Trump directs DOJ, White House counsel to investigate Biden’s mental state in office
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether former President Joe Biden’s administration sought to conspire to cover up his mental state while in office, prompting a response from Biden.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” Biden said in a statement. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
The move by the White House represents a significant escalation, as it is a directive to the Justice Department to formally investigate.
It goes beyond the review into Biden’s last-minute pardons before leaving office.
Biden responded to Trump’s memo to Bondi and the Department of Justice, calling an investigation “nothing more than a mere distraction” and defending his decision-making ability. In a statement he says any suggestion he was not in control is “ridiculous and false.”
“This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations,” Biden said in a statement sent to ABC News.
The president directed the U.S.’s top law enforcement official, in coordination with his White House counsel, to investigate “the circumstances surrounding Biden’s supposed execution of numerous executive actions during his final years in office,” according to a statement from the White House.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff in a letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles sent Monday, repeated his calls for the White House to issue a full disclosure of financial transactions from senior officials.
The new ask comes after the California senator — along with 25 other Democratic members of Congress — sent a separate letter to Wiles in April that outlined his concern surrounding potential ethics violations, asking for a commitment from all senior White House and executive branch employees to “expeditiously” transmit all reports related to their securities transactions since the start of Trump’s term to the Office of Government Ethics, and that the reports be made public.
That April letter was sent in the wake of President Donald Trump’s sudden pause that month of his sweeping set of tariffs, which triggered widespread concern from Schiff and other Democrats that those close to the president might have engaged in insider trading as markets rose following the pause.
In his Monday letter, addressed to Wiles like the first but also including White House Counsel David Warrington, Schiff notes that senior executive White House officials are “now beyond the maximum allowable filing period for individuals who began their service at the outset of the Administration” under federal ethics laws, which mandate that they file public annual financial disclosure documents, including a new entrant report, within 30 days of assuming their duties.
“The White House has yet to disclose any financial disclosure or transaction reports, even after widespread concern of potential insider trading following President Trump’s sudden pause of sweeping tariffs in early April,” Schiff writes in the letter, first shared first with ABC News.
“According to OGE’s disclosure database to date, no new entrant reports for any senior White House officials have been made available for public disclosure, despite legal requirements under the Ethics in Government Act and the clear public interest in the financial disclosures of senior executive branch leaders, raising questions as to whether the required public reports have yet to be submitted to OGE for certification,” he added.
Asked by ABC News for comment on the letter, White House spokesman Kush Desai said on Monday, “The American people remain highly concerned about Nancy Pelosi’s long, documented history of insider trading and eagerly await Adam Schiff refocusing his political stunt on serious issues, like Pelosi’s portfolio.”
Pelosi has faced allegations of trading on inside information during her time in Congress but has denied any impropriety.
Copied on Schiff’s letter is also Jamieson Greer, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, and Scott Gast, the ethics attorney in the White House counsel’s office.
In their April letter, the Democrats requested a response from Wiles no later than May 9, 2025, and for a “detailed plan” for how the administration plans to address any officials and employees who might have failed to file required disclosures from the start of the administration.
A spokesperson for Schiff said that they received from the White House an acknowledgement that they had received the letter, but provided no answers to their demands.
In the newest letter, Schiff asked for Wiles and Warrington to send, no later than on June 10, a list of all White House officials required to file new entrant reports; an explanation for the failure to transmit any new entrant reports to OGE for second-level review and certification; the current status and anticipated timeline for the submission and public posting of all overdue disclosures; a list of any filing extensions requested and granted by designated White House ethics officials and the duration of those extensions; and whether any late filing fees have been imposed for delinquent filings, as required by law.
“Transparency and compliance with ethics laws are essential. The American public deserves to know that those serving at the highest levels of government are free from financial conflicts of interest and have complied with the laws designed to safeguard the integrity of public service. I look forward to reviewing your responses,” the senator concluded.
Trump’s tariffs have faced a number of court challenges. An appeals court reinstated Trump’s tariffs this week after a Wednesday court order blocked them. The appeals court decision stands for the time being.
The block on the tariffs came after the Court of International Trade decided that the administration’s evocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president the right to set “unlimited” tariffs. The Trump administration argued that the court order may harm their progress in negotiations.
Schiff has been a critic and target of Trump since his days in the House. Former President Joe Biden, during his last hours in office, issued a preemptive pardon for Schiff in connection with his work on the House’s Jan. 6 select committee. Schiff has called that pardon “unnecessary” and “unwise.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s administration is launching an investigation into Harvard University’s law journal over alleged discriminatory practices, expanding its weeks-long battle over federal funding with the elite institution.
The civil rights offices of the Education and Health and Human Services departments announced Monday they are investigating the Harvard Law Review, an independent, student-run organization that promotes legal scholarship.
