just take issue with this idea that she’s been speaking to concerns of the American people.
When she’s talking about day care, when she’s talking about paid family leave, she’s talking about making education affordable, housing affordable. Those are all ideas that she has, you know, she has poll tested — they are true. And they have someone who isn’t talking about this at all.
ABC NEWS: And Bryan, Republicans have been very critical of this passing of the torch from Biden to Harris. How do you think that this will play out for voters who think that President Biden was forced out by members of his own party?
LANZA: Clearly he was, and from my perspective, I love the fact that the primaries don’t have to exist at the presidential level anymore. It’s a political operative I’ve found rather annoying, hard to predict, and a tremendous waste of resources.
So I think with the Democrats breaking the seal and canceling out 14 million votes, you’re canceling a taxpayer-funded primary. I think that sets a precedent for less primaries going forward, not more. And so I think they, you know, passing the torch sort of thing. They’ve been successful at it, you know, not having to address the 14 million people who voted millions of dollars of taxpayers that instituted the election and come out to 1,800 phone calls to get it, to get the nomination.
But I think that the, the sort of the end of their argument about threat to democracy. So it cost them a very valuable talking point that they had, but they ultimately got here and, you know, good for her. She unified her party. But by that, I mean, it wasn’t because 14 million people voted. They vacated 14 million people’s votes to get her here.
ABC NEWS: Heidi, I really do have questions for you. But it’s more interesting to get your reaction to Bryan because I see you reacting, shaking your head as he’s talking.
HEITKAMP: I hope Bryan encourages the entire Republican Party to only talk about this switcheroo as some kind of threat to democracy, as opposed to something that needed to happen in order to present the candidate that the public wanted to see. And so the more they complain about this, it’s just whining.
They now have a race between Kamala Harris, who their principal at once upon a time said would be easier to defeat than Joe Biden. So why not be happy about it? As Republicans, they know better. They know that Kamala Harris is is, has already surged in the polls. This race, which was in a very dire condition for the Democratic Party, now is dead even. And she has momentum behind her. And so keep complaining. Keep talking about it because it’s not going to win any votes.
ABC NEWS: Bryan, I’ll give you 15 seconds; Final word here.
LANZA: You know I’m not complaining. You asked the question, but, listen, from our standpoint, once this question, once the election gets back to the issues that matter, inflation, immigration, the wars, it’s clearly, it’s clear that President Trump has the advantage.
There’s a reason Joe Biden is not on the ballot today because he wasn’t able to sell success on those particular issues. And Kamala has less ability to sell that success. Sell that, especially with her sort of liberal San Francisco values and these dangerous liberal policies that she helped introduce on Friday.
ABC NEWS: Bryan Lanza, Heidi Heitkamp, thank you both so much. Good conversation. We appreciate the back and forth. All right. Give both perspectives and opinions on here. We appreciate it.
