Three key objectives Harris is expected to touch on during DNC speech
(CHICAGO) — Vice President Kamala Harris is setting out to achieve three key objectives in her highly anticipated Democratic National Convention speech Thursday night, according to a campaign official.
The vice president will tell her story of being raised by a working mother in a middle-class neighborhood — sharing how her background means she knows the everyday joys and challenges experienced by middle-class families like hers, explaining how she shares those values, the official said.
She will also discuss how she became a prosecutor in order to protect others, be they survivors of sexual abuse or homeowners impacted by the foreclosure crisis, a Harris-Walz official told ABC News.
She will point out the dangers posed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign, specifically the Project 2025 agenda, which will rip away people’s freedoms, increase the cost of living, and take the country backward, the official said.
In contrast, the official told ABC News Harris will present a New Way Forward — an optimistic agenda that provides economic opportunity and protects fundamental freedoms for all Americans.
Harris will root her optimism about the future in her faith in the American people. She will work to make a stark contrast with Trump, sharing her belief in the promise of America, according to the campaign official.
And she knows that loving your country means being willing to fight for its fundamental ideals. She is driven by a deep sense of patriotism and a desire to be a president for all Americans, the official told ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — Amid escalating rhetoric from former President Donald Trump threatening to prosecute his enemies should he win the 2024 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland will deliver remarks to the Justice Department workforce Thursday urging they continue to adhere to longstanding principles intended to protect DOJ from improper politicization.
“Our norms are a promise that we will fiercely protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations,” Garland will say, according to excerpts of his prepared remarks provided to reporters.
Garland will add, “Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this Department to be used as a political weapon. And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.”
The remarks come as Garland has sought to refute allegations from Trump and his allies of weaponization of the department through its prosecution of individuals involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s dueling prosecutions of Trump himself for his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Those close to Garland have disputed those accusations as baseless — pointing in part to DOJ’s prosecution and conviction of Democrats like disgraced New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez on corruption charges as well as the separate Special Counsel prosecutions of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Trump and his allies, in turn, have ramped up in recent months their promises to use the Justice Department as a tool of retribution against his political enemies — with Trump in a Truth Social post over the weekend threatening “long term prison sentences” for “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” he baselessly accused of being involved in “cheating” in the 2020 and 2024 elections.
According to the excerpts, Garland will forcefully rebuke what he describes as a “dangerous — and outrageous” spike in threats targeting DOJ employees under his tenure.
“Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work,” Garland will say. “These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.”
Garland will use his remarks specifically to point to steps taken during his tenure he says have been aimed at isolating the department from allegations of politicization, such as re-implementing policies intended to limit contacts with the White House.
Those policies, however, were complicated by the Supreme Court’s July ruling that effectively granted Trump immunity in his federal election subversion case over his alleged efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the election. The court’s conservative majority determined that Trump and other presidents should be shielded from any criminal liability for contacts with the DOJ, that they said clearly fall within the chief executive’s core powers.
As a result, Special Counsel Smith returned a superseding indictment two weeks ago against Trump that stripped out any mentions of the alleged DOJ plot.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debated for the first time on Tuesday, a consequential matchup with just eight weeks until Election Day.
The debate was hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The 90-minute showdown was filled with animated zingers and tense exchanges on key policy issues facing the American people.
Harris sought to portray herself as a new generation of leadership with a track record of results, while Trump tried to paint her as a radical Democrat and continued to criticize the Biden administration.
Here are some key takeaways from the debate:
Harris put Trump on defensive early on
The vice president didn’t waste any time in going on the attack against Trump.
“What we have done and what I intend to do is build on what we know are the aspirations and the hopes of the American people,” Harris said minutes into the debate. “But I’m going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”
She later took a dig at his rallies, claiming people leave them early out of “exhaustion” as he gives long speeches that sometimes include references to windmills causing cancer or to fictional characters such as Hannibal Lecter. Trump immediately defended his events and crowd sizes, saying he has the “biggest” and “most incredible” rallies in political history.
After Trump railed against crime in the nation, Harris said she thought the comments were “so rich” coming from someone who has been criminally charged multiple times. Trump has denied all wrongdoing in each of the cases against him.
Trump continues attacks on — Biden
Trump, who had a difficult time changing his message when Harris succeeded President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee, continued to criticize Biden and continually tried to tie Harris to Biden’s record — most notably on the economy, immigration and leadership abroad.
“She is Biden,” he said. “The worst inflation we’ve ever had, a horrible economy because inflation has made it so bad, and she can’t get away with that.”
Harris, who has supported many of Biden’s stances while also offering her own economic proposals, quickly responded, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country.”