The offices are investigating allegations that the journal discriminates based on race “in lieu of merit-based” standards, in violation of the Title VI anti-discrimination law, according to a release by the two agencies.
“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary within the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, said in a statement on Monday.
The agencies said the Harvard Law Review risks losing federal funding if found to have broken Title VI law.
The Harvard Law Review has been published and edited by students for over 135 years. It aims to be an effective research tool for practicing lawyers and students, according to its website.
“Harvard Law School is committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations,” a spokesperson for the university said in a statement to ABC News, noting that the journal “is a student-run organization that is legally independent from the law school.”
The latest investigation comes after the Trump administration froze over $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard after the university refused to comply with a series of demands following an antisemitism task force review earlier this month.
Harvard University President Alan Garber said in a letter at the time that “no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
The university has filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s threats to withhold funding, asking a judge to block the funding freeze from going into effect, arguing the move is “unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.”
During a short conference on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs scheduled oral arguments in the lawsuit challenging the funding freeze on July 21. In the meantime, the funding freeze will remain in effect.
The Internal Revenue Service is also considering revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, sources told ABC News earlier this month.
In other developments, the Department of Education said Monday its civil rights office found that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing transgender athletes to compete on its women’s sports teams.
The department is demanding the university issue a statement to its community that it will comply with the law, apologize to athletes whose athletic participation was “marred by sex discrimination,” and restore all athletics records or accolades “misappropriated by male athletes.” The school has 10 days to resolve the violation or risk a referral to the Department of Justice.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration said it suspended $175 million in federal contracts awarded to Penn, citing the participation of a transgender athlete on a women’s swimming team.
A Penn spokesperson said at the time that the university has “always followed” NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The new director of the federal Bureau of Prisons said the agency will “vigorously” pursue “all avenues to support and implement” the president’s agenda after President Donald Trump said he was wanted to reopen Alcatraz as a “substantially enlarged and rebuilt” prison.
Over the weekend, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was directing the Bureau of Prisons, along with the Department of Justice, FBI and DHS to reopen the facility.
“The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will vigorously pursue all avenues to support and implement the President’s agenda,” said BOP Director William K. Marshall III, who was sworn in last month. “I have ordered an immediate assessment to determine our needs and the next steps. USP Alcatraz has a rich history. We look forward to restoring this powerful symbol of law, order, and justice. We will be actively working with our law enforcement and other federal partners to reinstate this very important mission.
“Just an idea I had,” Trump told reporters Sunday night when asked what prompted his proposal. “And I guess because so many of these radicalized judges, they want to have trials for every single, think of it, every single person that’s in our country illegally, they came in illegally. That would mean millions of trials, and it’s just so ridiculous what’s happening.”
Alcatraz, which sits in the middle of San Francisco Bay, has not been an operational prison since 1963, according to the National Park Service, which has maintained it as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area since 1972. More than 1 million people visit the island each year, according to the BOP.
The facility, which was built as a fort to protect San Francisco Bay then converted to an Army prison before holding federal inmates, has housed notorious prisoners such as mobster Al Capone. Known as “The Rock,” the prison held on average 260 to 275 people, according to the Bureau of Prisons, and many inmates considered the living conditions at the prison to be better than most at the time, the agency says.
It was estimated that it would take $3 million to $5 million for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open in addition to daily operating costs, which were far higher than other federal prisons. Alcatraz’s daily per capita cost in 1959 was $10.10 compared to $3.00 for the federal prison in Atlanta.
A recent inspector general report estimated that the Bureau of Prisons facilities across the country needed $2 billion worth of repairs. The BOP has had to close facilities because of the dire conditions inside some prisons.
Elizabeth Neumann, a former DHS deputy chief of staff, told ABC News Live that the BOP “already has some pretty significant problems with its existing prisons.”
“They’ve closed a number in recent years just because they can’t maintain them. So to try to also turn around something that hasn’t been operational for 60 years, and make it habitable for people to be imprisoned would be a lot of money,” she said.
And it’s not just the cost of getting the facility ready to house inmates, she said.
“San Francisco is a very high cost of living area. Federal employees get paid more if they work in those high cost areas. So it’s not really a cost effective solution,” Neumann said. “If you’re looking to build producer capacity, you would it’s more effective to just build something new in a part of the country where the cost of living is lower.”
Neumann said she wasn’t surprised by Trump’s suggestion. She said during his first administration, she was often tasked with researching some of his proposals.
“He has a lot of ideas. People will go off and study them, then they’ll come back with the facts and, and usually it gets dropped at that stage,” she said.
House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who represents the area in Congress, shot down Trump’s proposal.
“Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal is not a serious one,” she posted on X.
