Trump praises Secret Service response to apparent assassination attempt
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised the Secret Service for stopping an apparent assassination attempt Sunday, speaking in a phone interview with ABC News.
“I’m fine. The Secret Service did a good job, actually,” he said.
A Secret Service agent fired several shots at Ryan Wesley Routh, who was allegedly concealed in a tree line armed with a rifle at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, about 300 to 500 yards from the Republican presidential nominee, authorities said.
The suspect was able to get into a car and drive off, but was stopped by law enforcement.
He appeared in court on Monday and currently faces two felony gun charges. The investigation is ongoing.
Trump spoke about the heightened threat environment, telling ABC News, “Probably always been dangerous, but it’s more so now, I think.”
He reiterated satisfaction with how the Secret Service handled Sunday’s incident.
“On that on that event, I thought they were excellent,” he said.
Trump also discussed his phone call with President Joe Biden following the incident, calling the conversation “very, very nice.”
“He called me just to, you know, express his sort of horror that a thing like that could happen. But it was a very good conversation,” Trump said.
Trump said Biden told him he wants to be sure the Secret Service has all the resources it needs to do its job, adding, “I hope that is the case.”
(WASHINGTON) — Three of the five 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo Bay — including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — have reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday.
Gary B. Sowards, the lead attorney Mohammed, confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday evening that the agreement does not include the death penalty but means his client will essentially serve life in prison.
The trial of the five 9/11 conspirators had been stuck in legal delays for almost a decade. No details about the specific terms and conditions of the pre-trial agreement were made public by the DOD. The other two conspirators who have agreed to the agreement aside from Mohammed are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
The families of 9/11 victims were the first to be notified of the plea deal earlier on Wednesday in a letter from Rear Admiral Aaron Rugh, the chief prosecutor in the case.
A copy of the letter, obtained by ABC News, said that in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, the three will plead guilty to all charges, including the murder of 2,976 people. They will be sentenced by a panel of military officers.
They also agreed to respond to questions from the verified 9/11 family members “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting” the attacks. The defendants will submit their responses within 90 days.
Patrick White, cousin of Louis Nacke II who was a passenger on United 93 — the flight where passengers attempted to retake the plane from hijackers, and in the struggle, the aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania — told ABC News, “I’ve made my peace with it.”
He added that he believes “life in prison along with an admission of guilt that they were complicit in [the] murder of loved ones” was what he was hoping would result from the plea talks.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News that the White House learned that the Convening Authority for Military Commissions entered into pretrial agreements with Mohammed and the other two 9/11 defendants on Wednesday.
The spokesperson also said that the president and White House played no role in the process.
Two other 9/11 defendants did not participate in the trial agreement, though only one of them, Ammar al Baluchi, could actually face trial proceedings at Guantanamo.
Last September a military judge ruled that Ramzi bin al Shibh, the other defendant not participating in the plea agreement, was mentally incompetent to stand trial.
In a statement about the plea agreement, Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice, said, “We are deeply troubled by these plea deals.”
He added that the group acknowledged the decision to avoid the death penalty but wants more access “to these individuals for information.”
“These plea deals should not perpetuate a system of closed-door agreements, where crucial information is hidden without giving the families of the victims the chance to learn the full truth,” he said.
The ACLU issued a statement saying the DOD’s decision was the “right call.”
“The government’s decision to settle for life imprisonment instead of seeking the death penalty in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the right call,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement. “It’s also the only practical solution after nearly two decades of litigation. For too long, the U.S. has repeatedly defended its use of torture and unconstitutional military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay. The military commissions were doomed from the start and the government’s torture of these defendants makes this plea both necessary and just. Finally, closing the chapter on these cases with a plea agreement will also provide a measure of transparency and justice for 9/11 family members.”
Last September, ABC News reported that President Joe Biden rejected a set of demands to form a basis for plea negotiations offered by the five defendants.
Biden agreed with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recommendation not to accept their demands, known as “joint policy principles,” that they wanted prior to entering into plea agreement talks with prosecutors. According to the New York Times, those demands included avoiding solitary confinement and receiving health treatment for injuries the detainees claim were a result of CIA interrogation methods when they were in the CIA’s “black prisons.”
“The 9/11 attacks were the single worst assault on the United States since Pearl Harbor,” a National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News in a statement in September 2023. “The President does not believe that accepting the joint policy principles as a basis for a pre-trial agreement would be appropriate in these circumstances. The Administration is committed to ensuring that the military commissions process is fair and delivers justice to the victims, survivors, families, and those accused of crimes.”
The five detainees were transferred to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. Their case has been held up by legal proceedings for years, with no trial date set.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, marking the start of a series of coordinated attacks that day against the United States by the Afghanistan-based terrorist group al-Qaida. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day and thousands more were injured.
(PARIS) — The greatest gymnast of all time, Simone Biles, took an apparent jab at former President Donald Trump early Friday, tweeting, “I love my black job,” in response to a tweet about her winning the gold medal in the women’s individual all-around hours earlier.