In the “spin room” with reporters after the debate, Trump continued to blast the Biden-Harris record.
“She’s trying to get herself away from Biden, and she wasn’t able to do that tonight,” he said.
Did Harris succeed in introducing herself to viewers?
A key question heading into the debate was whether Harris would be able to define herself to voters who say they don’t feel they know her or what she stands for well enough.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found a sizable share of likely voters (28%) and registered voters (31%) feel they need to know more about Harris as a candidate. Those numbers were even higher among independent voters: 41% of registered independents and 38% of likely voters who identified as independent said they needed to learn more about her.
Harris began her first response to a question on the economy by saying she was raised by her mother in a middle-class family. Later, she highlighted her background as a prosecutor who has taken on transnational criminal organizations. She also noted that as a senator, she was at the U.S. Capitol when it was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6.
She also hit on some of her signature policy proposals, including her support for reproductive freedom and economic plans like expanding the Child Tax Credit and assisting first-time homebuyers. She also noted that both she and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, are gun owners and wouldn’t take people’s guns away.
While neither candidate went too deep into policy specifics, Harris did try to paint a clear contrast between what she is offering and what she believes Trump is proposing if elected.
“What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country, one who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people,” she said.
Meanwhile, Trump argued Harris is a “radical left liberal” and pressed her on some of her shifts on police funding, fracking and more since her 2019 Democratic primary campaign.
Trump still refuses to concede he lost the 2020 election
Trump tried to explain his own remarks recently in which he appeared to accept he lost the 2020 election, including his comment last week that he “lost by a whisker.”
“I said that?” Trump said on the debate stage when it was read back to him.
“Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?” ABC News moderator David Muir asked.
“No, I don’t acknowledge that at all,” he said. “That was said sarcastically.”
Asked about the peaceful transfer of power, Trump did not say that he regrets anything about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. He claimed he had “nothing” to do with what happened that day, which culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Race comes up, but not gender
For the second time, Trump is campaigning against a woman for president. Harris’ gender was not broached during the debate, though her race was.
Asked by moderators about his previous false comments on her racial identity — including that Harris, who is Black and South Asian, “happened to turn Black” — Trump said he “couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t care what she is. I don’t care,” he said. “Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.”
When pressed, Trump doubled down, saying he read that she was not Black, and then that she was.
“And that’s okay. Either one was okay with me. That’s up to her. That’s up to her,” he said.
Asked for her thoughts, Harris went on the attack — but didn’t focus on herself. Instead, she focused on Trump’s falsehoods about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace and noted “he was investigated because he refused to rent property to Black families” to cast him as divisive and unfit.
“Honestly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she said. “I think the American people want better than that, want better than this.”
“This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country,” Trump responded.
(NEW YORK) — In her second move since resuming control over Donald Trump’s federal election interference case, Judge Tanya Chutkan denied the former president’s motion to dismiss the case based on selective and vindictive prosecution.
Chutkan found “no evidence” that prosecutors abused their authority or behaved vindictively when bringing their case against the former president.
In denying Trump’s motion, Chutkan criticized what she called Trump’s “improper framing” that the allegations against him are a “theory…that it is illegal to dispute the outcome of an election and work with others to propose alternate electors.”
“At this stage, the court cannot accept Defendant’s alternate narrative,” Chutkan wrote.
Before the federal case was frozen for more than half a year, defense attorneys attempted to have the case thrown out by arguing that Trump was selectively prosecuted and unfairly targeted “to prevent him from becoming ‘the next President again.'”
“After reviewing Defendant’s evidence and arguments, the court cannot conclude that he has carried his burden to establish either actual vindictiveness or the presumption of it, and so finds no basis for dismissing this case on those grounds,” Chutkan wrote in a 16-page order.
Chutkan found that Trump failed to provide evidence for either prong of the two-part test to prove selective prosecution – that he was singled out for prosecution or that the case was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.
“Finding no evidence of discriminatory purpose in the sources Defendant cites, the court is left only with his unsupported assertions that this prosecution must be politically motivated because it coexists with his campaign for the Presidency,” Chutkan wrote.
Earlier in the day, Chutkan set a hearing for Aug. 16 at 10 a.m., which Trump is not required to attend.
This will be the first time in seven months the parties will appear in Chutkan’s courtroom. Chutkan also denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case on statutory grounds.
Trump last year pleaded not guilty to charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election by enlisting a slate of so-called “fake electors,” using the Justice Department to conduct “sham election crime investigations,” trying to enlist the vice president to “alter the election results,” and promoting false claims of a stolen election as the Jan. 6 riot raged — all in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power.
The former president has denied all wrongdoing.
Trump originally faced a March 4 trial date before his appeal effectively paused the proceedings.