Biles’ tweet came in response to one from Ricky Davila, a singer and fan of the gymnast, who tweeted, “Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job.”
Both comments came after Trump used the term “Black jobs” during an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference on Wednesday.
“I will tell you that coming, coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs. You had the best–” Trump said, as ABC New’s Rachel Scott pointedly asked him, “What is a ‘Black job?'”
“A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is,” Trump said. “Anybody that has a job.”
The response generated audible laughs from the audience.
Biles bounced back after dropping out of the Tokyo Games to focus on her mental health to win gold in the individual all-around Thursday. She won the same title in Rio in 2016, and is the first gymnast to win the individual gold eight years apart. She already has two gold medals in Paris — including the team all-around win earlier in the week — and is favored to win more gold in the individual apparatus events.
Already acknowledged as the greatest of all time before Paris — not just due to her Olympic performances, but also her 23 world championship gold medals — Biles now holds six Olympics gold medals and nine medals total — the most of any American gymnast.
Biles’ comments on social media were likely colored by previous criticism from conservatives. In fact, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, criticized support for Biles dropping out of competition in Tokyo to focus on her mental health and deal with a condition known as “the twisties,” when a gymnast loses their spacial awareness during flips, putting them at serious risk for injury.
“What I find so weird about this … is that we’ve tried to turn a very tragic moment, Simone Biles quitting the Olympic team, into this act of heroism,” Vance told Fox News in 2021. “I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we try to praise people, not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments.”
Biles has been targeted since Tokyo on social media for prioritizing her mental health. Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements and writings in relation to election interference in Georgia, called Biles a loser on social media after the gymnast was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in July 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — Coming off of a brief respite from the campaign trail after a star-studded week in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz are heading to Georgia for a two-day bus tour that ends with Harris holding a solo rally in Savannah on Thursday.
The tour marks the first time the two campaigns will be in the crucial swing state together, with a planned stop for their first sit-down interview since Harris ascended to the top of the ticket with CNN’s chief political correspondent and anchor Dana Bash on Thursday.
The tour’s first stop was at Liberty County High School, where Harris, Walz U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams and state Rep. Al Williams were greeted by the school’s principal and superintendent, before listening in on the school marching band’s practice. In remarks to the band and football players, Harris told them that they were leaders that the country is counting on.
“We wanted to come up just to let you know that our country is counting on you. We’re so proud of you,” she said. “You are showing what hard work can achieve.”
Walz, a former teacher and football coach, told the students that education is a path to the middle class.
“Education is the key to the middle class,” he said. “The pathway to the middle class shouldn’t be burdened with debt given the opportunity to get there. This is truly about building towards the future, and you’re that future.”
The pair later stopped at Sandfly BBQ in Savannah, where Walz chatted with a group of teachers, telling them their job is “noble work.”
Although there is no notable post-convention polling that has been released to date, the campaign saw a bump in donations of $82 million during the week of the DNC, bringing the total haul since launching her candidacy last month to $540 million, her campaign said.
Hoping to build on that momentum, Harris and Walz are scheduled to travel through Georgia’s southeast where they will meet with supporters, small business owners and Georgia voters, according to the campaign. It will be their second bus tour after they previously went on a bus tour through western Pennsylvania before the DNC.
The Harris campaign is looking to sway voters in battleground Georgia — a state President Joe Biden only narrowly won in 2020, beating former President Donald Trump by about 12,000 votes.
Currently, Harris is neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls in the state, according to 538’s average. Trump barely leads in Georgia with 46.6% compared to Harris’ 46%, 538’s polling average shows.
“Campaigning in southern Georgia is critical as it represents a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban, and urban Georgians — with a large proportion of Black voters and working class families,” said Harris-Walz Georgia state director Porsha White in a memo.
This is all in addition to their 35,000 new volunteers, as well as more than 190 Democratic campaign staffers in 24 coordinated offices across the state, officials said.
Through extensive “Get Out the Vote” organizing efforts, Black voters were a huge contributing factor to Biden’s win in a state that former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had all but skipped during their presidential runs.
Harris’ tour is a testament that the campaign still feels like Georgia’s 16 electoral votes are in play.
“We turned Georgia blue for the first time in three decades in 2020, and we’re seizing on the energy and putting in the work to win again in 2024,” White said in the memo.
A Harris spokeswoman told ABC News said that the vice president will make two stops at local small businesses in South Georgia on Thursday, then thank volunteers in Chatham County, before rallying in Savannah late in the afternoon.
Walz, meanwhile, will travel to North Carolina for a “local political event” and a campaign reception.
Following CNN’s interview, Walz will head to Massachusetts for a solo rally on Thursday. Voters will see Harris, Walz and their spouses — second gentleman Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, respectively — on the trail again for a Labor Day blitz across several battleground states prior to ABC News’ debate on Sept. 10.